t really "pay." Much money has to
be sent yearly to Novy Afon ... and yet probably not so very much. In
any case, it is all purely administered, for there are no bribe takers
at the monastery. For the rest, it must be remembered that they make
their own clothes and tools, grow their own corn and fruits, and
manufacture their own electric light. They have the means of
independence.

Such monasteries as Novy Afon are true institutions of Christianity;
they do more for the real welfare of a people than much else on which
immense sums of money are spent. It is a matter of real charity and
real hospitality both of hand and mind combined. The great monastery
sits there among the hills like some immense mother for all the rude,
rough-handed tribes that live about. In her love she sets an example.
By her open-handedness she makes her guests her own children; they
learn of her. Not only does she say with Christ her Master, "Suffer
the little children to come unto Me, for of such is the kingdom of
heaven," but she makes of all those who come to her, be they fierce of
aspect or bearded like the pard, her own children. When the night-bell
has rung and all are in their beds--the five hundred brethren, the
many lay workers, the hundreds of guests gathered from all parts of
Russia--the spirit of the monastery spreads itself out over all of
them and keeps them all warm. The whole monastery is a home, and all
those who are within are brothers and sisters.

V

Though Novy Afon is new, it is built upon an old site. There was a
Christian church there in the second and third centuries, but it was
destroyed by the Persian fire-worshippers; it was restored by the
Emperor Justinian, but destroyed once more by the Turks. So completely
did the Moslem take possession of the country that Christianity
entirely lapsed till the Russian monks sailed down there two years
before the Russo-Turkish war of 1877. Novy Afon is without Christian
traditions. It takes its stand completely in the new, and is part of
that Russian faith which has no past, but only a future. The third
century ruins of the cathedral and the Roman battlements are indeed of
great interest, and many people climb the two thousand feet high crag
to look out from the ancient watch-tower. But the attitude of the
monastery is well explained in the words of a monk:

"People come here to worship God, and we stand here as a witness of
God, to pray continually for the coming of the Kingd