>This Church, like a chaste virgin, has alone been preserved

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>This Church, like a chaste virgin, has alone been preserved from apostolic times in its original, immaculate purity; this Church, which with its profound dogmas and small external rituals has, as it were, been brought down from the heavens to the Russian people, is alone able to undo all the knots of doubt and answer all our questions…And yet we do not know about this Church! We have not yet brought this Church, which was created so that we might live, into our lives! Only one kind of propaganda is possible for us—our own lives. We must defend our Church with our lives, for she is life; and we must proclaim her truth by the fragrance of our souls.
-Gogol's "Selected Correspondence", as quoted in "Orthodox Christianity, Volume I"