The Agony of the Church | Page 7

the best of all, when I know how much it
borrowed from the ancient religious forms of worship? How poor it
looks without all that!"
I said: "Just this wonderful power of embracing and assimilating gives
evidence of the vitality and universality of Christianity. It is too large in
spirit to be clothed by one nation or one race only. It is too rich in spirit
and destination to be expressed by one tongue, by one sign, or one

symbol, or one form. In the same sense as Christian doctrine was
prepared and prophesied by the religions and the philosophies before
Christ, in the same sense Christian worship was prepared and
prophesied as well. Whenever the Christian spirit is strong the Church
is not afraid of worship being strange, and ample, and even grotesque.
The weaker the Christian spirit, the greater exclusiveness in worship.
Some people say: It is wicked to use pagan architecture for the Church,
and incense and fire, and music, or dance, or bowing, or kneeling, or
signs and symbols, in Christian worship, because it is pagan." Yes, all
this is pagan indeed, but it is Christian too if we wish it to be. The Latin
language was pagan, but now it is Christian too. The English language
was a vehicle of Paganism as well, now it is a vehicle of Christianity.
The human body was itself pagan too, but the Eternal Christ, God's
Holy Wisdom, entered it and filled it with a new spirit, and it ceased to
be pagan. We in the East sometimes use for our sacerdotal vestments
Chinese silk made by pagan hands in China, or chalices and spoons and
little bells and chains made by the Moslems, or precious stones
gathered and scents prepared by the fire or stone-worshippers of Africa,
and no one of us should be afraid to use them when worshipping Christ,
as Christ Himself was not afraid to touch the most wretched human
bodies or souls with His pure hands. Christianity cannot be defiled,
using for its worship the works of pagan hands, but pagan people are
hereby taking a share in Christian worship, physically and
unconsciously, waiting for the moment when they will share in it
spiritually and consciously as well. Every piece of Chinese silk in our
vestments is a prophecy of the great Christian China. But this belongs
to the following paragraph.

THE INCLUSIVE WISDOM IN THE CHURCH'S DESTINATION
Judaism was destined for the people of Israel only. The Christian
Church was destined for the people of Israel too, but not for them only.
She included Greeks as well.
The Greek polytheism of Olympus was destined for the Hellenic race
only. The Christian Church was destined for the Hellenic race too, but

not for it only. She included Indians as well.
Buddha's wisdom was offered to the monks and vegetarians. Monks
and vegetarians the Christian Church included in her lap, but also
married and social people too.
Pythagoras founded a religious society of intellectual aristocrats. The
Christian Church from the beginning included intellectual aristocrats
side by side with the ignorant and unlettered.
The Persian prophet, Zoroaster, recruited soldiers of the god of light
among the best men to fight against the god of darkness. His religious
institution was like a military barracks. The Christian Church included
both the best and the worst, the righteous and the sinners, the healthy
and the sick. It was a barracks and a hospital at the same time. It was an
institution both for spiritual fighting and spiritual healing.
The Chinese sage, Confucius, preached a wonderful ethical pragmatism,
and the profound thinker, Lao-Tse, preached an all-embracing
spiritualism. Christian wisdom included both of them, opening Heaven
for the first and showing the dramatic importance of the physical world
for the second. Islam--yes, Islam had in some sense a Christian
ambition: to win the whole world. The difference was: Islam wished
world-conquest; the Church, the world's salvation. Islam intended to
subdue all men and bring them before God as His servants: The Church
intended to educate all men, to purify and elevate them, and to bring
them before God as His children.
And all others: star-worshippers, and fire, and wood, and water, and
stone, and animal-worshippers had a touching sense of the immediate
divine presence in nature. The Church came not to extinguish this sense
but to explain and to subordinate it; to put God in the place of demons
and hope instead of fear.
The Church came not to destroy, but to purify, to aid and to assimilate.
The destination of the Church was neither national nor racial, but
cosmic. No exclusive power was ever destined to be a world-power.
The ultimate failure of Islam to become a world-power lies in its

exclusiveness. It was with religion as with politics. Every exclusive
policy