The educated Russian, says a recent writer, may be dismissed from the subject of religion. As a class they represent the extreme section of atheism, free thought and the advanced theories of the age. And those who bow their heads before churches and ikons, one half do it as a matter of policy and because it is much easier to go with the crowd than to oppose it. Apart from the exaltation fringe the monks of the Russian people are pressing through much the same moral and religious transformation that Western Europe passed through in the middle ages.

St. Nicholas is the favorite saint among the peasants. His ikon is found in nearly every peasant's house. It consists of a small picture of the saint, a figure holding in one hand a church and in the other a sword, set in a deep frame, gaudily decorated with brass, silver, tinsel, or wax flowers. His creed is largely composed of superstitions and demonology. To him the ikon is holy, a mysterious, living thing representing the saint after whom it is patterned, not only in form, but in spirit and power. Before it he burns tapers, and keeps and continually crosses himself when coming into its presence or passing it.

In every house, office and place of business, from the altar of the church to the humblest abode, these ikons are found, and the first thing to be done in their presence is to make the sign of the cross, as no.business can be done without first recognizing and appeasing these saints. He believes that the souls of his ancestors and of any member of the family who has died are hiding behind the ikons, and food purchased from the monks is often placed before these ikons for the use of the departed. They fear to be too familiar with the village priest, lest they offend the old pagan gods, who have now taken the form of mischievous and malignant spirits. To appease the two and protect themselves from both they are constantly making the sign of the cross and burning candles and tapers before their protecting saints.

Perun was the ancient pagan god of thunder. St. Elias is now the peasants' "clerk of the weather." To Perun, the pigeon was consecrated in pagan times, and is still preserved and never harmed or eaten by the peasants. They have somehow associated this bird with the third person of the Trinity, which the majority of the peasants believe to be St. Nicholas. They still believe that the world rests on the back

of three whales, or turtles, in the ocean. They are full believers in witchcraft, and tenaciously hold to many of the old pagan traditions. Crosses are chalked or painted on the doors of the cow stables to keep the witches out. Crosses are seen on the ceilings of inns, houses, homes and churches, everywhere, and the people make the sign of the cross at well nigh every turn, and at every act performed. And all this and vastly more in "holy Russia; Russia, the orthodox; Russia, the home, and champion, and defender of the only true Christian religion," as its subjects are wont to say.

One is tempted to ask if this be the results of eleven centuries of the orthodox, the only true Christian religion, what more could infidelity and heretics produce?

The truth is, the orthodox Russian church is the most stupendous monopoly and fraud now imposed through forms of law upon a long suffering people.

The most striking characteristic of the Russians, says Stevens, is their suspicious nature. But this is the result of their laws, or the execution of them. We see what a fraud and deformity is given them in the orthodox church for Christianity, the noblest of religions, and while many of the laws of the land are all that could be desired; yet, in their execution, they are most unequal and oppressive, and the results exceedingly unsatisfactory. She holds out to her hungry subjects golden apples which always prove ashes to the taste. No wonder her people are debased, depraved and suspicious; how could they be otherwise? The only apparent relief, it would seem, is education, and a separation of the religious and civil forces of government. But this cannot be permitted, as that would speedily overthrow those in power and entirely revolutionize the present form of government.

There are, of course, some colleges and universities, but they are all under a most rigid system of espionage and surveillance to the governing powers, and in the country there is no system of education that is of any importance as materially changing the character and quality of the peasants.

In the Russian there is no point of attack for a higher civilization and spiritual life. He is ignorant, superstitious, idolatrous and debauched with sensualism, the result of almost universal drunkenness. The very citadel of Russian soul and national life seems closed and barred to every redeeming influence and ray of hope and life.

Even the highest civilizations in the religious world have nothing better than Christianity to offer. The priesthood meet this with the statement that for eleven centuries or more "they have been the champions and defenders of the only true Christian religion." It were vain to exhibit to them freedom, literary, scientific and commercial attainments, as the result of Christian influences. They always attribute such achievements to other causes; for is not his "the only true Christian religion?" They have no ideals to pattern after, no exalted conceptions of an extended and honorably conducted commerce, no knowledge of historical and passing events of world-wide importance among the masses of the people, while the benevolence of the civil, military and religious despots never contemplates or cares to investigate any question that may possibly effect the permanency and stability of the tenure of their official positions.

It were vain to hold up to their view laws that make for a higher civilization, for their laws in the main are good. The difficulty seems to be in the manner of, or failure of their execution, and in the structure of their government. They seem to have reached the climax of deceit and treachery. In theory the most Christian, in practice the most Satanic. In government, fair laws with the most tyrannic and despotic methods in their administration and execution.

Altruistic forces are more effectually debarred from affecting Russian life than if the Chinese wall surrounded them. They seldom travel, and except in their large cities, see and touch any than Russian life and thought. Owing to the prevailing ignorance, the great world of literature is forever closed to the vast majority of the people. There is, therefore, no intelligent thought or dormant forces that could be organized for relief outside of the civil, military and religious forces now in power. Nothing but a rupture between these three forces can promise any relief, and there is scarcely a possibility for such a rupture. They have worked together too long, and absolute power is too great a luxury in this age to put its continued use in jeopardy.

In the Russian thought-life of to-day there seem absent and wanting; imagination, that rarest and noblest faculty of the human race; that power which alone creates worlds and planes of exalted life and experience, fixing its own environments and limitations; that Godlike efficiency of the mind

and soul which makes present and real the most noble and exalted conceptions of the holy, the pure and the beautiful, which lay far away in the invisible distant future, and the unexplored infinite; that divine gift which transforms idealism into the real, throbbing, vital experiences of the present, and which enables its possessor to anticipate the future life, along lines of possible experience, and to see and realize the present in the white light of the future. Could this grandest gift of the Godlike in man; this culmination of natural forces and cultured powers, which grasps the most beautiful and noblest ideals, and compels them to yield to this present life the stores of enchanting beauty garnered for the distant future, eons of time, bestow somewhat of its exalting energy and uplifting power upon the poor benighted Russians, it might be different.

If there were any responsive power in the peasants, the Nihilists, aided by altruistic influence, might hope in time to overthrow the present established order of government and build thereon a republic and a free church. But until some method can be devised, in spite of the most vigilant opposition of the government and the priests, to enlighten and lift up the peasants, all hopes for a new and noble Russia would seem futile and impossible of realization.

XV.

REVIVAL OF GERMAN LITERATURE UNDER FREDERICK THE GREAT.

It is probably expected in the opening of the program on German authors and literature, that something should be said on the characteristics of the nation, of its peculiarities of thought and expression as found in its authors, and their expositions of national life.

It is unfortunate for this purpose, that the writer is not a German, for no one can be thoroughly informed of the actual thought life of any people, whose language he does not understand, and who is dependent upon the uncertainties of translations for the expressions of the real thought life of a foreign people.

Every nation that has a distinct language has its own peculiar thought life, and no one not a native born can enter into and fully appreciate and understand the finer shades and expressions of the national thought life. We may meet and mingle with a foreign people; may buy and sell with them in the material affairs of commerce; may understand their systems of trade and finance; may eat of their fruits and drink of their vintage; wear their fabrics and fully understand the topography of their country, and how to travel, eat and sleep and amuse ourselves; and understand their systems of government, and of worship; know something of their music and art, and yet know little of their real thought life. Because we only see the outward expression of the ruder forms of that which is purely materialistic. The vast realm of real life, the highest and best thought, that of the emotions of the soul, the,spiritual and the imaginative, never finds any satisfactory expression in purely material forms. Poverty of expression of the emotional, the spiritual and the