erson, the loss of
the wife would be a calamity in more ways than one to the priest as is
apparent by the above statements.

While the religious beliefs and doctrines of the average peasant is only
used by him as a practical means toward an end, yet it must be admitted
that the Russian people are in a certain sense religious. They regularly
go to church on Sundays and Holy Days, of which there are countless
numbers, cross themselves repeatedly when they pass a church or Icon,
take the holy communion at stated seasons, rigorously abstain from
animal food, not only on Wednesdays and Fridays but also during Lent and
the other long fasts, make occasional pilgrimages to the holy shrines
and in a word fulfill carefully the ceremonial observance which they
suppose necessary for their salvation.

Of theology in its deeper sense the peasant has no intelligent
comprehension. For him the ceremonial part of religion suffices and he
has the most unbounded childlike confidence in the saving efficacy of
the rites which he practices.

Men of education and of great influence among the people were these
sad-faced priests, until the Bolsheviks came to undermine their power;
for the Bolsheviks have spared not the old Imperial government. The
church had been a potent organization for the Czar to strengthen his
sway throughout his far-reaching dominions and every priest was an
enlisted crusader of the Little Father. So the Bolsheviki, sweeping over
the country, have seized, first of all, upon these priests of Romanoff,
torturing them to death with hideous cruelty, if there be any truth in
stories, and finding vindictive delight in deriding sacred things and
violating holy places.

The moujik, ever susceptible to influence, has been quick to become
infected with this bacillus of agnosticism, and while he still professes
the faith and observes many of the forms as by habit, his fervor is
cooling and already is grown luke-warm. Now on Sundays, despite all of
the execrations of the priest, and the terrible threats of eternal
damnation, he often dozes the Sabbath away unperturbed on the stove; and
lets the women attend to the church going. Under Bolshevik rule Holy
Russia will be Agnostic Russia; and it is a pity, for religious teaching
was the guiding star of these poor people, and religious precepts, hard,
gloomy and dismal though they were, the foundation of the best in their
character.

Icons are pictorial, usually half length represent