Moscow who could speak English. I found
him not so much angry as hurt. He seemed
to feel humiliated that it should be possible for
anyone to think of religion as opium for the
people. So far as he was able to judge, the
men responsible for the statement—that is,
men like Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky and
others—were all honourable, clean living,
decent men, alienated from the Church in
what to him seemed quite an inconceivable
manner. Yet as we talked on, he himself
touched the core of the whole matter, when
with tears in his voice he admitted that in the
days of the Czar the Church was nothing more
than the handmaiden of autocracy and tyranny
of the worst description. She had failed in her
mission because she had been tied hand and
foot to the powers of the State, never daring
to raise a voice of protest against the infamies
of Siberia or the terrorist methods associated
with the dungeons of the fortress of Peter and
Paul. Now was the day of travail and sorrow
both for Russia and the Church. Perhaps
what there was of true religion would now be
able to find better expression because the
Church, no longer tied to Governments, could
with freedom deliver her message of peace and
brotherhood.
This priest was one of the sanest, fairest critics of the Government. When I asked him, “ Are you quite free to carry on the work
