25. Слово в день рождения благочестивейшего государя императора Александра Николаевича (Истинное возрождение, как и жизнь, может истекать только от источника всякой жизни. Что такое возрождение 15–16 веков? Для всех наук найдутся в нашем исповедании основные понятия – Богом открытые истины)

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” 2 Cor. 5, 17. “It is fitting for you to be born from above” (John 3:7), says the Lord to those already born and living, and it is fitting with such urgency that unless one of those born according to the flesh is “born again”, he cannot even “see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). So this is for each person, but not otherwise for entire societies, and for all of humanity, which the Prophet saw under the image of a field full of bones, revived only by the Spirit according to a voice from heaven through the mouth of the Prophet. Everyone needs a new birth, or rebirth, as those who have fallen, and although they live, live a false life, or, one might say, a life of death. Its need, for the tangible damage to humanity, was felt by everyone and always. History presents attempts at it among all peoples and marks on its pages in red letters the persons who took up this matter, or at least made plans and proposed theories. But since the nature of man is always and everywhere the same and the needs of the fallen are the same for everyone, then there can only be one true way of rebirth, before which all others must be considered imaginary, illusory, false. True rebirth, like life, can only flow from the Source of all life - only “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” About this one true revival - as applied to our fatherland - we intend to offer you, brothers and fathers, our weak word now, on the birthday of the Most Pious Sovereign Emperor Alexander Nikolaevich, both because the thought of revival is not far from birth, and especially because this is suggested by the hopes that surrounded His cradle, and the sure beginnings of their implementation during His prosperous reign. We will not, however, set out the reasons for this Divine action or indicate the conditions for receiving this heavenly gift. The foundations for a general revival have already been laid. Divine restorative powers have been sent down into the world and are working in humanity. By the grace of God, from the first years of our public life we ​​too became partakers of them; we accepted them wholeheartedly, realized the value, and experienced the effect. All we can do now is to remain under their beneficial influence and grow, rising from strength to strength, in the same spirit. Meanwhile, sometimes one hears the reasoning of excited minds who dream of the need for us to have some kind of other revival, strain to promote it and expect some success in it, modeled, perhaps, on those from whom we have to borrow and adopt a lot, who exactly mark their own period of revival according to new self-invented principles, not those, that is, those indicated by the Lord, the Restorer of all things. So we would not be carried away after them and in this regard, would not, like them, move ourselves from the Divine foundations of rebirth, long ago laid in us and beneficially operating among us! This is what prompts us to offer to your attention a brief picture of how the true rebirth of humanity was accomplished, what is the nature of the rebirth, what our teachers boast of, and what then should we do? This is how the revival of the human race proceeded. Man fell and perished in his fall. To save him, the Only Begotten Son of God came to earth, showed the way, established the image of rebirth and sent down to humanity Divine restorative powers - the word of truth and the grace of the Spirit. From Jerusalem, as from the first paradise, into four countries, this life-giving water poured out in twelve streams “to water the whole earth” (Gen. 2:6, 2), and everywhere it laid the beginning of renewal and revival, “healed and gave life to everything that came upon it” (Ezek. 47:9). Everyone who listened to the call ate from this water and was revived. In the confession of faith I received sound concepts about everything, in the Divine Sacraments I received strength for a new life; staying in the church dispensation warmed the Divine seed of life, accepted by the heart, and, setting in motion the forces of human nature, dissolved by grace, returned and strengthened it. A person renewed internally appeared new in front of everyone and in external affairs. As one person was renewed, so families were renewed, and then cities and villages were renewed, and then entire nations and states. The seed that died in the ground brought forth much fruit; kvass, embedded in the sateh of three flours, penetrated the entire mixture of humanity; The mustard seed grew into a great tree, covering the whole earth with its branches. The beginnings of a new life replaced the beginnings of the old life. The colossus of paganism seen by the Prophet, molded by the superstition of the people and the superstition of philosophers, valuable in appearance, like gold, but not strong in its foundations, like a fragile shard broken into dust by a stone not cut by a hand, cut off by a human hand from an uncut mountain that grew into a great mountain. All delusions of the mind have been abandoned and true knowledge has been accepted about God, the worshiped Trinity, the Creator, Providence, the body and the Redeemer, about the spiritual world, about human nature, fallen and restored, about the meaning of present life and endless bliss in the future world, etc.; Instead of generally approved vices, new holy rules entered private, family