Если бы эти неразумные ревнители своих верований строже в своей совести отнеслись к своим поступкам, ко всему своему поведению в отношении к православию, то - кто знает? - может быть, совесть пробудила бы в них и дух смирения, и они стали бы способны восприять и дух православия и полюбили бы нас как братьев и рядом с нами стали бы на борьбу с деятелем тайны беззакония. А теперь, увы, они не во имя Христово работают, понося наше святое православие, и, повторяю, только себя унижают в наших же глазах, ибо нам-то видно ясно, чьим духом руководятся они...

С чего на чинается измена родным заветам?

I

Я закончил свой дневник о том - "Кто культурнее: они или мы?" и уже послал рукопись в редакцию, когда мне пришлось прочитать в одной рукописной автобиографии половины прошлого века следующие строки:

"Да, большой недостаток в русском высшем обществе, что там мало ценят милость Божию, что родились в православном исповедании. То, что человеку с прекрасными качествами, благородством и ученостию, но родившемуся в католичестве или протестантстве, еще потребно изучать, познавать, углубляться и разбирать, то православный уже имеет без всяких усилий, внедренное в сердце своем, всосанное с молоком матери своей, как бы сросшееся с ним и приобретенное без всяких трудов и усилий. Но, видно, правду говорят, что то, что получено без всяких трудов и усилий, то так мало и ценится! Если бы этим началам православия давали развиваться и укореняться, каких бы они не принесли благодатных плодов! Но они оставляются пренебреженными, засариваясь разным хламом лжемудрований, лжеумствований, ложных мнений; человек между тем узнает, что есть христианские же религии, которые смотрят снисходительнее на слабости человеческие и даже потворствуют им, не стесняют ни долгими молитвами, ни постами, ни воздержанием порывов плоти и крови; и вот, рожденный, но не укачествовавшийся в православии, соблазняется мнениями, чуждыми православию, наконец становится равнодушным к религии своей - дотоле, пока милующая Десница Всевышнего не образумит его своими наказаниями".

Это пишет человек светский, офицер, воспитанный в среде светского общества того времени и видевший главную причину зла в том, что у них, т.е. в этом обществе, было так много гувернеров и гувернанток, мадам и мамзелей, что дядя автора говаривал: "Когда это моя Европа разъедется?.."

A hundred years have passed since the time of which the author speaks, but do not "madames and mamzels," foreign tutors and governesses, still constitute an indispensable part in the education of the children of our not only intelligent, but also semi-intelligent society? Not to mention noble families: even among merchants who have not studied anywhere themselves, who have come out of peasants, French and German women, and sometimes even Englishwomen, are already hanging around their children: you see, it is impossible to do without new languages, and it is very difficult for them to learn without this kind of pedagogue, and now a child in the golden flowering of childhood is given into the hands of these "Europeans" only for the sake of so that his highly receptive memory may be used to learn foreign languages... Parents do not understand at what a high price they buy the ease of learning foreign languages for their child; They do not understand that, without realizing it, they are entrusting these strangers not only with the destruction of certain small rudiments of the Orthodox worldview, but imperceptibly, perhaps even unconsciously. - Builds an unorthodox worldview in the child's soul? If the Russian illiterate nurse was, and undoubtedly still is, of such great importance in the education of the Pushkins and other great Russian people, then how can one deny the influence of all these mamzels and madames on the whole structure of the child's soul?.. Are they not the first, I repeat, perhaps involuntarily, the first to plant in the soul of our future intellectual the seeds of exaggerated respect for everything Western, non-Orthodox, and disdain for the native, Orthodox? Is it not because of communication with them that our children from adolescence begin to disdain the precepts of their native antiquity? It is good if the parents themselves strictly adhere to this antiquity, as, for example, the parents of the author of the above extract adhered to. Here is what he says in his notes: "My late grandfather always served at home throughout Great Lent, even without a priest, who was invited only to the first and Holy Week, to all annual feasts, to the days of the deliberate saints, and to all Sunday all-night vigils; my father, not wishing to change the order of his father, having already children, also celebrated the services of Great Lent and all the feasts for three weeks. So it came to me. The other brothers and sisters no longer remember this: they were very young, and I used to read Vespers, Compline, Midnight Office and Matins at home, at the crosses, and in church, and the Hours, and my grandmother almost every day came to my mother's house, returning from Mass from the Lebyazhsky Trinity Monastery, in which she was buried." But that was almost a hundred years ago; now you can hardly find such a family, not only in the upper classes, but also in the merchants and petty bourgeois. And children's souls grow outside of that spiritual atmosphere which is called churchliness, and other trends blow over them. The churches are alien, other impressions fall on the tender child's heart, another world outlook is imperceptibly but firmly created.

