The Henson Journals

[153]

Saturday, March 8th, 1930.

A very mild day, but growing colder at nightfall.

I made preparation for a sermon on the Russian Persecution by collecting the relevant facts so far as they are conveyed by the books that I possess. But the whole story of Russian Christianity is squalid and confused. It is impossible to deny that the Church in Russia had been the obsequious tool of the Czardom, and the consistent enemy of every form of freedom. I read the chapters on Russia in the Cambridge Modern History in order to rectify my general perspective, and then tried to piece together a coherent view of the present situation. It is evident to me that nothing is abnormal (i.e. other than medieval conditions and the Slavonic temperament can explain,) except the fact that the persecutors are also themselves the fanatical propagandists of a religion, viz. Marxist Atheism, and that they have at their disposal the ideas & methods of the XXth century. These are truly formidable factors, so formidable that they differentiate the persecution in Russia from all the persecutions of the past. Nor may we forget that the Persecutors have in the recent history of their Victims much that gives plausibility to their hypocritical pretence that they are not persecuting the Religion but rather suppressing Rebels.

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