and civil life, the place of corrupt customs was taken by the sanctifying rites of the Church, sealing and protecting everything. By the end of the 5th and beginning of the 6th centuries, paganism had disappeared from the scene of the then known world. A dominantly new order was established in everything. Humanity found in him the solution to all perplexities, the satisfaction of all needs - and rested in him. What was left to do? - To develop and grow under the influence of Divine restorative forces, or to introduce them more and more into the masses, directing our own, strictly human efforts only to give them more space, or to angle, so to speak, the path for their march. In the East this was the case, and remains so to this day, despite external disorders, troubles and oppression. Beneath his unattractive appearance, he faithfully preserves the precious gift of God with which his inner life flaunts. From him, healthy and undamaged principles of a new life were accepted by us, they had a beneficial effect and act in the way that has hitherto been characteristic of them. This was the case at first in the West, but then he shied away from his calling. The spirit of predominance and pride - the imprecise beginning of the old pagan life, which took possession of the rulers of Rome, little by little attracted to itself - according to its kind - other elements of paganism, which had decayed into dust, and it began to come to life again. At first, in schools, in the form of only studying languages, youth were introduced to the remnants of the written language of Greece and Rome, but at the same time, the poison of superstition, self-will and corrupted sensuality was imperceptibly poured into their hearts. The generation raised in this way in the years of maturity and life demanded the same and installed it. From Italy this poison spread throughout Germany, France, and England. A society of humanists was formed, which, through writing and schools, began to introduce the principles of ancient pagan education everywhere and in everything - in the sciences, arts, private, family and public life - with all its corruption by pride and waywardness, and the inseparable hostility towards Christianity and Christ the Savior. The teaching and life that flattered the damaged nature were liked and accepted. The previously operative Divine truths and rules of life are abandoned completely by others, and retained only in external forms by others. The bolder ones raised their voices demanding a new order, and it began to take hold. (This is towards the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries: Satan was bound for a thousand years.) And this is what they call there with the pompous name of revival! In essence, it is a rejection of the image of restoration established by the Lord Jesus Christ, with hostile weapons against it, and an attempt to self-made restore and improve oneself through the development of the corrupted elements of the fallen nature of man according to the model and spirit of paganism, in which they acted with all their might. This is not an exaggeration or a complaint! By its fruits you will know it. See how tongues are troubled and people plot vain plans against the Lord and against His Christ (Ps. 2:1-2). After mastering new (pagan) principles in the mind and heart, the previous (Christian) forms of life seemed shy. These bonds had to be shaken off. The Reformation took the first step (mainly regarding appearance) for a plausible reason, perhaps, as retribution to Rome, which first gave impetus to the movement towards innovation. Irritated by her freedom of thought, she also destroyed the internal fence that was formed by the confession. Her daughter - freethinking - carried her into the world and society there - after morals and customs, after the order of life and pleasures, and the whole way of thinking that operated in the pagan world before the coming of Christ the Savior. Here all the pagan errors were repeated - only in a different form and in different words (dualists, pantheists, materialists, sensualists, skeptics, atheists appeared) - and displaced the truth of God from the realm of human knowledge. And how did this movement end? - Because they deified reason and freedom and, under the guise of pagan gods and goddesses, brought them into the temples of idols for popular celebration. This is what it is, what it strives for and how the self-made revival there ends! We are not saying that there was nothing good there, for otherwise that would be how the world there stood, but that its general spirit is precisely that. This is palpably assured by the fact that anyone who touches this education even with the edge of his lips immediately begins to rebel against the Lord and His holy institutions. The Apostle Paul, having described the deviation of the people of Israel from the ways of God and the troubles to which they were subjected for their disobedience, added: “And all these images were received silently: and it was written for our instruction” (1 Cor. 10, 11)... “lest anyone fall into the same parable of disobedience” (Heb. 4, 11). The finger of Divine Providence has written a lesson for us in the history of other nations. Let's be careful! Let us not get too carried away by the lures of their improvements and, while adopting what is useful, not become imbued with this spirit of resistance to the divinely established order, in the deceptive guise of some kind of revival! May the Lord deliver us from this disaster! Where else should we look for rebirth when we are already regenerated and carry within us Divine restorative powers and institutions? All we have to do is not to interfere with