“The people are permeated by the sense of the historical importance 
of the moment, and in matters of faith show a high degree of conservative 
instinct. Their part in the life of our Church is predominating. The soul 
of the people is steady and pure. Bolshevic church reforms do not stain 
it. While openly taking part in the life of the State, the people are at the 
same time jealously secretive in matters regarding their faith (which has 
now acquired a special reality). The good clergyman is rewarded for being 
spat on and jeered at, by the fender respect of his flock, which procures 
for him all necessaries of life, down to linen and galoshes. The fate of the 
Church is in good hands. You should not worry about religious differences 
and misunderstandings; they happen only on the surface and make us cling 
together more closely. Though there is no central administration in our midst, 
and any one may call himself a metropolitan bishop, no disturbances arise, 
the life of the parish flows on in a harmonious and orderly way. And not 
only the parish, but the whole mass of the orthodox people cling to one 
another and are deeply versed in all religious matters. Reputations are 
firmly made without the need of official approbation. In the remotest 
places of Russia there live ‘praying men’ to whom people flock.” 
These two statements — the letter from a bishop torn away from his 
flock, together with the one just cited — prove conclusively the unity of the 
Church; it is not only an institution or an organisation, — it is a great 
organism whose members are firmly joined together by the sense of 
anity of the Church. 
We may even go further and declare that religion in Russia is begin~ 
ning its triumphal march. “Life is still harder than it was 3 or 4 years 
ago, but we are no weaker”, — so said Russian priests and parishioners to 
a foreign friend of the Russian Church, who visited Russia last Summer. 
“We number 20 millions of persons who are active workers of the Church 
(not of the so-called “Living Church”, which is dying out!), whereas 
we counted only 6 millions three or four years ago.” This difference is 
explained not only by the growth of religious life, but also by the fact 
of people being much better informed about one another than thev were 
before. 
Workmen are beginning to take the side of the Church more and more 
often. Thus the Sormov workmen had the Metropolitan Bishop Sergius 
delivered from prison. In Ivanovo-Vosnesensk workmen out of their own 
humble savings had two churches built in place of those which communists 
had used for “cultural” aims, i. e., turning them into clubs and cinemas. 
Workmen from the Prokhorov Works, took a great part in the funeral 
procession at the burial of the Patriarch Tikhon; whom they had received 
with extraordinary pomp when, already sick, in the last vear of his life, 
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