Part 17

“When ye fast, be not of a sad countenance”: the West, except in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, does not fast. The Roman Catholic Church, though Western in its locality and constitution, is in many of its customs Eastern—for example, in the celibacy of its clergy, in the monastic life it affords, in its fasting, in its repetition of prayers. A wide gap, however, divides it from Eastern Orthodoxy, and as wide a gap separates it from the leading spirit of the West, the latter being decidedly Protestant. Dostoievsky, in the story of the Grand Inquisitor in _The Brothers Karamazov_, treats Roman Catholicism as a great conspiracy to defeat Christianity, and that point of view is taken very seriously by Russians to-day. Roman Catholicism indeed provides a holy way of life, and puts its members in a true position with regard to life and the world, but it does so by authority. Little is allowed to spring from personal initiative, and truths are not so much personal experiences as priestly guarantees. Roman Catholicism stands to one side, and this comparison of the spirit of East and West does not greatly involve her.

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth.” To this the East has paid heed. Russia is the greatest spending nation in the world. No money is saved. Every rouble is spent as it is obtained. In England and America children are actually given money-boxes and taught to save their pennies!

“Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on”: this is obviously a teaching which conditions the ragged and disorderly and unconventional East. In England and America one might almost think the opposite ideas had been recommended, seeing how we cherish the right crease in the right sort of attire, how we strive to be in fashion.

But “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” is something which obtains the hearty belief of the West.

“Take no thought for the morrow” has an Eastern accentuation.

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” is taken by the West as a cynical utterance. The West believes that Christianity means, “Sufficient unto the day is the good thereof.” The West says each day is full of blessing; the East says each day is full of suffering.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged”: no one pays much attention to this.

“Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye”—a reproof to the West, not needed in the East. America is terribly censorious and critical of the neighbour. Russia has no censure.

“Ask, and it shall be given you” the West has believed. It has, however, asked for material things. The East has taken rather, “Seek, and ye shall find.”

“Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” is in great favour in the West.

“Enter ye in at the strait gate”: this is quite Western in adhesion.

“Beware of false prophets.” Both churches have gladly taken this phrase to use against schismatics and dissenters.

“By their fruits ye shall know them.” This criterion the West has adopted. Easternism may be said to regard the barren tree as holy. At least, it never curses the barren.

The story of the wise man who built his house upon a rock has edified the West.

To the story of the scribe who wished to follow Jesus, but who apparently wished to do so and remain comfortable and well-off at the same time, and to the story of the disciple who wished to bury his father first, but to whom was said, “Let the dead bury their dead,” the West has paid little or no attention, whilst the East has taken it to himself.

The fact that Jesus sat down and ate with publicans and sinners is in the spirit of the East; the West prefers ever the company of the just. The West is glad to have the action of Jesus explained in the following verse: “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.”

“Provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses.” Alas, all Western weal believes that it is founded on gold. If any good work is to hand, the first thing is to raise a fund.

“When they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak ...”: this has always been most helpful to persecuted nonconformists and heretics.

“I came not to send peace, but a sword” is overlooked in the West. The West thinks that Christ proclaimed peace. And the peace that was before the Great War was thought to be a wonderful fruit of Christianity—the peace of mutual jealousy and fear, the great commercial peace of the twentieth century, that Kipling calls the “Peace of Dives”:

The whole wide earth is laid In the peace that I have made; And behold, I wait on thee to trouble it.

“He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it”: the West emphasises this thought. Carlyle gave it great force in his gospel of work. “Forget your troubles,” says the West; “throw yourself into work and lose yourself—then you’ll soon find yourself.” The East will not work in that way.

“Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden” has been comfort to the West.

In the matter of healing on the Sabbath the Western is rather on the side of the Jews.

The question, “Who is my mother and who are my brethren?” has not been acceptable to the West. The West would have preferred Jesus to be a model family man, not only loving mother and brothers and sisters, but having a wife and children about him. The Eastern Church takes its stand with the early Christians and the denial of earthly ties. Sometimes news is brought of father or mother or brethren to the wonderful Russian hermits such as Father Seraphim, but they coldly repel the tidings with Christ’s words, “Whosoever doeth the will of God, the same is my brother and sister and mother.”

