Part 23

Every one is the servant of all--and without hypocrisy--not only in act but in sentiment and prayer. Wherever I went I found the tone ring true.

This fair exterior glory seems to spring from a strong inner life. Religious life in the Holy Orthodox Church, with its many ordinances and its extraordinary proximity to everyday life, is not allowed to be monotonous and humdrum. Each day at New Athos is beautiful in itself, and if a monk's life were made into a book of such days one would not turn over two pages at once.

The day begins at midnight, when, to the occasional melancholy chime of the cathedral bell, the brothers move to the first service of the morning. On my second night at Afon I wakened at the prayer-bell and joined the monks at their service. In the sky was a faint glimmer of stars behind veiling clouds. The monastery, resplendent with marble and silver by day, was now meek and white in the dark bosom of the mountain, and shining like a candle. In the church which I entered there was but one dim light. The clergy, the monks, the faces in the ikon frames all were shadows, and from a distance came hollow shadow music, gul-l-l, the murmur of the sea upon the shore. It was the still night of the heart where the Dove yet broods over the waters and life is only just begun. At that service a day began, a small life.

When the service was over and we returned to our rooms, morning had advanced a small step; the stars were paler, one just made out the contours of the shadowy crags above us.

Just a little sleep and then time to rise and wash and breakfast. The monks in charge of the kitchen must be up some time before the rest of us. At 8 A.M. the morning service commences, and every monk must attend.

Then each man goes to his work, some to the carpentry sheds, others to the unfinished buildings, to the brickworks, the basket works, the cattle yards, the orchards and gardens, the cornfields, the laundries, leather works, forges, etc., etc., etc.; the teachers to the schools where the little Caucasian children are taught; the abbot to his cell, where he receives the brothers in turn, hears any confession they may wish to make, and gives advice in any sorrow that may have come upon any of them. The old abbot is greatly beloved, and the monks have children's hearts. Again in the evening the day is concluded in song and prayer. Such is the monastery day.

* * * * *

No doubt the upkeep of this great establishment costs much; it does not "pay"--the kingdom of God doesn't really "pay." Much money has to be sent yearly to Novy Afon ... and yet probably not so very much. In any case, it is all purely administered, for there are no bribe takers at the monastery. For the rest, it must be remembered that they make their own clothes and tools, grow their own corn and fruits, and manufacture their own electric light. They have the means of independence.

Such monasteries as Novy Afon are true institutions of Christianity; they do more for the real welfare of a people than much else on which immense sums of money are spent. It is a matter of real charity and real hospitality both of hand and mind combined. The great monastery sits there among the hills like some immense mother for all the rude, rough-handed tribes that live about. In her love she sets an example. By her open-handedness she makes her guests her own children; they learn of her. Not only does she say with Christ her Master, "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," but she makes of all those who come to her, be they fierce of aspect or bearded like the pard, her own children. When the night-bell has rung and all are in their beds--the five hundred brethren, the many lay workers, the hundreds of guests gathered from all parts of Russia--the spirit of the monastery spreads itself out over all of them and keeps them all warm. The whole monastery is a home, and all those who are within are brothers and sisters.

Though Novy Afon is new, it is built upon an old site. There was a Christian church there in the second and third centuries, but it was destroyed by the Persian fire-worshippers; it was restored by the Emperor Justinian, but destroyed once more by the Turks. So completely did the Moslem take possession of the country that Christianity entirely lapsed till the Russian monks sailed down there two years before the Russo-Turkish war of 1877. Novy Afon is without Christian traditions. It takes its stand completely in the new, and is part of that Russian faith which has no past, but only a future. The third century ruins of the cathedral and the Roman battlements are indeed of great interest, and many people climb the two thousand feet high crag to look out from the ancient watch-tower. But the attitude of the monastery is well explained in the words of a monk:

"People come here to worship God, and we stand here as a witness of God, to pray continually for the coming of the Kingdom, and to succour those who come to us. It would be a sign of disrespect to our church if people came here merely to see the ancient remains."

I for my part, being of the old though also of the new, was eager to climb the steep stone way along which in ancient days had ridden crusaders and mediaeval warriors. Great trees now grew through the rent wall of the cathedral, and slender birches grew straight up in the nave to the eternal roof which had supplanted that of time--to heaven itself....

But alas for romance, the Russians are restoring the church, clearing away the old stones, chopping down the trees. An ikon has been set up within the old building, and the latter is already a place of worship. Once more: to the eye of a monk a ruined temple is somewhat of an insult to God. There is no fond antiquarianism; all the old Latin inscriptions and bas-reliefs that have been found have been mortared together at random into one wall; all the human bones that have been unearthed, and they are many, have been thrown unceremoniously into an open box. Even on the bare white ribs and ancient crumbling skulls, bourgeois visitors have written their twentieth-century names. Some ancient skeletons have been preserved in a case from pre-Mahometan times, and under them is written:

With love, we ask you, look upon us. We were like you; you will be like us.

