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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: little church could hold--about twenty people. They were all
well-to-do proprietors or merchants. Father Sergius admitted
anyone, but a selection was made by the monk in attendance and by
an assistant who was sent to the hermitage every day from the
monastery. A crowd of some eighty people--pilgrims and peasants,
and especially peasant-women--stood outside waiting for Father
Sergius to come out and bless them. Meanwhile he conducted the
service, but at the point at which he went out to the tomb of his
predecessor, he staggered and would have fallen had he not been
caught by a merchant standing behind him and by the monk acting
as deacon.
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