CHAPTER LV.
THE BIBLE
A learned father of the ancient rite made some remarks to me on the Bible in Russia, which live in my mind as parts of the picture of this great country.
I knew that our Bible Society have a branch in Petersburg, and that copies of the New Testament and the Psalms have been scattered, through their agency, from the White Sea to the Black; but, being well aware that the right to found that branch of our Society in Russia was originally urged by men of the world in London upon men of the same class in St. Petersburg, and that the ministers of Alexander the First gave their consent in a time of war, when they wanted English help in men and money against the French, I supposed that the purposes in view had been political, and that this heavenly seed was cast into ungrateful soil. I had no conception of the good which our Society has been doing in silence for so many years.
"The Scriptures which came to us from England," said this priest, "have been the mainstay, not of our religion only, but of our national life."
"Then they have been much read?"
"In thousands, in ten thousands of pious homes. The true Russian likes his Bible – yes, even better than his dram – for the Bible tells him of a world beyond his daily field of toil, a world of angels and of spirits, in which he believes with a nearer faith than he puts in the wood and water about his feet. In every second house of Great Russia – the true, old Russia, in which we speak the same language and have the same God – you will find a copy of the Bible, and men who have the promise in their hearts."
In my journey through the country I find this true, though not so much in the letter as in the spirit. Except in New England and in Scotland, no people in the world, so far as they can read at all, are greater Bible-readers than the Russians.
In thinking of Russia we forget the time when she was free, even as she is now again growing free, and take scant heed of the fact that she possessed a popular version of Scripture, used in all her churches and chapels, long before such a treasure was obtained by England, Germany, and France.
"Love for the Bible and love for Russia," said the priest, "go with us hand in hand, as the Tsar in his palace and the monk in his convent know. A patriotic government gives us the Bible, a monastic government takes it away."
"What do you mean by a patriotic government and a monastic government, when speaking of the Bible?"
"By a patriotic government, that of Alexander the First and Alexander the Second; by a monastic government, that of Nicolas. The first Alexander gave us the Bible; Nicolas took it away; the second Alexander gave it us again. The first Alexander was a prince of gentle ways and simple thoughts – a mystic, as men of worldly training call a man who lives with God. Like all true Russians, he had a deep and quick perception of the presence of things unseen. In the midst of his earthly troubles – and they were great – he turned into himself. He was a Bible-reader. In the Holy Word he found that peace which the world could neither give nor take away; and what he found for himself he set his heart on sharing with his children everywhere. Consulting Prince Golitsin, then his minister of public worship, he found that pious and noble man – Golitsin was a Russian – of his mind. They read the Book together, and, seeing that it was good for them, they sent for Stanislaus, archbishop of Mohiloff, and asked him why people should not read the Bible, each man for himself, and in his native tongue? Up to that time our sacred books were printed only in Bulgaric; a Slavonic speech which people used to understand; but which is now an unknown dialect, even to the popes who drone it every day from the altar steps. Two English doctors – the good Patterson and the good Pinkerton – brought us the New Testament, printed in the Russian tongue; and, by help of the Tsar and his council, scattered the copies into every province and every town, from the frontiers of Poland to those of China. I am an old man now; but my veins still throb with the fervor of that day when we first received, in our native speech, the word that was to bring us eternal life. The books were instantly bought up and read; friends lent them to each other; and family meetings were held, in which the Promise was read aloud. The popes explained the text; the elders gave out chapter and verse. Even in parties which met to drink whisky and play cards, some neighbor would produce his Bible, when the company gave up their games to listen while an aged man read out the story of the passion and the cross. That story spoke to the Russian heart; for the Russ, when left alone, has something of the Galilean in his nature – a something soft and feminine, almost sacrificial; helping him to feel, with a force which he could never reach by reasoning, the patient beauty of his Redeemer's life and death."
"And what were the effects of this Bible-reading?"
"Who can tell! You plant the acorn, your descendants sit beneath the oak. One thing it did for us, which we could never have done without its help – the Bible drove the Jesuits from our midst – and if we had it now in every house it would drive away these monks."
