I mention this relation between Christianity and civilisation to prove that a civilisation with _any_ spirit is not attractive to the Slav, but rather the civilisation with the Christian religious spirit _only_. Tolstoi denied all civilisation just because he did not see the Christian spirit in it. The Church was reserved towards modern science and art just because she saw the anti-Christian, proud, egoistical spirit in many expressions of them. Better the poor Christian spirit in a cottage of Macedonia than a rich and cultivated Paganism in Vienna. The spirit with which a railway is made counts and not the railway itself. We are never alone but always in the presence of a great Spirit who encircles and inspires us. Whatever we do through this inspiration is living and good; whatever we do without His inspiration, but under the supposition that we are alone in this world, is wrong and dead. A great civilisation may be wrong and dead Yea, as there is no great man, there is no great civilisation. The ideal of Slav Christianity is a good and saintly man, and also a good and saintly civilisation. The very essence of life is mystic and religious. What is a man or a civilisation without mysticism and religion? They are like a painted landscape on paper. You enjoy it from a distance, but when you touch it you are disappointed. Everything without God is discontentment, emptiness. Blessed are those--I wish you all may be numbered among them--whose life is full of God. They are connected with the sun and the stars, with the living and the dead, with the past and the future. They possess a wonderful bridge over every abyss in life, and they are always safe. They are bright in darkness, joyful in suffering, hopeful in death. Their life on earth, in this very limited sphere of life, is escorted by the whole of the Universe, from one end to the other. I wish that such a religious spirit belonged not only to the Slavs but to all mankind. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD. BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORDSTREET, S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916), by Nikolai Velimirovic