82 RUSSIA THEN AND NOW 



judiced, uncoloured view of things as I saw them. 

 I believe that the nobles of Russia are endeavour- 

 ing to maintain a kind, helpful paternal relation 

 toward the peasant class, irrespective of their 

 religious affiliations, and that in this respect they 

 are the peers of their fellow-Christians in any land. 

 They are struggling with the great civil and social 

 problems of the day in an earnest spirit of broad 

 Christian chanty. If their progress appears to 

 some to be dreadfully slow in comparison with 

 our own, we have but to remember the differ- 

 ence in our forms of government and the dangers 

 involved in sudden, radical political changes, 

 even when those changes are in the line of great 

 reforms. Let us remember the fate of Presi- 

 dents Lincoln and Garfield and McKinley, and 

 be still! 



We have reason for rejoicing in our constitutional 

 deliverance from a condition that was in violation 

 of the fundamental principles of our Declaration of 

 Independence ; so has Russia for her emancipation 

 of the serfs in 1861, and their deliverance from an 

 hierarchy, which means its people's deliverance 

 from a sectarian yoke and from ecclesiastical 

 domination. 



