9. Messiah, the Most High

10. Christ, Who Is God

11. Lord, help me!

12. Meeting the Elders

13. Where to go?

14. Handling

15. Where are your children, Father?

16. "I Remember Only from John, 1:1"

17. "I think it's good, son"

18. And then?

Afterword to the Russian edition

Chapter 1

Rev. Father Santos

Religion classes at St. John's College. Anthony was led by a priest who fought during the Spanish Civil War of 1936 and who once shook hands with Mussolini. In addition to these two characteristics, which are equally common to thousands of his contemporaries, Father Santos made efforts, I think in vain, to make religious lessons more enjoyable than usual. It was largely due to him that the texts of the college's religious books underwent profound changes in order to make the lessons more lively and immediate, but to no avail. Our religion classes were as hard as any other monk-run college of the day.

"Witnesses" of what?

On the one hand, religion consisted exclusively in piety, addressed mainly to Mary, which was strictly monitored by the ministers of the college in order to control the piety of the children. This caused a kind of unconscious insincerity, namely, a tendency to feign religious feelings, which might have helped to advance to the next grade, if only because of deep religiosity, if not because of academic success. On the other hand, the way the monks acted was questionable. Nothing bad could be said about them, and the quality of their teaching was remarkable, but they certainly did not represent the models of holiness by which we were supposed to live. Their legalism usually evoked more indifference than fervent enthusiasm for religious subjects.

Father Santos was a perfect example of all this. With unfailing persistence he tried to attract our attention, and with the same invariability he failed. The story of him, however, forms part of our history, for it was from him that I first heard about Jehovah's Witnesses.