Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/115

Rh could ever suggest that Russia was a blank sheet on which they might write what they chose. Russia, alas! may learn wrong things of us and go wrong—Dostoieffsky's nightmare. The noisy middle-class Russia of to-day does indeed tend to follow after other gods. But for the moment I cannot pause to give actual pictures of Russia going wrong. I am in quest of the vital and fundamental idea of Russia, that which is the mother of her art, literature, music, of her religion and her traditional national life.

I am tempted to say that the Russian idea is an aspect of Christianity. Hence the title of this book, The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary. Russia is the fairest child of the Early Church. Her national idea is identified with one of the Byzantine aspects of Christianity. But it would be impossible to deny that Russia draws her marvellous spirit from something earlier than Christianity. There is Nature-worship in the Russians; there is Scandinavian mythology; there is Oriental mysticism. The remote past still lends impulses of passions, dreams, fears, hopes, to the rustling and blossoming present. Yet all its past has been absorbed into Russian Christianity, though Russians have not yet explored and reproduced in art all the significances of that mysterious time in Russian history. We may say that the Russian idea is a Christian idea. Christianity has been great enough to include and say yes to all that was wonderful in the old.