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 1898 
 
 
 Whyte , 
 
 Alex 
 
 ander, 1836- 
 
 -1921 
 
 Father 
 
 John 
 
 of 
 
 the Greek 
 
 church 
 
 
 
 
FATHER JOHN OF THE GREEK CHURCH 
 
To rev' rend athletes pour a rev' rend song. 
 
 . , . every hour 
 
 I read you kills a sin, 
 
 Or lets a "virtue in 
 To fight against it ; and the Holy Ghost 
 Supports my Jrailties, lest my life be lost. 
 
FATHER JOHN 
 
 OF THE GREEK CHURCH 
 
 a/^ <iAppreciation 
 
 with some characteristic passage 
 of his Mystical and Spiritual Auto- 
 biography collected and arranged by 
 
 <iAlexander TVhyte 
 
 D.D. 
 
 lip h ant Anderson csf Feme?- 
 
 Saint 3\dary Street^ Edinburgh^ and 
 
 21 ^Paternoster Square^ London 
 
 1898 
 
Second Edition 
 Completing Fourth Thousand 
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 APPRECIATION AND INTRODUCTION 
 SELECTED PASSAGES: 
 
 FATHER JOHN ON HIMSELF . . 
 
 ON DELIBERATION IN PRAYER . 
 
 ON ASSIDUITY IN PRAYER . . 
 
 ON BELIEVING PRAYER 
 
 ON IMMEDIATE FORGIVENESS 
 
 ON THE CROSS 
 
 ON THE CURE OF THE PASSIONS 
 
 ON INVOLUNTARY SIN . . . 
 
 ON THE TRUE SCIENCE . . » 
 
 ON THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN . 
 
 ON OUR HOME-LIFE .... 
 
 ON EATING AND DRINKING 
 
 ON MAKING EVERY DAY SACRAMENTAL 
 
 ON KEEPING THE HEART . 
 
 ON THE GOLDEN RULE 
 
 ON THE PULPIT .... 
 
 PACB 
 
 9 
 
 57 
 62 
 
 63 
 65 
 65 
 68 
 69 
 70 
 
 71 
 
 72 
 
 73 
 74 
 75 
 77 
 go 
 8i 
 
APPRECIATION AND INTRODUCTION 
 
APPRECIATION 
 AND INTRODUCTION 
 
 ' They shall come from the east and the west.' — Our Lord. 
 
 Father John, as he is afFectionately called, 
 is the great living pillar, and the far-shining 
 ornament of the Greek Church of our day. 
 And the Greek Church is the most ancient 
 and the most venerable of all the Churches of 
 Christendom. The Greek Church stretches 
 away back in a direct and an unbroken line to 
 the days of our Lord and His apostles. The 
 New Testament from Matthew to Revelation 
 was all written in Greek. And the Old 
 Testament itself has now for more than two 
 thousand years been far more widely read in 
 its Septuagint Greek than even in its original 
 Hebrew. The great Ecumenical Councils also 
 all sat in Greek cities, and carried on their great 
 debates in the Greek tongue. In no other 
 tongue, indeed, could they have carried on their 
 
I o Father John 
 
 great debates ; and in no other tongue could 
 their great Creeds have been composed and 
 handed down to us. The Greek tongue is by- 
 far the most powerful as well as the most ex- 
 quisite intellectual instrument that has ever 
 been perfected by the genius of man. And the 
 finest use to which that fine tongue has ever 
 been put has been the composition of the New 
 Testament and the construction of the great 
 Creeds of the Greek Church. To this day, 
 when our Scottish children commit to memory 
 their Shorter Catechism, they are already having 
 their opening minds exercised in those deep 
 distinctions and in those exact definitions that 
 could only have been extricated and expressed 
 in the Greek language. When they are taught 
 to say, ' These three are one God ' ; when they 
 are taught to say, 'The same in substance, 
 equal in power and glory * ; when they are 
 taught to say, ' A true body and a reasonable 
 soul ' ; when they are taught to say, ' In two 
 distinct natures, and one person for ever,' our 
 young people are already symbolising with 
 Athanasius, and with Nazianzen, and with 
 Cyril. They are being led back through their 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 1 1 
 
 own Westminster to Nice, and to Constanti- 
 nople, and to Ephesus, and to Chalcedon. 
 The Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms 
 are a splendid education in Theology, and 
 especially in Christology ; in Church History, 
 also, as well as in deep and clear thinking, and 
 in correct and exact expression. Let those 
 noblest of all Church Catechisms always be 
 taught with all due learning, and intellect, and 
 reverence, and love. 
 
 The great and still lasting schism between 
 the Greek and Latin Churches was the result 
 of many causes and the outcome of many 
 occasions. Racial, linguistical, and geographical 
 causes and occasions entered into that great 
 schism : doctrinal and ecclesiastical causes and 
 occasions entered into it : but most of all, 
 religious and moral causes and occasions. The 
 conversion of Constantine entered into it. 
 The transfer of the seat of empire from Rome 
 to Constantinople entered into it. The Filioque 
 and other doctrinal and disciplinary contro- 
 versies entered into it. The production and 
 universal use of the Vulgate in the West 
 entered into it. But most of all, and most 
 
12 Father John 
 
 disastrous of all, the bad passions both of the 
 East and the West entered into it. Ambition, 
 and envy, and jealousy, and suspicion, and pre- 
 judice, and fear, and ill-will all entered into it 
 and exasperated it, and all these things have 
 embittered and perpetuated the great schism 
 down to this day. The fall of Constantinople 
 before the conquering Turks led to the eleva- 
 tion of Moscow to its present pre-eminence 
 over against Rome. What Jerusalem had 
 been to the Jews: what Athens had been to 
 the ancient Greeks : what Rome then was and 
 still is to the Latins — ■ all that Moscow at 
 that epoch became and still abides to the Greek 
 Church and to the immense empire of Russia. 
 It was to the preaching of St. Andrew that the 
 Russian people owed their first introduction to 
 the Gospel. At the same time, ten centuries 
 had to pass before the grain of mustard-seed 
 that St. Andrew sowed so early had grown to 
 be a tree great enough to cover that immense 
 land. But at last, and as by a miracle, Russia 
 was born to God in a day. And thus it was 
 that in the year 1325 Moscow became what 
 that famous city has ever since remained, the 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 13 
 
 sacred seat of the Greek Church in Russia, and 
 the proud and disdainful rival of Rome. 
 
 Every Church of Christendom, like every 
 race of mankind, has its own special genius and 
 distinct character. Unto the Jews became I as 
 a Jew, that I might gain the Jews. To them 
 that are under the law, as under the law, that I 
 might gain them that are under the law. To 
 the weak became I as weak, that I might gain 
 the weak. So am I made all things to all men, 
 that I might by all means gain some. The 
 Gospel spirit runs itself into all the moulds of 
 men and of nations. It submits itself, and 
 resigns itself, and adapts itself to all manner of 
 circumstances. Grant the Gospel spirit but love 
 and prayer to live upon, and it will become 
 anything you like to please you. And even in 
 the supreme matters of love and prayer it pleases 
 not itself but you, and your traditions, and 
 your superstitions, and your prejudices to your 
 edification. If you are a Greek, the Gospel will 
 become Greek to save you. If you are a Latin, 
 it will become Latin. If you are an English- 
 man, it will become English. If you are a 
 Russian, it will become and will remain Russian. 
 
14 '' Father John 
 
 And, accordingly, the Greek Church in Russia, 
 hke Russia among the nations, is the most 
 conservative, stationary, and that to stagnation 
 almost, of all the Churches in Christendom. 
 The massiveness, the immobility, the inelas- 
 ticity of the Greek Church in Russia is a 
 proverb among all her sister Churches. No 
 innovation has ever invaded the Russian Church. 
 No development, either in doctrine or in 
 discipline, has ever disturbed the venerable and 
 vast calm of The Holy Orthodox Church. 
 She is the true home of use and wont ; she is 
 the true harbour and house of refuge for all 
 those who are determined neither to go forward 
 nor to go backward, but always to stand still. 
 ' The straws of custom,' says Stanley, ' show 
 which way the spirit of an institution blows. 
 The primitive posture of standing in prayer 
 still retains its ground in the East ; whilst in the 
 West it is only preserved in the extreme 
 Protestant communities by way of antagonism 
 to Rome. Organs and all musical instruments 
 are as odious to a Greek or a Russian church- 
 man as they are to a Scottish Presbyterian. 
 Even the schism that convulsed the Russian 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 15 
 
 Church almost at the same time that Latin 
 Christendom was rent by the German Reforma- 
 tion, was not a forward but a retrograde move- 
 ment, a protest not against abuses, but against 
 innovations.' The Russian Church is The One, 
 Apostolic, Holy, Orthodox, Catholic Church, 
 and all outside of her communion and obedience 
 are schismatics and heretics. We are accus- 
 tomed in the West and North to insolent 
 enough assumptions, and to lofty enough pre- 
 tensions ; but the East looks down on us all 
 alike. We are all so many rank dissenters 
 and turbulent non-conformists to her. Rome 
 and Geneva, Canterbury and Edinburgh, are 
 all in the same condemnation to her. The 
 Pope is the oldest of her prodigal sons, and 
 General Booth is the youngest ; only the Pope 
 is by far the worse, in her eyes, of the two. The 
 first Pope, in her eyes, was the first Protestant. 
 He was the real and original father of all 
 liberalism in politics and all rationalism in 
 philosophy and in theology. In the words of 
 Canonist Theodore Balsamon, — 'We excom- 
 municate the Pope for all his errors : and with 
 him, all the West who heretically adhere to him. 
 
1 6 Father John 
 
 All the Westerns, therefore, are to be treated 
 simply as so many schismatics, and an 
 anathema must be provided for their abjuration.' 
 And that anathema is provided and pronounced 
 to satiety surely in every Greek Church on 
 every first Sunday in Lent : and that Sunday is 
 sanctified by the name of Orthodox Sunday. 
 On that orthodox and denunciatory day some 
 sixty anathemas are hurled at all heretics and 
 schismatics from Arius of Alexandria down to 
 our own day. Anathema ! Anathema ! Ana- 
 thema ! But on the other hand, for all the 
 orthodox Greek Emperors, — Everlasting re- 
 membrance ! Everlasting remembrance ! Ever- 
 lasting remembrance ! Till I had gone to the 
 originals for myself I was wont to think that 
 the Commination Services of Orthodox Sunday 
 must be something altogether savage and wholly 
 insufferable to the mind of Christ. But I was 
 greatly disappointed when I felt myself forced 
 to surrender all my indignation and contempt 
 at the Greek Church on account of Orthodox 
 Sunday, and to admit that, with many imper- 
 fections from my point of view, and with many 
 things that, if I were their ecclesiastical and 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 17 
 
 devotional censor, I would strike out, — yet, 
 with all that, there is a great deal on Orthodox 
 Sunday that is not only as true as the word of 
 God, but is also both tender and charitable, 
 stately and noble, sweet and beautiful. Let us 
 give the Greek Church, even on Orthodox 
 Sunday, her full and even liberal due. Bless 
 them that curse you. 
 
