THE RELIGION OF SOVEREIGNS. T HE public . announcement made by
the Czar of the pleasure which he and his wife have felt in being per- mitted by Providence to offer up prayers to heaven in Moscow instead of St. Petersburg, is a curious incident of the week. The visit itself was most natural, the strange illusion that prayer reaches God more quickly from one place than another being one that has existed for ages in all lands, and among men professing all creeds, and the Emperor and Empress having an urgent impulse to pray. They deeply desire a son, whose birth would put an end to the palace intrigues which in all absolute monarchies are fostered by the absence of a direct heir, and who would secure the throne to their direct descendants, and they greatly fear lest, as their children have hitherto all been daughters, they should continue to be daughters until the end. There is a popular superstition in Russia as in England that this often happens. Daughters can inherit the Russian throne, but by an unwise family law they inherit only when the male line has become extinct, and as there are many Grand Dukes, sons are almost as much desired as in countries governed by the Salle Law, or in English families under a strict entail. The visit is therefore, as we have said, most natural, but the publication of the Imperial thanks to the Almighty for permission to make it is unusual, and suggests in the Czar a certain earnestness of belief which throws much light, and, on the whole, pleasant light, upon a character as yet but little understood. Sings are rarely pious, though they are still more rarely unbelievers. There have been plenty of bad men upon European thrones, and the lives of few Sings will bear study through an ethical microscope, but we can recall only one, King Frederick the Great of Prussia, who was a scoffing unbeliever. He even sneered at the British Ambassador for saying that he would do something or other by "the help of God," and asked, with his nose in the air, whether the English counted God among their allies. " Yes, your Majesty," was the crushing reply, "and the only ally who asks no subsidy from us." The temper displayed in Frederick's jest is, however, most unusual among Sovereigns, and though when they win victories they are often accused of hypo- crisy for publicly professing their belief that God rules all it is more probable, in spite of their usual conduct, that the profession has been sincere. Many sinners believe, and Sovereigns, who perceive so plainly the complexity of human affairs, and the powerlessness even of the greatest to control events, must feel more than any men the necessity for aid and guidance from some Power higher than themselves. Who else is to give success to plans which are so large that foresight fails, and orders must constantly be given the future effect of which it is impossible to know? It is certain, at all events, that they all say so, and we see no reason for supposing that they are all liars, or are only going through a form. On the contrary, the loneliness of Sovereigns, who all, however much advised, think that they govern, their con- sciousness of a separate position, and their belief that when all is said they must bear rule by some special permission, and therefore must have some peculiar relation to the Most High, all tend to make them at least strongly convinced Theists. Even Napoleon, who bad neither morals, pity, nor remorse, pointed to the stars, and asked a sceptical Marshal " who made them." The more absolute the Monarch the stronger would be this faith in him, until we reach the really pathetic belief of Alexander III., who, knowing himself to be incompetent, still governed well and strongly because, as he said, he believed that God would never have appointed a man like himself to rule without intending to give him aid. Beyond Theism we suspect they very rarely go. The pride of the priest affronts the pride of the Monarch. True Christianity would be too much of a restraint, and would in many countries involve submissions which offend the amour propre of the throne. There have been many Catholic Kings, but they have rarely been submissive to Papal orders—even Charles V. was recalcitrant—while Protestant Sovereigns have usually re- garded Churches as institutions they were bound to protect rather than to obey. A few Monarchs, like our own James II., have professed an entire faith even when it tended to their own visible hurt—he was a stupid tyrant, but that side of him has never been fairly brought out—but the majority have, as we read history, believed strongly in God and His direct control of human affairs, and have left all other dogmas to be disputed over by meaner men. They have been Theists, not Christians.
We should think, on the whole,' that Nicholas II. belonged to the minority, and not only believed in God, but in the teaching of the Holy Orthodox Church. There is a curious ring in the words of his Rescript, which suggests that he found actual comfort in going to Moscow as on pilgrimage, and there praying, as he says, "in the shadow of the Kremlin surrounded by the most sacred objects of his people, in the cradle of the autocracy where saints repose undisturbed, amid the resting places of the crowned builders and expanders of the Russian Empire, and where prayers rise with increased strength to the Lord of Lords and a calm joy fills the soul in prayer." It may be strange that an autocrat should say such things aloud to a whole people, but why should he say them if he does not feel them ? We think it infinitely more probable that he does feel them, or, in other words, that Nicholas II., Emperor of Russia, thinks himself nearer the realisation of his hopes because he asked aid from the Almighty in a place which to him is sacrosanct. Why not, when millions of all degrees of intelligence believe the same thing, and have at least one reason for believing it? The old notion of merit in pilgrim- age, and the sacrifice of personal ease which it involved, is foreign to the Protestant mind, and has lost much of its hold even upon Roman Catholics and the children of the Greek Church—though the latter attribute high merit to visits to the Holy Sepulchre—and most Englishmen have diffi- culty in conceiving that the place of prayer can of itself lend to that prayer any additional efficacy. Bat all men who believe in prayer at all believe at times that special seasons, laces, even attitudes of the body, promote that earnestness of
invocation which it is reasonable to suppose makes prayer acceptable, and why should not the Czar have precisely the same feeling, more especially as tradition must weigh so much more strongly on his mind? To Englishmen, if they know Russian history, the Kremlin, with its bloodstained associations, seems an odd place to choose; but Nicholas II. is a Russian, and to Russians the Kremlin has at once a political and a religions sanctity. It is to them Jerusalem and the Temple in one, the spot where Russia sprang into being, and where are concentrated the holiest buildings of her faith. No Czar can enter it, at least if he knows Russian history, without an emotion at once of faith and pride, and it was that emotion which the Emperor sought, as he says, in words which one would think he must himself have written, in order that his prayers might "rise with increased strength to the Lord of Lords." The Rescript may be matter of form, but we prefer to believe that it was published in an overflow of feeling, and affords a singular glimpse into the inner mind of the greatest Monarch in the world, revealing a nature radically pious and perhaps not disinclined to a little superstition. In the latter quality Nicholas II. is but Russian, and indeed a Sovereign must be genuinely Russian at heart to publish to the millions of Russia such words in the full confidence that his thought will not be misapprehended. There are strong bonds in Russia between the Sovereign and the people, much stronger than the majority of Western men are apt to believe.
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