off his learning, yet it cost him much perspiration."

On retiring to the house, Father Cyprian relates his conversation with the Bishop during the tour of the latter through the diocese.

asks one

6

"He is severe very severe," affirmed Father Cyprian. "First about one's parish, about matters generally, and then examines one. He turned to me, too, Which is the feast day of thy Church?' 'The Transfiguration of the Saviour,' I replied. Dost know the collect for that day!' 'Of course I know it.' Sing it.' Of course I began, Christ our God was transfigured on the mount,' &c. 'Stop! What is the Transfiguration, and how is one to interpret it?" Simply enough,' I answer; 'Christ wished to show His glory to His disciples.' 'Good!' he answered; 'here is an image for you in remembrance.' I fell at the Bishop's knees and thanked him; so I did not go away empty."

6

This is characteristic both of the implied ignorance of the village priest, and of his obsequiousness towards the monastic superior, his Ordinary. The effect of this on the minds of the higher classes, half-cultured themselves, blasés, and morally vitiated, is most pernicious, whilst students of science and the Modern Russian party, with its strong leanings towards realistic views of life, turn away disgusted from the teaching of a clergy whom they consider only as ignorant boors. The Nihilist conspirators mostly belong to this advanced section, and it is a notable fact that not one of them when condemned in former State trials, would have anything to do with the "comforts of religion," but scornfully rejected the offices of the Church in the extreme moment.

4. Incompetency and immobility are as inseparable as the Siamese twins. People deficient in mental power naturally relapse into the stationary condition of mental inaction. While conscious capacity is not afraid of ven

turing out upon the high sea of discovery, timid incapacity prefers sailing along the coast, close under shelter of land. The stars of heaven are sufficient guidance for the former; a dim revolving light at the neighbouring station suffices for the latter. The Russian Church has all along preferred the dim religious light from that dilapidated watch-tower called Tradition. In its present chaotic state, with no independent head to guide its movements, and wanting the intellectual light of a superior clergy, it lacks the progressive flexibility of the Western Churches, where the paralysing hand of State despotism in the senate and the synod has not abruptly arrested self-development. Indolent repose and enforced immobility, are peculiar traits of Eastern thought and life; we are therefore prepared to find a strong conservative tendency pervading the Russian establishment. The stirring activity of the West has produced an opposite effect in ecclesiastical systems nearer home. With us, for example, at the present moment of high pressure, the restless activity of the country, in business, reacts on Church organisation, and produces much of the bustle and unrest in Church work which are at once signs of progress and symptoms of unhealthy excitement engendered thereby. What is encouraging in the fact is the parallel movement, pari passu, of the Church and the world in a similar direction, though that movement is surrounded by dangers of its own. "We may learn something," says Dean Stanley in his well-known lectures on the Eastern Church, "from the sight of a calm strength, reposing in the quietness and confidence of a treasure of hereditary belief." But we may learn another lesson, of the danger of relying too confidently on the immutability of a crystallised dogmatism, and of clinging too tenaciously to stereotyped symbolism and antiquated ceremonial. To preserve

the manners, dress, and speech of the days of the Patriarchs and Pha

raohs" in the nineteenth century, may, as a matter of archaic idiosyncracy, be innocent enough. But the Russian Church does more than this-it refuses not only to turn its face to the light of modern criticism and discovery, but ob stinately rejects all changes whatever, and attaches ridiculous importance to the merest trifles in its supreme horror of innovations.

Thus, in the fifteenth century, an Archbishop of Novgorod declared solemnly that those who repeat the word "Allelujah" only twice in certain parts of the Liturgy, "sing to their 'own damnation." Two centuries later, among the condemned innovations of Nicon it was an unpardonable sin to allow the established clergy to give the benediction with three fingers instead of two; and in the beginning of the last century it was gravely laid down that to smoke tobacco was a violation of the divine law, for it has been said that, "not that which goeth into a man, but that which cometh out of a man defileth him."

The wearing of beards was even thought at one time essential to salvation, as the absence of beard appears among some ecclesiastical persons among ourselves to be part of a sublime symbolism. "Where," asks one of the patriarchs of Moscow, "will those who shave their chins stand in the last day?-among the righteous adorned with beards, or among the beardless heretics?" Where, indeed? This obstinate refusal of all change, and fixed determination never to leave the outworn grooves of obsolete usage is bringing about a complete divorce between the Church and the world, the clergy and the educated classes.

The symbolical act of excluding the laity from the sight even of the highest act of religion in the Holy Communion, marks the complete absence of communion of interest between priest and people in every-day life. Unable, because of their own ecclesiastical immobility, to stir up the turgid ignorance of the masses, and incapable

of keeping abreast with the rapid advance of modern civilisation in the ruling classes, the Russian clergy have become the ministers of a debased superstition to the one, and the object of dislike and derision to the other. Like the French clergy of the revolutionary epoch, they are hated by the philosophers with the passion irreligieuse on account of their ignorant fanaticism; and are losing their hold on the people, now being roused from their long sleep into rebellion, by reason of their unprincipled exactions, and their incapacity in most cases of sympathising with the popular cause. Both higher and lower classes alike refuse to be influenced by a body of men who appear in the light of blind supporters of a dual despotism in Church and State. In the meantime the Russian Dissenters, like the Puritans of old and the modern English political Dissenters, naturally incline towards democracy. They are gain ing ground among the mercantile classes, and with that increasing number of thriving individuals who are beginning to form the nucleus of a vigorous middle class in Russia, and who have a great future before them.