 It was his far-travelling missionary experience 
 that transformed Saul of Tarsus into such a 
 shining pattern of that divine charity concern- 
 ing which he sings such an immortal song in 
 his First Epistle to the Corinthians. As the 
 great apostle passed on from land to land, and 
 from one race of his fellowmen to another, he 
 came to see that he must consult with them, 
 and advise with them, and learn from them, 
 and respect them, and love them, and gener- 
 ously acknowledge to them, and appropriate 
 from them, all their native truth and goodness, 
 if he was ever to hope to win them to the full 
 mind of Jesus Christ. And all that, the greatest 
 of the apostles more and more did, as his life 
 went on, till he ended by standing, shall we say, 
 next to his Master Himself both in wisdom 
 
1 8 Father John 
 
 and in love. But our own Scottish Church, 
 even in her darkest days, was never more dead 
 to her Lord's command to preach the Gospel 
 to every creature than the Russian Church has 
 all along been, and still is. And the stationary, 
 stiff, and almost stone-dead state of the Russian 
 Church, in some respects, is not the outcome of 
 the somewhat stony Russian character only ; it 
 is full as much the accumulated result of so 
 many centuries of a selfish and an indolent 
 neglect of one of her first duties to her Lord 
 and to the world. Had the great national 
 Church of the Russian Empire but devised 
 liberal things ; had she been what so many 
 small and poor Churches have been both in 
 Scotland and in England and on the Continent 
 and in America ; had she, with all her riches, 
 been a generous-hearted, self-denying, world- 
 evangelising Church — who can tell how all that 
 might by this time have been paid back to her 
 in spiritual life, as well as in ecclesiastical, and 
 political, and individual liberty ? Her Latin 
 sister, with all her faults, did the noblest service 
 to her Master and to the world in the evan- 
 gelisation of England and Germany in the 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 19 
 
 middle ages. And even when she was nearest 
 to death in Europe, her missions to America 
 and China and India all proved that there was 
 still a living heart left somewhere in her for 
 Jesus Christ and for the spread of His Gospel. 
 And since the Reformation, and notably in our 
 own day, the missionary work of the Evan- 
 gelical Communions is the brightest page of 
 this whole world's history since the days of the 
 apostles. The Church of Russia alone stands 
 all the day idle, while all her sisters are hard at 
 work in their Master's vineyard. All that 
 Stanley himself can say for her in this respect 
 is this : ' If the Russian Church is not a 
 missionary Church : then, neither is she a 
 persecuting Church.' 
 
 ' Notwithstanding all that,' says Mr. Durban, 
 in a fine paper in the third number of 'The 
 New Orthodoxy^ ' it must be manifest to every 
 open mind that we have here no decadent or 
 emasculated spiritual institution. A religion 
 which has vivi^ed and resuscitated nations : 
 which throbs in the heart of one of the 
 mightiest and most rapidly advancing of 
 modern empires; which commands the spiritual 
 
20 Father John 
 
 allegiance and gains the impassioned loyalty of 
 the manhood of the Russian Empire, as no 
 other Church does in any other land, is surely 
 entitled to careful study by all those who feel 
 interested in the comparative theology of the 
 age,' — and, I will add, by all those who feel 
 interested in far better and far deeper things 
 than that. 
 
 Truly and intensely interesting as the subject 
 is, and closely as it touches on the main theme 
 of this discourse, at the same time, I cannot 
 attempt to enter on a discussion of the great 
 Office-books of The Holy Eastern Church ; 
 nor can I enter on the Public Worship of 
 which those rich and elaborate books constitute 
 almost the whole service. Even Neale himself 
 acknowledges that he found the investigation 
 of the liturgies and the euchologies of the 
 Greek Church a task of the very greatest 
 difficulty. * The variety, the bulk, and the 
 Intricacy of the Office-books themselves ; the 
 number and the obscurity of the rubrics; 
 the unwritten tradition that guides and adjusts 
 all, and the knowledge of which is scarcely to 
 be gained but by oral teaching ; the abbrevia- 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 21 
 
 tions of diction ; the extraordinary contractions 
 of words ; the technicalities in the quotation of 
 Psalms or Versicles ; the shifting backwards and 
 forwards from book to book ; and the absence 
 of any one general rule for the concurrence of 
 festivals ; these things form only one of the 
 many sources of our difficulty ' in dealing with 
 the great unconsolidated and unharmonised 
 Breviary of the Greek Church. But while it is 
 absolutely impossible to reduce that enormous 
 subject into such a space as can here be com- 
 manded, there is one of their books of Public 
 and Private Devotion that well deserves to 
 be acknowledged in passing. The Slavonic 
 Service-book, entitled 'Trebnik, or The Book 
 of Needs ^ is an extraordinarily rich and beauti- 
 ful compilation provided by the Greek Church 
 for the use both of her priests and her people. 
 The book gets its so expressive name from its 
 peculiar contents. This golden little book is 
 a vade-mecum^ so to call it, which the Greek 
 Church puts into the hands of all her priests 
 and people to guide them in all the parts and 
 processes, exigencies and emergencies, of their 
 spiritual and devotional life from their cradle 
 
22 Father John 
 
 to their grave. And, only take Mary out of 
 it, and some other Greek intrusions ; only edit 
 it up to our Protestant and Evangelical truth 
 and taste, and it might quite well become a 
 cherished possession for all our own household 
 and personal needs also. And to those who 
 can pass the mother of our Lord by with all 
 the reverence and love that are due to her, 
 and who do not indulge themselves over this 
 and that stumbling-stone for our Western and 
 Northern feet; to those who are determined to 
 take no offence, but to seek their own spiritual 
 profit only, 'The Book of Needs is a noble book, 
 and a praise and an honour to the Church that 
 has provided it for her pilgrim people. The 
 whole book is of singular dignity, and, indeed, 
 majesty ; but out of it all The Order for the 
 Burial of a Priest stands forth as a service of the 
 greatest stateliness and nobleness and impressive- 
 ness to the heart and the imagination of one 
 Presbyterian minister at any rate. The present 
 speaker is bound to say that he has found it a 
 great education, and a great reward, to study 
 both King, and Neale, and Palmer, and Black- 
 more, and Brightman, and Shann, on The Book 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 23 
 
 of Needsy and on all the other liturgies and 
 euchologies to which those learned men have 
 happily given him such intellectual and de- 
 votional access. But, perhaps, the very finest 
 thing ; the thing, at any rate, that I most 
 enjoy in all the Office-books of the Greek 
 Church, is The Great Canon composed by St. 
 Andrew of Crete. This devotional composi- 
 tion is called ' The Princely Canon,' and it 
 well deserves its exalted name. This so 
 elaborate and so impressive devotion begins 
 at the very beginning, and it takes the penitent 
 through the whole of Holy Scripture, putting 
 him into the penitential position and into the 
 spiritual case of all the successive sinners whose 
 sins are discovered, confessed, and forgiven in 
 the Word of God. The intending communicant 
 comes down through all the recorded tr.ansgres- 
 sions of faith and obedience in the Word of 
 God, and at the name of each fallen forerunner 
 of his he stops and says, ' I am the man ! ' 
 And at the name of each saint, also, in the Old 
 Testament and the New, he covers his face and 
 says, * Whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to 
 unloose.' * The Princely Canon ' is a splendid 
 
24 Father John 
 
 testimony to the depth of heart and to the 
 spirituality of mind of its revered composer. 
 This truly princely canon is sung with great 
 appropriateness on the Thursday of every 
 returning Passion Week. 
 
 But, all canons and euchologies of men apart 
 — what about the open Bible? you will ask. 
 Beneath and behind all her other likenesses to 
 us and unlikenesses : apart from all other 
 agreements and disagreements, — what about the 
 word of God ? Are the Holy Scriptures open 
 to the Russian people, as they have been open 
 to us ever since the Reformation? Or, does the 
 Greek Church interdict, or at best suspect and 
 grudge, the open Bible to her people like the 
 Latin Church? Well, I am able to answer 
 your solicitude in that matter in a way that will 
 rejoice the hearts of all those who make that 
 inquiry in the hope and prayer to receive a 
 good answer. I put that whole question, with 
 some anxiety, to my friend, the Prince Galitzin, 
 who is both a loyal member of the Greek 
 Church in Russia, and who at the same time 
 knows intimately our best religious life in the 
 West, both Roman and Reformed ; and who 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 25 
 
 has, in addition, the fullest sympathy with those 
 who give the Bible its supreme and un- 
 approached place, both in public worship and 
 in private devotion. The Prince's memoran- 
 dum to me, after some passages on the old 
 Slavonic language as the official language of the 
 Russian Church, proceeds thus: 'The reading 
 of the Scriptures occupies so large and so im- 
 portant a place in the liturgy of our Church, 
 that every member who attends the services 
 regularly is sure to hear the whole of the 
 Scriptures read to him in a short space of time. 
 It is true that the Holy Scriptures were very 
 superficially known in Russia up to the com- 
 mencement of the present century; but that 
 was due partly to the great cost of the copies — 
 partly to the defective manner of the reading 
 of the Scriptures in public worship. But at 
 the beginning of this century, under the reign 
 of Alexander i., Prince Galitzin, the minister 
 of ecclesiastical affairs, gave a great impulse to 
 the circulation of the Holy Scriptures. Seconded 
 by some members of the Society of Friends, 
 and by German pietists and mystics, the Prince 
 founded the Bible-work in Russia, and built 
 
26 Father John 
 
 it up in the teeth of all opposition. A great 
 impulse to the spread of the Scriptures at 
 that time was given by the publication of a 
 magnificent translation of the New Testament 
 into modern Russian from the pen of Bishop 
 Philarete DrozdofF. The Holy Synod also, 
 the head and arm of the Russian Church, 
 took the matter up, and did the greatest 
 possible service to the Kingdom of God in 
 Russia by placing the Bible within the reach of 
 the poorest purse. For sixpence a well-printed 
 and well-bound copy of the New Testament is 
 now to be purchased everywhere in Russia. As 
 to the diffusion of the Scriptures, that has been 
 taken up most successfully by the British and 
 Foreign Bible Society, and by a Russian 
 Society for the spread of the Gospel. Both 
 Societies have their agents and colporteurs who 
 are general favourites and are universally re- 
 spected. The great convents, also, are often 
 most important centres for the circulation of 
 the Scriptures. As for the colporteurs, they 
 show a zeal and a courage that remind one of 
 the enthusiasm of the Salvation Army. They 
 may be met with everywhere urging people to 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 27 
 
 become possessors of the pearl of great price. 
 It is a rare thing to find a steamer or a train in 
 which there is not one of those devoted men 
 pressing the Word of God upon the passengers. 
 The Bible Societies are not content with selling 
 the Scriptures at a cheap price, they distribute 
 the Holy Book gratis where the people are too 
 poor to buy it. For instance, at St. Petersburg 
 a special agent is commissioned to distribute 
 copies of the Scriptures to convicts and colonists 
 on their way to Siberia. Thanks to the 
 Russian Bible Society, every posting-inn is pro- 
 vided with a New Testament on the public 
 table. It lies also in all the rooms of the best 
 hotels. The first book that the Russian peasant 
 buys is the Bible. It is the first book that he 
 reads and reasons about. And may God bless 
 the good seed that thus falls on those simple 
 hearts ! ' 
 
 Such then, in much too short, is the Greek 
 Church in Russia in which John SergiefF was 
 born and brought up, and in which he is now an 
 arch-priest and a main pillar. I have instinct- 
 ively and intentionally dwelt on the things 
 
28 Father John 
 
 of good report in that Mother Church, rather 
 than on those of evil report. And who shall be 
 offended with me for that ? What kind of an 
 unnatural son would he be who would not 
 dwell on whatsoever things are venerable, and 
 noble, and steadfast, and prayerful, and hope- 
 ful, in that apostolic Church out of whose 
 roots his own Church sprang, and in whose 
 ministry such a saint as Father John is now 
 serving God ? ' I am the son of a Sacristan 
 of the province of Archangel, and I was born in 
 the year 1829. From my earliest years my 
 parents instructed me in prayer, and by their 
 own personal example made me a religiously 
 inclined boy. They took me regularly to 
 church, and I loved the public worship with 
 my whole soul, especially good singing. I 
 passed into the parish school in the tenth year 
 of my age : but I made little or no progress 
 for a long time. I seemed to have no mind. 
 I could not learn, though, all the time, I was a 
 well-conditioned lad. Being so much put out 
 by my want of success in my lessons, I prayed to 
 God passionately that He would give me more 
 mind and more ability to learn my lessons. 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 29 
 
