Three other places are served from Petrograd--Helsingfors, Narva, and
Schlusselberg. Helsingfors has a small community of girls engaged in
teaching and nursing, and the one Englishman who lives there with his
wife, a Mr. Reid, is a Professor of English in the Finn University.
One has to go there and return during the night, and during my day there
I had a Confirmation in the Art School, most carefully and reverently
prepared, and in the evening Mr. and Mrs. Reid had all the girls for a
reception, at which I was able to chat with them individually and speak
to them about the important and responsible trust they had in being
allowed to lay the foundations of character in young lives. At midnight
they were all on the station to say good-bye, bright English girls with
sparkling eyes and happy faces. Who could not go away deeply thankful
that they were not allowed to feel in that remote place that they were
forgotten by their Church?
Narva is a great manufacturing community with a large staff of
Englishmen, also a long journey away, and it so happens that they are
nearly all Nonconformists there, but they value our services, and
enjoyed mine with them, followed as it was by a special evening of music
and recitations, about sixty being present.
Schlusselberg is a large factory for printing cotton goods for Asia,
half a day's journey up the Neva, where we always have an evening
service followed by Holy Communion next morning. It is the only place I
have yet known where all the community, about forty, have been present
at the evening service, and next morning been _all_ present again as
communicants, but with one added to their number, a man who had been
away the night before.
Moscow has a church and parsonage and large courtyard, as will be seen
in the illustration; almost startlingly like, it seems in that ancient
capital, to a bit of a London suburb. But as I saw it on Christmas Eve
last year it was Russian enough, the great courtyard was full of
_troikas_ and sledges, and the clear air musical with tinkling bells as
the people came driving in from far and near, clad in warm furs, for the
service. That Christmas Eve, with its carols and the old hymns, helped
one to realize what it means to have an English church and clergyman in
a community like that of Moscow. The chaplain conducts all the services,
does all the work of the community, and visits over a large
neighbourhood outside, single-handed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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