are less comprehensible than
the dogma of the Trinity--less comprehensible, less applicable, and
unfruitful.

*GOD ONLY IS GREAT*

Not Napoleon, but God; not London, but God. Tolstoi analysed Napoleon's
life and character, and found that he was no better or greater than
thousands of other men who followed him. Why should London be called great?
Yes, perhaps it can be called great compared with anything on earth, except
God. I say, _except God_, because after a thousand years, i.e., after one
God's day, God will be surely the same, and London? Will it be in existence
a thousand years hence? Who knows? Walking in the streets of London I look
round me and see nothing great except God.

The famous Russian literature from Gogol to Dostojevsky is the finest
psychological analysis of men. The result of this analysis was: there
exists no great man. No one is great: neither Shakespeare nor Napoleon,
neither Peter the Great nor Kutuzov, neither the Russian landlords nor the
Czar himself, neither Prince Bolkonsky nor Raskolnikov, neither Nero nor
St. Paul, neither Beaconsfield nor Osman Pasha, neither Pope nor Patriarch,
neither Dalai-Lama nor Sheik-ul-Islam. How could they be great since they
must sleep, and eat, and be sick and disappointed, and despair, and die? A
review was made by the Russian authors--a review of ancient and modern
great men--and a verdict arrived at. For a thousand years Christian Russia
kept silent and listened to the hymns to the ancient and modern great men,
to the heroes whom they worshipped. She listened to the hymns and worship
of the great men while she begrudged praise to the good and saintly and
suffering men. Russia is called "Holy," not because she pretends to be
_holy_, but because her ideal is holiness--not greatness but holiness. She
first made use of the word in the nineteenth century. The poet Pushkin
first used it, and he used it in the customary way, like Lord Byron, or
Goethe, praising the great men, although still alluding here and there to
the true Russian ideal--to the good and saintly man. But he spoke not in
order to say a new, an original word to the world, but only to break the
silence and to attract the attention of the world to Russia. He was the
first of a series of preachers. He was listened to and applauded, but he
said nothing new. After him followed the preachers: Gogol, Tolstoi,
Goncharov, Tchehov, Turgeniev, Dostojevsky, and many others, like a choir,
in which three v