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tions of some of the Slavophile poets and the Russian national anthem of Prince Lvov adapted and included in our Hymnal, áre the chief poems of the last century.

There is little need to mention the definitely anti-Church works of many of the radical authors, many of them printed outside of Russia to gain sympathy for the revolutionists. We may, however, mention Stepnyak's novel, "Pavel Rudenko, Stundist," in which he depicts the sufferings and martyrdom of the Stundo-Baptists in Russia and the intolerant way in which they were often treated by the people as well as by the priests. All such works were essentially pieces of propaganda which have not left any important mark on contemporary literature.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, different authors became interested in the religious problems of Russia and endeavored to depict conditions. Korolenko especially took an interest in all the religious trials of his day and in many of his stories he represented sympathetically the wandering monks, the tramps, and the religious moods of the people. Sometimes, as in the short story, "On the Volga," he compares the wrangling and disputing of the different factions of Christians with the calm and severe faith of Islam as shown by the Volga Tartars, by no means to the advantage of the Christians. Or again as in "Makar's Dream," we see a weird mixture of Christianity and heathenism with God a benign old gentleman with a long beard almost like a Siberian Patriarch.

The twentieth century, like the nineteenth, commenced in Russia with a period of mysticism which culminated in real life in the enthronement of Rasputin and which had a striking influence on the literature of the country. In some aspects and in some quarters, the movement served to strengthen Christianity and the Church, but much of it was an emotional mysticism which revolted at

the restraint laid by the Church on its members and led to some weird developments.

One of the most striking leaders of the new movement was Merezhkovsky. In his trilogy, "Christ and Antichrist," he sought to present three moments in the century-long struggle between the spirit and the flesh, between Christianity and the spirit of ancient Greece. These were the days of Julian the Apostate, of Leonardo da Vinci and of Peter and his son Alexis. The third part dealing with the great period of change in Russia is especially striking. It presents in vivid form the mass holocausts of the Old Believers, the fanatical conservatives who refused to accept any innovations on the ritual and practices of their religion and the still wilder rites which certain sectarians desired to introduce. This conflict between Christ and Antichrist is ever present with Merezhkovsky. In his critical studies of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy he traces the same dualism but he differs from Orthodox Christianity in the fact that he hopes for a synthesis of the two. He believes the time will come when the spirit of Christ and the spirit of Antichrist will lay aside their hostility and merge in a new and greater whole, which will adequately express the truth of both conceptions.

In this he was not followed by the philosopher Solovyev, one of the most sincere believers of modern Russia. Strange to say, he found his ideal not in Orthodoxy but in the Throne of St. Peter and definitely joined the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless he conceded that the union of Christians could only come after the Roman Church as well as all others had lost their worldly prestige and were reduced once more to struggling communities persecuted by the world, the flesh and the devil, as in the days of the Early Church.

Among the mystical authors whose connection with Christianity is most dubious stands Andrey Byely, now

one of the foremost Bolshevik poets. A profound mystic, he commenced before the Revolution a trilogy of novels dealing with the struggle between East and West in Russia. The first part, "The Silver Dove," describes in great detail the mystical, revolutionary sects which spread among the peasantry, able to overpower and destroy the minds of the most intelligent who once fall within their benumbing sphere of action. They seem at first to their educated followers the true and vital religion, but they very soon become an object of terror, the accursed gift of Asia to Russia. The same is seen again in "Peterburg," a long and very difficult novel filled with theosophical allusions, squares, cubes and a particularly involved style. The text of the novel is the coming struggle between the two Asias in Russia,the Asia of Christ and the Asia of the Mongols.

Closely connected with these works of Byely are his later works which are representative of a large and rapidly increasing literature in which Christ becomes the representative of the people or the mystical country, anything but the divine Son of God, as the Church has always known Him. This tendency has been innate in Russian literature since Dostoyevsky. In "The Possessed," poor Shatov, believing in Russia, in the Orthodox Church, must make an effort to believe in God. He repeats Stavrogin's ideas of the identity of the nation and its God and predicts the downfall of national character when it comes to believe in a universal God. The idea springs naturally out of the faith in false Christs held by many of the Russian sects but it has had a very grave effect on the fortunes of Russia. The union of humanity and God in Christ thus interpreted has led to the faith on the part of many that Russia like Christ, or as Christ, is to lay down her life for the world and many of her people have seen this destiny offered them in the present crisis and it has paralyzed

their power of struggling against the bitter doom which was facing them. The idea has been developed in many forms and it is very difficult from a perusal of many of the Bolshevik poets as Marienhof to decide whether we are dealing with a conscious blasphemy of the fundamental truths of Christianity or a strange and irrational mysticism which sincerely believes that God and man are identical and that the people and Christ cannot be separated in any way, with all the possible corollaries of this position expressed. Blok's "Twelve" and Byely's later poems are some of the most striking examples of this new conception, which has found among us a tight hold if we may judge by some of the literature of the World War.

Leaving the mystical authors, we have almost completed our survey of Russian literature that has any relation to organized religion. Sensationalists, such as Kuzmin in "The Wings," undertook to defend and praise the substitutes for family life found in many of the sects, but these works are of little importance save for additional light which they may throw upon vexed questions of sectarian organization.

The last author who should be named is Gusev-Orenburgsky. The clergy are the chief class which he studies and he by no means describes them as so hopelessly sunk in gloom and superstition as his predecessors had done. His liberal sympathies lead him to see wider possibilities for service in the revolutionary movement than in the Church. Thus in the "Land of the Fathers," the young priest, Father Ivan, disgusted at the hypocrisy which he finds around him, throws aside his cassock and leaves his parish. Again and again we have the usual pictures of the higher clergy supporting the wealthy sinners of their dioceses against the earnest and faithful priests, but it is to be noted that the priests of Gusev-Orenburgsky are at least trying to live up to their responsibilities. In more

than one story, too, the authorities or part of them support the priest and he is not defeated in his beneficent purposes as we are led to expect from so much of Russian literature. Or take such a story as "The Horse Thief." The old priest knows very well who stole the horse and instead of denouncing the thief to the authorities, he invites him to confession and the next day the horse reappears. The works of Gusev-Orenburgsky contain also much other interesting material on the condition of the clergy and especially of their wives who often lead a very uncomfortable existence in the village among the peasants because of the traditional manner in which they were brought up.

Many of the best known Russian authors have nothing to say about the religious life of their people or are quite frankly antagonistic to it. They are the representatives of the intelligentsia, the class which has traditionally been most prominent in the movement of liberation. Except for some of the leading authors like Dostoyevsky and Gogol, few of the works which describe the religious life of Russia are of the first rank and fewer still of the works have been rendered accessible to readers outside of Russia, largely because it is again the intelligentsia which has served as the intermediary between the productions of the Russian genius and the outside world.

The picture which Russian literature presents of Russian religion is usually a very painful one. Undoubtedly many more of the reproaches heaped upon it a century ago were better deserved than at present, for the Orthodox Church of Russia as those of the other Orthodox lands was steadily reforming and ending the most flagrant results of centuries of encounter with Islam and the nonChristian religions of the East, when the Great War broke out. We may well believe that the bishops and priests who have been martyred in large numbers since

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