In the book “Prayers by the Lake”, Bishop Nikolai reveals himself as a theologian, as a poet, and as a preacher. “Prayers by the Lake” are a hundred psalms sung by a man of the twentieth century - an ideological, technocratic, war-disfigured century - and how virginally pure these psalms are! The ability of the Slavic soul to feel the corruption of everything worldly and at the same time - to discover God in all nature, to see His harmony everywhere, to look at the Creator through His creation - makes St. Nicholas of Serbia similar to many Russian theologians and writers. The poetic language of “Prayers by the Lake”, the ability to express all one’s feelings through prayer, researchers rightly liken to the works of St. Simeon the New Theologian. As a preacher, St. Nicholas does not convince anyone, he prophetically draws the ends of human paths, thoughts and feelings. The human soul, expanded to the limits of the universe, to the divine-human soul; the whole history of heaven and earth, microcosmically contained in the human soul; the soul that cultivates, according to the teachings of the Holy Fathers, Christ within itself - this is the subject of the author’s closest attention.