II

Children! What a priceless treasure God gives us in the person of these little ones! It is not in vain that children's souls are called angelic: our children come out of the holy font of baptism pure, alien to the sin of their ancestors, innocent creatures. Remember the word of Christ: "Unless you yourselves are as little children, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven." For the Lord also said this about children: "Their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven." Where there are children, there are the angels of God. How should we protect this treasure - the child's soul..

And what are we doing with it? From the first steps of conscious life, as soon as a child begins to babble, we hasten to give him into the arms of people who are alien to us in spirit, language, and in their entire moral worldview. The child has not yet learned how to properly name the objects around him, when French, German, and English phrases are already sown into his innocent head. Parents do not want to think at least about the fact that a Russian child under such conditions will not even think in Russian... The late Anna Feodorovna Aksakova in her intelligent, philosophically thought-out conversations complained to me more than once that it was difficult to "think in Russian": since childhood she had been accustomed to speaking German and thinking in German.

It happened that this highly educated Russian woman, not without difficulty, searched for Russian words to express some abstract concept in the field of sublime objects. But it was not her fault that her father lived for the most part abroad, in Germany, although we must give him the honor: he knew the Russian language perfectly and knew how to embody his wonderful poetic works in it.

I have reason to say, in addition to general judgments, that foreigners who are admitted to our children harm the most important thing - they imperceptibly sow their religious views in them. It is clear that an atheist cannot speak of God with due reverence. But it is also understandable that a fanatical Catholic will find both the time and the opportunity to instill in the child her ideas of purgatory, of the Immaculate Conception; it speaks to him with feigned reverence about the "Holy Father," about the "heart of Jesus," etc. It is good if a wise child asks his parents: how to treat such unsolicited lessons? And if he doesn't ask?.. One can't help but think about the question: what does it mean that even native Russian families, like the Abrikosov merchants, suddenly went to Latinism for no reason? Who prepared them for this? Oh, of course, the Jesuit Fathers do not miss an opportunity to catch in their nets our intellectuals who are infants in matters of theology; but in front of the paters, very likely, were their zealous novices, Madames and Mamzels. For a long time our merchant class has been distinguished from other intellectual estates by its greater religiosity; it is true that in recent times it has also followed the intellectuals from other estates, poisoned by the Jewish press, and even in some cases outstrips them; and yet, among merchant families, one can still meet people who sincerely believe in God, who do not forget even the one thing that is required. And this is where Latin propagandists direct their eyes, here they are looking for profit... How necessary it is to protect children from these greedy eyes, from all sorts of tutors and governesses, madame and mamzels, bonnes and tutors!

I am struck by this criminal carelessness - not to mention faith, about the salvation of the soul, but at least only about the good of our homeland, so that foreigners do not seize into their hands what our fathers have accumulated for centuries, do not force us to be farm laborers for them, do not mock us as stupid, contemptible negroes, from whom everything can be made, whatever they please! But if we are so careless and go forward, then it won't be long before that... It is as if some kind of hypnosis has taken possession of our intelligentsia: it is imperative to be Europeans at all costs, to resemble them in everything, to assimilate their ideals, their forms of life, their languages, even their dress, manners, habits... And the Russian people do not see that the Europeans only laugh at this, only despise us even more, as pariahs, as uncultured savages. And this especially plays into the hands of the sworn enemies of Christ - Jews and Freemasons: they rub their hands with joy, this is what they need. And by all means they try to promote this hypnosis, most of all they are afraid that the Russian people will wake up and remember the precepts of their pious ancestors. And so, having seized the seal in their hands, they in every possible way suggest that this hypnosis is a phenomenon of the highest degree of gratification, as a sign of culture, progress, victory over obscurantism, the triumph of civilization... That we are ignorant, that we are in everything, decidedly behind Europe, that we are ashamed to be Orthodox, that Christianity "has played its part in history, has become obsolete, is dying" - all this from day to day, under various guises, is instilled in the Jewish press, absorbed into the brains of our fashionable intelligentsia, as an indisputable axiom, against which only fools can argue... What does all this threaten us with in the very near future? Russian people, come to your senses! It is shameful and unforgivably sinful to humiliate oneself in such a way, to disgrace oneself by betraying one's native precepts of antiquity, one's native Church, one's own people! With bewilderment they look at your "lordly whims", with pity at your overseas inventions, with deep sorrow they sigh when they see your apostasy, and complain to God when you try to seduce them onto your destructive path... After all, he kept waiting for you to go ahead of him along the path bequeathed to him by history and God's Providence, that as people more enlightened by his science, you would lead him, and that you worship Baal and follow the path of the servants of Moloch... Woe to you when the people lose all confidence in you, when among you there are no worthy sons of Russia of the past centuries! You are now striving to corrupt him spiritually: he will not hesitate, having taken into his heart the poison of spiritual corruption, to descend into bodily depravity, to turn into such a beast as the world has not yet seen, as the history of mankind has not yet known...