The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

RELIGIOUS SECTS OF GREAT RUSSIA. 385Religious Sects.Russia forms a connecting link between Europe and Asia, no less in the religiousthan the moral and social order. Through the Catholic and Protestantelements of its western provinces it is connected with the rest of Europe ; throughthe Pagans, Buddhists, and Mohammedans of the east, with the Asiatic world.But between these two extremes lies the great central mass of Greek orthodoxy.Yet, in spite of this official creed, more religious sects are probably here developedthan in any other European state, and most of them take their rise amongst theGreat Russian populations. The peculiarly mystic and polemical spirit so characteristicof this race ; the more than Byzantine severity of the rites imposed onthem by the clergy ; the old pagan superstitions still surviving under new forms ;the very character of the people, their gentleness and good nature, so easilyswayed by fanaticism ; lastly, the thraldom which so long oppressed the masses,driving them to seek refuge in the supernatural world—all these causes have combinedto produce an endless variety of fantastic beliefs. They spring up, perish,and are renewed like so much rank vegetation. At present there are recordedfrom one hundred to one hundred and thirty recognised sects, and in the languageof the orthodox proverb, " Each mujik makes his own religion, as each old womanmakes her own nostrums." Every great national event gives rise to freshvarieties, all differing in name or in form, but substantially the same in theirmoral aspect, and in the passions which they bring into play. With each succeedinggeneration there arise new Messiahs, sons of God, or God himself ; or elseCzars, such as Peter III. and Alexander I., are worshipped and believed to bestill alive, because they were mild rulers. Napoleon himself had his votaries inPskov, Belostok, and even in Moscow, ruined though it was by him. In theirusual frame of mind a text of Scripture, or some old " Mother Shipton's prophecy,"is generally all that is needed to beguile the faithful into the most devious pathsof folly, such as self-mutilation, suicide, or murder.Until freedom of worship is established it will be impossible to form even anapproximate estimate of the actual number of dissenters. In 1850 the nonorthodoxRussians were officially stated to be about 830,000, but the Minister ofthe Interior even then estimated them at 9,000,000, which, allowing for the normalincrease of population, would make them at present at least 12,000,000.The various Raskolnik sects may be divided in a general way into three maingroups : the Popoiizl, or Presbyterians ; the Bezpopovtzi, those who reject the priesthood;and the Spiritualists. The purely ritualistic movement of those who wishedto retain the national observances anterior to the seventeenth century coincideswith the dissatisfaction produced by the constant and vexatious intermeddling ofthe clergy in civil and religious matters ; and to these sources of dissent wasadded the more or less direct influence of Protestantism, and all these complexcauses had schism as their common result. An escape was also afforded in schismfrom the intolerable burdens and drudgery of serfdom, whose victims had thusat least the satisfaction of being able to anathematize their oppressors. For them