The story of the battle of the Bible Society and the Order of Jesus may be read in Joly, and in other writers. When that Order was suppressed in Rome, and the Fathers were banished from every Catholic state in Europe, a remnant was received into Russia by the insane Emperor Paul, who took them into his favor in the hope of vexing the Roman Court, and of making them useful agents in his Catholic provinces. Well they repaid him for the shelter given – not only in the Polish cities, but in the privatest recesses of his home. Father Gruber is said to have been familiar with every secret of the palace under Paul. These exiles were a band of outlaws, living in defiance of their spiritual chief and of their temporal prince; but while they clung with unslackening grasp to the great traditions of their Society, they sought, by visible service to mankind, the means of overcoming the hostility of popes and kings. No honest writer will deny that they were useful to the Russians in a secular sense, whatever trouble they may have caused them in a religious sense. They brought into this country the light of science and the love of art then flourishing in the West; and the colleges which they opened for the education of youth were far in advance of the native schools. They built their schools at Moscow, Riga, Petersburg, Odessa, on the banks of the Volga, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. They sought to be useful in a thousand ways; in the foreign colony, at the military station, in the city prison, at the Siberian mine. They went out as doctors and as teachers. They followed the army into Astrakhan, and toiled among the Kozaks of the Don; but while they labored to do good, they labored in a foreign and offensive spirit. To the Russ people they were strangers and enemies; subjects of a foreign prince, and members of a hostile church. Some ladies of the court went over to their rite; a youth of high family followed these court ladies; then the clergy took alarm, and raised their voices against the strangers. What offended the Russians most of all was the assumption by these Jesuits of the name of missionaries, as though the people were a savage horde not yet reclaimed to God and His Holy Church. Unhappily for the fathers, this title was expressly forbidden to the Catholic clergy by Russian law, and this assumption was an act of disobedience which left them at the mercy of the crown.
But while the Emperor Paul was kind to them, these acts were passed in silence, and Alexander seemed unlikely to withdraw his favor from his father's friends. The issue of a New Testament in the native speech brought on the conflict and insured their fate.
Following the traditions of their Order, the Jesuits heard the proposal to print the Bible in the Russian tongue, so that every man should read it for himself, with fear, and armed themselves to oppose the scheme. They spoke, they wrote, they preached against it. Calling it an error, they showed how much it was disliked in Rome. They said it was an English invasion of the country; and they stirred up the popes to attack it; saying it would be the ruin, not only of the Roman clergy, but of the Greek.
Alexander's eyes were opened to the character of his guests. The Bible was a comfort to himself, and why should others be refused the blessing he had found? Who were these men, that they should prevent his people reading the Word of Life?
A dangerous question for the Tsar to ask; for Prince Golitsin was close at hand with his reply. The worst day's work the Jesuits had ever done was to disturb this prince's family by converting his nephew to the Roman Church. Golitsin called it seduction; and seduction from the national faith is a public crime. When, therefore, Alexander came to ask who these men were, Golitsin answered that they were teachers of false doctrine; disturbers of the public peace; men who were banished by their sovereigns; a body disbanded by their popes. And then, in spite of their good deeds, they were sent away – first from Moscow and Petersburg, afterwards from every city of the empire. Their expulsion was one of the most popular acts of a long and glorious reign.
The Jesuit writers lay the blame of their expulsion on the Bible Societies.
From other sources I learn that the New Testament was free until Alexander's death, and that the copies found their way into every city and village of the land. With the death of Alexander the First came a change. After the conspiracy of 1825, the new Emperor listened to his black clergy, and the Bible was placed under close arrest.
The Russian Bible Society was called a Russian parliament. All parties in the state were represented on the board of management; Orthodox bishops sitting next to Old Believers, and Old Believers next to Dissenting priests. The Bible, in which they all believed, was a common ground, on which they could meet and exchange the words of peace. But Nicolas, ruling by the sword, had no desire to see these boards pursuing their active and independent course; and his monks had little trouble in persuading him to replace the Bible by an official Book of Saints.
CHAPTER LVI.
PARISH PRIESTS
In this empire of villages there is a force of six hundred and ten thousand parish priests (a little more or less); each parish priest the centre of a circle, who regard him not only as a man of God, ordained to bless in His holy name, but as a father to advise them in weal and woe. These priests are not only popular, but in country villages they are themselves the people.
