Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/409

Rh famous of all Russian monasteries. At first simply seeking for a retreat like St. Anthony in the desert, Cyril retired to the lonely shores of the White Lake; but his fame spread, and companions gathered about him peopling the solitude with lives dedicated to the service of religion. Here the traveller to-day sees a monastery of the first class, surrounded by two strong walls flanked by lofty towers, and armed with cannons. The enclosure contains two monasteries, a greater and a lesser. The greater monastery lies between the inner and the outer walls; it has nine churches built of stone. The lesser monastery is within the second wall. This monastery is said to possess the richest treasures of gold-embroidered and jewelled vestments in the empire. In earlier days it earned a more laudable reputation, for then it was a centre of missionary activity in still more remote regions. One of its offsprings is the Solovetsky Monastery, which is built on one of a cluster of islands lying out north of the bay of Onega in the White Sea, The island is inaccessible for nearly eight months of the year on account of ice-floes; but during the summer it is visited by crowds of pilgrims.

This monastery in its turn, long regarded as the northernmost outpost of the Russian Church, became a centre of missionary activity in Arctic regions. On a rocky island on Lake Loubensky, not far from Bielo-ozero, there lived a community of monks who were engaged in preaching the gospel to the Finnish tribe of the Chondes. The monk Lazarus founded a monastery on the shore of Lake Onega as a missionary centre for the conversion of the Laplanders, while the monks of Salaam on the neighbouring Lake Ladoga also evangelised these people. In the south and east, and throughout the greater part of her country, Russia was now down-trodden and distressed by a cruel, barbarous yoke. Yet we see these very years of her oppression to be the times of greatest activity in the extension of Christianity on her inhospitable borders out of reach of the Asiatic intruder. History has few more inspiring tales to tell than this record of the sweet