ORTHODOX CHURCH AND PRIESTS. 3° 7 



in that it regards the people merely as a means for its 

 own support and aggrandizement. The two are gigan- 

 tic Siamese twins, who wax fat and continue to grow 

 in power at the expense of the toiling millions of 

 peasantry, who live harder and enjoy less comfort than 

 any set of people whom the writer, who has been in 

 twenty-four countries, can call to mind, unless it be a 

 certain class of coolies in China. One loots them by 

 means of the tax-gatherer and the police, the other by 

 means of the priests, and by trading on their igno- 

 rance, which it encourages, and their superstitions, 

 which it is too lazy and indifferent to root out. And 

 while one forbids the victim to move even out of his 

 house into another without permission, or to escape 

 through any channel whatever, the other has the mon- 

 strous power to imprison or send to Siberia any one 

 who presumes to assist him out of the slough of igno- 

 rance and superstition that keeps him helpless. 



To convert a Russian peasant from the Greek 

 Church to any other branch of the Christian religion 

 is a penal offense, punishable by a long term of hard 

 labor in Siberia. If he is already a sectarian, the peas- 

 ant may remain so, subject to various humiliating 

 restrictions. What the Russian Greek Church de- 

 mands of the people is that they " keep quiet " and 

 do nothing. " Work and pay for masses and sacra- 

 ments ; give money to enrich churches, and buy can- 

 dles to burn before the ikons of the saints ; but don't 

 think ; don't read ; and, above all, make no move 

 toward worshiping God according to the dictates of 

 your own conscience, or you will be punished and 

 imprisoned." 