Father Peter, the village pope, is a countryman like the members of his flock. In his youth, he must have been at school and college – a smart lad, perhaps, alert of tongue and learned in decrees and canons; but he has long since sobered down into the dull and patient priest you see. In speech, in gait, in dress, he is exactly like the peasants in yon dram-shop and yon field. His cabin is built of logs; his wife grows girkins, which she carries in a creel to the nearest town for sale; and the reverend gentleman puts his right hand on the plough. He does not preach and teach; for he has little to say, and not a word that any of his neighbors would care to hear. Knowing that his lot in life is fixed, he has no inducement to refresh his mind with learning, and to burnish up his oratorical arms. The world slips past him, unperceived; and, with his grip on the peasant's spade, he sinks insensibly into the peasant's class. Yet Peter's life, though it may be hard and poor, is not without lines of natural grace, the more affecting from the homeliness of every thing around. His cabin is very clean; some flower-pots stand on his window-sill; a heap of books loads his presses; and his walls are picturesque with pictures of chapel and saint. A pale and comely wife is sitting near his door, knitting her children's hose, and watching the urchins at their play. Those boys are singing beneath a tree – singing with soft, sad faces one of their ritual psalms. A calm and tender influence flows from his house into the neighboring sheds. The dullest hind in the hamlet sees that the pastor's little ones are kept in order, and that his cabin is the pattern of a tidy village hut.
The pastor has his patch of land to till, his bit of garden ground to tend; but on every side you find the homely folk about him helping in his labor, each peasant in his turn, so as to make his duties light. Presents of many kinds are made to him – ducklings, fish, cucumbers, even shoes and wraps, as well as angel-day offerings and benediction-fees. A priest is so great a man in a village, that, even when he is a tipsy, idle fellow, he is treated by his parishioners with a child-like duty and respect. The pastor can do much to help his flock, not only in their spiritual wants, but in their secular affairs. In any quarrel with the police, it is of great importance to a peasant that his priest should take his part; and the pastor commonly takes his neighbor's part, not only because he himself is poor, and knows the man, but because he hates all public officers and suspects all men in power.
A great day for the parish priest is that on which a child is born in his commune.
When Dimitri (the peasant living in yon big house is called Dimitri) hears that a son has been given to him, he runs for his priest, and Father Peter comes in stately haste to welcome and bless the little one. Finding the baby swinging in his liulka, Father Peter puts on his cope, unclasps his book, turns his face to the holy icons, and begins his prayer. "Lord God," he cries, "we beg Thee to send down the light of Thy face upon this child, Thy servant Constantine; and be he signed with the cross of Thy only-begotten Son. Amen."
In two or three weeks the christening of little Constantine, "servant of God," takes place. When the rite is performed at home, the house has to be turned, as it were, into a chapel for the nonce; no difficult thing, as parlor, kitchen, hall, saloon, are decorated with the Son, the Mother, and the patron saint. A room is set apart for the office; a rug is spread before the sacred pictures; and on a table are laid three candles, a fine napkin, and a glass of water from the well. A silver-gilt basin is sent from the village church. Attended by his reader and his deacon, each carrying a bundle, Father Peter walks to the house, bearing a cross and singing a psalm, while the censer is swung before him in the street.
The rite then given is long and solemn, the ceremony consisting of many parts. First comes the act of driving out the fiends: when the pope, not yet in his perfect robes, takes up the baby, breathes on his face, crosses him three times – on temple, breast, and lips – and exorcises the devil and all his imps; ending with the words, "May every evil and unclean spirit that has taken up his abode in this infant's heart depart from hence!" Then comes the act of renouncing the Evil One and all his works, in the baby's name. "Dost thou renounce the devil?" asks the pope; on which the sponsors turn, with the child, towards the setting sun, that land of shadows in which the Prince of Darkness is supposed to dwell, and answer, each, "I have renounced him." "Spit on him!" cries the pope, who jets his own saliva into a corner, as though the devil were present in the room. The sponsors spit in turn. Here follows the confession of faith; the sponsors being asked whether they believe that Christ is King and God; and, on answering that they believe in Him as King and God, are told to fall down and worship Him as such. Next comes the rite of baptism, when the pope puts on his brightest robe, the parents are sent away, and the child is left to his godfathers and godmothers. A taper is put into each sponsor's hand; the candles near the font are lighted; incense is flung about; the reader and deacon sing; and the pope inaudibly recites a prayer. The water is blessed by the pope dipping his right hand into it three times, by breathing on it, praying over it, and signing it with the cross. He uses for that purpose a feather which has been dipped into holy oil. The child is anointed five times; first on the forehead, with this phrase: "Constantine, the servant of God, is anointed with the oil of gladness;" next on the chest, to heal his soul and body; then on the two ears, to quicken his sense of the Word; afterwards on his hands and feet, to do God's will and walk in his way. Seized by the pope, the child is now plunged into the font three times by rapid dips, the priest repeating at each dip, "Constantine, the servant of God, is now baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." If the young Christian is not drowned in the font (as sometimes happens), he is clad in white, he receives his name, his guardian angel, and his cross.