 And all at once there came to me a marvellous 
 clearing-up of my intellect, till I began to under- 
 stand my lessons very well. And the older I 
 grew the better I succeeded with my studies, till 
 I was almost the dux of the whole school. And 
 then in 1851 I was sent to the Ecclesiastical 
 Academy of St. Petersburg to be educated for 
 the Church at the cost of the State. I secured 
 the post of clerk to the Academy, and I was 
 able, out of my small salary of a pound a 
 month, to send some help home to my widowed 
 mother. Finishing my Divinity course in 
 1855, ^ passed on as priest to Cronstadt, 
 and in December of that year I married the 
 daughter of the senior priest of the place, by 
 name Elizabeth.' (I here take in this from 
 Stanley's first lecture on the Eastern Church. 
 * However fervent the Oriental Church has 
 been at all times in its assertion of the ascetic 
 and monastic system, yet among her ministers 
 marriage is not only permitted and frequent, 
 but in some orders of the ministry is absolutely 
 compulsory. It is a startling sight to the 
 traveller, after long wanderings in the south 
 of Europe, to find himself among the moun- 
 
30 Father John 
 
 tains of Greece, and in Asia Minor, once 
 more under the roof of a married pastor, and 
 to see the table of the parish priest furnished, 
 as it might be in Protestant England or 
 Switzerland, by the hands of an acknowledged 
 wife.') ' Of children,' Father John goes on, 
 * we have none, nor ever had any. In the 
 very first days of my ministry, I made it a 
 rule for myself t© attend with the utmost 
 possible earnestness to my work as a preacher 
 and a pastor. I strictly examined myself as 
 to my inner life. With this intent I took to 
 the closest study of the Holy Scriptures ; select- 
 ing from them what most concerned myself 
 as a man, as a minister, and as a member of 
 society. I commenced early to keep a diary, 
 in which I set down my inward struggles with 
 myself, and all my secret prayers to God, and 
 all my gratitude for my deliverances from 
 temptations, and afflictions, and all disasters. 
 Besides preaching, from the very beginning 
 of my ministry I tried to take the utmost care 
 of the poor : the more so that I was one of 
 them myself.' ' On the seaboard of the town 
 of Cronstadt,' so a popular life of Father John 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 31 
 
 runs, ' half a verst from the Cathedral of St. 
 Andrew, stands a small grey house hidden from 
 the view of the passers by a high boarded-up 
 fence and a thick hedge. In this cottage lives 
 the revered of all Russia, Father John Sergieff. 
 The furnishing of his house consists of a bed 
 with a hard mattress, a common table, a few 
 chairs, and two or three presses, — this is all the 
 furnishing and adorning of the house of the 
 Cronstadt minister who distributes annually 
 hundreds of thousands of roubles for help and 
 alms to the poor. In the summer, even before 
 the sun is up, and in winter, while it is yet 
 long dark. Father John awakens alert, and 
 serious, and self-entranced ; and, after his 
 ablutions, stands before his own icon and offers 
 up his morning prayer. He altogether enters 
 into his prayer ; he passes into another world, 
 and for the time forgets this earth. For about 
 half an hour he continues in prayer, out of 
 which he comes forth with the iron energy he 
 has there put on, and with the fortitude of soul 
 and body that carries him through another 
 day, and with his eyes sparkling with an 
 extraordinary light and love. Father John 
 
32 Father John 
 
 now departs to morning service In the church. 
 But this Is not so easy ; the gate of his house 
 is already surrounded by a crowd of people, 
 all but impervious, both of pilgrims from 
 all parts of Russia, and of people from all 
 around, seeking for his benediction, or just 
 to see him. Advising, blessing, reproving, 
 pushing aside, he sits down In his drosky. 
 Although it Is only half a verst to the church. 
 Father John always drives, because, otherwise, 
 he would not reach the church till the day was 
 gone. At last the priest is at the altar, and 
 the hour Is six. He reads the Evangel, prays, 
 and takes part In the praise. Deep, distinct, 
 precise, and with a special reverence, his fine 
 strong voice sounds out through the church, 
 Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the 
 Holy Ghost, and the crowd of people fall on 
 their knees. The service finished. Father John 
 will have twelve or fifteen visits to pay to sick 
 and sorrowful people in Cronstadt ; several 
 lessons to give to the catechumens and others ; 
 a visit to St. Petersburg ; some tens of visitors 
 waiting him at home ; and hundreds of letters 
 to open and answer. And great part of these 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 33 
 
 are " requests for prayer " from far and near : 
 sometimes even from Germany; sometimes even 
 from England and Ireland. And so on to- 
 morrow, and the day after, year after year.' 
 And in all that, as a fellow-churchman of 
 Father John has said to me about him, ' every- 
 thing that marvellous man touches he turns 
 to gold : from the dispensation of the Lord's 
 Supper down to teaching an infant class in 
 the Sabbath school.' * Father John,' writes the 
 St. Petersburg correspondent of 'The 'Times ^ * is 
 known and revered in every nook and corner 
 of Russia. This wonderful man, in the midst 
 of his Russian surroundings, seems to approach 
 in these days to the first apostles. He is 
 indeed a true physician of the Gospel. His 
 extraordinary healing powers, and the spiritual 
 and bodily cures effected by the reception 
 of his earnest consolations, are attested on 
 all sides by many sorts and conditions of 
 men. To those who believe in Father John, 
 and their name is legion, the age of miracles 
 is not yet over. Crowds press round him 
 whenever he leaves his humble abode, and 
 they are happy if they can only touch 
 
34 Father John 
 
 the hem of his modest garment. Father 
 John's life is one of uninterrupted self- 
 sacrificing charity and Christian ministration 
 among the poor, the sick, and the needy. 
 Not, however, refusing his presence and prayers 
 to the well-to-do and the rich, who send for 
 him when other help fails, and never in vain, 
 from all parts of the country. Steamboats 
 and trains in which he travels to and fro are 
 besieged with such crowds that the police have 
 to protect him from their pressure. The 
 report of his appearance in any house in St. 
 Petersburg makes the news spread like wild- 
 fire, brings throngs of poor people, running 
 madly from all the adjoining streets, to get 
 within the range of his healing presence, 
 to receive his blessing, or to implore his 
 attendance at the sick-beds of relatives and 
 friends.' To this it may be added that 
 the last Czar received the cup of blessing 
 from the hands of Father John on his death- 
 bed, and all but died in his arms. ' My 
 people love you,' said the Emperor with his 
 dying breath. ' Yes, they love you, because 
 they know what you are. And I feel 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 35 
 
 better when you hold your hands over me 
 in prayer.' 
 
 Our own Archbishop Maclagan made a visit 
 to the Russian Church in April of last year, and 
 I take the following from an excellent account 
 of the Archbishop's visit which appeared in The 
 Guardian of May 26th : — 
 
 *But one more episode of the Archbishop's visit to 
 St. Petersburg remains to be chronicled — namely, a 
 visit paid him by the v^^ell-known priest, Father John 
 of Cronstadt, the reputation of whose saintly life and 
 extraordinary influence for good in all parts of Russia 
 has already reached this country, where his book, 
 My Life in Christy has lately been published in an 
 excellent translation by M. Goulaeff, preceded by a 
 letter of dedication to our gracious Sovereign. On 
 returning from a visit to the Hermitage picture- 
 gallery, we found a telegram saying that Father John 
 would call in the course of the afternoon, and it was 
 evident by the groups of hotel servants already wait- 
 ing about in the passages near our rooms that the 
 new^s of his intended visit was already more or less 
 public property. At last we heard a sort of rush in 
 the passage, and one of the servants hurriedly looked 
 into our sitting-room and told us that Father John 
 had come. I went out into the passage and met the 
 venerable priest, his face as usual calm, and lit with 
 smiles as he made his way with difficulty through 
 the crowds of hotel servants who were pressing round 
 
36 Father John 
 
 him in order to kiss his hand or to receive his bless- 
 ing. His influence in Russia extends far beyond the 
 Orthodox population, and I noticed that not only 
 several of the German Lutheran servants in the hotel 
 were pressing round him, but that even two of the 
 Mohammedan Tartar waiters from the restaurant were 
 seeking and receiving his blessing. Father John 
 stayed with us for more than an hour, and he and 
 the Archbishop carried on an interesting and remark- 
 able conversation on the subject of the religious 
 condition of the poor in England and Russia respec- 
 tively, and more especially in the great towns, where 
 each of them has had such a wide experience. His 
 departure was attended in the passage by a similar 
 demonstration to that which had taken place on his 
 arrival, and it was with great difficulty that he made 
 his way to the lift, only to meet with a still denser 
 crowd in the street as he made his way from the 
 hotel to his carriage.' 
 
 But, with all that, Father John's biography, 
 and, especially, his autobiography, has yet to be 
 written. Even his diary, which he has been 
 writing every day all his life, is not a proper 
 diary at all. In his own strong and modest 
 words about it, his diary is only so many 
 moments of spiritual contemplation, reverent 
 feeling, earnest self-amendment, and peace with 
 God, and especially of prayer, all set down at 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 37 
 
 the moment, and the true value of which each 
 several reader of what he has written is left to 
 judge for himself. Now that is just what I 
 have done. I have read Father John's diary 
 over and over and over again ; and, along with 
 it, all else of Father John's writing that I 
 could lay my hands on ; as also all I could 
 collect of other men's writings from every 
 quarter concerning him. And, judging him 
 and his work for myself, and judging both 
 him and it very highly, and both loving and 
 honouring him in the Lord, I have been led 
 to introduce him to my Classes as, to my mind, 
 the greatest of living spiritual writers and a 
 true scriptural mystic; altogether worthy to 
 stand before us in our studies beside Behmen, 
 and Teresa, and A'Kempis, and Rutherford, 
 and Shepard, and Law, and all such-like 
 devotional, experimental, and spiritual authors. 
 While the whole of Father John's auto- 
 biographic diary is digested immediately out 
 of his own deepest experience, there is, at the 
 same time, a long catena of special experimental 
 passages that runs all through the book, bind- 
 ing it all together with the cords of a spiritual 
 
38 Father John 
 
 man of the first order of such men. I have 
 an index of all those passages before me, all of 
 which are written in tears and in blood, in 
 truth and in power and in prayer, above all 
 the rest of this everywhere truthful and power- 
 ful and prayerful book. And, then, those 
 outstanding passages are all indorsed, as they 
 did not need to be, with this seal and counter- 
 sign, ' This is experience ; this is my own 
 experience ; this is my own daily experience.' 
 And this continual stamp and seal comes in 
 suddenly, and with extraordinary impressiveness, 
 when he is warning and rebuking us, and, again, 
 when he is counselling and comforting us in some 
 extraordinary inward and soul-searching way, — 
 * This is experience ; this is my daily experience ' 
 comes in, — I cannot hope to convey to you 
 with what power and authority this seal and 
 stamp comes in. When he is warning us, as he 
 often warns us, against the dark and cruel and 
 malignant passions of our own hearts ; when he 
 is imploring us to pray with our whole hearts ; 
 when he is encouraging and emboldening us 
 to rise up and repudiate the thoughts and the 
 feelings that the devil insinuates into our hearts; 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 39 
 
 when he is giving us his best pastoral advice 
 as to how we are still to sit at the Lord's Table 
 amid all fears and fightings of conscience and 
 heart ; when he is back again with us at the 
 intensest and most penitent prayer ; when he 
 is assuring us, as if on his oath, that God will 
 always hear us on the spot when our whole 
 hearts cry for His mercy ; when on the same 
 page he tells us how, on such and such a date, 
 he called upon God in all the sinfulness of his 
 heart, and, as soon as he had finished his prayer, 
 peace and liberty established themselves within 
 him ; and when, after all that, his deceitful 
 heart would not return to God in abiding 
 prayer, such an abomination of sin and un- 
 belief had it become ; when he is the most 
 plain-spoken of all preachers about the evils ot 
 eating and drinking ; when he is pressing in- 
 tercessory prayer on us, and the sure and im- 
 mediate recompense of intercessory prayer to 
 ourselves ; and so on through his whole book ; 
 it comes in, I cannot tell you with what surprise 
 and rapture of the heart, — ' This is true ! ' 
 * This is of experience ! ' ' This is my own 
 daily experience ! ' The absolute integrity and 
 
4P Father John 
 
 the intense earnestness of the man ; his uttermost 
 self-forgetfulness, and most of all when he is 
 speaking most authoritatively to us about him- 
 self; his sweet and fascinating humility ; his 
 hold of God ; his hold of himself ; his sure- 
 footedness in the Word of God and in the 
 heart of man ; all this — and his whole volume 
 full of the same kind — makes John SergiefF to 
 be a spiritual authority and a spiritual guide of 
 the very first order; and proclaims him a mystical 
 saint second, in some of those respects, to none 
 of that noble family of the children of God. 
 
