When God wants to speak to men, at the beginning He whispers, only when they don’t listen to Him does He throw rocks.

Proverb

Everything has fallen apart. Educated society has lost all understanding of what Christianity is. Every day I can see before my eyes the ongoing corruption of our clergy. There is no hope at all that they will come to reason or understand their condition. Everywhere among them there is drunkenness, debauchery, simony, extortion and secular interests. The last remaining believers are trembling with repugnance over the condition of their clergy. And there is no one to finally realise just what brink of destruction the Church is standing on or what is happening.

The opportune time was missed. A disease of the spirit has taken over the entire State organism. The moment of recovery cannot recur and the clergy is rushing headlong into an abyss, having no strength or desire to stop the process. Just one more year, just a little while, and there won’t even be any simple people left around us. They will all rise up and reject such insane and repulsive leaders. And what will happen to the State? It will perish along with us. It no longer makes any difference who is in the Synod, who is its Head, what seminaries and academies there are – our agony and death are near.

The future New Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) of Petrograd, 1910