professions, which sometimes seem like sincere professions, one is
ready to doubt whether the churches can be antagonistic to
Christianity. "It cannot be," one says, "that these people who
can point to such men as Chrysostom, Fenelon, Butler, and others
professing the Christian faith, were antagonistic to
Christianity." One is tempted to say, "The churches may have
strayed away from Christianity, they may be in error, but they
cannot be hostile to it." But we must look to the fruit to judge
the tree, as Christ taught c us. And if we see that their fruits
were evil, that the results of their activity were antagonistic to
Christianity, we cannot but admit that however good the men were--
the work of the Church in which these men took part was not
Christian. The goodness and worth of these men who served the
churches was the goodness and worth of the men, and not of the
institution they served. All the good men, such as Francis of
Assisi, and Francis of Sales, our Tihon Zadonsky, Thomas a Kempis,
and others, were good men in spite of their serving an institution
hostile to Christianity, and they would have been still better if
they had not been under the influence of the error which they were
serving.

But why should we speak of the past and judge from the past, which
may have been misrepresented and misunderstood by us? The
churches, with their principles and their practice, are not a
thing of the past. The churches are before us to-day, and we can
judge of them to some purpose by their practical activity, their
influence on men.

What is the practical work of the churches to-day? What is their
influence upon men? What is done by the churches among us, among