RUSSIA'S RELIGIOUS IDEALS.
The Influence of the Bible. THE Greek Church can scarcely be called a Christian Church. The Russian common people have a religious nature, but no religious education. The Greek Church pastor is generally despised. The local political boss dictates what he should say. The common people look upon him as an obsequious, cringing agent of the government. As a moral teacher, he has little or no force in the community. This much must be said, that in every case where the Russian common people have had any opportunity to get at the real meaning of Christianity, they have been converted and shown marvelous insight into the practical elements of the Christian system. The Stundists are fine examples of the truth of this statement. In contact with some of the Protestant Germans, and with an open Bible in their hands, they made wonderful progress. Whatever Russia has in the way of Christian ideals she owes to the Stundists. No sooner had they "tasted of the good Word of God," and begun to rise into personal consciousness of duty, than a storm of persecution from the Greek Church broke upon them. They were driven out of that church for the simple reason that they insisted upon taking the Bible as their sufficient rule of faith and life. The Bible was introduced into Russia as early as 1857, and in the early sixties made a powerful impression. Not the Nihilists, not the terrorists, furnish the working basis of the ferment in Russia, but the Bible. The Bible even now is working, and is, in fact, the only hope of Russia. Among the Protestant sects that have grown up from the independent study of the Bible are the Molokhans and the Dukhoborzis. These independent sects, for no other reason than their faith, were driven by the Holy (?) Synod into the wilds of Siberia. The fact remains that the Russian nature, savage and barbarous as it is in its wild estate, responds to higher spiritual conceptions of the Christian system. We are all familiar with the story of Colonel Pashkoff, a commander of the Imperial Guards, a man of great wealth and of a distinguished family. He was converted while on a visit to England in a Methodist meeting. He went back to St. Petersburg and began to preach the Gospel, and in a short time the poor and despised of the whole city knew him and followed him. His palace was open to the poor. He founded hospitals, he went down into the slums, and in a few years thousands of Russians blessed his name. The Holy Synod could not stand that sort of social reform. His fine estates were confiscated. He was banished, and died of a broken heart in Paris in 1902. We cite these cases to show that all Russia needs to cure her terrorism, her Nihilism, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are not spinning a theory, but dealing with practical matters. Thousands of Russians are coming into this country, even into California, and settling upon the Pacific Coast. Our presiding elders and missionary authorities should lose no time in giving them the Bible and teaching them Protestant ideas of Christianity. It is estimated that Russia has at least two millions of Protestant Christians. These Christians are the hope, the only hope, of Russia. The Greek Church has exploited and miseducated the masses, until at last, in bitter, hopeless atheism, the wild Tartar in the Slav has turned upon his own land in a fit of desperation. When the czar comes to himself, shakes off the spell of probably the meanest and cruelest tyrant in all the world, Pobiedonosteff [head of the Russian Church], opens again the Bible, and withdraws the hand of persecution, then a decade will change the social and political status of all Russia.