Note 5 — Chapter XVI · THE SIBERIAN CHURCH (continued).

The Russian priests labour under great social disadvantages. They are less instructed than what are called the “educated classes” of their countrymen, and so do not mingle with them on a social equality; and in many of the towns of the interior, intellectual affairs are on so low a level that the priest’s most intelligent companion is the schoolmaster, lately arrived perhaps from the capital with a smattering of neology. In one parish of which I know, the old priest said that the new schoolmaster had been telling him, among other like things, that it was not God who made the world, etc., etc., till the priest hardly knew what was right or otherwise. He could not think what a lay person could possibly find to preach about from a verse out of the Bible. This same priest, when recommended pastorally to visit his flock, said, “I never appear among my people except to ask for corn, milk, and eggs, and thus they hate the sight of me.” He had not even a Bible, and said he never possessed one.