Nor was this the worst. All was not sunshine in the path of evangelical reform; and even the dissemination of the Word of truth did not seem to bring with it the unalloyed blessing that had at first been anticipated. On the contrary, there appeared to be some foundation for the gloomy forebodings of De Maistre, who, as a Roman Catholic, saw in the Bible Society only a means for overturning the whole ecclesiastical establishment of Russia. “Protestants on one side and Raskolniks[77] on the other,” said he, “are two files which saw the religion of the country at each end, and they must soon meet.” Everywhere the new wine was fermenting and threatening to rend the old bottles. Ignorant soldiers and peasants rushed into wild forms of fanatical dissent, or tore down and destroyed sacred pictures, justifying their acts out of the Russian Testaments their Czar himself had distributed amongst them. Photi, and other zealots of the Greek Church,--who had their own reasons for dreading the influx of evangelical light,--eagerly took advantage of these disorders, not only to denounce such men as Galitzin and Tourgenieff, “who defy us the heirs of the apostles,” but to ask the official head of the national Church whether he intended to stand by and see her torn to pieces, nay, himself to assist in the work of destruction? This was a question Alexander certainly could not answer in the affirmative. It is evident that he loved the Church of his fathers; that he thought her superstitions mere excrescences which might be removed without seriously endangering her fabric; that he believed her maintenance necessary to the welfare of his people; and that he knew there was nothing ready to replace her. Hence his course of action satisfied no one; he earned the envenomed abuse of the bigots of the Greek Church, who traced all the disorders of the country to the translation of the Bible and the education of the poor; while at the same time he did not quite fulfil the sanguine expectations of the friends of evangelical light and progress. But after all, this does not matter so greatly. The important question is, how far he satisfied the Master in whose presence he tried to walk. This is not for us to decide; but at least we know that no influence, no persuasion, ever moved him to withdraw his help and countenance from the Bible Society, or to allow its work to be impeded in any way.