5. We come in the last place to speak of the inactivity of the Russian Church in the direction of missionary effort and philanthropy. It is used, indeed, at times as a State-engine for the suppression of heresy where the extinction of rival religions in newly. acquired, or otherwise unmanageable, provinces, becomes a question of statecraft. For this purpose its own persecuting proclivities and slavish subserviency to those in power make it a very terrible instrument. But excepting some few fine instances of missionary zeal and devotion, no enthusiasm of humanity, nor expansive force of Christian zeal have as yet produced in Russia great religious and social reformers like Wilberforce, or great enthusiasms, like the Methodist revival, the Oxford movement, or the Christian socialism

of Maurice and Kingsley. There is still a strong religious instinct in the body of the laity, and a great tendency to mystic piety even among the higher classes. But it receives little aliment, or none, from the representatives of religion. The Church is dead and cold. If there are noble religious impulses, they are smothered behind convent walls. The moral power of the Church is gone. What M. Taine says of the French Church before the outbreak of the Revolution (to make one more comparison) is true of the Russian Church in its attitude towards the Nihilistic revolt -it is utterly helpless in the conscious absence of all spiritual force, impotent with the impotence of enervating worldliness, and prostrated by the humiliating conviction of its own effete inanition.

What may be expected from the influence of such a Church in a national crisis like that through which the Russian Empire is now passing? On the one hand we see a clergy without ideals, without belief in its Mission,1 without faith in high principle! On the other hand, a society steeped in materialism and scepticism, and on the verge of moral bankruptcy! The general outlook is very dark. What

the Church may become as a spiritual agency for the regeneration of Russian society of the future it is impossible to imagine. We can only confine ourselves to what we know to be the case now. There is no intention on the part of the present writer to draw the picture darker than it is. But his studies, and his intercourse with those who know, have left the sad

1 "The Russian clergy have no faith," says Ivan Golowin, a competent writer on such a subject. The sons and daughters of clergymen are declared Nihilists."

impression on his mind that the Russian Church, as a national institution, has ceased to be, for the time being, an important factor in the growth of the national life. There is no virtue, or "truth-force," going out of it. It is an almost lifeless body of clay. body of clay. It requires to undergo a transformation process before it can hope to become a healing power in the State, and a spiritual lifting force among the people.

The lessons which sister Churches in the West may learn from these deficiencies of the Russian Church are simply so many warnings against :

1. A degeneracy into selfish Utilitarianism in Church and State.

2. The tendency of too readily dividing secular and sacred interests, instead of endeavouring to bring about a sympathetic and harmonious adjustment of them for the common good.

3. The neglect of higher culture among the clergy, which disables them from grappling with the intellectual difficulties of a stirring age.

4. The non-possumus cry of re actionists in Church assemblies, refusing the timely revision of forms and formularies which have ceased to satisfy modern cravings.

5. The indolence and indifference of the clergy in stirring times towards burning questions that affect the moral and social well-being of the great mass of the people. For such an attitude diverts popular support from Established Churches, and virtually prevents them from fulfilling their noble destiny of marching in the van of human progress, encouraging and consoling the pioneers of truth and goodness by their light and leading.

M. KAUFMANN.

of Maurice and Kingsley. There is still a strong religious instinct in the body of the laity, and a great tendency to mystic piety even among the higher classes. But it receives little aliment, or none, from the representatives of religion. The Church is dead and cold. If there are noble religious impulses, they are smothered behind convent walls. The moral power of the Church is gone. What

M. Taine says of the French Church before the outbreak of the Revolution (to make one more comparison) is true of the Russian Church in its attitude towards the Nihilistic revolt -it is utterly helpless in the conscious absence of all spiritual force, impotent with the impotence of enervating worldliness, and prostrated by the humiliating conviction of its own effete inanition.

What may be exp ected from the influence of such a Church in a national crisis like that through which the Russian Empire is now passing? On the one hand we see a clergy without ideals, without belief in its Mission,1 without faith in high principle! On the other hand, a society steeped in materialism and scepticism, and on the verge of moral bankruptcy! The general outlook is very dark. What

the Church may become as a spiritual agency for the regeneration of Russian society of the future it is impossible to imagine. We can only confine ourselves to what we know to be the case now. There is no intention on the part of the present writer to draw the picture darker than it is. But his studies, and his intercourse with those who know, have left the sad

1 "The Russian clergy have no faith," says Ivan Golowin, a competent writer on such a subject. "The sons and daughters of clergymen are declared Nihilists."

impression on his mind that the Russian Church, as a national institution, has ceased to be, for the time being, an important factor in the growth of the national life. There is no virtue, or "truth-force," going out of it. It is an almost lifeless body of clay. It requires to undergo a transformation process before it can hope to become a healing power in the State, and a spiritual lifting force among the people.

The lessons which sister Churches in the West may learn from these deficiencies of the Russian Church are simply so many warnings against:

1. A degeneracy into selfish Utilitarianism in Church and State.

2. The tendency of too readily dividing secular and sacred interests, instead of endeavouring to bring about a sympathetic and harmonious adjustment of them for the common good.

3. The neglect of higher culture among the clergy, which disables them from grappling with the intellectual difficulties of a stirring age.

4. The non-possumus cry of reactionists in Church assemblies, refusing the timely revision of forms and formularies which have ceased to satisfy modern cravings.

5. The indolence and indifference of the clergy in stirring times towards burning questions that affect the moral and social well-being of the great mass of the people. For such an attitude diverts popular support from Established Churches, and virtually prevents them from fulfilling their noble destiny of marching in the van of human progress, encouraging and consoling the pioneers of truth and goodness by their light and leading.

M. KAUFMANN.