Serbia in Light and Darkness: With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916)Velimirović, Nikolaj
History
Serbia in Light and Darkness: With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916)
Velimirović, Nikolaj
Proverbs, Serbian; Serbia; Serbian poetry -- Translations into English
The presence of Father Nicholai Velimirovic in England during the last
few months has brought to the many circles with which he has been in
touch a new message and appeal enforced by a personality evoking an
appreciation which glows more warmly the better he is known. But this
little book is more than the revelation of a personality. It will be to
many people the introduction to a new range of interest and of thought.
He would be a bold man who would endeavour at present to limit or even
to define what may be the place which the Serbia of coming years may
hold in Eastern Europe as a link between peoples who have been widely
sundered and between forces both religious and secular which for their
right understanding have needed an interpreter. Of recent days the
sculpture and the literature of Serbia have been brought to our doors,
and England's admiration for both has drawn the two countries more
closely together in a common struggle for the ideals to which that art
and literature have sought to give expression. It is not, I think,
untrue to say that to the average English home this unveiling of Serbia
has been an altogether new experience. Father Nicholai's book will help
to give to the revelation a lasting place in their minds, their hopes
and their prayers.
RANDALL CANTUAR.
LAMBETH, _Easter_, 1916.
_PART I_
LECTURES ON SERBIA
ENGLAND AND SERBIA.
_Delivered for the first time in the Chapter House of Canterbury
Cathedral. Chairman: the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury._
THE SIGN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
YOUR GRACE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
To come to Canterbury, to visit this Sion of the Church of England, that
has been my dream since my fourteenth year, when I for the first time
was told of what a spiritual work and of what an immortal glory this
place has been the home. I dreamed a beautiful dream of hope to come
here silently, to let every man, every house and every brick of the
houses silently teach me, and, after having learned many fair and useful
things, to return silently and thankfully home. Unfortunately I cannot
now be a silent and contemplative pupil in this place, as I desired to
be, but I must speak, forced by the time in which we are living and
suffering. I will speak in order not to teach you, but to thank you. And
I have to thank you much in the name of the Serbian nation and in my own
name.
I thank you that you are so mindful of Serbia, of a poor and suffering
country that failed so much in many respects, but never failed in
admiration of the English character and civilisation. From central
European civilisation we received a small light and a great shadow. From
English civilisation we got--I dare say it--the light only. There is no
doubt that English civilisation, being a great light, must have its
shadow also, but our eyes, blinded by the great light, did not see the
dark side of this light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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