THE KING'S GRACIOUS WORD 43

A NEW DOSE OF THE POISON OF DENIAL 44

IN MEMORY OF THE BRIGHT CELEBRATION 45

THE GREAT TEMPTATION AROUND THE MOST HOLY NAME OF GOD 47

AS ST. THE CHURCH ON THE NAMES OF GOD (Extracts from the Holy Fathers and Church Definitions) 58

WHAT DOES THE WORD "BELIEVE" MEAN? 59

MY FAULTS BEFORE THE KAHAL 60

MY OCTOBER SERMON AND ITS MEMORY IN THE JUDAIZER PRESS 62

POISON OF PRIDE 65

To the Friends of My Youth Pupils of the Moscow Theological Seminary, Class of 1874 70

JUBILEE OF THE VICTORY OF THE CROSS OVER PAGANISM 71

MY TRIP TO OLD ATHOS AND THE FRUITS OF THE "GREAT TEMPTATION" 73

A. BULATOVICH'S NEW PERFORMANCE 86

ARE WE ALIVE? (My Kind Word to the Believing Intellectuals) 91

THE HUMILITY OF ORTHODOXY 94

ON THE MOODS OF MODERN YOUTH AND A KIND WORD TO TEACHERS OF RELIGION 99

WHERE ARE WE GOING? (For the information of the lawmakers) 102

THE EVANGELICAL MAGI AND WISE MEN OF OUR TIME 105

A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD

Never, perhaps, even in times of persecution from the pagans, were there so many dangers for the Church as in our supposedly peaceful days. It is threatened by both external and internal enemies. The external ones are sects and schisms that have openly fallen away from it: the internal ones are those who have not openly broken their unity with it, but are no longer of the same mind, already philosophizing in their own thinking in matters of faith and understanding of life according to faith. And the latter, under certain conditions, can be more dangerous than the former. Having lost confidence in the authority of the leadership of the Church, they can easily submit to the influence of heretical wisdom and become entangled in the nets set by heretics. And this can happen unnoticed by themselves: for some time they will still consider themselves Orthodox, believing that the differences of opinion they have adopted are not essential, but then, having strengthened themselves in these differences, they will accuse the Church herself of an incorrect understanding of her teaching and thus carry away other, faithful children of the Church. And these children of the Church, knowing them to be Orthodox, will listen to their wisdom without any fear and be poisoned by them. That is why we, the pastors of the Church, need to keep a watchful eye on the holy sites of Orthodoxy, attentively following all, even apparently favorable trends and phenomena in the spiritual life of the people and educated society, knowing that Satan is sometimes transformed into an angel of light, and poison is sometimes presented in the guise of medicine... And the more innocent the external form in which a dangerous tendency for the Church is clothed, the more useful this or that initiative, this or that good thought represents, the more carefully this or that good thought should be discussed, the more carefully it should be discussed from the point of view of Church teaching, the more it should be illuminated by the light of the Church. And this seems to be admitted, at least by some of those who are faithful to the precepts of the Church and understand the dangers that threaten her in our day. Involuntarily, you become a little, sometimes to the point of pain, when you constantly see how the enemy creeps up from the side from which you do not expect him. And therefore, let us, the pastors of the Church, be forgiven by those good laymen (I do not expect this from pastors) who unintentionally, carelessly, out of inexperience in the spiritual life, in the matter of teaching, sometimes one-sidedly illuminate this or that issue in the field of this teaching, and thus give us reason to pay attention to this one-sidedness as a warning to the children of the Church against being carried away by this one-sidedness. We believe that such instructions are useful not only to the children of the Church themselves, but also to those who are the willing or unwilling culprits of this infatuation. In the Church of God, as in the living body of Christ, all the members must take care of each other, and each must know and do his own work in the spirit of love and holy obedience to the Lord and to her, our mother Church.

