Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/330

 314 quiet labours of my missionaries did not produce the spectacular results so well loved by the impatient members of fashionable religious society. While there were no such sudden effects I felt assured that the water jars were being filled one after another, but when it chanced that one or other of my missionaries produced a large number of proselytes I must confess, I was troubled. I remembered my Zyryan, or the baptizer of the Guards Ushakov; or the Councillor Yartzev, who were still more successful because in their case as in the days of Vladimir, "piety was allied to fear," and even before the arrival of these missionaries the natives begged to be baptized. Yes, but what was the result of all their nimbleness and piety allied with fear? The abomination of desolation was produced in the holy places, where these fleet baptizers had their fonts and all was confusion—in the mind, in the heart, in the understanding of the people, and I, a bad bishop, could do nothing for it, and a good bishop could not have done more before—before, so to speak, we begin seriously to occupy ourselves with faith, and not merely take pride in it for pleasure's sake like Pharisees. That, gentlemen, is the position in which we Russian baptizers find ourselves; not, as it may appear, because we do not understand Christ, but because we really