 Those great experience-passages are the 
 source and the measure of the whole book. 
 But for those great passages the rest of the 
 book had never been written. And when they 
 are once given, all the rest of the book is already 
 given. And, especially, those deep parts of 
 the book that deal with the Divine Nature ; 
 and with the Divine Nature in its Oneness, 
 Simplicity, Incomplexity, Uncompoundedness, 
 Omnipresence, and Inwardness. Our spiritual 
 experience of ourselves is the exact limit and 
 the sure measure of our spiritual experience of 
 God. Our spiritual discovery, and hold, and 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 41 
 
 possession of ourselves exactly measure our 
 discovery, and hold, and possession, and enjoy- 
 ment of God. They are one and the same 
 thing. And thus it is that our author continu- 
 ally insists on the oneness, the simplicity, the 
 incomplexity, and the spirituality of our souls 
 in the very same sense, and in the very same 
 terms, in which he insists on the Oneness, the 
 Simplicity, and the Spirituality of the Divine 
 Nature. God is a Spirit, He is continually in- 
 structing and reminding us. A Simple, Incom- 
 plex Being. The Being, indeed, of all beings. 
 The Almighty God is wholly present in every- 
 thing that exists. He penetrates and fills 
 everything full, according to its nature and 
 its capacity. Everything that anywhere exists 
 has its origin, its existence, its life, its 
 preservation, and its well-being in God. He 
 is infinite, eternal, unchangeable. Neither 
 time nor space exists for Him. He creates and 
 He sustains time and space only as an environ- 
 ment for His creatures. The whole mode and 
 manner of the Divine existence is too deep for 
 us. We cannot wade out into it. Who can 
 imagine what it is to be everywhere, and totally, 
 
42 Father John 
 
 and wholly, everywhere ? It is too high ; we 
 cannot attain to it. At the same time, all that 
 is as old as Moses and David and Isaiah. Not 
 Behmen, not Pascal, not Edwards, not SergiefF, 
 with all the revelations of God, and with all the 
 experiences of God's saints behind and within 
 them, has gone deeper into God than David 
 has already done in the 139th Psalm. 'The 
 City of God^ also, has it all in those well-known 
 words : ' God is that Incorporeal Nature which 
 is not contained in any place, but is all in 
 every place.' It is but the epigram of another 
 Latin Father : ' Deus ubique est ; et totus 
 ubique est.' And of yet another : * God is a 
 circle whose centre is everywhere and its cir- 
 cumference nowhere.' Only, the originaHty 
 and the genius and the grace of Father John 
 stand out in this, that he dwells on that, and 
 returns continually to that, and carries back 
 his readers to that, and all in the most sudden, 
 startling, awakening, ennobling, and sanctifying 
 way. Our God is wholly and totally every- 
 where ; and therefore He is with you and with 
 me in all His Godhead, and power, and truth, 
 and goodness. And His equally Incomplex, 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 43 
 
 if Incarnate Son, is wholly with us also in all His 
 pity, and sympathy, and blood, and resurrection, 
 and righteousness, and intercession and media- 
 torial providence. Believe, Sergieff con- 
 tinually cries. Believe all that with all your 
 mind and with all your heart, with all your 
 understanding and with all your imagination, 
 and with all that is within you. Work at that. 
 Labour at that. Never leave off from that. 
 There is nothing else worth working at. For 
 in God you live, and move, and have your 
 being, and your well-being, and in nothing and 
 in no one else. ' This also is experience.* 
 
 Though I am here in the near neighbour- 
 hood of the Greek icons, I am not going to 
 enter on that stumbling subject. It would not 
 be for your universal edification. But if there 
 is any divinity student here who is strongly 
 drawn to a deep and comprehensive study 
 of the devotional life ; and of the manners and 
 the methods, the aids and the appliances of that 
 life, true and false, right and wrong, in all the 
 Churches ; let him read and digest all that 
 Father John has to say to him on that subject. 
 And then let him buy for a shilling Ralph 
 
44 Father John 
 
 Erskine's Faith no Fancy : A 'Treatise of 
 Mental Images discovering both vain Philosophy 
 and vile Divinity. Between the Greek Mystic 
 and the Scottish Calvinlst, the tyros to whom 
 Erskine dedicates his learned and able treatise 
 will get both an opened and a deepened mind for 
 all their days. All that can possibly be said for 
 icons as an imaginative aid to faith is said in 
 the most beautiful and winning way by Father 
 John. And, then, all of that kind is put under 
 the severest tests of philosophy and theology 
 and Holy Scripture by our own Ralph Erskine 
 in his most masterly and conclusive manner. 
 
 The great mystic's great chapter on faith 
 and prayer springs immediately, and with 
 immense impressiveness and fruitfulness, out 
 of all that. * This also is experience.' If God 
 is indeed and in truth all that, then how easy it 
 is for Him to give us all things we need when 
 we take His ordained way of faith and prayer to 
 receive them ! It is utterly unpardonable, it is 
 absolutely suicidal in us if we still doubt, and 
 halt, and come away from God with our hearts 
 empty. Our Lord said it as plainly as even He 
 could say it. Every one that asketh receiveth, 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 45 
 
 and he that seeketh findeth. Believe that you 
 receive it, He said also, and you shall have it. 
 Not to believe, then, is blasphemy against 
 God. It is making Jesus Christ a lying 
 witness. Only feel truly and sincerely your 
 need of that for which you pray, and believe 
 that it comes from God, and you will obtain 
 anything and everything. For with God all 
 things are possible. Whether you are sitting 
 alone, or lying down, or walking abroad, or 
 thinking, or writing, or working ; whether you 
 are well or ill, at home or out, on land or on 
 sea, be continually assured that God at that 
 moment is wholly with you ; that He hears the 
 finest breathings and beatings of your hearts ; 
 and that He listens to hear and help you. Has 
 He not said to you that He waits for you to 
 be gracious to you ? Do you deny that ? No, 
 demands Father John, you must not either 
 forget or deny or despair of that. Forget, 
 deny, despair of anything and everything but 
 that. Remember that for Omnipotence nothing 
 is difficult, nor for Love a trouble or a task. 
 All things, therefore, whatsoever you shall ask 
 in prayer, believing, you shall surely receive. 
 
46 Father John 
 
 He who doubts is severely punished for his 
 doubt. For his heart is left of God hard, and 
 cold, and dead in sin. On the other hand, all 
 blessings ; all life, and peace, and power, and 
 joy ; it all comes directly and immediately 
 from God, and from God in reply to believing 
 prayer. * This also I have a thousand times 
 proved to be truth in my own experience. 
 My heart tells me so at this moment that I 
 write. Thou, O my God, art an ever open 
 treasure-house of all blessedness to me. Amen.' 
 I suppose it is all this : I can well believe 
 that it has been fifty years of a life like this 
 that has given this eminent man of faith and 
 prayer such a name and such a power in the 
 land where he dwells. You will say it is great 
 ignorance and great superstition in the Russian 
 people to run after any man as they run after 
 Father John. And you will denounce it as 
 great credulity in me, and great disloyalty to 
 my Church at home, for me to admit that there 
 is anything to be admired or imitated in any 
 Russian archpriest. But I incline more and 
 more, the longer I live, to be very easy of belief 
 in the literal promises and strong assurances of 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 47 
 
 Jesus Christ, and in the boundless power of be- 
 lieving prayer. I am a miracle of importunate 
 prayer myself, as great as anything in Father 
 John, though I will never be bold enough to give 
 day and date for it in this life as he so courage- 
 ously and so eucharistically does. Try the 
 prayer of faith, and the literal word of Christ 
 yourself. You can lose nothing by it ; and 
 you may — nay, to a certainty you will, gain 
 more by it than you can ask or think. ' This 
 also is experience.* 
 
 But with all that, and much more that is 
 equally precious and epoch-making for us in 
 Father John's autobiographic diary ; at the 
 same time, that book, it must always be pro- 
 claimed, if only to propitiate people, is far from 
 perfect. ' Everything has two handles,' says 
 Epictetus ; and Father John's autobiographic 
 diary is no exception to that true rule. For 
 if the diary has a rich handle for the teachable, 
 and the hospitable, and the thankful, and 
 the spiritual, it has also a protruding-enough 
 handle for the ill-natured man, and the im- 
 possible man to please. There are too many 
 motes, as I see quite well, in Father John's 
 
48 Father John 
 
 Greek eye. There is far too much about the 
 mother of our Lord, and about His saints, and 
 about an extravagant and a superstitious faith 
 in prayer, as well as about icons, and azymes, 
 and such like. There are too many flies in 
 the ointment, I frankly admit. And all that 
 I contend for is only this, that the ointment, 
 all the time, itself is good ; is indeed of a 
 peculiarly rich, and healing, and fragrant, and 
 scarce kind. And, moreover, that the flies that 
 have got into the box of spikenard can easily 
 be separated out of it. At the same time, as 
 another most true proverb has it, — one man's 
 meat is another man's poison. And Father 
 John has not written his book for all men ; but 
 only for those who are able and willing to 
 profit by what he has written. He is bold to 
 say as he hands us his great devotional and ex- 
 perimental gift, ' He that is spiritual judgeth 
 all things ; yet he himself is judged of no man.' 
 * This man,' says Palmer, ' is in error only 
 incidentally, and by no real fault of his ov/n, 
 but only through his unhappy tradition, 
 while we are in the truth by no virtue of our 
 own, but only through our so much happier 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 49 
 
 tradition. And his zeal in communicating to 
 us what he has experienced to be Divine truth 
 is a personal merit and a praise to him. 
 Whereas our want of a like experience, and of 
 a will and a desire to profit by his, is a real vice 
 and defect in ourselves.' Those golden words 
 deserve to be printed at the head of every 
 controversial page, and should be acknowledged 
 and attributed to his honour everywhere as 
 William Palmer's wise and irenical law. 
 