The recommendation is unavailing. The bones have been picked up, passed from hand to hand, scrawled upon, joked over. They are probably the remains of strong warriors and early Christians, and one can imagine with what peculiar sensations they, in their day, would have regarded this irreverence to their bones could they but have looked forward a thousand years or so.

It seemed to me, looking out from the watch-tower of Iver over the diminished monastery buildings and the vast and glorious sea, on that which must change and on that which in all ages remains ever the same, some reverence might have been begotten for that in the past which shows what we shall be in the future. The monks might have spared the bones and buried them; they might have left the ruins as they were.

I am told that in a few years the work of restoration will be completely achieved, services will be held regularly on the mountain top, and peasant pilgrims will gladly, if patiently, climb morning and evening up the stone way to the church, having no thoughts of any time but that in which they are worshipping. The Russian is racially young. He is in the morning and full of prophecy; only in the evening will his eye linger here in the emotions of romance.

Life at the monastery is new life; it is morning there--it is indeed only a little after the dawn. The day is as yet cool and sweet, and it gives many promises. We can see what the morning is like if we will journey thither.

III

THE BOY WHO NEVER GROWS OLD

Up to Christmas we are walking with the kings to the Babe's cradle, to the birth of new life and new hope. High in the heavens, and yet before us over the hard frost-bitten way, gleams the guiding star whose promise we divine. After Christmas we are walking with the spring, with a new, young, whispering child-life in the old heart. Though the winds be cold and snow sweep over the land, we know that winter and death are spent. Whilst the light grows stronger in the sky, something in us that is wooed by light responds. New eyes open in the soul. Spring comes, and then the tramp is marching with the summer. Down come the floods, and often for hours one takes shelter from the rain, and it seems as if all we hope for were being inundated. But, as I wrote before, "the spring is not advanced by rain, but it gathers strength in the rain to proceed more quickly when the sun comes out: so also with the tramp." Summer is the year itself, all that the other seasons have laboured for. It is the glory of the year. Then may the tramp cease marching, for in the height of summer nature also must cease, must cease from going forward to turn back. He may rest in the sun and mature his fruits. Autumn is coming and all the year's beauties must yield to death.

I think of my autumn on the way to Jerusalem, and all that a day told me then. The skies became grey at last, and cold searching winds stole into the summer weather. Many things that by sunlight I should have rejoiced in became sombre and ugly in the shade. The tobacco farms, with their myriad tobacco leaves drying and rotting from green into yellow, became ill-kept and untidy, the peasants harvesting them surly and unwashed: the sky spread over them no glamour.

I was walking over the swamps of Sukhum, and I noticed all that I disliked--the deep dust on the road, the broken-down bridges, the streams that cattle had befouled. It was perhaps a district that lacked charm even in fine weather.

There were some compensations. In a wilderness of wilted maize fields, and mud or wattle-built villages, one's eyes rested with affection upon slender trees laden with rosy pomegranates--the pomegranate on the branch is a lovely rusty-brown fruit, and the tree is like a briar with large berries. Then the ancient Drandsky Monastery was a fair sight, white-walled and green-roofed against the background of black mountains, the mountains in turn shown off against the snowy ranges of the interior Caucasus. The clouds hung unevenly over the climbing mountains, so that far snow-bestrewn headlands looked like the speckly backs of monsters stalking up into the sky.

I walked through miles and miles of brown bracken and rosy withered azalea leaves. There came a day of rain, and I spent thirty-six hours in a deserted house, staring most of the time at the continuous drench that poured from the sky. I made myself tea several times from the rainwater that rushed off the roof. I crouched over a log fire, and wondered where the summer had gone.

It needed but a day of rain to show how tired all nature was. The leaves that were weighed down with water failed to spring back when the rain had passed. The dry and dusty shrubs did not wash green as they do in the spring. All became yellower and browner. That which had come out of the earth took a long step back towards the earth again.

Tramping all day through a sodden forest, I also experienced the autumnal feeling, the promise of rest, a new gentleness. All things which have lived through the summer welcome the autumn, the twilight of the long hot day, the grey curtain pulled down over a drama which is played out.

All day the leaves blew down as if the trees were preparing beds for the night of winter. In a month all the woods would be bare and stark, the bushes naked, the wild flowers lost in the copse; nought green but the evergreens. And yet but a week ago, rhododendrons at New Athos, wild roses and mallow in full bloom at Gudaout, acres of saffron hollyhocks, and evening primroses at Sotchi!