Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/416

406 the affirmative. It is evident that he loved the Church of his fathers; that he thought her superstitions mere excrescences which might be removed without seriously endangering her fabric; that he believed her maintenance necessary to the welfare of his people; and that he knew there was nothing ready to replace her. Hence his course of action satisfied no one; he earned the envenomed abuse of the bigots of the Greek Church, who traced all the disorders of the country to the translation of the Bible and the education of the poor; while at the same time he did not quite fulfil the sanguine expectations of the friends of evangelical light and progress. But after all, this does not matter so greatly. The important question is, how far he satisfied the Master in whose presence he tried to walk. This is not for us to decide; but at least we know that no influence, no persuasion, ever moved him to withdraw his help and countenance from the Bible Society, or to allow its work to be impeded in any way.

As for Clémence and Ivan, the Romanizing party had never possessed any attraction for the latter, while the former was gradually receding from the creed in which she had been brought up. But the conflict between the Evangelical and what was called the "Orthodox" party was of deep interest to them both. They went heartily along with Galitzin and his friends; Ivan was even sometimes tempted to go beyond them, and altogether to snap the cords that bound him to the national Church. The superstitious practices which prevail in the Eastern Church, as well as in that of the West, cost him many keen and bitter "searchings of heart." He was especially troubled about the adoration of saints and angels and of sacred pictures. Often did he talk upon these matters with Clémence, and earnestly did they pray that they might "perceive and know what things they ought to do."

Ivan's search after a pure form of faith might have led him further had not a bond, invisible yet most strong, held him to