of Tolstoy.

Priest objected to his name being associated with Tolstoy's.

A striking illustration of this was given, seven years ago, at the university of Dorpat, at the occasion of the celebration of its hundredth anniversary. In commemoration of that event the institution elected as honorary members of the corporation a number of Russians distinguished in literature, science and art, one of these was Tolstoy, another was Ivan, the miracle-working priest of Cronstadt, elected to allay the church's indignation at the choice of Tolstoy. Ivan, the priest, refused the honor, and in the following letter to the Rector of the University:

"Your Excellency—I have read your estimable and respectful letter to me, which is so full of subtle delicacy—I decline absolutely the honor of the membership to which I have been elected. I do not wish to become connected, in any way, with a corporation—however respectable and learned—which, by some lamentable misunderstanding, has put me side by side with that atheist Leo Tolstoy—the most malignant heretic of our unfortunate age—who, in presumption and arrogance, surpasses all previous heretics of any age. I do not wish to stand beside Antichrist. I am surprised furthermore, to see with what indifference the University Council regards that satanic author, and with what slavishness it burns incense to him."

IVAN SERGEIEF,
Prior and Archpriest of the Cronstadt Cathedral.

This letter tells of the attitude of the church towards Tolstoy better than any words of mine can tell. And this same Ivan, it is said, approved of the massacre of the petitioners of St. Petersburg on that memorable White Sunday, and when petitioned to protect the Jews against threatening massacres, treated the appeal with silent contempt.

Government hatred back of that of the church.

It is to be remembered, however, that over and back of the Church of Russia stands the government. The Czar is the head of the church. Whom the government favors the church favors; whom the government hates, the church hates. The church hated Tolstoy because the government hated him, and why it hated him we shall be told in the next discourse of this series.

My Visit to Tolstoy.
(Continued.)

A Discourse, at Temple Keneseth Israel,
by
Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, D. D.

Philadelphia, January 1st, 1911.

Government used church for discrediting Tolstoy.

Speaking in our last discourse of the church's excommunication of Tolstoy, and of its refusing a resting place to his remains in what she calls "consecrated ground," we said that the Czar is the spiritual as well as the temporal head of the Church of Russia, and that the hated of the church is yet more the hated of the government. This statement explains what otherwise is difficult to understand, namely, how so good a man as Tolstoy, who, for more than two score years, strove to square his life with the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, could have incurred the hatred of the Russian orthodox Church. The government had far more reason to hate Tolstoy than had the church. Finding it impolitic to proceed directly against him, it availed itself of the church for discrediting Tolstoy in the eyes of the credulous populace.

Before giving reason why.

Before entering upon a discussion as to why the government feared Tolstoy, we must first have a glimpse of his earlier years, and briefly follow his heroic self-extrication from the corruption of the aristocratic society into which he was born, and his gradual rise to the exalted station of greatest reformer in the history of Russia.

Must hear story of his life.

He was born eighty-two years ago of an ancient noble family. His childhood years were spent in the midst of the gay military life of Moscow. Yet more gay and more corrupt was the society that surrounded him during his university life. Experiencing a revulsion of feeling against the kind of life he was leading, he fled from the university before graduation, returned to his family estate at Yasnaya Polyana and took up the life of a farmer.

This impetuous flight, and a later one of which we shall hear presently, may throw some light upon his last flight, a few weeks ago, which came to a pathetic end, and of which we shall speak in our next discourse.

His early glory and shame.

Five years long he lived the life of a peasant, when a call to arms landed him on the battlefields of the Crimea, where he soon won distinction for heroic service. But the dissoluteness of campaign-life soon disclosed that the Tartar in him was not yet dead. He returned to the debaucheries of his former years, and, according to his own confession, with all the greater zest, because of the double glory that had come to him, that of a distinguished soldier and of a brilliant author. He had taken to story-writing, and displayed in it a talent that made success instantaneous. He became the lion of his day, and was courted by high and low. And the greater his glory the more unrestrained grew his libertinism.[1]

His reform.

But there were lucid intervals, now and then, during which he held up to himself the lofty ideals of his former peasant life, and bitterly he denounced himself, and even portrayed himself unsparingly in the character-sketches of some of his novels. His better self acquired mastery at last; he threw off the yoke that had held him fast to the corrupt society of his day, and for the second time he fled to his estate.

He himself told of the circumstance that led to that flight. He had attended a ball at the home of a prominent nobleman, and passed the night in dancing and feasting, leaving his peasant-coachman waiting for him outside, in an open sleigh, in a bitter cold night. When at four in the morning he wished to return home, he found the coachman seemingly frozen dead, and it required several hours of strenuous effort to restore him to consciousness and to save his life. "Why," he asked himself, "should I, a rich, young aristocrat, who has done nothing for society, spend the night amid warmth and luxuries and feastings, while this peasant who represents the class that has built our cities, given us our food and clothing and other necessities, be kept outside to freeze?" He resolved, then and there, to dedicate the remainder of his life to the righting of this and other wrongs. And he kept his promise.

How strong an impression this incident made upon him may be gathered from an indirect allusion to it, in his novel "Master and Man," published some two score years later.

Consecrates life to peasant.

It was discouraging work at first. The people whom he desired to benefit had no faith in him. They could not conceive of an aristocrat, to whom the serfs had been no more than worms to be trod upon, becoming suddenly interested in their welfare. There were long spells of utter disheartenment. A number of times he found himself at the brink of suicide. He sought relief and diversion in travel, but returned more convinced than ever of the corruptions and evils of society, of the tyranny of the classes and of the sufferings of the masses.

Marriage opened at last a new vista of life to him. Aided and stimulated by his cultured and companionable wife he entered upon his reform work by directing a powerful search-light on the goings-on among the high and the low,