concentrated. When the reading was over, one of the hindmost, an old man, sighed deeply and crossed himself. This man, for certain, did not understand anything of the confused jargon in which the article was written, and which it is difficult to understand even for those who know how to talk this jargon themselves. He understood nothing of what was written in the article, but he understood that the matter concerned the great, the old sin from which all his ancestors had suffered and from which he also suffers; he understood that those who are committing this sin are becoming conscious of it. And having understood this, he mentally turned to God and crossed himself. In this one movement of this man’s hand there is more meaning and content than in all the prattle which now fills the columns of the papers. This man understands, as does the whole of the people, that the seizure of the land by those who do not cultivate it is a great sin, under which his ancestors physically suffered and perished, and under which he himself and his neighbours also physically suffer, while all the time those who have committed this sin and who are now committing it, spiritually suffer—and that this sin, like every sin—like, in his memory, the sin of serfdom—must inevitably come to an end. He knows and feels this, and therefore he cannot but turn to God at the thought of the approach of the solution.
VIII.
“Great social reforms,” says Mazzini, “always have been and will be the result of great religious movements.”
Such is the religious movement which is now pending for the Russian people, for all the Russian people, for the working classes deprived