their development in us, to carry them to the final limits of our private and general life, or in all branches of human activity. How is this possible, you ask? Put on the one hand the restorative Divine institutions, on the other the needs of our universal human life, and you will see how some can feed (inspire) others, saturating them, creating and growing a new grace-filled life, in all its fullness and in the entire body of our fatherland. For whatever we seek, we will find in them the right guidance and indication of the most durable principles. We need enlightenment and we are looking for it. The Lord has already sent down to us abundant light of knowledge in Revelation. Our confession gives us sound and bright concepts about everything that exists - about God, the world, man, their mutual relationship, our fate here on earth, and our purpose for the future, about our poverty and damage and about ways of correction and healing, and so on. Let us master these concepts and we will be enlightened, for what is enlightenment if not the possession of sound concepts about everything? Then, if we wish to expand the circle of our knowledge, we will adhere to these concepts as guiding principles and carry them through the entire area of ​​our knowledge. They will protect us from dangerous errors and impart age-old strength to our knowledge. Whether anyone strives to know the world of God, here is his guiding principle: God created the world in six days out of nothing by His omnipotent Word, He created it purposefully, in measure, weight and number, He contains it in His right hand and leads it to its destiny. Let this begin and lead throughout the entire field of world knowledge. It will protect him from the false theory of self-education of the world and will restrain the impulse of dreamy assumptions that are built on the basis of meager and not yet accurate studies of our land. Whether anyone wants to study History, he already has guidance in the thought of the all-encompassing Providence of God, and it is precisely the enmity that the Lord has placed between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, and everything leads to the victory of the former over the latter. Let him take and carry out this beginning throughout history. It will protect him from the assumption of a wild, unprecedented state and will keep him from thinking about the mechanical fatal self-disclosure in the history of mankind of some principle that is sleeping in itself. Whether anyone wants to investigate human nature, they already know that man was created in the image and likeness of God and is destined for eternal bliss in living communion with God. Let him take this as a beginning and guide him through all human knowledge. It will not allow him to place man in the ranks of animals, as a special breed, to produce all his spiritual actions from the chemical combination and movement of particles of matter, and to limit the continuation of his existence to the limits of only present life. Thus, for all sciences there will be found in our confession basic concepts, truths revealed by God, and, therefore, undoubtedly true. By building our sciences on these principles, carrying them through to the final ramifications of our systems, we will impart unity, solidity, and truth to all sciences, and the entire totality of our knowledge will then constitute a world of true knowledge, imbued with Divine light. Then these principles will pass into all of our writing, which therefore not only will not contain anything inconsistent with Divine truths, not only will it not positively contradict them, on the contrary, it will serve as a varied conductor for them and will spill their light throughout the entire space of our vast fatherland. Here comes national enlightenment, or the revival of the people from the mental side! We need skill in good, generally useful activities in all its forms. But what prevents our activity from always being like this when we are constantly acting? – Passions and vicious inclinations that lead us astray from the right path and lead us to evil deeds. And so the Lord did not only command us to abstain from vices and not indulge passions, but gave us the most effective means for healing these infirmities and established the very way of healing them. Everyone is aroused and called to repentance - awareness and confession of their passions and evil deeds, with a promise and determination not to servile them anymore and not to submit to their attraction, everyone then accepts Divine grace for help and enters into close communion with the Lord - the Conqueror of sin in the Sacrament of Body and Blood, everyone is finally introduced into the God-established and already operating healing order of life - in fasting, prayer, charity and avoidance of everything that can excite passions and feed vices. Let us establish an order within ourselves in which all these beneficent institutions will find full application, and we will be healed, and having been healed, we will not act otherwise than in what is generally beneficial. Let us introduce a similar order into the education system, and it will prepare only wise, well-intentioned, and zealous leaders for the state. Let us subject our social customs and all forms of mutual relations to the same law, and they, in turn, will be for us a good school of correction and purification; they will not destroy the good mood received in the family or the Church, but will support and strengthen it. Nowadays almost everything is expected from education. Education is definitely a powerful means for establishing the good principles of life, but only when it is carried out steadily under the influence