 If then that is so ; if all Father John's faults 
 and errors, so to call them, are only of tradition 
 and inheritance, whereas his attainments and 
 his experiences in the Divine life are all his own 
 conquest and possession ; shall we not both 
 believe and hope that to whom so much has been 
 given, and such a good use made of it, far more 
 shall yet be given and gained ? Shall we not hope 
 and pray, and both in love and honour, that 
 Father John may yet become such a reformer 
 in Russia, as powerful and as lasting, as Knox 
 was in Scotland, and Wesley in England.? 
 Nicon had the making of a great reformer in 
 him, and Lucar was the sympathetic corre- 
 spondent and guest of Abbot and Diodati, and 
 
50 Father John 
 
 others of the great Western reformers and 
 theologians of his day. But the time was not 
 ripe. Russia was not ready. To Lucar 
 especially our hearts and imaginations con- 
 tinually return. Had not the bowstring of 
 the Sultan cut short that truly apostolic life, 
 there is no limit to the service that Lucar 
 might have done for the Eastern Church of 
 his day. And all the past history of that truly 
 venerable but far too fossilised Church ; her 
 present position as the National Church of 
 Russia; the growing power of Russia also 
 among the nations of the earth ; and then the 
 rise of such a man as Father John at the very 
 heart of that Church, will all make us wait and 
 watch to see if he is to be made of God that 
 great reformer and that great evangelist which 
 she so much needs. With his prodigious 
 popularity and influence with the common 
 people ; with his privileged access to the very 
 highest circles and personages in the Empire ; 
 with his so conspicuous loyalty and devotion 
 to his own Church and nation ; and with his 
 so essentially evangelical, and so profoundly 
 spiritual teaching and character, — is Father 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 51 
 
 John predestinated to effect the internal re- 
 formation and the spiritual quickening of the 
 Church and the people he loves so well ? Dean 
 Stanley closes his brilliant lectures on the 
 Eastern Church with a fine page full of such 
 prophetical and wistful questions as these. 
 What will her future be? Will the Greek 
 Church venture, still retaining her elaborate 
 forms of ritual, to use them all as so many 
 vehicles of true spiritual and moral edification 
 for her people ? Will she be able to cleanse 
 away the corruption and vice of the higher 
 ranks in Russia, as well as the deceit and rude 
 intemperance of the middle and lower classes? 
 The Russian clergy, as they recite the Nicene 
 Creed at the Lord's Table, always embrace one 
 another with a fraternal kiss, in order to re- 
 mind themselves and the congregation that the 
 Orthodox Faith is never to be disjoined from 
 apostolical charity. Is there a hope that this 
 noble thought may be more adequately repre- 
 sented in their ecclesiastical development than 
 it has been in our own? Will Russia yet 
 exhibit to the whole world the sight oi a 
 Church and a people understanding, receiving, 
 
52 Father John 
 
 fostering the progress of new ideas, foreign 
 learning, and free inquiry, not as the destruc- 
 tion, but as the fulfilment of religious belief 
 and devotion ? Will the Churches of the 
 West find that, in the greatest National Church 
 now existing on the face of the earth, there 
 is still a principle of life at work, which is at 
 once more steadfast, more liberal, and more 
 pacific, than has hitherto been produced, either 
 by the uniformity of Rome, or the variation of 
 Protestantism ? Such are some of Stanley's 
 characteristic questions as he closes his classical 
 book. Now, it is no more than the simple 
 truth to say that these very questions, and 
 many others more or less kindred to them, 
 rose in my own mind continually as I read and 
 pondered the life, and the experience, and the 
 teaching, and the immense influence of John 
 SergiefF. Jonathan Edwards read the news- 
 letters of his day in order to see how the 
 kingdom of God was coming all over the earth, 
 and how the will of God was being done on 
 earth as in heaven. Mr. Dobson, the Corre- 
 spondent of The Times in St. Petersburg, first 
 introduced Father John to the English people 
 
Appreciation and Introduction 53 
 
 in a noble letter to that journal in 1891. And 
 may we not hope one day to read in all our 
 journals, that both by Father John's books, 
 and by his preaching, and by his character, and 
 above all by his prayers, the great Greek 
 Church in Russia has again become all that she 
 was in her Apostolic days, when as yet she 
 looked forth on the world as the morning, 
 fair as the moon, clear as the sun. and terrible 
 as an army with banners ? 
 
SELECTED PASSAGES 
 
*^* The following passages are selected and arranged from 
 
 * My Life in Christ,'' published in this country by 
 
 Cassell and Company. 
 
 See at end of this Volume. 
 
SELECTED PASSAGES 
 
 FATHER JOHN ON HIMSELF 
 
 (l) On his pursuit of 'Truth. — Thou hast 
 opened to me all the riches of faith, and of 
 nature, and of the human mind. I have 
 studied the laws that regulate the mind of 
 man in its pursuit of truth, and the growth 
 and the beauty of the languages of men. I 
 have penetrated with some depth into the 
 mysteries of Nature, into her laws, into the 
 abyss of the creation of the worlds, and into 
 their evolution and development. I know 
 something of the wonderful history of our own 
 earth also. I have acquainted myself with its 
 different peoples ; with its celebrated men, and 
 with their great achievements. I have spent 
 no little time and strength in the study of 
 myself also, and of Thee, and of the way I 
 must take to know Thee and to come to Thee. 
 And I hope still to learn much more of all 
 
58 Father John 
 
 that in the years to come. But, with all that, 
 neither my mind nor my heart is satisfied : no, 
 nor ever will be. My mind still hungers ; my 
 heart still hungers and thirsts, and cries, Give, 
 give. When and how shall I ever be satisfied ? 
 I shall be satisfied only when I awake with 
 Thy likeness, and when the Lamb leads me 
 to living fountains of waters. For He says 
 to me, and I believe Him : The water that I 
 shall give you shall be in you a well of water 
 springing up into everlasting life. 
 
 (2) On his own Heart. — Do not give way 
 to the dark feelings in your heart against your 
 neighbour. For many dark and malignant 
 feelings arise on occasion out of the bottomless 
 depths of your heart. And he who has not 
 learned how to subdue and expel these evil 
 emanations will often become gloomy, and 
 irascible, and melancholy, and bitter, and a great 
 burden to himself and to others. When these 
 abominable ebullitions are vomited up within 
 you, force yourself to love and goodwill, to 
 mirth even, and innocence. Do good and speak 
 good concerning your neighbour, and your 
 
Selected Passages 59 
 
 wicked heart will be shut down, and all your 
 evil feelings will scatter like smoke. This is 
 from my own experience. 
 
 When malice against any one is roused in 
 your heart, then believe, and say, and insist 
 that it is the devil at work within you. Hate 
 with horror the diabolical outcome of your 
 own heart. Repudiate it. Deny it. Do not 
 acknowledge it. Speak as Paul spake about 
 it in The Epistle to the Romans. Say, it is 
 not I that do it. This also is from experience. 
 
 I often oppose God and His holy laws. I 
 am often unbelieving, selfish, proud. I often 
 despise others, I often envy others. I am 
 often avaricious, covetous, sensual, ambitious, 
 impatient, irritable, slothful. I do not pity 
 those who suffer. This, and much more like 
 it, is my daily experience. 
 
 All my happiness and unhappiness is con- 
 tained in the thoughts and affections and 
 inclinations of my heart. If all these things 
 are in accord with the will of God, then I am 
 at rest. Then I am filled with Divine light, 
 and joy, and blessedness. If not, I am uneasy, 
 filled with soul-destroying darkness, heaviness, 
 
6o Father John 
 
 despondency. But as soon as I change the 
 evil thoughts and affections of my heart into 
 good affections ; into affections like God and 
 well-pleasing to Him, then I immediately 
 return to rest and blessedness. 
 
 (3) On his experiences in Prayer, — Fervent, 
 tearful prayer not only delivers the heart from 
 sin, but it also cures bodily maladies and 
 infirmities. It renews the whole being of a 
 man, and makes him, so to say, born again, 
 and a new creature. I speak from experience. 
 What a priceless gift is prayer ! Glory to 
 Thee, The Only-begotten Son of God, who 
 hath obtained for us the endless pardon of all 
 our sins, and all kinds of access to the throne 
 of grace ! 
 
 As He hears every word of the prayer, ' God 
 have mercy on me ! ' and fulfils every word 
 of it : so, likewise, God hears and fulfils all 
 the words of all our other prayers — the most 
 personal, and particular, and peculiar, and 
 secret ; only ask in all the simplicity of your 
 heart, nothing doubting. This is from ex- 
 perience. 
 
Selected Passages 6i 
 
 I thank Thee, my Lord and Master, for 
 teaching me how to pray simply and sincerely 
 to Thee, and for hearing me when I so called 
 upon Thee, and for saving me from all my 
 sins and sorrows, and for afterwards directing 
 all my ways. I called upon Thee in all my 
 wickedness, and said, in the words of the Church 
 prayer, * O Lord our God, who grantest for- 
 giveness to men through repentance. . . .' And 
 as soon as I had finished this prayer, peace and 
 exhilaration immediately took possession of 
 my soul (29th June 1864). 
 
 During Passion Week the enemy hindered 
 me just before the time of my ministerial work 
 began by striking my heart with straitness, 
 disturbance, and evil despondency. But I 
 prayed with my whole heart, and with un- 
 doubting faith, to the God of my salvation, 
 and said : * O God, most merciful Father ! 
 Thou spakest through Thine Only-begotten 
 Son, Our Lord Christ, saying, Ask, and it shall 
 be given you, and so on. Give me now Thy 
 Holy Spirit, that my heart may be strengthened 
 for the work of this week among Thy people.* 
 And what happened.^ I went through the 
 
62 Father John 
 
 work of the week exceedingly well. I was 
 calm, kind, edifying, and did not experience 
 any oppression or uneasy hurry. I glorify the 
 merciful right hand of my most gracious 
 Heavenly Father. The longer I live and 
 work the work of God, the more I see that it 
 is ever necessary to strengthen ourselves before 
 every spiritual work by heartfelt prayer. 
 
 ON DELIBERATION IN PRAYER 
 
 During prayer it is absolutely necessary that 
 your heart should sincerely desire that which 
 you ask for : that you should feel deeply and 
 truly what you are saying. Pray slowly till an 
 echo comes back into your heart from every 
 word of your prayers. Yes. It is an ab- 
 solute rule. Pray slowly, and with power on 
 every word. Pronounce each successive word 
 from the heart. Keep to the rule that it is 
 better to say five words from the bottom of 
 your heart, than ten thousand words from your 
 tongue only. When your heart is cold, stop 
 praying, and warm your heart by vividly repre- 
 senting to yourself your misery and your 
 blindness and your deadness ; and then go on 
 
Selected Passages 63 
 
 to pray slowly and fervently. The Lord will 
 not forsake those who labour for Him, and who 
 stand long before Him. With what measure 
 they mete, it shall be measured to them again. 
 He will reward them amply for all their pain 
 and toil by sending a light, and a warmth, and 
 a peace, and a joy into their hearts that the 
 common run of men never taste. It is better 
 to pray long and continually, no doubt, but all 
 men cannot receive that saying. And it is better 
 for those who are not yet capable of a whole 
 life of prayer to offer short prayers, but always 
 with an understanding and a fervent spirit. 
 Let every praying man accustom himself to ask 
 himself — Am I in real need of that for which 
 I am on my knees ? And do I, as I shall 
 answer at the great Day of Judgment, really, 
 and from my heart, desire it ? Do I really 
 wish it,'' and am I ready to rise off my knees 
 and work out that amendment of life and that 
 holiness of heart which are now on my lips .? 
 
 ON ASSIDUITY IN PRAYER 
 
 ■ Do not spare yourself, even if you have been 
 toiling hard all day. Having put your hand 
 
64 Father John 
 
 to the plough, do not look back. God will 
 not suffer in you duplicity, and easiness, and 
 oversight, and self-pity. If you hurry over 
 your prayers in order to give rest to your body, 
 you will lose both bodily and spiritual rest. 
 Oh ! by what labour, and sweat, and tears is the 
 approach to God ofttimes made and held fast ! 
 This is experience ! The only means by which 
 you can spend the day in holiness, and peace, 
 and without sin, is the most sincere and fervent 
 prayer as soon as you rise from sleep in the 
 morning. Such prayer, and such prayer alone, 
 will bring Christ into your heart, with the Father 
 and the Holy Ghost. And their presence alone 
 can fortify you against all evil, and guard and 
 keep your heart. Why is long-continued prayer 
 so necessary ? In order that we may warm our 
 cold hearts, and soften our hard hearts. Be 
 sure of this, in spite of all sophistry, that time 
 and labour are needed to soften and warm the 
 heart. The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth 
 violence, and the violent take it by force. Our 
 Father knoweth what things we have need of 
 before we ask them. But we do not know : 
 and never will know but by much prayer. 
 
Selected Passages 65 
 
 This is experience, as all men of prayer will 
 testify. 
 
 ON BELIEVING PRAYER 
 
 When you pray that your sins may be for- 
 given, strengthen your heart in faith, and put 
 an absolute trust in His mercy. What are all 
 your sins to God's mercy, whatever they may 
 be, if only you truly repent of them ? But it 
 often happens that a man does not in his heart 
 believe that he will be forgiven : counting him- 
 self outside of God's mercy. That man, in 
 that mind, will never obtain forgiveness, even 
 should he shed oceans of desponding tears. 
 But always with a straitened and a burdened 
 heart he will depart from the mercy seat, 
 which is only what he deserves. ' Believe that 
 ye receive, and ye shall receive.' Not to 
 believe ; not to be sure of receiving what you 
 ask, and what God has promised, is a blasphemy 
 against God. 
 
