I have read many Roman Catholic teachers of catechism.  I doubt whether all those teachers did for Christianity as much as an artist—­Sienkiewicz —­did with his charming story, “Quo Vadis?” He aroused so much interest, and so many sympathies even among the unbelievers; I am sure he converted to Christianity many more than any propaganda fides working on a half-political, half-scientific foundation.  He put Christianity on a purely religious foundation, and he was understood not only by the Roman Catholics but by the whole world.  He found the very heart of the “noble catholicity,” and he inspired the world.  He showed once more that Christianity is a drama and not a science.

Sienkiewicz loved Christianity, but he saw that it was still far from gaining a decisive victory.  He knew the horrible injustice done to his Christian nation by the surrounding Christian nations.  He was horrified looking at Bismarck.  He called Bismarck the “true adorer of Thor,” because he was a true follower of a pagan philosophy expressed in the Iron Chancellor’s sentence—­Might over Right.  Yet Sienkiewicz prophesied that “Germany in the future cannot live with Bismarck’s spirit.”  She must change her spirit, she must expel Thor and again kneel before Christ, because the “Christian religion of two thousand years is an invincible power, a much greater power than bayonets.”

Mickiewicz hoped that only the Christian religion can save mankind.  Christ is for him the central person in the world’s history.  Christ never made concessions to evil.  But His Church to-day is making compromises with all kinds of evil.  The official Church is publishing diplomatic Notes and promoting the publishing of books.  That is all.  The Church is afraid of suffering, although “there are even to-day enough occasions for the Church to suffer.”  “Prelates wear the purple which symbolises martyrdom:  But who on earth has heard lately of the martyrdom of a Cardinal?” Mickiewicz bitterly complains that the “high clergy deserted the way of the Cross.  They never would suffer.  In order to escape suffering they fled as refugees to books, theology and doctrines.  But la force ne vient que de la douleur.”  “The lower clergy, the Russian as the Polish, conserved the depot of faith intact,” but still they are in a darkness of prejudice and vice.  It is remarkable how large a view of the Christian Church had Mickiewicz.  He did not care only for the Roman Church.  He called the Russian Orthodox and the Polish Roman Church by one name—­“the Church of the North.”  He cared about Christ’s Church, and he believed steadfastly in her Messianic role in the world.  “The men of conventions must be defeated,” he said.  The pride of the high clergy and the fear of suffering must disappear.  “The first need for a modern man is to be inspired and elevated, de s’allumer et de s’elever.”  The Church is the only bearer of inspiration and elevation; not the official Church, but the Messianic Church of “men of suffering, intuition and action,” i.e., the primitive Church of Christ, which Sienkiewicz so magnificently described and for which Jan Huss so heroically fought.