of God-given means for correcting and purifying the heart. Without their assistance, it does not lead far and can only impart an external gloss without internal strength, making a person look like an externally beautiful thing, made of rotten wood and polished, and, what is more harmful than this, taking place in alienation from these saving institutions, it can cool and turn away from them for the rest of life, in which, however, they are mainly needed, for until the end of life we ​​are faced with a struggle with passions and lusts. Mutual circulation is also given a lot of importance in education. Yes, mutual circulation definitely polishes and smoothes out the unevenness, but one thing in itself does not change: a person remains the same as he is - passionate, vicious, only in more refined and less harsh forms. But what can you expect from it if it only inflames passions and gives them scope?! When, therefore, in the family, and in places of education, and in public life, we walk among the cleansing and healing institutions of God - strong and effective, then we will certainly be corrected internally and mature in Christian perfection: vice will little by little be removed from our midst, not finding food for itself, and generally useful activity will naturally begin to develop at all levels of society, not encountering any obstacles anywhere. And this will be a revival of the active side of the people! What else do we need? It happens sometimes: we need it and we seek to satisfy the requirements of taste - we collect works of art around us and love to enjoy them. It seems that this is not entirely an extreme need; but since her motives can lead to very dangerous deviations, the Lord also provided for her with care. He himself established among us such an institution in which she finds the purest and noblest satisfaction. For what is this need for beauty? – It is the fruit of the memory of a lost paradise stored in the depths of our soul, or the aspirations of future endless bliss: a person wants to bring heaven to earth, or, while still living on earth, to live as if in heaven. But is there already something among us where he could live in this way? - Eat. Such is the Church of God in all its structure - with all its magnificent sacred rites, prayers and sanctifying rites. She truly is heaven on earth, for she was created in the image seen by the mountain, and represents in herself the apparently invisible structure of things. What remains for us? – All that remains is to gratefully accept this God’s blessing, not to be alienated, but to live unoriginally in this grace-filled institution, to overshadow oneself in everything with churchliness and introduce it into the circle of our private and public life, or, rather, not to expel it from here, for, according to ancient law, it already dominates everything among us. Let us do this, and we will live on earth as in paradise, constantly tasting not only aesthetic pleasures, but also spiritual consolations, pacifying, sanctifying, strengthening. When we form in ourselves such a taste, the only true one, then we will demand from the arts of all kinds that they depict to us only the pure, holy, heavenly and nothing carnal, passionate, seductive, to which, to their humiliation, artists often devote them, who do not understand their meaning, for the duty of the arts is to represent in visible, beautiful forms only the invisible Divine world of truth and goodness, in which all, all, is bliss. Thus, this part of us will finally be transformed, and our pleasures of taste will not only be ennobled, but also sanctified, giving us not the destructive decay of lusts, but quiet joy and peace in the Holy Spirit - this is the true delight of the sorrows that are inevitable during the short period of our stay on earth. This is the God-ordained path to the revival of the people. For when this blessed order of enlightenment of the mind, education, active forces, pleasures of taste is thus established among us, we will give unhindered scope to the action of Divine restorative powers and institutions in us; they will penetrate the entire body of our fatherland, grow in it a new grace-filled life, transform it in all parts and present us to God as a pure virgin, “not having any filth or blemish, or anything from such” (Eph. 5:27); they will present from us “a royal priesthood, a holy tongue, a people of renewal” (1 Pet. 2:9). And then everyone who sees us will say: Behold, the tabernacle of God is made of men! Oh, may our beloved fatherland bloom in this way, like the eagles, and may its youth be renewed in this way, like an eagle! This is what we need to do if we want lasting and significant prosperity for our fatherland, and not dream of a self-made revival, which did not lead to the good of its inventors. Again I repeat that they have goodness; but the general spirit there is precisely the spirit of cooling towards the God-established order, resistance to it, rebellion against it... And if we, without caution, all follow their broad path, then the same thing that happened to them will inevitably happen again. May the Lord protect us from this evil! It was not for this reason that the Lord deigned for us to go behind others, so that, like them, we could fall into the ditches dug by their misunderstanding. “Watch,” however, “so that you do not enter into misfortune,” the Lord commands and adds: “And as I say to you, I say to all: watch” (Matthew 26:41; Mark 13:37). Openly and secretly, through writing and direct communication, the teachings and orders of alien life are passed on to us; Sometimes calls are heard to leave the old and introduce the new, and there may be attempts to do