A Russian Moujik and His Family
So the altar is blown up after the priest has removed the image. The people are told it is a marvelous miracle and the church is crowded again, each peasant not forgetting to leave his copeck, half a cent, as he departs.
After the explosion, the student says, “I will go to the monastery and when the great crowds of peasants are coming out of the chapel I will tell them just how great a fraud the latest miracle is.” So he goes and tells the people how grossly the monks are deceiving them and that it was his plan that destroyed the altar. Do the people believe him? Oh, no. They believe what the priests tell them and they are so angry with the young informer for saying he blew up the altar and for trying to open their eyes that they kill him.
“But,” some one says, “we have been looking at and hearing only a play.” Yes, that is true, but it is a true play, for all you saw actually happened in Russia, and it is the deception of such monks that has made so many Russians hate the church and hate God.
You noticed how the audience leaned forward in their seats, each seeing in that picture his own story, the forces that drove him far from his fatherland. You also remember what the interpreter said at a great burst of applause, the greatest of the night, when we asked, “What was that for?” “Why,” said the interpreter, “you will be surprised to know what they are applauding. In reply to the question as to who was his most bitter enemy, the actor has just said, ‘My greatest enemy is God; through God and the church come all my troubles.’”
It is the duty and the privilege of the Christians of America to introduce these Russians to a true church, and to instruct them in the knowledge of the true God.