 ON IMMEDIATE FORGIVENESS 
 
 The Lord sometimes hears us instantaneously 
 and unexpectedly. Often during the day I 
 
66 Father John 
 
 have been a great sinner, and at night, after 
 prayer, I have gone to rest whiter than snow 
 and with the deepest peace and joy in my 
 heart. Let that be my experience at the 
 evening of my whole life ! O save, save, save 
 me, O Lord ! O receive me in that same way 
 into thy heavenly kingdom ! Everything is 
 possible to thee. And thou delightest in 
 mercy. 
 
 Do not fear or forget to confess every night 
 the sins into which you have fallen during the 
 past day. A few moments of fervent repent- 
 ance, and you will be cleansed by the Holy 
 Ghost from every impurity. You will be 
 whiter than snow. You will be covered with 
 the robe of Christ's righteousness, and united 
 to Him, and to the Father, and to the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 After sin immediately say in your heart the 
 Psalm, ' Have mercy upon me, O God,' and 
 say the whole Psalm in and from your heart. 
 If it does not take effect the first time, try 
 again : only say it the second time more 
 heartily, more feelingly, and then salvation will 
 speedily shine into your soul. Be always con- 
 
Selected Passages 67 
 
 trite, and more and more contrite, the more 
 you sin : this is the proved and experienced 
 remedy against sin. If still you do not obtain 
 relief, blame only yourself It proves that 
 you have prayed without contrition, without 
 humility, and without a strong enough desire 
 to obtain forgiveness. It shows that you do 
 not see and feel your sin aright. 
 
 When you sin for the fiftieth and hundredth 
 time in the day, and are seized with the most 
 devilish despondency, say, from the depths of 
 your soul with Metaphrastes : * I know well, 
 O Lord, that mine iniquities have gone over my 
 head. But I also know that without measure 
 is the multitude of Thy mercies, and that there 
 is no sin that can overcome Thy loving-kind- 
 ness. Therefore, O most wonderful Being, 
 O Lord most good, do Thou show Thy mercy 
 to me a sinner. Accept me as Thou didst 
 accept the prodigal, the thief, and the sinful 
 woman. Accept me, though in word and in 
 deed, by my evil passions and brutish lusts, I have 
 sinned without measure against Thee. Have 
 mercy upon me, O Lord, for though I am 
 weak and evi' I am still Thy creature. O 
 
68 Father John 
 
 Lord, my God, I have put my trust in Thee. 
 Be Thou my Saviour, and loosen, and remit, 
 and forgive all my sins ; and turn, and pre- 
 serve, and deliver my soul, save me for Thy 
 mercy's sake. Where sin hath abounded, there 
 let grace much more abound. For Thou art 
 the God of the penitent and the Saviour of 
 the sinner.* A hundred times a day. 
 
 ON THE CROSS 
 
 Look upon our Saviour's Cross, and contem- 
 plate Love crucified upon it for our salvation. 
 And think from what torments He has 
 delivered us, and to what blessedness He has 
 saved us ! He has snatched us from the 
 jaws of death and hell, and has brought us to 
 the Father ! O love ! O redemption ! O 
 indescribable blessedness ! 
 
 After our Saviour's sufferings the Cross 
 became the sign of the Son of Man : that is, 
 the Cross now signifies our Lord Himself, 
 incarnate, and suffering for our salvation. On 
 the Cross our Lord offered Himself as a sacri- 
 fice for our sins, and by it He has saved us 
 
Selected Passages 69 
 
 from the enemy : and therefore, we can never 
 see even the sign and shape of a cross without 
 thinking of Him, and doing Him reverence. 
 
 Why did the Holy Cross appear in the 
 heavens to the Emperor Constantine? Surely 
 in order to show him that our Lord Himself, 
 and all His apostles and martyrs, entered into 
 glory through the Cross : that the Cross is 
 invincible victory ; that all the enemies of 
 Christ and His people will be vanquished 
 through the Cross, and that all the oppressed 
 and persecuted are under the protection of 
 Christ and His Cross. And we also experience 
 the effect of the invincible, incomprehensible, 
 divine power of our Lord's glorious and life- 
 giving Cross, and by its power we drive away 
 from our hearts all evil passions, all de- 
 spondency, all fear, and all the other snares 
 of the devil. I say this sincerely, with full 
 belief in the truth and power of these words. 
 
 ON THE CURE OF THE PASSIONS 
 
 Crucify them. Never indulge them. When 
 you feel hatred to your neighbour : never utter 
 
70 Father John 
 
 it : never indulge it : never allow or entertain 
 it. But set yourself to love him, and to say 
 and do loving things to him. And, above all, 
 pray for him. If you are of an envious heart, 
 say and do benevolent things to the man you 
 envy. When you feel pride, dash yourself and 
 it to the ground. Tormented with malice and 
 ill-will, follow after peace and love. The 
 whole art of curing the diseases of the mind 
 and the heart is by doing violence to them 
 whenever they show themselves, and never, 
 never indulging them. 
 
 ON INVOLUNTARY SIN 
 
 The sin to which we do not consent is not 
 imputed to us. As, for example, involuntary 
 distraction during prayer : impure and blas- 
 phemous thoughts : involuntary malice : in- 
 voluntary envy : involuntary anger and ill-will. 
 Our duty is to endure involuntary sin, which 
 is our greatest cross, and to humble ourselves, 
 and to be patient, and to pray without ceasing : 
 Create in me a clean heart, O God ! 
 
Selected Passages 71 
 
 ON THE TRUE SCIENCE 
 
 The science of sciences is to know our 
 passions, and to know how to conquer and 
 expel them. It is great science riot to be 
 angry with any one, or with anything : not 
 to think evil of any one : not even if he 
 has done us evil : but to find an excuse for 
 him in ourselves, or in something else : it 
 is great science to despise gain, and praise, 
 and luxury : and to live temperately and 
 moderately in all things. And so on through 
 all the passions and affections of the heart. 
 Alas ! we have studied many arts and sciences : 
 but not yet our own hearts, and how to 
 keep them. Life is a great experimental 
 science. Nothing is more difficult than to pass 
 through this science ; this narrow way ; these 
 strait gates. And those who have not learned 
 either of their mother or of their schoolmaster 
 to have the faith and the fear of God, they 
 will find themselves unprepared to face life. 
 Often he who is dux at school, and wrangler at 
 college, is overthrown and outrun every day 
 in the race and wrestling-ground of life. He 
 
7^ Father John 
 
 is like a ship put out to sea without anchor, 
 sails, or rigging. 
 
 ON THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 
 
 In educating children, we should attend first 
 and last and always to the heart. For their 
 heart is their life. But it is their life corrupted 
 already with sin at its source. And society 
 is corrupted precisely at its source through the 
 want of Christian education. Neglect of the 
 development, of the softening, of the radical 
 amendment of the heart, is a thousand times 
 more culpable in a parent or a teacher than 
 neglect of mental education. For a mentally 
 uneducated man deserves and receives our in- 
 dulgence and our pity. But in how much worse 
 an estate is he who, while full of a so-called 
 education, is still more full of malice, and pride, 
 and scorn, and envy, and gluttony, and covet- 
 ousness, and all his other wicked passions ! The 
 uneducated and plain man's simplicity, meek- 
 ness, gentleness, humility, silence, and patience, 
 — ^how much better are they than all our 
 knowledge of letters and sciences, all our 
 
Selected Passages 73 
 
 outward polish, all our feigned courtesy and 
 studied expressions ! Even sins themselves, 
 being done in ignorance, are more excusable 
 in the uneducated. 
 
 Parents and teachers ! beware and be most 
 careful not to let your children be wilful. 
 Wilfulness is the root of bitterness in a young 
 heart. It is the rust of the heart, the moth of 
 love, the seed of much evil. 
 
 Look ! are the pupils of our schools taught 
 that which concerns them more than all else 
 — prayer ^ Lord, said the disciple, teach us 
 to pray. 
 
 ON OUR HOME-LIFE 
 
 Watch yourselves — your passions especially 
 — in your home-life, where they appear most 
 freely, like creatures of darkness in a safe place. 
 Do not give way to vexation or irritability, 
 else you will be mastered by it, and wiU fill 
 your home with it. Our innumerable im- 
 perfections fill our home-life with endless 
 occasions for vexation and irritation ; and 
 then, yielding to them, our home-life is soon 
 
74 Father John 
 
 killed dead. Our irritations and our outbursts 
 only make matters worse. Be calm : you are 
 not married to an angel. We all sin before 
 we are aware ; and we are all more obnoxious 
 to one another than we know. Charity sufFereth 
 long, and is kind. Charity never faileth. 
 Conquer everything by charity. 
 
 In all caprices, all offences, all manner of 
 family unpleasantnesses, always sincerely blame 
 yourself. Acknowledge yourself as the real 
 cause of the unpleasantness. Say, ' It was all my 
 fault ' ; and the house will be healed, and your 
 first love and honour will return. Know 
 nothing at home but more love. 
 
 ON EATING AND DRINKING 
 
 Avoid and escape a life of eating, and 
 drinking, and dressing, and sleeping, and 
 walking ; and then again, eating, and drinking, 
 and sleeping. Health and the belly are our 
 two gods in this age, and I am a man of the 
 age myself, and a great sinner in all these 
 respects. To walk and drive for health, and 
 to incite the appetite, such are the objects and 
 
Selected Passages 75 
 
 aims of every day with many of us. Many of 
 us — and I myself the first, — if we do not repent 
 and alter our life, will be condemned for living 
 like the beasts that have nothing but their 
 bellies to live for. Tea and coffee and tobacco, 
 even, pertain to drunkenness if indulged in for 
 their own sakes, and unseasonably and in excess. 
 Some men eat and drink and smoke continually. 
 This is their diary ; this is their whole life. 
 Such a life is the death of the soul; and at 
 a tremendous cost and cross to himself such a 
 sensualist and glutton will ever be saved ; he 
 will know what it is to take up his cross daily 
 when he begins to be a man of mind and heart; 
 a man of God, and not of his bed and his belly. 
 When hungry, do not throw yourself upon 
 your food. Eat slowly, and with sweet reflec- 
 tion on the goodness of God. Eat all the 
 time the incorruptible food, rejoicing in Him 
 who is the Bread of Life. 
 
 ON MAKING EVERY DAY SACRAMENTAL 
 
 On rising from your bed, say : In the Name 
 of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I 
 
76 Father John 
 
 begin this new day. When I awake I am still 
 with Thee ; and I shall be satisfied when I 
 awake with Thy righteousness, and with Thy 
 whole image. While washing, say : Purge me 
 from the sins of the night, and I shall be clean. 
 Wash Thou me, and I shall be whiter than 
 snow. When putting on your clean linen, 
 say : Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and 
 clothe me with the fine linen, which is the 
 righteousness of the saints. When you break 
 your fast, think of the length of Christ's fast, 
 and in His Name eat your morning meal with 
 gladness of heart. Drinking water, or tea, or 
 sweet mead, think of the true quenchings of the 
 thirst of the heart. If you wish to walk or 
 drive, or go in a boat somewhere, first pray to 
 the Lord to keep this your going out and 
 coming in. If you see and hear a storm, think 
 of the sea of passions in your own and in other 
 men's hearts. If you are a scholar, or an 
 official, or an officer, or a painter, or a manu- 
 facturer, or a mechanic, remember that the 
 science of sciences to you is to be a new creature 
 in Christ Jesus. And every day, and in every 
 place, work at the new creation which you 
 
Selected Passages 77 
 
 yourselves are. Working with all your might 
 at your proper and peculiar calling, — work out 
 your own salvation in every part of every day. 
 
