replaced by the Asiatic religion--the man and the monarch who fathered
the first instrument of persecution in our Europe, who introduced into
our midst the crazed hounds of religious wars, unknown either in
Greece or Rome, Constantine, has been held up by Cardinal Newman as "a
pattern to all succeeding monarchs." Only an Englishman, a European,
infected with the malady of the East, could hold up the author of such
an edict,--an edict which prostitutes the State to the service of a
fad--as "a pattern."

If we asked for a modern illustration of what a church will do when it
has the power, there is the example of Russia. Russia is today
centuries behind the other European nations. She is the most
unfortunate, the most ignorant, the most poverty-pinched country, with
the most orthodox type of Christianity. What is the difference between
Greek Christianity, such as prevails in Russia, and American
Christianity! Only this: The Christian Church in Russia has both the
power and the opportunity to do things, while the Christian church in
America or in France has not. We must judge Christianity as a religion
by what it does in Russia, more than by what it does not do in France
or America. There was a time when the church did in France and in
England what it is doing now in Russia, which is a further
confirmation of the fact that a religion must be judged not by what it
pretends in its weakness, but by what it does when it can. In Russia,
the priest can tie a man's hands and feet and deliver him up to the
government; and it does so. In Protestant countries, the church, being
deprived of all its badges and prerogatives, is more modest and
humble. The poet Heine gives eloquent expression to this idea when he
says: "Religion comes begging to us, when it can no longer burn us."

There will be no revolution in Russia, nor even any radical