since they share with others God’s most glorious gift to man—nature! “Russian monasteries also render a service to the people by their beautiful singing. The desire for music is not, as many people wrongly suppose, the privilege of the cultured circles. There are indeed many clever and well-educated people who do not care about music at all, while there are ignorant peasants who delight in it. You have only to go to the big Cathedral of the Alexander-Nevsky Lavra, at Christmas or Easter. At no concert will you see such beaming, happy faces. The people will stand for two or three hours, forgetting everything in the world but the delight of the soft dulcet tones of the choir. “In all poor countries, where general culture is not very advanced, monasteries give to the masses the silence, poetry and music, for which their souls unconsciously yearn. As soon, however, as a people grows prosperous, educates itself and finds its own distractions, the need for convents or monasteries disappears. Simple-minded folk imagine that the suppression of the religious orders means the decay of Christianity—but they forget that monasteries existed in India and in China, long before the birth of Christ. Christianity did not invent them, but the monasteries of the time gradually adopted the new faith. Actually, all such institutions are quite contrary to Christian ideals, for Christ’s teaching, above all else, enjoins activity. Much more in conformity with the Gospel are the modern religious working associations, with their hospitals, schools, and refuges, which are springing up everywhere now in place of the old convents. Their introduction into modern life is perfectly comprehensible. In addition to the nervous wrecks, there were also some healthy people who used to enter convents; people, indeed, whose superior spiritual health, so to speak, prompted them to consider the happiness of others, before their own. Such monks and nuns as these were not content to do nothing but fast and pray, but invented occupations for themselves. Some founded schools and colleges, others nursed the sick, others again became missionaries in foreign lands. They wore the prescribed attire of their orders, but in all other respects they lived in the world as before, loving and helping their neighbours, and sharing the interests and joys and sorrows of their fellow-creatures. It is this healthy class of monastics, that is now, after the suppression of the old institutions, hastening to found new ones, more in keeping with the needs of our times. Such charitable associations have sprung up in large numbers also in Russia—God speed them! But institutions of that kind will never attract people like you, Irene Pavlovna!” “Why not?” “Because you are _ill_, and your illness makes the old convents, with their mysticism and their mysteries and their sleeping existence somewhere between earth and heaven, far more attractive to you.”