LATE FATHER JOHN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2862, 20 January 1909, Page 19

LATE FATHER JOHN.

A VALUABLE ESTATE. t . LONDON, January 15. Father John, of Kronstadt, left £200,000. His library was found strewn with bank notes, while cheques were discovered among his books and manuscripts. Enormous gifts had been showered upon him during his lifetime, but be was indifferent to mon«y. I Of late little lias been heard of Father John of Krone tadt, who <L\ed at the beginning of the present month. A great hero of the people, be found himself in dire cross-currents when the revolution waxed strong. Ultimately, it seems, h© went altogether over to the reactionaries, for it was announced in a brief cablegram in 1906 :—" Father John of Kronstadt, in the presence of thousands of reactionaries at St. Petersburg, bleseed the banner of the Union of the Russian People (the Black Hundred). He denounced the Duma as an unhealthy growth." Yet a Duma has survived; Ministers like Premier gtplypin and >I. Lsvoisky (Foreign Affairs) make policy speeches to it in the modern, manner; and the new Russia — the ruling Russia— eeems to have little in common, with that which wished to acclaim thedeceased pHeet as ' The Messiah.' " A correspc-ndemt of The Times in one cf a series of articles on " Russia Revisited " sketches the power and the fall of Father John of Kronetadt. The correspondent writes : " When I was in Russia some years ago, Father John of Kronetadt, reputedl nivetie saint and thaumaturge, seemed to ba as popular and powerful "tJiwughout the Empire as even the Czar, and when revoluntary disorders broke out som« thought that he had bufr to ' speak the word only * in order to exorcise the demon of discontent by which the body politic warn possessed. : 1 have frequency met Father John since tb?n, in his own housa afc Kromstadt, in my rooms at St. Petersburg, when I had rooms there, and in sick chambers to which he had been called to offer what proved to <be ' the fervent effectual! prayer of a righteous man.' I have heard* him preach, and he always seemed to me to strive to substitute personal religion, fo 1 - a degmatic and ecclesiastical system. I have cVscusced with him his reputed] power as a worker of miraclee, ajid he invariably replied with simplicity and sincerity that man can do nothing, but that through man completely surrendered to God all things could be done by God". With such a creed a man may go far, and* must go far if he bae the qualities of a martyr sue well as those of a saint. I kiuew that Father John was of most deJicabe and sen-i»\e fibre j but I was not without hope that his m^eek and lowly temper would rice into firmness aiwl grandeur when popular passion or bureaucratic tyranny demanded that deep shoukl anewer unto deep. " But when the hour came I look«<J, and there was no man. On a previous occasion,, in connection with the Jewish. ' pogrom ' at Ki&himeff, Father John had! discovered the ' fatal disposition to funk a crisis,' and when great rioting broke oufc in Kronstadt, aoid all looked to him td" still tbe passions of tfoe mob, the priest of Kronstadt— fled. Up to that time, in spite of many calumnies, for which some oredenca had been won by his own indiscretions and the- greater indiscretions of h's friends, the influence of Father John had been, incalculable. From that moment the whole Empire turned against him as completely as Florence turned against Fra Giroilamp Savonarola when _ that priest andr his monks refused the ordeal by fire." An ideal snirit for both sexes— WOLFE'S &CKXAPP3T