Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECOND CHAPTER. A Grave Consultation. With the departure of the ispravnik serenity vanished from the high forehead of the distinguished church dignitary. Instead of resuming his seat, the Archierey paced the length of his library up and down, his manner betraying an agitation hard to suppress. Stopping before a window which commanded a view of an orchard, he exclaimed in passionate grief, Great God, what madness possesses this world, designed to be an Eden of peace, worship and felicity, and turned by human folly into a bedlam of sin and sorrow! Crucified our God! This is the devil’s prevarication; if there be a connection between man’s crucifixion and human redemption, the sons of Judah bear the cross of untold agony in his name whom no power can crucify. Yea, and Russia, poor martyred Russia is being daily crucified. Crucified our God! Reason with insanity! What chords have I not touched to outreason sophistry, conquer prejudice, enlighten ignorance! Vain all endeavor; vain work of long, long years; vain the hope to dethrone darkness; vain, vain all subtlety, self-deceit?to reconcile the Synagogue with the Church, Israel with Edom! Image-worship is the curse; the ideal is dead in Russia. Under the iron heel thought has no scope, no future. Give manna to natures degraded, dehumanized! Ah, let them rave; it must be so willed on high for an end beyond human comprehension. The great fact of the moment must be faced. My brother, my brother in Samara. Till now a sphinx. What brought him hither? My family having rejected, my own, my dearest, my sweetest scorned the apostate?the apostate! Despondency come not near my heart. Thou sainted, blessed mother, an angel among the angels, thou knowest well the soul, the anguish of thy firstborn, thy ill-fated Isaiah. An apostate! The Archie…
