the sculptures of the cathedral of which I have just spoken as the monument of the deliverance of Moscow, it is the execution of one and the same idea when the groups from Russian history alternate with scenes from the story of Joshua's entrance into Palestine, of Deborah encouraging Barak, of David returning from the slaughter of Goliath, of the coronation and the grandeur of Solomon."

The religious character of the Czar of Russia is thus described by Mr. Stanley:

"First is the Czar. In the West, as well as in the East, the frame-work of all religious and civil institutions was molded on the idea of a Holy Roman Empire succeeding to the Pagan Roman Empire of former times. But in the West this institution has signally failed, as in the East it has signally succeeded. Charlemagne was a much greater man than any of the Russian potentates before the time of Peter. His coronation by Leo was a much more striking coronation than any that has fallen to the lot even of the greatest Russian emperors. The theory of his empire was defended by Dante with far more genius and zeal than ever was the theory of the White Czar by any poet or philosopher of Russia. But, nevertheless, the Holy Roman Empire has faded away, while the new Cæsar of the Empire of Orthodoxy' still stands. In part, this dif ference is owing to the fundamental diversity of the Eastern and Western characters. In part, however, it was fostered by the peculiar circumstances of the Russian history, and obtained an importance in the Russian Church and Empire beyond what may be ascribed to the same tendency in other regions of the East. The very slowness of the growth of the institution indicates the depth of its roots in the national character and history. The transformation of the Grand Princes of Kieff, Vladimir, and Novgorod into the Czar of Muscovy, and of the Czar of Muscovy into the Emperor of all the Russias, was not the

work of a day or a century; it was the necessity of the long-sustained wars with Tartars, Poles, and Swedes; it was the craving for union among the several princes; it was the inheritance of the ceremonial of the Byzantine Empire, through the intermarriage of Ivan III with the daughter of the last Palæologus; it was the earnest desire for peace under one head, after the long wars of the Pretenders; it was the homogeneousness of the vast empire, uniting itself under one common ruler. The political position of the Czar or Emperor is not within our province, but his religious or ecclesiastical position transpires through the whole history of his Church. He is the father of the whole patriarchal community. The veneration for him was in the Middle Ages almost, it is said, as if he were Christ himself. The line of Grecian emperors, so it was said even by Orientals, had been stained with heresy and iconoclasm: never the line of the Orthodox Czars of Muscovy. He who blasphemes his Maker meets with forgiveness among men, but he who reviles the emperor is sure to lose his head.' God and the Prince will it; God and the Prince know it,' were the two arguments, moral and intellectual, against which there was no appeal. So live your Imperial Majesty, here is my head;' I have seen the laughing eyes of the Czar'-these were the usual expres sions of loyalty. He was the keeper of the keys and the body-servant of God. His coronation, even at the present time, is not a mere ceremony, but a historical event and solemn consecration. It is preceded by fasting and seelusion, and takes place in the most sacred church in Russia; the emperor, not as in the corresponding forms of European investiture, a passive recipient, but himself the principal figure in the whole scene; himself reciting aloud the confession of the orthodox faith; himself alone on his knees, amid the assembled multitude, offering up the prayer of intercession for the empire; himself placing his own crown with his own hands on his own head; himself entering through the sacred doors of the innermost sanetuary, and taking from the altar the elements of the bread

and wine, of which then and there, in virtue of his conse cration, he communicates with bishops, priests, and deacons. In every considerable church is placed a throne in front of the altar, as if in constant expectation of the sudden apparition of the sovereign. In every meeting, council, or college, is placed the sacred triangular mirror,'' the mirror of conscience,' as it is called, which represents the imperial presence, and solemnizes, as if by an actual consecration, the business to be transacted."

It is evident that a nation, whose religious and political life are so intimately blended, are capable of being profoundly moved, either for defense of their "sacred soil," or to recover the lost possessions of their Mother Church. Seventy millions of people thus penetrated by a deep religious sentiment, and directed by one who is at the same time their political and religious head, can not be permanently checked by any power in Europe.

Mr. Stanley's closing reflections upon the possible future of the Russian Church may well be pondered by Ameri

cans now:

"I have thus glanced at some of the leading characters of the modern Church of Russia, and of its existing tendencies. They will be enough to show that its inherent life has neither been choked by its own tenacity of ancient forms, nor strangled by the violence of Peter's changes. But what its future will be, who shall venture to conjecture? Will it be able now, in these its latter days, to cease from foreign imitations, Eastern or Western, and develop an original genius and spirit of its own? Will it venture, still retaining its elaborate forms of ritual, to use them as vehicles of true spiritual and moral edification for its people? Will it aspire, preserving the religious energy of its national faith, to turn that energy into the channel of practical social life, so as to cleanse, with overwhelming force, the corruption and vice of its higher ranks, the deceit and rude intemperance of its middle and lower classes?

The Russian clergy, as they recite the Nicene Creed in the communion, embrace each other with a fraternal kiss, in order to remind themselves and the congregation that the orthodox faith is never to be disjoined from apostolical charity. Is there a hope that this noble thought may be more adequately represented in their ecclesiastical development than it has been in ours? Will Russia exhibit to the world the sight of a Church and people understanding, receiving, fostering the progress of new ideas, foreign learning, free inquiry, not as the destruction, but as the fulfillment, of religious belief and devotion? Will the Churches of the West find that, in the greatest national Church now existing in the world, there is still a principle of life at work, at once more steadfast, more liberal, and more pacific than has hitherto been produced either by the uniformity of Rome or the sects of Protestantism?

"On the answer to these questions will depend the future history, not only of the Russian Church and Empire, but of Eastern Christendom, and, in a considerable measure, of Western Christendom also. The last word of Peter, struggling between life and death, was, as has been already described, Hereafter. What more awful sense the word may have expressed to him, we know not. Yet it is not beneath the solemnity of that hour to imagine that even then his thoughts leaped forward into the unknown future of his beloved Russia. And to us, however curious its past history, a far deeper interest is bound up in that one word, which we may, without fear, transfer from the expiring Emperor to the Empire and the Church which he had renewed-HEREAFTER.'"

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE RUSSIAN CHURCH MAY RECOVER THE EAST.

THE observations which have been made upon the Roman Catholic and Russian Churches will naturally suggest the inquiry, what would be the character of the religious influence which Russia would exert upon the East should her power be established there? Before attempting a direct reply to this question, there are some preliminary considerations which deserve attention.

Americans are yet in a position to weigh candidly the character and claims of Russia, and they can not fail to perceive that if she were fitted, in a religious point of view, to give Christianity to the regions around and to the east of the Hellespont, the Euxine, and the Caspian, then, in other respects, she is better prepared for this mission than any nation of Europe; and, unless some great change should occur in European politics, America is the only nation that could co-operate with her in that work.

In the religious aspect of this question it can not be denied that Russia has, beyond comparison, a larger interest in the population of the East than any other power, and that she wields over them already an influence greatly surpassing that of any other nation. Twelve millions of Greek Christians in Turkey sympathize with her in her faith and general policy, and regard her as their head. The population of Greece is similarly situated, though, from position, largely under European control.