Recently I happened to be in a meeting of the Christian Fellowship of Student Youth. The report was made by the chairman of the Society for the Dissemination of the Holy Scriptures in Russia, the venerable E. K. Pistolkors, on the topic: "On the Practical Significance of the Word of God in Life." In a lively speech animated by love for the Word of God, the speaker depicted the "various facets" of the Word of God, comparing it to a precious diamond—its effect on the human soul, the need for a Christian to study it, to put it into practice, "to react with it to the sad reality of our time" and to strive for spiritual rebirth through the word of God... The speech ended; But, as they say, there was something left unsaid in the air. The head of the "Commonwealth", Archpriest Lahostsky, invited those present to express themselves on the content of the report, and a young girl appeared at the department. A sensitive young soul tried to express what it seemed to me that she was not the only one in her heart. She pointed out that the speaker had somehow silenced the Church: when calling for the reading of the Word of God, he did not mention that in church, during divine services, it is read constantly, that when reading at home, one must be especially careful in understanding it... After an exchange of thoughts between several persons, for my part, I said that I was very glad to meet not only with the representative, but also with the chairman of the society with whom, about twenty-five years ago, I had conducted a polemic in Tserkovny Vestnik. At that time I pointed out one essential defect in the statutes of this society, a deficiency which is felt especially in our time. The fact is that the society has set itself the task of disseminating exclusively the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, not allowing through its book-carriers any interpretations of the Word of God, even approved by the Church, to be distributed. Such a one-sided presentation of the matter does not at all correspond to our Orthodox understanding of this essentially holy matter. Even the Apostle Peter, for example, noted that in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul "there is something incomprehensible, which the ignorant and unconfirmed, to their own destruction, turn both him and the rest of the Scriptures" (2 Peter 3:16). The same Apostle, while approving the believers for turning to the word of God "as to a lamp shining in a dark place," nevertheless warns "that no prophecy in the Scriptures can be resolved by itself," and that this must be "known first of all" (2 Peter 1:20). The speaker himself said that the Word of God, according to the testimony of the Apostle Paul, is a spiritual sword, and moreover it is "sharper than any two-edged sword" (Heb. 4:12). Whoever knows how to wield this sword defeats the enemies of his salvation, and whoever does not know how to wield it as he should, can easily harm his own soul with it. It should always be remembered that this weapon is often used by our enemies – the devil and his faithful servants, various false teachers.

Remember how Satan tempted the Lord: and he, after all, referred to the Holy Scriptures: "It is written... In a similar way he tempted the holy ascetics: for example, inducing them to violate the vow of chastity, he pointed to the words of the Scriptures: it is not good for the man alone to be... marriage is honest in all, and the bed is undefiled.

All heresies, all false teachings and schisms arose because people did not understand the true meaning of the Holy Scriptures. If a person reads any passage in Scripture and begins to interpret it in his own way, as he pleases, he will err in his interpretation, and there he will separate himself from the unity of the Church of God, he will become a heresiarch. Do I need to give examples? Arius decided to interpret the words of Christ the Savior in his own way: "My Father is greater than Me," and he stumbled in his wisdom and fell into blasphemous heresy: He called the Son of God, who is of one essence with the Father, the same creature as the Angels of God, for which he was anathematized at the First Ecumenical Council. And how many such insane, self-willed interpreters of the Holy Scriptures there were, and all of them were stubborn opponents of the Holy Church, sons of perdition!

One interpreted the second commandment of God in his own way and became an iconoclast, the other began to explain the words of the Apostle in his own way: Christ Jesus is one intercessor between God and men, and began to philosophize that it was no longer necessary to invoke in prayer for help either the Mother of God, or the holy Angels, or the holy saints of God; the third read the words of the same Apostle: "By grace thou art saved, through faith," and began to interpret as if good works were not at all required for salvation... These are the blasphemous false teachings that arise from the fact that people do not take up their own business, but interpret the Word of God in their own way, as it comes to their minds, and not in the way the Holy Orthodox Church expounds it.

What is to be done, what is to be done, so as not to err in the understanding of the Holy Scriptures? How to learn to wield a double-edged sword? First of all, remember that you are not saved by yourself, not as an individual who supposedly has direct access to your Savior, but only as a member of His body, the Church, you are saved in the Church and through the Church. The Lord entrusted the entire work of salvation to the Church, and outside of her saving bosom there is no salvation, just as no one escaped the universal flood outside of Noah's ark.

Blessed Augustine says: "Only he is saved who has Christ as his head, and only he who is in His body, which is the Church, has Christ as his head." She and she alone is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15), in her is the divinely established hierarchy, in her are all the divinely established sacraments, she is the guardian of sacred tradition and the infallible interpreter of the word of God. "One should not seek the truth from others, says St. Irenaeus, it is easy to borrow it from the Church, for in it, as in a rich treasury, the Apostles placed everything that belongs to the truth. Where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God, there is all grace."