n between Christianity and civilisation to prove that
a civilisation with _any_ spirit is not attractive to the Slav, but rather
the civilisation with the Christian religious spirit _only_. Tolstoi denied
all civilisation just because he did not see the Christian spirit in it.
The Church was reserved towards modern science and art just because she saw
the anti-Christian, proud, egoistical spirit in many expressions of them.
Better the poor Christian spirit in a cottage of Macedonia than a rich and
cultivated Paganism in Vienna. The spirit with which a railway is made
counts and not the railway itself. We are never alone but always in the
presence of a great Spirit who encircles and inspires us. Whatever we do
through this inspiration is living and good; whatever we do without His
inspiration, but under the supposition that we are alone in this world, is
wrong and dead. A great civilisation may be wrong and dead Yea, as there is
no great man, there is no great civilisation. The ideal of Slav
Christianity is a good and saintly man, and also a good and saintly
civilisation. The very essence of life is mystic and religious. What is a
man or a civilisation without mysticism and religion? They are like a
painted landscape on paper. You enjoy it from a distance, but when you
touch it you are disappointed. Everything without God is discontentment,
emptiness.

Blessed are those--I wish you all may be numbered among them--whose life is
full of God. They are connected with the sun and the stars, with the living
and the dead, with the past and the future. They possess a wonderful bridge
over every abyss in life, and they are always safe. They are bright in
darkness, joyful in suffering, hopeful in death. Their life on earth, in
this very limited sphere of life, is escorted by the whole of the Universe,
from one end to the other. I wish that such a religious spirit belonged not
only to the Slavs but to all mankind.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religious Spirit of the Slavs
(1916), by Nikolai Velimirovic

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIOUS SPIRIT, SLAVS ***

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