The rite of baptism ended, the sacrament of unction opens. This sacrament, called the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit, is said to represent the "laying on of hands" in the early Christian Church. With a small feather, dipped once more into the sacred oil, the pope again touches the baby's forehead, chest, lips, hands, and feet, saying each time, "The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit;" on which reader, deacon, and priest all break into chants of hallelujah! After unction comes the act of sacrifice; when the child, who has nothing else of his own to give, offers up the hair of his head. Taking a pair of shears, the pope snips off the down in four places from the baby's head, making a cross, and saying, as he cuts each piece away, "Constantine, the servant of God, is shorn in Thy name." The hair is thrown into the font; more litany is sung; and the child is at length given back, fatigued and sleepy, into his mother's arms.
Ten or twelve days later, Constantine must be taken by his mother to mass, and receive the sacrament, as a sign of his visible acceptance in the Church. A nurse walks up the steps before the royal gates; and when the deacon comes forward with the cup in his hand, she goes to meet him. He takes a small spoon and puts a drop of wine into the infant's mouth, saying, "Constantine, the servant of God, communicates in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." Later in the service, the pope himself takes up the child, and, pressing his nose against the icons on the screen, cries, loudly, "Constantine, the servant of God, is now received into the Church of Christ."
Not less grand a time for Father Peter is a wedding-day. The rite is longer, and the fees are more. Old Tartar customs keep their hold on these common folk, if not on the higher ranks, and courtship, as we understand it, is a thing unknown. A match is made by the proposeress and the parents, not by the youth and maiden – for in habit, if not in law, the sexes live apart, and do not see much of each other until the knot is tied.
A servant came into the parlor of a house in which I was staying as a guest – came in simpering and crying – to say that she wished to leave her place. "To leave! For what cause?"
Well, she was going to be married.
"Married, Maria!" cried her mistress; "when?" "The day after next," replied the woman, shedding tears.
"So soon, Maria! And what sort of man are you going to wed?"
The woman dropped her eyes. She could not say; she had not seen him yet. The proposeress had done it all, and sent her word to appear in church at four o'clock, the hour for marrying persons of her class.
"You really mean to take this man whom you have never seen?"
"I must," said the woman; "the prayers have been put up in church."
"Do the parish popes raise no objections to such marriages?"
"No," laughed the lady. "Why should they object? A wedding brings them fees; and in their cabins you will find more children than kopecks."
The livings held by the parish clergy are not rich. Some few city holdings may be worth three or four hundred pounds a year; these are the prizes. Few of the country pastors have an income, over and above the kitchen-garden and plough of land, exceeding forty or fifty pounds a year. The city priest, like the country priest, has neither rank nor power in the Church. The only chance for an ambitious man is, that his wife may die; in which event he can take the vows, put on cowl and frock, obtain a career, become a fellow in the corporation of monks, and rise, if he be daring, supple, and adroit, to high places in his church.
That the parish priests are not content with their position, is one of those open secrets in the Church which every day become more difficult to keep. As married men, they feel that they are needlessly depressed in public esteem, and that the higher offices in the system should lie open to them no less than to the monks. Being many in number, rich in learning, intimate with the people, they ought to be strong in favor; yet through the craft of their black rivals, they have been left, not only without the right of meeting, but without the means of making their voices heard. The peasant was never beaten down so low in the scale of life as his parish priest; for the serf had always his communal meeting, his choice of elders, his right of speech, and his faculty of appeal. The parish priests expect a change; they expect it, not from within the clerical body, but from without; not from a synod of monks, but from a married and reforming Tsar.
This change is coming on; a great and healing revolution; an act of emancipation for the working clergy, not less striking and beneficent than the act of emancipation for the toiling serfs.