I had never before heard the absolute quintessence of the Greek faith, in the opinion of the common people, so frankly expressed as by this man, and he must have known it in fact better than the Russians themselves, inasmuch as he belonged to the nation from whom the former have received their faith. Now, I preface my few remarks on the sects of the Russian church, by these opinions of the worthy captain on Christianity, the Trinity, and the three fingers, because they offer the only correct medium through which these sectarian differences can be viewed. As the v/hole religion of the Greco-Russians consists more in outward observance than that of any other people, the sects formed in the bosom of their church differ in no other respect than in forms ; and never in any variance of opinion respecting the natm-e of the divine being. No prophet has ever risen among them to reform the errors of their doctrine or form of worship. Some changes have undeniably taken place in the course of centuries, but they have been changes of manner, not of matter ; sects have arisen, not, however, from any yearning after newer and higher light, but from a stubborn clinging to the older forms. That such is really the case is sufficiently proved by their name " Staroverur (old-beHevers), under whicli name all the sects, said to be fifty in number, are included. Our dissenting sects might rather be called " weifj-behevers," as thev have sprung from the birth of new ideas.
Suyeff. who in the time of Catherine published some very Interesting notes of his travels in the interior of Russia, is of opinion that many of those sects are the offspring of the heathen times. In Tula he found a sect which practised many Indian superstitions, and denied the divinity of Christ ; he thought it might be the remains of an Indian commercial colony from tlie borders of the Caspian Sea, which had assumed some external semblance of Christianity, or some heathen protestants against the Christianity introduced by Vladimir, who to their old heathenish rites had superadded the Christian.
Some of those sects have priests, others not ; some choose their spiritual guides only among those persons who for some crime have been ejected from the ranks of the orthodox priesthood. Some build their churches one way, some another ; one never observes any fast, another prohibits fish
272 THE SECTS OF THE RUSSIAN CHURCH.
as a fast-dish. In short, differences in external forms are endless ; in the inward spirit there are none. There are some sects accused of hideous licentiousness in their doctrine and practice ; for example, one sect is said to resemble the Adamites in Bohemia, whose members live, with respect to marriage, as did the children of Adam. Another sect believe they perform a work grateful to God in sacrificing their manhood.
The hatred and contempt of these sects for one another, and the enmity between all of them and the orthodox church, are excessive ; and it is remarkable that the Russians, otherwise so tolerant, should be so very bitter in these dissensions with their brethren. The sectarians are the most so, at least the occasions of scandal that have arisen proceed almost exclusively from them. Tlie hatred of those sects who do not smoke, who do not eat fish, or who make the cross from right to left, against those who differ from them in these things, goes so far, that they not only spit in each other's faces, but hold it to be not only pardonable, but positively meritorious, to kill one of the obnoxious misbehevers. Whilst the orthodox Russian respects even a Lutheran church, some of these heretics hold any degree of outrage to be allowable in a consecrated place not consecrated to their own faith.