'Moreover, I am astounded that the Council burns incense to an author who is the personification of Satan.'

"Father John, of Cronstadt (Joann Sergieff), is known by name to almost every person in the Russian Empire. When he is expected at a railroad station or a house thousands of people gather to see him, and the words 'Father John is going to pass' are sufficient to cause the congregating of an immense crowd anywhere. He is the son of poor parents, and from very early years showed that he possessed remarkable powers. As a bachelor of theology he worked among the poor in the Russian capital, and in 1855 he was appointed Prothonotary of St Andrew's Cathedral, Cronstadt, which post he still holds."

Mr. Rumely and the liberalistic readers of the Globe will say immediately that Father John is a prejudiced critic, that no priest of the Catholic Church, Greek or Roman, is a proper judge of a man like Tolstoy. While I do not fully admit these strictures on the judgments of the priesthood, I know enough of the tendency of such judgments to the wholesale condemnation of any man who offends their ideas of strict orthodoxy, or who offends them personally—I know enough of such judgments not to accept them without reserve and various conditions, and I do not wholly accept Father John's condemnation of Tolstoy.

Please a priest and he is the best of friends, cross him and he is pretty sure to be a very savage and uncharitable enemy. Within the past two years an excellent priest, and a good friend of mine, in speaking of a fellow priest, used very much the language that Father John uses to define Tolstoy. In fact, having exhausted the ordinary epithets of condemnation, my friend said of his fellow priest: "Why, he is antichrist, the actual antichrist," which, as everybody knows, is supposed to be the basest incarnation of Satan that ever has come, or that ever can come, into the world. The priests of whom I am speaking knew each other well, and the names of both have often been in the newspapers. Both of them were my friends, and the one who used this strong language was most earnestly sincere. Within a twelvemonth from the time the words were used, and not without reason enough, the antichrist priest was signally honored with new titles by the Roman Hierarchy, and both of the "Fathers" are now doing very well. I do not think

resembling them will smile, enjoy themselves and pass on. There is little in common between the two classes.

I have known various representatives of the families of modern wealth and pleasure inside and outside the prevailing circles of our own four hundreds who, while admitting in the bitterness of their own experience the cool brutalities, debaucheries and unprincipled scoundrelisms of their own families and family connections, and while admitting again the prevailing bestialities of city and country life, still think and wish to teach and have taught the optimistic general theory that "there is more good than bad in the world," and who hold that such novelists as Tolstoy, Zola and Ouida are wrong, alike, on both these grounds, viz.:—First, that the bad is not as bad as said novelists describe it, and, second, that it is not best to describe it, any way.

I hold that the vices of the world are deeper, more subtle and all-sweeping in their corruptions than any novelist ever has described them or ever can, and that these very optimists themselves are full of the subtlest vices. At the same time I hold that they are not to be held up like carrion in novels or newspapers that are read by the millions of men, women and chiW dren, but that they are to be learned and known and condemned by those whose positions and lives give them the right and the power to know, to describe and to condemn the same.

As long as I thought of Tolstoy as a prophet of God, who taught and practiced the self-sacrifice inculcated by Jesus Christ. I held that he had a right to name and condemn the prevailing vices of his time.

I now hold that he neither understands nor practices the religion of Jesus; that he has always drawn false pictures of human life; that he never drew the right lessons either from the exalted heroisms or the degraded selfishnesses and iniquities of human life; that he has always been a false teacher of morals, not to be mentioned as a judge of art, and yet with certain good intentions and well-meaning moralizings; in a word, the most charitable definition I could give of him is that he is a sort of cross between Socialist and Anarchist, and I advise those American editors who are constantly bolstering him up and praising him "to tak a thot and mend"—Socialist in feeling, Anarchistic in thought and inconsistent in everything. I hold that, while the basic facts of the "Kreutzer Sonata" are

^in- -tn tnat Tolst°y has ever written against war

5 agree { eace. It is just as wrong to commit murder at d in favof °o{ the Major-General, Emperor, King or Presidictati°n aS a soldier or sailor, as it is for an Anarchist to

■ent, tbat ^der in his cl

mit 111 hist or any other murderer—it is simply condemn

that is> a -n his chosen way; but this is not apologizing

pron°unC f he globe Review he would have learned tieVe..{ul reader ral prosperous colonies of these people have that seve ^ community life in various estab

to tJJ*6 peon to tnc —

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Elkinton's record. Genuine Christian societies, these; having all goods in common, their own schools for their children, their own preachers, etc., etc. Long ago I pointed out the fact that these communities, with whom I have visited, were Russian Quakers and the most Christian portions of our great Amer; ican empire;—even as our Eastern Quakers have been, in many ways, the most Christian portion of the community in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey for the last two hundred years.

Tolstoy is a Doukhobor, with this exception, that he has never had the courage of his convictions. He has gazed over the walls into the promised land and has turned back, scared. He never has sold or parted with his goods or held them in common with any community. I do not blame him for this; I blame him for ever having pretended to do so. He has constant!} preached a mangled system of Christian faith; but has never been loyal to any church, Greek or Catholic, and has never had the heroism to live up to his own pretended convictions as to the wrongs of modern church or state in any way to make himself felt as the founder or defender of the inherent Quakerism of his own so-called teachings. In a word, he is far more of a charlatan and a hypocrite than he is a prophet of God or a reformer of any sort.

Many years ago I said to myself, "How is it that this man Tolstoy, who preaches against the organization of modern government, church and society, and by implication denounces marriage, preaches Socialism and the yielding up of one's selfish hold upon wives and real estate, still lives with his wife, has a large family of children, some fourteen, I believe, and holds on to his property all the while?" That is, I said to myself, "Why does he not practice what he preaches? Why does he not become a celibate and a downright Christian from that standpoint—I mean, not as to dogma, necessarily, but as to practice? Why not sell his goods and thus give them to the poor, or, at least, join a community where individual ownership is not known and then give to the poor, or take his family with him and still do something worthy of his community dreams?" If he likes the Middle-of-the-Roaders, let him become a hayseed in earnest, vote the straight ticket and take the consequences. I value no man's teachings who is not willing to stand by them.