re of others,
are closely connected by the bonds of commerce: can it be wondered
at if the ideas of the peasant become tinted by his surroundings?

It cannot be gainsaid that the lifelessness and emptiness of the
State Church, with its hireling and often ignorant priesthood,
fails to satisfy the great mind of Russia--the peasant mind--but
now awakening from its long infant slumber, as did the mind of
Western Europe three centuries ago. Next perhaps to the extreme
literalness with which the Mujik interprets Holy Writ, this
dissatisfaction with the official Church is the greatest cause of
the grip which the chameleon-like "dissent" has taken hold of the
popular mind. With very few exceptions--notably the Skoptsy--the
150 sects which are stated to exist within the pale of Christianity
and the borders of the Empire of the Tsar, begin and end with the
Mujik; the official world is of necessity Orthodox, the wealthy
world careless, and this fact, of the peasant origin and development
of the denominations, must be carefully borne in mind when attempting
to form any idea of the widely different meanings and shades of
meaning which have been put upon the one Bible story.

Of the strictly rational, and more or less Protestant, portion
of Russian dissent, the Dukhobortsy, or "Wrestlers with the Holy
Spirit," and their descendants in the faith, the Molokans, or "Milk
Drinkers," are perhaps the best known to us, from the fact of their
having emigrated to English-speaking lands, and from the valiant
championing of their cause by Count L. D. Tolstoi. They form the
antithesis of the Old Believers, as is well set forth in the
conversation between A. Leroy-Beauleau (in the _Empire of the Tsars_)
and a fisherman of the persuasion, who said, "The Raskolniks would
go to the block for the sign of the Cross with two fingers. As
for us, we don't cross ourselves at all, either with two fingers
or with three, but we strive to gain a better knowledge of God";
and, indeed, his words may stand for a declaration of the simple
faith of his people, for their worship is marked by a deep contempt
for tradition, dogma, and ceremony. They have even done away with
the church, and, as a rule, use the house of their elders as a
meeting-place. Communion has been simplified away, marriage reduced
to a simple declaration, and invocation of God's blessing, the
priesthood question, the rock which first split the Old Faith,
solved by making every man a priest in