an evening
service followed by Holy Communion next morning. It is the only place I
have yet known where all the community, about forty, have been present
at the evening service, and next morning been _all_ present again as
communicants, but with one added to their number, a man who had been
away the night before.
Moscow has a church and parsonage and large courtyard, as will be seen
in the illustration; almost startlingly like, it seems in that ancient
capital, to a bit of a London suburb. But as I saw it on Christmas Eve
last year it was Russian enough, the great courtyard was full of
_troikas_ and sledges, and the clear air musical with tinkling bells as
the people came driving in from far and near, clad in warm furs, for the
service. That Christmas Eve, with its carols and the old hymns, helped
one to realize what it means to have an English church and clergyman in
a community like that of Moscow. The chaplain conducts all the services,
does all the work of the community, and visits over a large
neighbourhood outside, single-handed.
Warsaw is the next capital to take, much before us of late, and perhaps
with a great place yet to fill in future history. It is the centre of
Christian work amongst the Russian Jews, as I shall have to explain more
at length in my next chapter; but there is also a British community to
whom the chaplain ministers, and which perhaps numbers, all told, about
a hundred, with one or two outlying places reckoned in. The service I
remember most at Warsaw, and shall always associate with it, was the
dedication or consecration--the two abroad mean the same thing--of their
church. We had it on a Sunday morning, with a very large congregation,
and very impressive it was to take, so far away, as our little copies of
the service told us, "The Order of Consecration as used in the Diocese
of London." There were some Old Catholics present, and they were deeply
impressed with the scriptural character of a service which carried us
back to the days of David and Solomon. I dare say it was true of all
there, as one of them said, that they had never seen the consecration of
a church of their own before, and had had to come to Russia for it when
they did.
We have only two other places in our jurisdiction--as the shores of the
Black Sea fall to the Diocese of Gibraltar--Libau and Riga.
Libau is a Baltic port in Courland, a German-speaking place, where there
is an extremely small British community, but w
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