The passport system in Russia is an admirable and comprehensive one, and as soon as a Hebrew Christian abandons his Faith and returns to Judaism, he is required by law to report it at once to the local authority, in order that his passport may be altered; and on his doing so a notice is at once dispatched to our chaplain at Warsaw that a pen is to be drawn through his name in the baptismal register. It was painfully affecting to turn over the pages of that register, and see those ominous-looking lines drawn from top to bottom of various entries. One could not see anything like it anywhere else, I suppose. It carried the mind back to the early days of the Faith, and to that sad class known as the _lapsi_ ("lapsed"); to the lament over Demas, who had forsaken S. Paul and gone back to the world; and to such promises as "I will not blot out his name from the book of life." There is much in the work at Warsaw to take one back thus in spirit to the days of the Apostles. One felt it a little at the Confirmation itself, when saying the sentence which accompanies the laying on of hands, first in German for the young Jew, and then in English for the girl who followed him; but most of all on the Sunday evening, when the services of the day in the little chapel were all over, and everything was quiet. That is the time always given to "inquirers"; and they came one after another, that first Sunday of mine at Warsaw, stealing in, just as Nicodemus came by night and for the same reason, sometimes singly, sometimes husband and wife together, and sometimes a whole family--the children going off to join the chaplain's children, while the parents came to us. When the room in time was quite full we began by singing a few hymns in German, after which the chaplain prayed for guidance and the sense of God's presence; and then a most interesting time followed. He took the holy Gospel for the day, every one reading a verse in turn--in German--during which questions were encouraged if the literal meaning of the verse was not clear.