Another slight episode which gave me food for reflection happened in the train on a small line between the town of Kharkov and a neighbouring village. I was going to the town of Kharkov for the day; it was only half an hour’s journey. I was in a third-class carriage; there were not many passengers, and most of them were railway guards off duty, two peasants, a soldier, and a monk. The monk had no sooner entered the carriage than he began a theological discussion. Now, as soon as the train started, although I was sitting quite close, I could not unfortunately follow the intricacies of his argument for the noise made by the train, but whenever the train stopped at a station his words were plain. And the drift of the matter was this: that all the passengers in the carriage were uniting to express to him in forcible language that priests in general, and monks still more (and himself in particular), were lazy, worthless, good-for-nothing scoundrels, and deceivers into the bargain. The soldier said, and his words received universal approval, that every one who was not a born fool knew that there was one God, the same for everybody, and that all men were equal before Him, and that consequently there could be only one real religious faith (namely, a belief in God), and that all the rest was the invention of priests. By “the rest” it subsequently became plain that he meant the Devil and the tenets of the Orthodox Church in general and of any other Churches. The monk, on the other hand, said that the Devil was intensely real, and that every man was followed by angels, who were constantly fighting the Devil for the soul of the man. Now, the soldier, and three guards off duty who were taking part in this discussion, starting from the premise that there is only one God, one faith which consists in the belief in this one God, and that all priests are liars, worried the monk with questions and attacked him in every possible manner. They accused him of begging in the first place; they would be ashamed of doing such a thing, they said. Then the soldier asked him if he had seen the Devil. The monk said, “Yes, often.” “Where is he?” said the soldier. “It would be most interesting to see him.” Then when the monk stood up for the Orthodox faith the soldier said: “You say it is the only faith. You lie, because I have been told there are any number of other Churches, and each of them says its faith is the true one. For instance, the Jews have an entirely different faith, and this proves that all priests are liars; because God is the same for everybody.”