VII
IN THE CHURCH
I have been much struck with the many ruins of
abbeys in England. There are many ruined abbeys
that seem to need comparatively little restoration
to make them great places of worship. Kirkstall
Abbey outside Leeds, for instance, is a grand pile
of stone, and has room for 1200 worshippers—but it
remains little more than a curiosity and a questionable
adornment of industrial Leeds. In Russia
there are no such ruins. Throughout the wide
stretch of Russia there is not a single Christian
ruin. Christianity does not tolerate ruins. Kirkstall
would never have been allowed to fall out of
Christian service unless a heathen power like
Turkey had gained possession of it. Russia, for
instance, in 1875, coming into possession of the
ruins of early Christian churches on the newly-acquired
Caucasian shore of the Black Sea, at once
set to work to restore them and to build new
churches on the old holy sites. Kirkstall was built
in 1152; it struck me, looking at it, that at their
best the Russians of to-day are not unlike the
