# The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary/Part 2/Chapter 11

Strange that there should be a feud between the Church and the Theatre! They were originally one and the same, and as it is the Church remains a holy theatre where day after day is enacted the same holy mystery. In passing: how much nearer the Theatre is brought to the Church by the constant repetition of the great classical and mystical dramas such as Hamlet. The reason for the religious distrust of the Theatre which exists in all countries,—in England in the Free Churches; in Russia in the Orthodox Church,—lies in the degradation of the Theatre, the making it a show of wild beasts, a stage for indecent dances and comic songs, an arena for combats of athletes. The common townspeople are not and never can be the pupils of Hypatia. They will have their indecencies and vulgarities, wild beasts, acrobats, invitation to sin. The showman has usurped the place of the mystagogue, and money-making has replaced religious service or service to art and culture as ​a motive of theatrical production. The Theatre to-day, even if it aspire to be serious, has unclean hands, and the Church not unfairly regards it as part of the stock-in-trade of the evil one.
An interesting exemplification of the relation of Church and Stage is furnished by Oscar Wilde's Salome. To the Christian, to look at the dance of Salome is to glance into the charnel-house where all is decay and worms and death, and to see there the head of one of the saints with celestial aureole. But the dramatist has turned the interest to the dance itself and made you say that it is interesting: he has dwelt on the jewels, the crimsons, the thick lips, the luscious movements. Every effort is made to make you agree with Herod, and the best way to do that is to suggest to your body and soul the same feelings towards the dancer on the stage as Herod felt towards the daughter of his brother's wife—so that you would give her anything, even the pure body of the saint that is in your keeping. He would give you a place with the worms and the spirit of decay, and let you end as Herod ended, eaten by the worms at the last. No aureole for you!
But the Church suggests the aureole for you, and if Salome were presented as a mystery-play the whole interest of the populace would be directed towards the sainthood of John the Baptist. When Oscar Wilde's Salome was produced at Petrograd, Russia made short work of it. On ​the first night, at the first public performance, some one stood up in the middle of a scene and shouted in a bass voice:
"Spustee zanavess!" "Lower the curtain!" and the curtain was lowered; and Salome has not been repeated there from that day to this.
Who it was said this is rather a mystery, but it was doubtless some one who had the voice or the ear of Orthodoxy. Russia probably gained by this prohibition. A pity, however, that many other plays quite as injurious are allowed their way to the perversion of private morals and the corruption of public taste. Indeed it would be a gain to Russia if the Church would cease looking at the Stage from a merely ecclesiastical point of view. The fault of the clergy is their pride in their own order and their institutions. The clergy, ministers of the living Church of Christ, should in nature be the humblest of people, so humble in fact, so meek and unresentful, that it would be necessary occasionally to protect them from the enmity of the secular world. As it is, in their pomp, they are proud. They despise the Stage and often prohibit plays on quite wrong grounds, incidentally depriving not only the theatre and the public, but the Church also, of something helpful to the cause of Eastern Christianity and of all real Russian values. The prohibition of Andreef's Anathema, performed at the Theatre of Art in Moscow, is an example. Though this prohibition was at the ​instance of the Archbishop of Moscow the play was in essential teaching profoundly helpful to Eastern Christianity. It was written by a man who belonged to the revolutionary movement, but it was only the more remarkable and the more powerful thereby. It was in substance a refutation of Westernism and the ideals after which secularist Russia was striving. A pious and philanthropic Jew inheriting immense wealth, millions of American dollars, resolved in his simplicity to save the world, feeding the hungry, clothing the ragged, giving money to the needy, medical aid to the suffering. The drama shows the futility of this dream, and at the end the mob of enraged and suffering humanity stone the philanthropist to death. Not by material but by spiritual things could their sufferings be assuaged.
The archbishop who stopped it was probably never in a theatre in his life, and no doubt condemned it on hearsay, and from a complete misapprehension of the significance of the drama.
The Church of the future in England, and probably in Russia, will have to come into alliance with what may be called the right side of the theatre. For occasionally in the theatre people worship as much as others do in the Church. Many young people whose families have lapsed from the Church find their religious life functionised in the book, the drama, the opera, the symphony. They are not communicants in the literal sense, ​they are outside the church walls and the shut church doors, but they are inside the living Church. They have a common word with people inside church walls. Their chorus of praise swells from the other side of the walls, and in some countries the secular chorus of praise to God has considerably more volume than the official ecclesiastical chorus. Somehow in church one rather resents the choir, especially in the Te Deum, when they are singing it to some "God-forsaken" curious tune that a pedant musician has chosen. It is good when the whole church can lift one great voice. And outside the church the greater congregation rather resents the church-goers. They would sing Te Deum also.