so. If we carelessly begin to indulge them, then, of course, they will soon deviate our life from the direction along which it has been heading until now, and shift it from the foundations that were laid in the beginning. What else can we expect if in our country, just as is being done in other countries, they begin to actively develop unbridled freedom of thinking and give the development and teaching of science a direction opposite to the revealed teaching, when, for example, they freely begin to teach that the world was formed by itself, according to the eternal laws of the combination of elements, that in this formation, which is still ongoing, every body of the world, including our earth, has passed and is passing through enormous periods of development, during which they themselves various types of creatures appear on it, like ours: plants, animals and humans, because there is no Creator and Provider, but everything flows according to the laws and forces of nature, given by who knows who; when, in order to make a strong impression on the minds of these new revelations, they will begin to publicly present all this in pictures, with the necessary explanations and interpretations, when they will begin to teach that not only bodily functions, but also all the various actions of the soul are nothing more than a consequence of the chemical combination of particles of matter, that the soul has no special power, that faith and the demands of conscience are the fruit of education, immortality, the Last Judgment and reward - dreams, etc.; when will history begin to represent not the actions of a protective Providence for us, but the self-disclosure of some hidden spirit, from which the necessary figures in the field of human development arise and return again? What can we expect if, at the same time, luxury is allowed to enter all layers of society and the establishment of such an order of life and relationships in which not only to attend the Church and fulfill its healing instructions, but also to think about it, there will be no time, which will thus separate her children from her and instill in them coldness and even aversion to her? What can we expect if our writing, our arts, and education take a similar wrong direction? when writing in all its various generations will preach the teachings indicated before this and praise the life mentioned, and, moreover, as close as possible to the concept of the people; when the arts will represent in the most seductive forms only the sensual, carnal, passionate; when education will prepare a generation that would not only not know the Divine truth, but would also be imbued with concepts contrary to it, not only would not be accustomed to the sanctifying and healing rites of the Church, but would also be alienated from it, not love it, consider it unnecessary, and even harmful to itself, and tolerable by grace only for the clergy and the people (fasts, holidays); when our only concern is how to expand as much as possible the circle of public and national amusements and revelries that would make everyone’s head spin, befuddle everyone and not give them time to come to their senses? For just allow all these powerful means to act, and they will soon drown out in us the seeds of life planted by Divine restorative institutions, and instill a different life, with all the darkness of ignorance and delusion, with all the violence of willfulness and the height of passions. But what will all this lead to?! - Only the Lord knows that. However, if everything goes this way for us, then what wonder if the end of the eighteenth century with all its horrors repeats itself among us? Because from similar causes there are similar consequences! Oh, it won't! And it will not be by the grace of God, but - if our watchful eye of observation and active care do not weaken to ensure that everything is directed along the path shown to us by the Lord! Otherwise, only the all-powerful wave of God can dispel the dark cloud gathering over us. Oh Lord! “Post Thy light and Thy truth! May she instruct us and lead us to Thy holy mountain and to Thy villages!” (Ps. 42:3). We were “at that time without Christ, alienated from the life of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of promise” (Eph. 2:12). You have deigned to call us from the realm of Satan “into your wonderful light” (1 Pet. 2:9) “and to bring to life the dead through sins” in Yourself (Eph. 2:5). And we, “who were sometimes far away, were near by Thy blood... to whom we are strangers and strangers, but fellow saints and dreamers of God, who once was on the foundation of the Apostle and the Prophet, I dry the cornerstone” to You Yourself, our Lord and God (Eph. 2:13). It is your pleasure, Who created us in Himself, “to do good works, that we may walk in them... that we may grow into the holy Church, and that we may be built up into a habitation of God” by the Spirit (Eph. 2:10, 21–22). Do not allow us to “add to another” teaching, following “those who want to pervert your gospel” (Gal. 1:6-7), “lest anyone deceive us with philosophy and vain flattery, according to the elements of the world, and not according to You” (Col. 2:8). “Give your strength to our king, and exalt the horn of your anointed” (1 Samuel 2:10). Sharpen and deepen the gaze of His wisdom, so that the hidden, often good and useful, can be revealed and brought to light, so that the creeping evil can be seen from afar and returned to the heads of the spirits of wickedness. Unfailingly raise up in His power “the mighty, the watchful, the wondrous counselor, and the wise listener” (Isa. 3:2-3) for “salvation is in much counsel” (Prov. 11:14).” Amen. You might be interested in: