When the night-bell
has rung and all are in their beds--the five hundred brethren, the
many lay workers, the hundreds of guests gathered from all parts of
Russia--the spirit of the monastery spreads itself out over all of
them and keeps them all warm. The whole monastery is a home, and all
those who are within are brothers and sisters.
V
Though Novy Afon is new, it is built upon an old site. There was a
Christian church there in the second and third centuries, but it was
destroyed by the Persian fire-worshippers; it was restored by the
Emperor Justinian, but destroyed once more by the Turks. So completely
did the Moslem take possession of the country that Christianity
entirely lapsed till the Russian monks sailed down there two years
before the Russo-Turkish war of 1877. Novy Afon is without Christian
traditions. It takes its stand completely in the new, and is part of
that Russian faith which has no past, but only a future. The third
century ruins of the cathedral and the Roman battlements are indeed of
great interest, and many people climb the two thousand feet high crag
to look out from the ancient watch-tower. But the attitude of the
monastery is well explained in the words of a monk:
"People come here to worship God, and we stand here as a witness of
God, to pray continually for the coming of the Kingdom, and to succour
those who come to us.
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