THE RUSSIAN CHURCH.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 7403, 6 March 1903, Page 4

THE RUSSIAN CHURCH.

The I'huri'h from which Tolstoi was driven forth, cut oil from tin , rest of its 70,000,000 adliorenlH, has a "capital" of £5,000,000, and a revenue of £1,000,000 a year, and its acts mean much to the Russian peasantry. It has over 50,000 (■burche.s and chapels, over 250,000 clergy of all ranks, and 45,000 singers; while in a recent year its monasteries and convents had 12,000 monks and nuns, with nearly twice sis many "aspirants." It is a great landed proprietor, with IiO.OOO square .nilcs of land, embracing several towns, and with inns, shopH, and printing establishments of its own. lint it has little freedom. The State, which subsidisen it to the extent of .£40,000 a year, has the oversight of tbe church, controlling , and appointing its bishops, administering its estates, and dealing with the questions of heresy and scliism, marriage and divorce. These powers rest with the Holy Synod, com posed of the cliief men in the church, with Joannikus, the Me opolitnn oi' Kieff, as president; hut the Holy Synod is the creation of tbe .State, dating from the time when the great Czar Peter abolished the Patriarchate and struck terror to the hearts of the bishops by his fierce tinsertlon of authority over them. "Give us a Patriarch," they asked, and, striking the table with his cutlass and his breast with his hand. Czar Peter cried: "Here, hero is your Patriarch."