ussian Church, like the Eastern
Orthodox Church generally, is essentially conservative. Anything in
the nature of a religious revival is foreign to her traditions and
character. Quieta non movere is her fundamental principle of conduct.
She prides herself as being above terrestrial influences.

The modifications that have been made in her administrative organisation
have not affected her inner nature. In spirit and character she is now
what she was under the Patriarchs in the time of the Muscovite Tsars,
holding fast to the promise that no jot or tittle shall pass from the
law till all be fulfilled. To those who talk about the requirements of
modern life and modern science she turns a deaf ear. Partly from the
predominance which she gives to the ceremonial element, partly from
the fact that her chief aim is to preserve unmodified the doctrine and
ceremonial as determined by the early Ecumenical Councils, and partly
from the low state of general culture among the clergy, she has ever
remained outside of the intellectual movements. The attempts of the
Roman Catholic Church to develop the traditional dogmas by definition
and deduction, and the efforts of Protestants to reconcile their creeds
with progressive science and the ever-varying intellectual currents of
the time, are alike foreign to her nature. Hence she has produced no
profound theological treatises conceived in a philosophical spirit, and
has made no attempt to combat the spirit of infidelity in its modern
forms. Profoundly convinced that her position is impregnable, she has
"let the nations rave," and scarcely deigned to cast a glance at their
intellectual and religious struggles. In a word, she is "in the world,
but not of it."

If we wish to see represented in a visible form the peculiar
characteristics of the Russian Church, we have only to glance at Russian
religious art, and compare it with that of Western Europe. In the West,
from the time of the Renaissance downwards, religious art has kept pace
with artistic progress. Gradually it emancipated itself from archaic
forms and childish symbolism, converted the lifeless typical figures
into living individuals, lit up their dull eyes and expressionless
faces with human intelligence and human feeling, and finally aimed at
archaeological accuracy in costume and other details. Thus in the
West the Icon grew slowly into the naturalistic portrait, and the rude
symbolical groups developed gradually into highly-fini