Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/9

iv of eminence, he is entitled to rank highest among foreign authorities on the subject.

I speak advisedly above of the present state of information upon the religious question, especially as regards the masses of the people, among whom, chiefly, devotional feeling and sectarianism flourish. They are frequently unable to give intelligible explanations of their religious beliefs, even when willing to do so; and generally, with Asiatic dislike of strangers, or with suspicious distrust of their own superiors, generated by centuries of serfdom, they evade every attempt at inquiry. Moreover, it is only in recent years that the internal condition of the Russian Empire has received from Russians themselves the investigation and study which its importance demands, and it may yet be lone before it can be safely averred that the religious question, any more than other of a political nature, is fully understood and appreciated.

Loyalty to the Tsar, and aptitude for organization, are universal among the people, but religious devotion is their strongest and most general characteristic; in no country is it so universally and so intimately interwoven in the daily life of every individual. Wars against the infidel Turk excite the same enthusiasm as the crusades of the Middle Ages; and the intensity of this feeling, together with the pious credulity of the people, are a prodigious power in the hands of the government, that may be easily directed in furtherance of political ends.

"It is for Christ that we are to fight," a peasant was heard to say to a fellow-conscript in 1877. "He suffered on the cross for us, and it is but right that we should suffer, in our turn, for Him."