[Note: This was a pamphlet St. Hilarion published in the intervening years between the failed 1905 Revolution and the unhappy 1917 Revolution.]
People swear by someone greater than themselves (Heb. 6:16).
This truth remains ever and everywhere immutable. Any single truth or any series of truths always comprise what is “greater” for man, and this “greater” is man’s authority; he refers to it, he “swears” by it. Yet the same truths are not what is “greater” for all men. Sometimes what is “greater” is entirely false; yet man nevertheless swears by this illusory “truth” as though it were authoritative. The measures by which men approach the phenomena of the life which surrounds us are quite varied. Each chooses that authority which seems best to him, and therefore one may accept the position: Tell me what your authorities are, and I will say what sort of man you are. In the past, men were different, and their authorities were also different. The word of God, the laws of the Church - in the past these were the eternally immutable and perfect authorities understood and held dear equally by all. If something were in accordance with the word of God, with the laws of the Church, it was good; if something were not in accordance with them, or contradicted them, it could not be good. I. T. Pososhkov wrote his “A Father’s Testament” precisely “to corroborate the divine Scriptures”; there he states with certainty: “All of us who live in the Orthodox Faith know this well: that all truth is contained in the words of the Lord”; and to his son he says: “My son, I firmly exhort and adjure thee, that with all thy strength thou hold fast to the Holy Eastern Church as the Mother who gave thee birth... and that thou cut off from thyself all who oppose the Holy Church, and have no amicable relations with them of any sort, for they are the enemies of God.”
