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Page:George Lansbury - What I saw in Russia.pdf/77

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LENIN, BOLSHEVISM AND RELIGION
51


It may be said one swallow does not make a summer, but those of us who know the tremendous effect the work of Fathers Conrad Noel, James Adderly, Lewis Donaldson, Gobat, Widdrington, the late Canon Scott Holland and others, working through the Church Socialist League, has had on the English Church, may understand and appreciate the sort of influence Bishop Vladimir and his friends will have on the outlook of the Church in Russia. If Christianity is to live in that country, it must become the exponent of the new social order, and such it appears to me it will inevitably become.

The net result of all my conversations with people of varying opinions is to convince me that in Russia there is for everybody perfect freedom to worship God. No sect is favoured at the expense of another, no creed will be supported against another. Each and all are obliged to depend on the freewill offerings of disciples and friends. The cathedrals and churches remain sacred for the purposes for which they were erected. Those beautiful towers, one or two in number, injured during the revolution are to be repaired at the expense of the Government. It is the Church which must now make good. After centuries of sloth, during which her Bishops and leaders have been the servants, not of God but of the Czars, she is now free. In Moscow itself there