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Rh impressed by the childlike and simple faith of the people. Cynics have railed at the superstition of the ignorant moujik, as if Christianity were a monopoly of the wealthy, the educated, and the learned. The truth is, that the religion of the moujik is the nearest approach to primitive Christianity and to the faith of the Golden Age of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thomas Aquinas. To visit the Catacombs of Kiev or the Troitsa Lavra on a holiday, to accompany the Russian pilgrims to Jerusalem, is to travel back to the Middle Ages. The Russian Church may have badly suffered from the confusion of spiritual and temporal power introduced by Peter the Great. Formalism and ritualism may play an excessive part in the economy of religion, but the spirit is everywhere alive, and the ideals of Christianity continue to inspire the individual lives of the people. Nowhere is the "Nietschean" spirit so little prevalent. Nowhere is the Christian temper of meekness and humility, of charity and brotherhood, of self-surrender and self-sacrifice so common as in Russia. And the Christian spirit is a no less potent force in the public life of the nation. As I have amply proved in a subsequent chapter