H.G. Wells, on his recent visit to Russia, "abounds
in noble churches because the Italians are artists and architects, and a
church is an essential part of the old English social system, but Moscow
glitters with two thousand crosses because the people are organically
Christian. I feel in Russia that for the first time in my life I am in a
country where Christianity is alive. The people I saw crossing themselves
whenever they passed a church, the bearded men who kissed the relics in the
Church of the Assumption, the unkempt grave-eyed pilgrim, with his ragged
bundle on his back and his little tea-kettle slung in front of him, who was
standing quite still beside a pillar in the same church, have no parallels
in England." Mr. Rothay Reynolds, in his interesting and sympathetic book
_My Russian Year_, writes in much the same strain: "In Russia God and His
Mother, saints and angels, seem near; men rejoice or stand ashamed beneath
their gaze. The people of the land have made it a vast sanctuary, perfumed
with prayer and filled with the memories of heroes of the faith. Saints and
sinners, believers and infidels, are affected by its atmosphere; and so it
has come about that Russia is the land of lofty ideals." And Mr. Stephen
Graham, again, in his _Undiscovered Russia_, speaks with glowing admiration
of the Russian Church. "The Holy Church," he says, "is wonderful. It is the
only fervid living church in Europe. It lives by virtue of the people
who compose it. If the priests were wood, it would still be great. The
worshippers are always there with one accord. There are always strangers in
the churches, always pilgrims. God is the Word that writes all men brothers
in Russia and all women sisters. The fact behind that word is the fountain
of hospitality and friendship."

The religious aspect of Russian life has been dwelt upon at some length,
because it is the key to everything in Russia and has a direct bearing upon
the present war. "Religion in Russia," writes Mr. Maurice Baring, "is a
part of patriotism. The Russian considers that a man who is not Orthodox
is not a Russian. He divides humanity, roughly, into two categories--the
Orthodox and the heathen--just as the Greeks divided humanity into Greeks
and Barbarians. Not only is the Church of Russia a national church, owing
to the large part which the State, the Emperor, and the civil authority
play in it, but in Russia religion itself becomes a question of
nationality, nationalis