 ON KEEPING THE HEART 
 
 Having Christ once in your heart, take good 
 care that you do not lose Him out of your 
 heart. It is very hard to begin again. Your 
 efforts to get Him back will cost you many 
 prayers and many tears. This is experience. 
 
 The invisible God acts on my soul as if He 
 were visible and present with me ; as He is. 
 He is ; and He knows all my thoughts, and all 
 my feelings, and all my desires. And thus it 
 is that every inward slothfulness, stubbornness, 
 wilfulness, or other wicked passion, is always 
 accompanied by its corresponding punishment. 
 If my inward inclination is away from God, 
 and from His Holy Spirit, then my own 
 wicked, bitter, unholy spirit fills my heart. 
 
 People irritate and offend you ; treat you 
 with easily evident ill-will and contempt. But 
 you must not pay them back. Now is your 
 opportunity to be gentle and meek, and full of 
 
78 Father John 
 
 the mind of Christ. If you let yourself out of 
 hand ; if you arc excited, and hot, and agitated 
 inwardly, you will be vanquished of yourself, 
 and will lose the inward battle that was almost 
 won. Be always calm, serene, simple, unsus- 
 picious, and kind-hearted, and you will have a 
 double victory, first over yourself, and then 
 over your enemy. 
 
 We must carefully watch our own hearts 
 every day, lest the tares of death — self-indulg- 
 ence, unbelief, envy, hatred, and what not of 
 all that kind — spring up to trouble us. We 
 must daily descend into our own heart to weed 
 it. Besides this, we must by every means 
 known to us fertilise it by prayer, and medi- 
 tation, and reading, and holy imaginations, 
 and never let our heart out of our sight. We 
 must remember that labour, and even toil, ay, 
 and even daily violence, are all needed to the 
 great task of subduing, and keeping subdued 
 and obedient, the heart. It is through much 
 inward tribulation that we shall carry our hearts 
 home to heaven. 
 
 Bring your heart to God in a morning and 
 evening sacrifice. Give up your heart wholly 
 
Selected Passages 79 
 
 to God. You do not know the blessedness 
 and enjoyment of that ; nor the misery of 
 denying it. Renounce yourself absolutely ; 
 and especially all your sinful inclinations. 
 Malice, hatred, pride, self-will, envy, ill-will, 
 avarice, covetousness, gluttony, uncleanness, 
 deceitfulness, slothfulness, — what a heart ! what 
 a hell is every human heart ! And continu- 
 ally force yourself to be kind when others ex- 
 asperate you ; to ask for them, and for yourself 
 toward them, meekness, humility, gentleness, 
 benevolence, generosity, disinterestedness, 
 abstinence, chastity, truth of all kinds, and 
 righteousness. It is difficult to conquer the 
 passions : impossible. It is to die. It is death 
 and burial, and you alive all the time. But 
 it can be done. By constant watchfulness, and 
 self-observation, and prayer, you and God in 
 and with you will do it. But not in a day ; 
 not in a year. But at last your heart will be 
 a copy of Christ's heart, and all your passions 
 at the service of God, as all His Son's passions, 
 and appetites, and affections were. 
 
 You say, ' What shall I do with such a heart 
 as mine is ? For it sets itself in constant 
 
So Father John 
 
 opposition to everything that is true and good. 
 It is full of unbelief. It is without God. It 
 fails me in the hour of trial. It fears when it 
 should be bold ; and it is bold when it should 
 tremble. What am I to do .? ' Hate it. Kill it. 
 Take it to the Cross. Away with it ! crucify 
 it, crucify it ! And after it is crucified, and 
 dead and buried, it will be raised again, a 
 glorious heart ; the copy, and the equal, and 
 the fellow of Christ's heart, for holiness, and 
 beauty, and sweetness, and peace. You will then 
 know, and not till then, what a divine gift the 
 image of God is, and what a splendid possession 
 to all eternity a holy heart is. That is what you 
 are to do with your heart. And then you will 
 say : Who is a God like unto Thee ? O the depth 
 of God ! And above all, in the heart of man ! 
 
 ON THE GOLDEN RULE 
 
 Love every man as yourself; that is, do not 
 wish him anything that you would not wish for 
 yourself ; think about him, and feel toward 
 him as you would think and feel about and 
 toward yourself; do not wish to see anything 
 
Selected Passages 8i 
 
 in his life or in his lot that you would not 
 have in your own ; do not keep in your memory 
 any word or deed he has done against you, just 
 as you would like all your own evil words and 
 works to be forgotten ; believe others to be as 
 good, and far better, both in their deeds and 
 in their intentions toward you, than you are 
 toward them ; and then you will soon see what 
 will come out of that golden rule into your 
 heart and life. What peace ! what absolute 
 blessedness ! You will be this day with Christ 
 in Paradise. You will taste heaven upon earth. 
 The kingdom of God is within you. He that 
 dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God 
 in him. 
 
 ON THE PULPIT 
 
 Our old man is constantly present with us, 
 tempting us, snaring us, corrupting us, destroy- 
 ing us. This is why we occupy ourselves in 
 the pulpit with the old man and his works. 
 It is in order that both we and our people may 
 learn every new Lord's Day to know our- 
 selves and the dangers of our passions. And 
 
 F 
 
82 Father John 
 
 it is that they and we together, and by the 
 grace and strength of God, may slay the old 
 man within us. This is why we do not take up 
 our time and thoughts in the pulpit with any 
 of the things of this world. They do not 
 concern us. They are irrelevant and imper- 
 tinent to us. There is one thing needful to us 
 there till it is accomplished. Thus we labour 
 in and for the pulpit that our people may be 
 taught to know God in Christ, and to love Him 
 with all their hearts, and their neighbours as 
 themselves. This is an old text, but it is every 
 day new and needful as ever, and more than 
 ever. 
 
 And, then, a preacher, as a physician of 
 souls, ought himself to be above his own 
 passions in order to have his hand in the 
 cure of his people. He ought to be skilful 
 and mighty in prayer and in all kinds of self- 
 denial. He ought to be above all worldly 
 desires and delights. He ought to be, he must 
 be, above self-love, and pride, and ambition. 
 That is to say, he must be deep in the Divine 
 Physician's hands, and under His regimen for 
 all these things himself, if he would work to- 
 
Selected Passages 83 
 
 gether with Christ in the hearts of his people. 
 If he is to enlighten others he must be en- 
 lightened himself. If he is to preserve his 
 people from spiritual and moral corruption, 
 he must have in himself the true spiritual salt. 
 Physician, heal thyself first, and then I will 
 listen to thee about my sicknesses and my 
 salvation. This also is experience. 
 
My Life in Christ 
 
 Or Moments of Spiritual Serenity and Con- 
 templation^ of Reverent Feeling, of Earnest 
 Self- Amendment, and of Peace in God 
 
 'Saying and doing always such things as shall well please Thee ' 
 Prayer before the Reading of the Gospel at the Di-vine Liturgy 
 
 Extracts from the Diary of the most Reverend 
 
 John Iliytch Sergieff 
 
 {^Father John') 
 of St. Andreio^ Cathedral., Cronstadt, Russia 
 
 Translated, ivith the Author'' s sanction, from the Fourth and 
 Supplemented Edition 
 
 By E. E. Goulaeff 
 
 St. Petersburg 
 
 Cassell and Company, Limited 
 
 Londoji, "Paris, and [Melbourne 
 1897 
 
 ^All Rights reser-ved 
 
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Fourth Thousand. Crown Zvo, Art Linen, Price 2S. 
 
 Father John 
 
 OF THE GREEK CHURCH 
 
 AN APPRECIATION, WITH SOME CHARACTERISTIC PASSAGES 
 
 OF HIS MYSTICAL AND SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 
 COLLECTED AND ARRANGED 
 
 By ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 
 
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 like unto the Cur^ d'Ars, but more manly, better taught, and one who 
 lives as near to God. ' — Scottish Guardian. 
 
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 ' Gives an interesting account of the Orthodox Church, and of the 
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 Sa7ita Teresa 
 
 AN APPRECIATION, WITH SOME OF THE BEST PASSAGES OF THE 
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 By ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 
 
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 AND HIS PRIVATE DEVOTIONS 
 
 A BIOGRAPHY, A TRANSCRIPT, AND AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 By ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 
 
 ' The book is a model of convenience and beauty, and reflects gfreat 
 crediton the publishers, more especially considering its small price. . . . 
 The introduction is always forcible, and therefore readable, and the 
 transcript seems to be well done, with a faithful adherence to the old 
 phrasing of the English Bible.' — Church Times. 
 
 ' We regard this book as one of Dr. Whyte's most valuable con- 
 tributions to the literature of his country and his time.' — Presbyterian 
 Witness, Halifax. 
 
 'An edition of Andrewes' Private Devotions, which is as incom- 
 parable with other editions as the Devotions ai^e incomparable with 
 other books of Devotion. First there is a biography of thirty well- 
 stocked pages ; next there is an interpretation of thirty pages more ; 
 and then the Devotions run to the end of the volume. And the 
 volume is itself most artistically appropriate.' — Expository Times. 
 
 'A wonderful book, and the man who will take the hand of the 
 sinning and penitent bishop will find himself led indeed into the inner 
 courts. ' — Methodist Times. 
 
 ' A unique, incomparable, devotional work. . . . Happy they who 
 come under the spell of a book like this. ' — Methodist Recorder. 
 
 ' One of the most notable additions to our devotional literature of 
 recent times.' — United Presbyterian Magazine. 
 
 'A distinct contribution to our devotional literature.' — Huntly 
 Express. 
 
 ' The comprehensive, if severely critical, biography and the lucid 
 interpretation which occupy the earlier portion of the volume were 
 delivered as opening lectures to Dr. Whyte's classes, while the 
 transcript of the Devotions has been made after careful study of the 
 original text and the best translations.' — Scotsman. 
 
 ' Dr. Whyte has established himself as the expositor of the Mystics, 
 and all his books are eagerly read. He is not a mystic in any bad 
 sense, but a puritan mystic, one who sees a great light, and can make 
 it shine,' — New Age. 
 
 Edinburgh and London : 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON and FERRIER 
 
 AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
Fifth Thousand. Post £w, cloth extra, gilt top. Price 3j-. 6a?'. 
 
 Bible Characters 
 
 Adam to Achan 
 By ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 ADAM 
 
 II. 
 
 EVE . . 
 
 III. 
 
 CAIN 
 
 IV. 
 
 ABEL , 
 
 V. 
 
 ENOCH , 
 
 VI. 
 
 JUBAL , 
 
 VII. 
 
 NOAH 
 
 VIII. 
 
 HAM 
 
 IX. 
 
 NIMROI) • 
 
 X. 
 
 TERAH 
 
 XI. 
 
 ABRAHAM 
 
 XII. 
 
 LOT 
 
 XIII. 
 
 SARAH 
 
 XIV. 
 
 ISAAC 
 
 XV. 
 
 ESAU 
 
 XVI. 
 
 REBEKAH 
 
 XVII. 
 
 JACOB 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 JOSEPH . 
 
 XIX. 
 
 AARON . 
 
 XX. 
 
 MIRIAM . 
 
 XXI. 
 
 MOSES 
 
 XXII. 
 
 MOSES THE TYl' 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 PHARAOH 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 BALAAM . 
 
 XXV. 
 
 JOSHUA . 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 ACHAN . 
 
 CHRIST 
 
 FAGB 
 
 9 
 
 22 
 
 34 
 44 
 51 
 6i 
 
 71 
 8o 
 
 92 
 
 100 
 
 ii6 
 129 
 140 
 
 151 
 162 
 
 174 
 183 
 194 
 205 
 217 
 228 
 239 
 251 
 264 
 276 
 290 
 
 Edinburgh and London : 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON and FERRIER 
 
 AND ALL BOOKSELLERS, 
 
I'lienij- first Tkou^nud. Foil 'fiV<), antiqui laid paper, ciuiii 
 eMra. Price 2s. 6d, 
 
 FIRST SERIES, 
 
 Bunyan Characters 
 
 LECTORKS DKLIVERED IN ST. GEORGE's FREE CHDRCH, 
 
 EDINBURGH : BY ALEXANDER WIIYTE, D.D. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 
 
 FAC'J 
 
 I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 1 
 
 II. 
 
