32 RUSSIA THEN AND NOW 



bring food to our people who are in hunger and have 

 no bread. We offer with all our heart our prayer to 

 God that you and your compatriots may, among other 

 great blessings, every season enjoy bountiful harvests. 

 May God give you a pleasant sojourn here, and guide 

 you safely home to your beloved land of philanthropy, 

 prosperity, and happiness. 



Notwithstanding the beautiful Christian spirit 

 of that Bishop's address, I cannot refrain from 

 quoting the following from a letter by Com- 

 missioner Blankenburg to the Philadephia Times, 

 March, 1892. 



It seems that the Russian Church has for its found- 

 ation stone wretchedness, ignorance, and superstition; 

 that to remove them would be to endanger the great 

 influence and absolute control which the priests now 

 wield. We see an object lesson of this statement on 

 every side; look at the villages with their miserable 

 huts, abodes not fit for even cattle to live in; their 

 dirty streets, wretchedness unspeakable, and then 

 behold the magnificent church building that rears its 

 proud steeples and fine cupolas in the midst of squalor 

 and want. The cost of all the huts and abodes in many 

 of these villages and almost every one has a church 

 cannot nearly approximate the cost of the church build- 

 ing alone ! If the priests would devote but one-half 

 of their labours to the furtherance of the things of this 

 world and the other half to that of the world to come, 