The relation of Church and Stage exhibits the confusion of religious values at present existing. The same confusion exists with regard to the Church and Literature—many of the great classics of Russian literature, like Gogol's Dead Souls, the monks would regard it a sin to read. The ecclesiastical Church takes no useful stand with regard to what is helpful, what harmful, in past and present literature; it is left for the living Church to find out for itself and do what it can without organisation. Even in the domain of Holy Writ there is a confusion of what the living Church believes, and what mere ecclesiasticism lays down. At least one fundamental idea in Christianity has been overlaid, and, as it were, frustrated by the Church itself—the idea of the Holy Ghost. The ​Holy Ghost has been conventionalised and made terrible. It has become the most inscrutable and awe-inspiring aspect of the Trinity, whereas it should be the most familiar and consoling, Christ saying good-bye to his disciples in that last long sweet talk where He calls them friends, tells them that after He is gone away from them there will come a new consolation, the vision of Truth.
"I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, . . . the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. . . . If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. . . . When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me: And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning."
And in the cross-examination before Pilate, Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world: if my ​kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews. . . . To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth."
Therein lies the true idea of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit—it is the vision of Heavenly Truth that gives the lie to worldly values, worldly truth. By virtue of this Holy Spirit the blind see, though they have no eyes, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the dead live, mortality itself is disproved. The mysteries of the Pentecostal mitres, of the gift of tongues, and the conventionalised notion of what is called the "sin against the Holy Ghost," have stood in the way of the simple and beautiful conception of the comforting vision of Truth. The Church, with its keys of heaven and hell, and its arrogation of the power of anathema and excommunication, has preferred to lay its emphasis on those texts which may seem to imply the dreadfulness of offence against a certain more inscrutable aspect of the Trinity. There is nothing in the Gospels but love of man, forgiveness of man, and nothing is more pitiful than the man who, having a glimpse of the Truth, yet denies it or wilfully confuses it with magic or unclean power.
But the Filioque clause of the Creed is alone sufficient to exemplify the confusion of ecclesiasticism and the living Church. There are many who think that the two Churches of England and ​Russia are kept apart by this clause alone. England holds that the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, proceeds from the Father and from the Son, Russia that it proceeds from the Father alone. Russia's basis is St. John, vx. 26, " . . . the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me." "What does it matter how it is put?" cries the living Church. But ecclesiastical pedantry is strongly entrenched, and whenever the question of the intercommunion of the two Churches is mentioned there arises that fatal phrase—"Filioque—and from the Son."
"Does not one of your Thirty-nine Articles lay down that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and from the Son? And is not assent to the Thirty-nine Articles obligatory upon your clergy? Why, then . . ." To which one can only answer in one's heart:
Thirty-nine Articles, Ye precious little particles, And did God really make the world by you?
The same confusion exists with regard to the Church and Life. That which the living Church of Christ possesses is a spiritual communion, not a set of dogmas or a set of points of ecclesiastical law. If a man is really touched to go to church, if he has the impulse from the heart, it is not in order that he may hear dogma. He goes to blend his voice and his thoughts with the voice and the thoughts of humanity in hymn and prayer. But to-day many ​misconceptions arise. Carlyle could not go to church because the sermon bored him. Many stay away from churches because they can't stand so-and-so's sermon. As if the sermon were part of the service! In old days the sermons were often delivered outside the churches after the service was done. The priest came through the worshippers, went out into the church square, and rising to a platform or "outside pulpit" harangued the everyday crowd. The function of the Church service is not to be a frame to a sermon, even a clever or profound or inspiring sermon. Its function is praise.
A Jew writing for an important Russian newspaper about the state of the Church of England remarks that "dogmas make many leave the Church, and those who stay remain to preach ethics," and he goes on to praise ethics as the function of the Church, leaving out of account, and evidently having no notion of, the Church as a temple of religion, a place of communion and aspiration. Surely the preaching ethics is a work begun by parents and confirmed by the schoolmaster. Christ did not die on the cross or forgive the thief who recognised Him in order to preach "Thou shalt not steal!" Yet such a confusion of ideas remains in the mind even of the cultured.
Still, the whole world and the universe is an orchestra praising God, and, remembering that, it is impossible to say there is real confusion or final ​confusion. It is as impossible to classify and show series of like things, for the imagination tells you that every instrument in the orchestra is diverse. Hence I am open to misconception when I write of confusion or when I classify, as for instance when I talk of Marthas and Marys. There is confusion and there is order. Nothing is fixed, all is in motion, the kaleidoscope is ever moving. So it would be wrong to say that all who were in the way of Martha were in towns working for the poor, or that all in the way of Mary were away in the desert saving their souls at the feet of the Master, or that the priests in their orders and vestments with their processions and grandeur were all in the way of Martha, or that the hermits of the desert did not upon occasion come like Paphnutius to Alexandria to save Thaïs, the dancing-girl. The sisters love one another; and though it is not written in the Gospels, there were certainly occasions when Mary might have been seen cumbered about with many things whilst Martha sat with her Lord.