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Rev. Elias ’Newman 225
P^r centuries Russia has groaned under the despotism of which the
average American can Mve no conception. It is not strange that
when, without warning, she found herself freed from its bonds she
should stagger uncertainly, not knowing where to turn. The imme-
diate future will see faction striving against faction, party fighting
against party. No one who knows Russia will dare to prophecy what
the result will be; but the ultimate end will be for the good of the
country just as in the case of the French Revolution.
It will take time for Russia to realize what she wants. There is
no cohesion, no common ideal to inspire her people. She is conscious
of having killed a dragon; that is all. The workmen remember their
long hours and insufficient pay; the soldiers, their harsh treatment
and their miserable pittance of little more than two cents a week.
The returned exiles look at their wasted farms and the lost years
of their life spent in Siberia; the Jews remember the pogroms in
which multitudes of their race were brutally murdered. The social-
ists think of the rights of man and how little they have seen of
them in the past; the Nihilists, Royalists and police have a common
aspiration—blood.
With all these worrying factors at work in Russia today the future
seems overcast, but she will work out her own destiny just as other
countries have done.
What is the duty of evangelical Christians to Russia and her nearly
two hundred millions of people, at the present time? Before the
war the cultured classes of Russia were saturated with the hell-born
philosophy of Nietsche. The students in the universities were eager
readers of his writings. And among the poorer and ignorant classes
we find the most devoted disciples of Karl Marx, earnest and zealous
anarchists who aim at the overthrow of all faith and religion as
well as law and order.
We have a great debt to pay, to take the Gospel to this neglected
people, to follow up the pioneer efforts of Baedeker and Radstock.
Protestantism has a duty toward the Greek Church as she has to all
systems that contain error. It is the proclamation of the free and
pure Gospel of Jesus Christ which delivers from every bondage^
ecclesiastical or political.
J
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