RUSSIAN MISSIONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23000, 30 March 1938, Page 10

RUSSIAN MISSIONS

REV. F. J. MILES' WORK COMING TO NEW ZEALAND • [fbom our own correspondent] LONDON, March 12 The chief executive officer of an organisation which endeavours to provide for the religious needs of millions of Russians, both within and beyond the borders of the Soviet Union, the Rev. F. J. Miles, general secretary of the Russian Missionary Society, will visit New Zealand early next year. He will leave England in Juno to fulfil a lengthy programme of engagements in America, and subsequently will spend two months in the Dominion. He will confer with the New Zealand committee of the society and will give many public addresses. Before the war Mr. Miles spent 14 years in Baptist pastorates in Australia and was with _ the Australian forces in Egypt, Gallipoli, Sinai and France. His work for the Russian missions has taken him several times into Soviet territory, although he does not travel as secretary of the society. Ouv of 66 evangelists who were in touch with the society in Russia, only five are now in regular communication, said Mr. Miles in an interview. The others had been imprisoned, exiled, shot or otherwise silenced. Messages containing important information had to be sent by most elaborate and circuitous methods. Tho recently-intro-duced article providing for freedom for religious rights meant in fact very little because of the many restrictions which counteracted its effects. Although the work that could bo •done in Runsia was thus limited, the society was active among the 35,000,000 Russians in the independent countries formed after the Great War round the Baltic and as far south as Bessarabia. It also did a great deal of work among exiled Russian communities scattered over the globe from Harbin, Manchukuo, to South America. There were 80,000 Russians supporting two daily newspapers in Paris alone.