Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/256

234 Christian bells, choric with Christian psalms; the next year all was desolation, and when an ancient hermit missed by the Arabs came to Nitria he found not one human being there, and he lived amongst the ruins of monasteries and chapels as if the place were the remotest and most solitary in which a world-forsaker could dwell. In its turn, also, Constantinople fell, and the Hellespont and Bosphorus, the issue to Russia, became Mohammedan. Eastern Christianity receded to Greece, was shut away in Russia. And Greece and Russia, and especially Russia, have preserved the direct traditions of the early Church and what Christianity originally meant. With them has remained the spiritual fervour of the hermits.