The Russian masses will never believe that the return to the Church means the revival of political and social oppression. They never confuse the eternal principles on which the Church rests with the passing political or social conditions.

It was a source of inestimable comfort to the devoted that the people ardently responded to the Patriarch's call and by peaceful mass demonstrations of their religious sentiments largely succeeded in putting a stop to the open campaign started against the Church.

THE CHURCH PROBLEM IN THE UKRAINE

In connection with the Ukrainian separatist movement, a group of Ukrainian public men raised the question of the separation of the Church of the Ukraines from that of Russia. It was decided to summon a special Ukrainian Church Council. As Regional Councils are provided for by the organization of the Russian Church, the Moscow Sobor did not protest against the summoning of a Sobor at Kiev, and the Patriarch sent his representative to Kiev with a message of greeting.

While the civil war which broke out in Kiev interrupted the work of the Sobor, tendencies were disclosed of a more moderate character than those advocated by the supporters of a complete separation from the Russian Church.

In the midst of the trials besetting the Russian people, mainly through their own guilt, the Church proves its vitality. It is now reconstructing its outer forms, which had greatly deteriorated during the past from Orthodox Church order. But outward forms are not vital; inner life is of far greater import. That source of inner life never ran dry in the Russian Church, in spite of the numerous defects of its outward forms, for the deficiency of which it often compensated.

Let there be no misgiving; the Church has aided Russia in every crisis. The Church which even in the nineteenth century produced such shining lights as St. Seraphim of Sarov and Father John of Kronstadt, besides hosts of others, that Church is sure to foster and develop its inner life, now that better conditions of external organization are secured.

In the present moment of confusion in Russia the Church is the only institution which stands on its feet. May not the example of the Sobor well pave the way in due time for a similar triumphant reconstruction of the Russian body. politic?

L

IGHTHOUSES and other sea marks are as necessary for the safety of traffic on the sea as are signal lights for the protection of railway travel.

It is interesting to note that there are waterways which are operated much like railways. Thus portions of the Detroit and St. Marys rivers, which carry the enormous traffic between the Lakes, have practically been double-tracked by dredging and marking separate channels for up-bound and down-bound vessels, and in some narrow parts of this passage a block-system has recently been introduced, so that by means of semaphore

signals a vessel is prevented from passing until the preceding vessel has gone a safe distance. Similar systems are in use on important canals.

In normal times the shipping of the North Atlantic is operated on a doubletrack plan, with distinct lanes agreed upon for east-bound and west-bound vessels, and these lanes are for safety shifted to the southward during the iceberg season.

New York has a sort of four-track entrance from the sea, and of the four channels leading to the Narrows, the great Ambrose Channel is reserved for