 EVANGELIST 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 III. 
 
 OBSTINATE 
 
 
 
 22 
 
 IV. 
 
 PLIABLE . 
 
 
 
 31 
 
 V. 
 
 HELP 
 
 
 
 42 
 
 VI. 
 
 MR. WORLDLY-WISEMAN 
 
 
 
 53 
 
 VII. 
 
 GOODWILL 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE INTERPRETER . 
 
 
 
 76 
 
 IX. 
 
 PASSION . 
 
 
 
 S8 
 
 • X. 
 
 PATIENCE . 
 
 
 
 TOO 
 
 XI. 
 
 SIMPLE, SLOTH, AND TRKSUMl'Tl' 'N . 
 
 
 112 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE THREE SHINING ONES AT THE CROSS 
 
 
 122 
 
 XIII. 
 
 FORMALIST AND HYPOCRISY 
 
 
 132 
 
 XIV. 
 
 TIMOROUS AND MISTRUST 
 
 
 . 143 
 
 XV. 
 
 PRUDENCE 
 
 
 151 
 
 XVI. 
 
 CHARITY ...... 
 
 
 160 
 
 XVII. 
 
 SHAME ...... 
 
 
 170 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 TALKATIVE 
 
 
 iSo 
 
 XIX. 
 
 JUDGE HATE-GOOD .... 
 
 
 . 191 
 
 XX. 
 
 FAITHFUL IN VANITY FAIR 
 
 
 201 
 
 XXI. 
 
 BY-ENDS 
 
 
 214 
 
 XXII. 
 
 GIANT DESPAIR .... 
 
 
 224 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE, A SHEfiiEKD 
 
 
 . 237 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 EXPERIENCE, A SHEPHERD 
 
 
 248 
 
 XXV. 
 
 WATCHFUL, A SHEPHERD . 
 
 
 . 260 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 SINCERE, A SHEPHERD 
 
 
 271 
 
 Edinburgh and London : 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON and FERRIER 
 
 A.VD ALJ. FOOKSKI 1 KRS. 
 
Tenth Thousand. Post Svo, antique laid paper, cloth 
 extra. Price zs. 6d. 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
 Bunyan Characters 
 
 LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH, 
 
 EDINBURGH : BY ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 IGNORANCE . 
 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 LITTLE-FAITH 
 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 THE FLATTERER . 
 
 
 XXX. 
 
 ATHEIST 
 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 HOPEFUL 
 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 TEMPORARY . 
 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 SECRET 
 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 MRS. TIMOROUS . 
 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 MERCY , 
 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 MR. BRISK . 
 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 MR. SKILL . 
 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 THE SHEPHERD BOY 
 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 OLD HONEST 
 
 
 XL. 
 
 MR. FEARING 
 
 
 XLI. 
 
 FEEBLE-MIND 
 
 
 XLII. 
 
 GREAT-HEART 
 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 MR. READY-TO-HALT 
 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 VALIANT-FOR-TRUTH 
 
 
 XLV. 
 
 STANDFAST . 
 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 MADAM BUBBLE . 
 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 GAIUS . 
 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 CHRISTIAN . 
 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 CHRISTIANA . 
 
 
 L. 
 
 THE ENCHANTED GROUND 
 
 LI. 
 
 THE LAND OF BEULAH 
 
 LII. 
 
 THE SWELLING OF JORDAN 
 
 FAGB 
 
 I 
 
 II 
 
 24 
 
 34 
 45 
 57 
 68 
 80 
 92 
 103 
 
 "3 
 
 124 
 
 137 
 149 
 
 163 
 176 
 189 
 201 
 214 
 227 
 238 
 248 
 
 259 
 270 
 282 
 29s 
 
 Edinburgh and London : 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON and FERRIER 
 
 AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
Post Svo, antique laid paper, cloth extra. 
 Price 2s. 6d. 
 
 THIRD SERIES. 
 
 Bwiyan Characters 
 
 LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE's FREE CHURCH, 
 
 EDINBURGH: BY ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 L ' THE HOLY WAR ' : THE BOOK 1 
 
 n. THE CITY OF MANSOUL AND ITS CINQUE PORTS ... II 
 
 III. EAR-GATE 20 
 
 2V. EYE-GATB 28 
 
 V. THE king's palace 39 
 
 VI. MY LORD WILLBEWILL SO 
 
 VII. SELF-LOVE 63 
 
 VIII. OLD MR. PREJUDICE, THE KEEPER OF EAR-GATE, WITH HIS 
 
 SIXTY DEAF MEN UNDER HIM 73 
 
 IX. CAPTAIN ANYTHING 84 
 
 X. CLIP-PROMISE 95 
 
 XI. STIFF MR. LOTH-TO-STOOP I07 
 
 XII. THAT VARLET ILL-PAUSE, THE DEVIL'S ORATOR . . ,113 
 
 XIIL MR. PENNY-WISE-AND-POUND-FOOLISH, AND MR. GET-l'-THE- 
 
 HUNDRED-AND-LOSE-l'-THE-SHIRE 126 
 
 XIV. THE devil's LAST CARD I36 
 
 XV. MR. PRYWELL I48 
 
 XVI. YOUNG CAPTAIN SELF-DENIAL l6a 
 
 XVII. FIVE PICKT MEN I73 
 
 XVIII. MR. DESIRES-AWAKB 183 
 
 XIX. MR. WET-EVES 193 
 
 XX. MR. HUMBLE THE JURYMAN, AND MISS HUMBLE-MIND THE 
 
 SERVANT-MAID 204 
 
 XXI. MASTER THINK-WELL, THE LATE AND ONLY SON OF OLD MR. 
 
 MEDITATION 215 
 
 XXII. MR. GOD'S-PEACE, A GOODLY PERSON, AND A SWEET-NATURED 
 
 GENTLEMAN 224 
 
 XXIII. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF MANSOUL, AND MR. CONSCIENCE 
 
 ONE OF HER PARISH MINISTERS 833 
 
 XXIV. A FAST-DAY IN MANSOUL , 245 
 
 XXV. A FEAST-DAY IN MANSOUL 257 
 
 XXVI. EMMANUEL'S LIVERY 268 
 
 XXVII. MANSOUL's MAGNA CHARTA 279 
 
 XXVIII. Emmanuel's last charge to mansoul : concerning the 
 
 REMAINDERS OF SIN IN THE REGENERATE .... 2gi 
 
 Edinburgh and London : 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON and FERRIER 
 
 AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
St.riA TTiomand. Post Svo, antifjue laid paper, dotk 
 extra. Price zs. Gd. 
 
 Samuel RtUherford 
 
 AND SOME OF HIS CORRESPONDENTS 
 LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH, 
 
 EDINBURGH: BY ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGH 
 
 I, JOSHUA REDIVIVUS I 
 
 II. SAMUEL RUTHERFORD AND SOME OF HIS 
 
 EXTREMES 10 
 
 III. MARION M'NAUGHT .19 
 
 IV. LADY KKNMURK 29 
 
 V. LADY CARDONESS ...... 35 
 
 VI. LADY CULROSS 43 
 
 VII. LADY BOYD . 50 
 
 VIII. LADY ROBERTLAND ...... 59 
 
 IX. JEAN BROWN ....... 69 
 
 X. JOHN GORDON OF CARDONESS, THE YOUNGER . 7g 
 
 XI. ALEXANDER GORDON OF EARLSTON ... 86 
 
 XII. WILLIAM GORDON, YOUNGER OF EARLSTON . 95 
 
 XIII. ROBERT GORDON OF KNOCKBREX . , . I04 
 
 XIV. JOHN GORDON OF RUSCO ... • "3 
 XV. BAILIE JOHN KENNEDY I23 
 
 XVI. JAMES GUTHRIE ...... I3I 
 
 XVII. WILLIAM GUTHRIE ...... I4I 
 
 XVIII. GEORGE GILLESPIE I5I 
 
 XIX. JOHN FERGUSHILL 16I 
 
 XX. JAMES BAUTIE, STUDENT OF DIVINITY . . 17I 
 
 XXI. JOHN MEINE, JUNIOR, STUDENT OF DIVINITY . l8l 
 
 XXII. ALEXANDER BRODIE OF BRODIE . . . I9I 
 
 XXIII. JOHN FLEMING, BAILIE OF LEITH ■ . . 20I 
 
 XXIV. THE PARISHIONERS OF KILMALCOLM . .211 
 
 Edinburgh and London : 
 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON and FERRIEK 
 
 and all nooKsrLLrKS, 
 
Prirt 7.S. 
 
 The Holy War. 
 
 By JOHN BUNYAN. 
 With Prefatory Note by the Rev. Alexander Whytk, D.D., 
 St. George s Free Churchy Edinburgh, and Frontispiece by 
 Mrs. Traquair. 
 
 "A most delightful edition of the Holy ll'nr, which will, 
 we are sure, be warmly welcomed. • . . NoUiing better in its 
 own line could be imagined." — British IVeek/y, 
 
 "The issue of the present neatly-got-up edition offers an 
 excellent opportunity for those who have not yet made its ac- 
 quaintance to study this great Puritan classic." — Christian 
 World. 
 
 "An exceedingly well-printed edition of a book which is 
 second only in inteiest to The Pilgnm's Progress. — Literary 
 World. 
 
 "A more pleasantly readable copy of this immortal romance 
 could not be desired. " — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 " Perhaps the most surprising thinj^ about the book is its 
 price. Such a hook as this used to cost ^s. always." — 
 Expository Times. 
 
 "Who, if they did but see it, would be without Messrs. 
 Oliphant's dainty and cheap edition tvilh its antique title-page, 
 and its symbolic frontispiece, and its prefatory note by Dr. 
 Alex, Whyte ? " — Primitive Methodist Magazine. 
 
 *' For book-lover and student we do not know of a more 
 desirable edition of a work which is not the best of its kind in 
 the language only because Bunyan also wrote The Pilgrim's 
 Progress." — Westmoreland Gazette. 
 
 " The prettiest little edition of this immortal classic we have 
 ever seen." — Methodist Thtus. 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 OUPHANT ANDERSO.S & FET?"'-MFR 
 
Uniform with Dr. Whytt^s ' Jacob Behmen.^ 
 
 Cfown %vo, in Antique booklet form. Price is. 3</. 
 
 And in Art Linen. Price 2s. 
 
 Thoughts on the Spiritual Life 
 
 By JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 Translated from the German by Charlotte Ada Rainy. 
 With a Preface by Alexander Whyte, D.D. 
 
 * The little book will form a fit and accessible gateway for 
 those who wish to go up into the inner shrine of Behmen's 
 philosophy and religion.' — Su7iday School Chronicle. 
 
 ' This outward objective, hurrying, worrying, generation 
 greatly needs devotional reading such as this.' — Witness 
 (Belfast). 
 
 * Miss Rainy has done a valuable service to readers of 
 devotional literature by introducing them to the best thoughts 
 of Jacob Behmen.' — Dundee Courier. 
 
 ' It is well done, and it was worth doing so well. Some of 
 these sayings are very fine, though that is the least of the book, 
 the knowledge of the man being far better. ' — Expository Times. 
 
 ' Choice and simple passages from the writings of the great 
 mystic. Miss Rainy has made a good selection, and has 
 rendered the extracts into very readable English.' — Glasgow 
 Herald. 
 
 * The English is certainly good, and no one would know 
 from reading it that it had not been written in English by the 
 powerful thinker who composed the work from which it is 
 t ak en . ' — Spectator. 
 
 'The selection is an exceedingly useful one, and includes 
 the evangelical portions of Behmen rather than the ultra- 
 mystical.' — New Age. 
 
 Edinburgh and London : 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON and FERRIER 
 
 AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
Date Due 
 
 1 
 
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Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 01041 806