448. Речь славянам
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(Said on May 17 during the visit of His Eminence the Metropolitan by some of the Slavs who arrived in Moscow for the Ethnographic Exhibition; published in Soulful Reading and in the Wanderer of 1867)
I have an unexpected consolation to greet the longed-for guests and brothers whom I see here, and whom Moscow now sees beyond expectation.
Blessed be our God and Lord Jesus Christ, who has visited and is visiting miserably divided humanity, and directing it to one salvation and salvific unity.
Slavs and Slavic-Russians are one race. But its beginning is obscured by time. Its branches are divided by the movement of human affairs. This division was unfavorable to the unity of his language.
God raised up two holy brothers in the flesh and in the spirit, who became our fathers in the spirit, giving birth to us with the gospel of Christ, and renewed and exalted our natural brotherhood with spiritual brotherhood. There is no doubt that kindred love is perfected and strengthened by Christian love. The unity of spirit and language is protected by the fact that the Slavic language has become the language of faith and church. We Russians have inherited this gift of God from our oldest brothers in Christianity, and we never cease to be grateful. Let us sympathize with sorrows, rejoice in the hopes of our brothers, and through division we see towards unity. And now an unexpected chance, from various, from distant countries, raises up zealots of Slavic brotherhood and unites them in the center of Russian unity, in order to pour out brotherly feeling directly from heart to heart and, despite external divisions, to find themselves in living inner unity.
Having seen the signs of Providence in our past, let us dare to see a sign for good in the present.
In the spirit of Christianity, may our common unity grow, and in such unity the power capable of victoriously creating and spreading common and private good.
We greet you with sincere love and good hope, based on faith in the all-good providence of God.
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