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No doubt the upkeep of this great establishment costs much; it does not “pay”—­the kingdom of God doesn’t really “pay.”  Much money has to be sent yearly to Novy Afon ... and yet probably not so very much.  In any case, it is all purely administered, for there are no bribe takers at the monastery.  For the rest, it must be remembered that they make their own clothes and tools, grow their own corn and fruits, and manufacture their own electric light.  They have the means of independence.

Such monasteries as Novy Afon are true institutions of Christianity; they do more for the real welfare of a people than much else on which immense sums of money are spent.  It is a matter of real charity and real hospitality both of hand and mind combined.  The great monastery sits there among the hills like some immense mother for all the rude, rough-handed tribes that live about.  In her love she sets an example.  By her open-handedness she makes her guests her own children; they learn of her.  Not only does she say with Christ her Master, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven,” but she makes of all those who come to her, be they fierce of aspect or bearded like the pard, her own children.  When the night-bell has rung and all are in their beds—­the five hundred brethren, the many lay workers, the hundreds of guests gathered from all parts of Russia—­the spirit of the monastery spreads itself out over all of them and keeps them all warm.  The whole monastery is a home, and all those who are within are brothers and sisters.

V

Though Novy Afon is new, it is built upon an old site.  There was a Christian church there in the second and third centuries, but it was destroyed by the Persian fire-worshippers; it was restored by the Emperor Justinian, but destroyed once more by the Turks.  So completely did the Moslem take possession of the country that Christianity entirely lapsed till the Russian monks sailed down there two years before the Russo-Turkish war of 1877.  Novy Afon is without Christian traditions.  It takes its stand completely in the new, and is part of that Russian faith which has no past, but only a future.  The third century ruins of the cathedral and the Roman battlements are indeed of great interest, and many people climb the two thousand feet high crag to look out from the ancient watch-tower.  But the attitude of the monastery is well explained in the words of a monk: 

“People come here to worship God, and we stand here as a witness of God, to pray continually for the coming of the Kingdom, and to succour those who come to us.  It would be a sign of disrespect to our church if people came here merely to see the ancient remains.”

I for my part, being of the old though also of the new, was eager to climb the steep stone way along which in ancient days had ridden crusaders and mediaeval warriors.  Great trees now grew through the rent wall of the cathedral, and slender birches grew straight up in the nave to the eternal roof which had supplanted that of time—­to heaven itself....