of the April sun into the great ice barrier which binds together
the modern quays and the old granite fortress where lie the bones
of the Romanoff Czars.

This barrier is already weakened; it is widely decayed, in many
places thin, and everywhere treacherous; but it is, as a whole,
so broad, so crystallized about old boulders, so imbedded in
shallows, so wedged into crannies on either shore, that it is a
great danger. The waters from thousands of swollen streamlets
above are pressing behind it; wreckage and refuse are piling up
against it; every one knows that it must yield. But there is
danger that it may resist the pressure too long and break
suddenly, wrenching even the granite quays from their
foundations, bringing desolation to a vast population, and
leaving, after the subsidence of the flood, a widespread residue
of slime, a fertile breeding-bed for the germs of disease.


But the patient mujiks are doing the right thing. The barrier,
exposed more and more to the warmth of spring by the scores of
channels they are making, will break away gradually, and the
river will flow on beneficent and beautiful.

My work in this book is like that of the Russian mujik on the
Neva. I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical
truth into that decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches
the modern world to mediaeval conceptions of Christianity, and
which still lingers among us--a most serious barrier to religion
and morals, and a menace to the whole normal evolution of
society.