year it was known in Moscow that the French were
advancing on the city, the people wished the Metropolitan to take the
Iberian Madonna, which may still be seen near one of the gates of the
Kremlin, and to lead them out armed with hatchets against the enemy.

If the Russian priests have done little to advance popular education,
they have at least never intentionally opposed it. Unlike their Roman
Catholic brethren, they do not hold that "a little learning is a
dangerous thing," and do not fear that faith may be endangered by
knowledge. Indeed, it is a remarkable fact that the Russian Church
regards with profound apathy those various intellectual movements which
cause serious alarm to many thoughtful Christians in Western Europe. It
considers religion as something so entirely apart that its votaries
do not feel the necessity of bringing their theological beliefs into
logical harmony with their scientific conceptions. A man may remain a
good orthodox Christian long after he has adopted scientific opinions
irreconcilable with Eastern Orthodoxy, or, indeed, with dogmatic
Christianity of any kind. In the confessional the priest never seeks to
ferret out heretical opinions; and I can recall no instance in
Russian history of a man being burnt at the stake on the demand of the
ecclesiastical authorities, as so often happened in the Roman Catholic
world, for his scientific views. This tolerance proceeds partly, no
doubt, from the fact that the Eastern Church in general, and the
Russian Church in particular, have remained for centuries in a kind of
intellectual torpor. Even such a fervent orthodox Christian as the late
Ivan Aksakof perceived this absence of healthy vitality, and he did
not hesitate to declare his conviction that, "neither the Russian nor the
Slavonic world will be resuscitated . . . so long as the Church remains
in such lifelessness (mertvennost'), which is not a matter of chance,
but the legitimate fruit of some organic defect."*

* Solovyoff, "Otcherki ig istorii Russkoi Literaturi XIX.
veka." St. Petersburg, 1903, p. 269.

Though the unsatisfactory condition of the parochial clergy is generally
recognised by the educated classes, very few people take the trouble
to consider seriously how it might be improved. During the Reform
enthusiasm which raged for some years after the Crimean War
ecclesiastical affairs were entirely overlooked. Many of the reformers
of those days were so very "advanced" that