Casting the wicked into the fire—this idea lingers in America, but it is dead in Russia and in England.

The confession of Peter, and the prophecy, “Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church,” the Roman Church has necessarily taken to itself.

The Transfiguration on the mountain—the possessed about the foot of the mountain—is taken as an Eastern understanding of life. The light of transfiguration is the halo about the head of the hermit; the possessed below make the hurly-burly of the world whence the hermit made his escape. “The light of transfiguration,” I heard Prince Trubetskoi say in a lecture at Moscow, “is the light of haloes, the light of Holy Russia, the light of friendship.”

“Let us build three tabernacles” is, as I said, Western.

The West has believed Jesus in that He answered the question, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” by taking a little child and setting him in the midst of them.

The West has allowed its eyes to rest on the parable of the Talents, but the East has had more appreciation of “The first shall be last, and the last first.”

The West has insisted on “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” but it has avoided the condemnation of the Pharisees; the Gospel of St. Matthew reveals itself as the gospel of the kingdom of heaven as opposed to “the world.” But the West has sought to find “the world” holy. Western Christianity was started by the conquest of worldly armies, but Eastern Christianity was founded on the example of hermits, eunuchs, stoics, philosophers, fanatics. It had all the advantage of proximity to the place where Christianity started, all the advantage of the traditions of Greek and Roman philosophy. Despite all our study of Greek and of history and of philosophy at the schools, and despite the Russian’s lack of study, yet the latter is nearer to the ancient spirit; but he has lived historically in direct relation to Byzantium, and has ever had before his eyes living examples of the way to live a Christian life.

“Many are called, but few are chosen” has had great influence in the West, but the power of the text is waning. Protestantism is becoming more philanthropical, easy-going, and generous than it was in the days of persecution.

The idea of the Second Coming of Christ is a strange will-o’-the-wisp of light that cannot be tracked and is difficult to account for, breaking out ever and anon unexpectedly where you would think it had for ever disappeared. At present it is seen in many places, East and West. Originally it was a very powerful sentiment, but after two thousand years of waiting hope has died down, and it is seldom that whole societies sell up all their worldly goods and repair to the valley of Jehoshaphat to wait the great day.

The story of Mary pouring the precious ointment on Jesus’ head rather than selling the ointment and giving the proceeds to the poor, is the way of Mary rather than the way of Martha.

Here perhaps ends the Gospel of St. Matthew as far as definite sentences of teaching are concerned, and probably sufficient ideas have been taken out and compared for the purpose of this differentiation.

As regards the acts of the Gospel, there remains the consideration of the miracles. The healing of the sick, the lame, the blind, has become the example of the West, and what Christ did by miracle they do by science. The East, however, insists on the miraculous, and to-day in Russia thousands of miracles are performed annually at the sacred shrines. Whether these miracles are genuine or no is a moot point. Many certainly are no more than ecclesiastical contrivances for gaining popular support for ikons and shrines. Many are said to be the result of the faith of those who ask the miracle. At Kief and Sarof and New Jerusalem many a blind man receives sight, many a crippled woman straightens herself out, many a sick man is restored to health. The Eastern Church lays stress on the miraculous; the miracle, however, is esoterically understood as mystery. The Russian has an extraordinary capacity for belief.

There remains the Crucifixion, of which I will say no more than that it is the greatest _podvig_, the crown of the life of Jesus. For the West it is the Resurrection that is emphasised. As I wrote in _With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem_: “For the Orthodox, He was dead; for the Protestant, He is alive for evermore.” So two churches combine to make one truth, and the hand-maidens of the Lord, Martha and Mary, are shown to be indeed two sisters, not only in kindred but in spirit.

THE END

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BOOKS BY STEPHEN GRAHAM

=A TRAMP’S SKETCHES.=

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These four books, published by Macmillan & Co., form a sequence of which the _Tramp’s Sketches_ is like a prologue or a promise. The Pilgrim book is of the Way of Mary; the America book is of the Way of Martha; and the fourth book, _The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary_, knits the other three in one.

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WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM

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_THE ATHENÆUM._—“M. Jusserand’s _Pilgrim Life in the Middle Ages_ or Burton’s or Doughty’s accounts of their pilgrimages to Mecca are books of secure repute. Mr. Graham in _With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem_ gives us a companion volume.”

_THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN._—“‘Many think in the head,’ wrote Francis Thompson, ‘but it is thinking in the heart that is most wanted.’ It is because this book has been pondered, and the events it describes lived ‘in the heart,’ that it possesses such grace and distinction. Those who have followed Mr. Graham and have watched his style becoming with every volume he has written a more and more close-fitting and appropriate garment for his thought, will not be disappointed. It is his best work—gay, beautiful, and tender; gay with the spirit of youth, beautiful with the spirit of poetry, and tender with the spirit of worship.... Compare these reverent and radiant pages with the bright semi-cynicism of _Eothen_, and you get a measure of the distance the English spirit has travelled since 1844.”

_THE NATION._—“The Russians have not been broken by Russia. Mr. Stephen Graham, in his beautiful and remarkable book, throws this great truth into vivid perspective. Not for him the ‘grey days’ of Tchekhof or the hoarse challenge of Gorky’s exultant mood, not for him the symbol of Andreyev’s Red Laughter.... This Englishman does not dwell upon the Russians’ suffering, but upon their immense hope; he is preoccupied not by their material poverty but by their spiritual wealth.”

_THE DAILY MAIL._—“Mr. Stephen Graham is favourably known as the interpreter of modern Russia and more particularly of the peasant. To that task he brings every accomplishment. He has sympathy; he has the insight of genius and the heart of the poet. He has a rare and precious gift of style.... He seems to have divined by some flash of intuition the psychology of the Russian. This book will add greatly to his already great reputation. It is a pleasure to praise such work. Here he has given us an extraordinarily beautiful and interesting account of an extraordinarily interesting achievement.... It breaks entirely fresh ground. It makes a deep and universal appeal.”

_THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE._—“The best book on Russia written by an Englishman.”

_THE OUTLOOK._—“Something more than a book of travel, a spiritual Murray—a very remarkable piece of work ... at once simple and extraordinary.”

_CHURCH TIMES._—“We are sure that the student of human nature and the student of religion alike will find a deep interest in this book. Its merit is the complete sympathy and the true insight with which it describes the child-like faith of the Russian peasant and his passionate love of the Saviour who died for him.”

_MERCURE DE FRANCE._—“C’est une longue aventure où l’on se croirait reporté au temps des croisades, et l’auteur dessine en quelques traits nets et durs des types étonnants. Voilà un livre à lire pour quiconque veut être intéressé et obligé de réfléchir.”

_THE TIMES_ (in a leading article Feb. 5, 1914).—“No living English writer has made investigations so patient and so wide into the habits and manners of the great dumb masses who are the body of the largest and the least-known nation in Europe.”

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WITH POOR EMIGRANTS TO AMERICA

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_THE NATION._—“Mr. Stephen Graham is a real super-tramp, and in his aspect of the world and his fellows there is always a touch of the pilgrim’s sanctity. He feels an attraction, partly æsthetic, often sentimental, to people of simple and religious life, and especially to the Russian peasants, whom he depicts as the simplest and most religious of all mankind. He loves the beauty of untouched nature, and of man pursuing the primitive and traditional methods of pasture, plough, or loom. He is always conscious of a spiritual presence behind phenomena, and is strongly drawn by emotions of pity, sympathy, and fellow-feeling, as by the qualities of humility and indifference to material things.... Of all English writers on America Mr. Graham is almost the only one who tells us certain things that we really wanted to know.”

_SPHERE._—“Not one of the well-known writers who from the days of Dickens and Thackeray to our own has written his experiences of the United States has proved so attractive.”

_TIMES._—“Of these three travellers (Henry James, H. G. Wells, and Stephen Graham) Mr. Graham has at least the advantage of extreme contrast.... His book is full of humanity, sensitive with the love of peace and beauty.”

_GLASGOW NEWS._—“With a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the books on travel in America published in the past twenty-five years by English authors, the present writer has not a moment’s hesitation in declaring that _With Poor Emigrants to America_ is immeasurably the best among them all. It is not only an unusually informative book; it is a work of spiritual genius, precious by reason of its revelation of as unique and beautiful a character as surely has dignified the trade of letters since the period of Lamb or Goldsmith. Stephen Graham is something far more rare than an ‘interpreter of Russia’ or a philosophical ‘tramp’; his quiet voice, if he be spared, is likely to sound even more distinctively and more impressively above the noisy chatter of his contemporaries. It is perhaps a little unfortunate that his interest should be so much engaged with Russia, for we grudge to Russia an expositor who, we think, might be better employed in writing about his own race, but then we must admit that but for the influence of Russia we might perhaps have had no Stephen Graham.”

_SPECTATOR._—“An extremely interesting record, with many penetrating illustrations of the contrast between Russian and American ideals.”

_FIELD._—“The book is full of Mr. Graham’s philosophy, but that philosophy largely reveals itself in the narration of his experiences both on board ship and on land. They are narrated with an abundance of anecdotes and with a charming simplicity of style which make the book delightful reading.”

_LIVERPOOL POST._—“This is a book of sheer delight which will compel most readers to finish it at a single sitting. It tells his story in the free and effortless style which Mr. Graham uses so magically.”

LINDSAY BASHFORD in the _DAILY MAIL_.—“The best of his books. Mr. Graham is the modern poet-pilgrim; his is the vision of wide roads and long deliberate journeys; his the gift to understand the heart of the poor and the wanderers. Each day’s little events, each casual encounter, each wayside talk or tiny adventure has its deeper significance, and resolves into the deeper human movements he seeks for as he goes, and which he interprets for us. I do not know of any books of contemporaries which have a more intimate appeal, which speak with more friendly confidence of the actual life of human beings in our world to-day than do these wonder-books of Mr. Stephen Graham.”

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By STEPHEN GRAHAM

A TRAMP’S SKETCHES

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_ACADEMY._—“To have read _A Tramp’s Sketches_ is to have been lifted into a higher and rarer atmosphere. It is to have been made free, for a few hours at least, of the company of saints and heroes. This much we owe to Mr. Graham, who has added to English Literature a book that, if we mistake not, is destined to endure.”

_SPECTATOR._—“Like Jefferies’ _Story of my Heart_, but the author is much more occupied with men than Jefferies was. Unlike most books of its kind _A Tramp’s Sketches_ has indisputably a genuine passion running through it.”

_ENGLISH REVIEW._—“It is a delightful book, redolent of the open air, of the night, of the great silences of expanse, and yet full of incident, of real spiritual and material sympathy, both with the ‘black earth’ and the monks of the monasteries, whose hospitality he enjoyed, and with his fellow-comrades on the road. It is life that interests the author.”

_PALL MALL GAZETTE._—“Descriptions of Nature are apt to become tiresome, but we have not been wearied once in reading these pages; and this is not, we believe, altogether due to Mr. Graham’s fine style, his ever-adequate perception of the right word, but because of his sincere and absolute love of Nature in all her moods. Here is no pretence, no make-believe. He writes of the mystery and beauty of the sea, the night, the sunset, the moon, and the stars in words that seem at times to take colour from that which they describe.”

Mr. ALGERNON BLACKWOOD in _COUNTRY LIFE_.—“They are the notes of a spiritual pilgrim going towards the new Jerusalem. The writer’s passionate worship of Beauty, his love of simplicity, his charity, his courage, all these make a strong appeal. He has in him poetry and vision.”

Mr. WM. PURVIS in the _SUNDAY CHRONICLE_.—“Stephen Graham walks the earth in the garb of beggary, and sees unusual types and meets incredible men and women and analyses his emotions, and worships the Great Spirit in vague fashions; and writes excellently about it all. He wishes there were more like him; and so do I.”

_DAILY NEWS._—“This robust book, a classic of educated yet wild vagabondage.”

_LIVERPOOL COURIER._—“Mr. Graham found pleasure, even joy everywhere, and he has an almost inspired faculty for making the reader see things as he sees them.”

_THE QUEEN._—“The whole book is full of beautiful things.”

_IRISH TIMES._—“Not a chapter, scarcely a page, which cannot be re-read with profit and delight.”

_GLASGOW HERALD._—“Told in language that is always adequate and luminous.”

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● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). Text that was in bold face is enclosed by equals signs (=bold=). ○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are referenced.