Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/106

84 crowd, a crowd attracted by a personality or an idea. At interludes throughout history we catch glimpses of gazing crowds, the

Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,

Man, brute, reptile, fly—alien of end and of aim—

that rush into sight at once as you name the ineffable Name.

The New Testament pictures of Jesus standing in the midst of the crowd is the symbol for all time of the Church, "Jesus teaching among the people, living in His heart the life of every one He saw, living from His heart in living veins over the whole earth, the thousand people about Him listening, calling, reviling, praying, the angelic spirits gazing at Him rapt, even the devils acknowledging Him from the bodies of the possessed, the disciples bringing sick people to and fro at the Master's feet." This is just the same picture as the Russian Church presents to-day. It is the idea of that wonderful modern Russian painting, "Holy Russia," where Jesus walks out of the ikon frame and stands enhaloed above the crowd of all sorts and conditions of Russian men and women. It is the picture presented in the work of the great novelist Dostoieffsky. Dostoieffsky's novels are pictures of great crowds of Russian men and women in the presence of the mystery of Love. Dostoieffsky's novel is a church, and in the church there is room for Raskol-