Download - Plough

66 The Gospel in Dostoyevskyin such cases is a surprise not to us only but to all Europe. If oneof us turns Catholic, he is bound to become a Jesuit, and one ofthe most fanatical. If he becomes an atheist, he’s sure to clamorfor the extirpation of belief in God by force, that is, by the sword.Why is this, why such frenzy? You must surely know! Becausehe has found the fatherland which he has missed here. He hasreached the shore, he has found the land and he rushes to kiss it.“Russian atheists and Russian Jesuits are the outcome not onlyof vanity, not only of a bad, vain feeling, but also of spiritual agony,spiritual thirst, a craving for something higher, for a firm footing,for a fatherland in which they have ceased to believe, becausethey have never even known it! It’s easier for a Russian to becomean atheist than for anyone else in the world. And Russians do notmerely become atheists, but they invariably believe in atheismas though it were a new religion, without noticing that they areputting faith in a negation. So great is our craving! ‘He who hasno roots beneath him has no god.’ That’s not my own saying. Itwas said by a merchant and Old Believer, whom I met when I wastravelling. It’s true he did not use those words. He said: ‘The manwho has renounced his fatherland has renounced his god.’ Onlythink that among us, even highly educated people join the sectof Flagellants. Though why is that worse than nihilism, Jesuitism,or atheism? It may even be rather more profound! But that’s whattheir agony has brought them to. Reveal to the yearning andfeverish companions of Columbus the ‘New World,’ reveal to theRussian the ‘world’ of Russia, let him find the gold, the treasurehidden from him in the earth! Show him the whole of humanity,rising again, and renewed by Russian thought alone, perhaps bythe Russian God and Christ, and you will see into what a mightyand truthful, what a wise and gentle giant he will grow, before theeyes of the astounded world – astounded and dismayed, because