Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/513

Rh sophy with its epistemological subjectivism and individualism, the negation of Old Russia, nihilism as atheism, forced these alternatives upon Herzen, Bělinskii, and Bakunin, Dostoevskii, above all, devoted his life to the exhaustive consideration of the problem, and for this reason the study of Dostoevskii will lay bare to us the soul of the modern Russian.

N Europe, the term Byzantinism has been used to denote the defects of the Russian church and of Russian ecclesiastical religion; as we have seen, the Russians have themselves adopted the word and have accepted the criticism implied in its use. It suggests excessive formalism, undue clinging to inherited forms and doctrines (cf. Solov'ev's satire upon the Orthodox archeological museum), satisfaction with externals and with materialistic piety (ritual, liturgy, veneration for icons and relics); it suggests a passive demeanour in religious matters in general, coupled with extravagant mysticism (Solov'ev, though himself a mystic, disapproved of Russian mysticism); and suggests, finally, the amalgamation of the church with the state and with nationalism. The slavophils, despite their friendliness to the church and to religion, here join with Solov'ev in frank criticism.

Protestant theologians of the west, Kattenbusch, Müller, Loofs, and more recently Harnack, take the same view in their comparative judgments of the Orthodox church and of Orthodox ecclesiastical religion—above all in the case of Russia.

The essential characteristic of Russian religion is, in fact, the belief in the other world; for believing Russians, transcendence is no mere philosophical principle, but is actual reality; belief in God and in immortality are truly living faiths. Hence arises the endeavour whilst still in this life to participate in the life to come; hence mysticism, hence addiction to the contemplative life. Russian faith is faith in miracle, faith in thaumaturgy. To Russians, Jesus the God-man, the deity in human form who awakens men from the dead, seems a being close at hand. Transcendence is not conceived spiritually and ethically, but materially;