To understand this the reader must know that according to Russian conceptions there are two distinct kinds of heresy, distinguished from each other, not by the doctrines held, but by the nationality of the holder, it seems to a Russian in the nature of things that Tartars should be Mahometans, that Poles should be Roman Catholics, and that Germans should be Protestants; and the mere act of becoming a Russian subject is not supposed to lay the Tartar, the Pole, or the German under any obligation to change his faith.  These nationalities are therefore allowed the most perfect freedom in the exercise of their respective religions, so long as they refrain from disturbing by propagandism the divinely established order of things.

This is the received theory, and we must do the Russians the justice to say that they habitually act up to it.  If the Government has sometimes attempted to convert alien races, the motive has always been political, and the efforts have never awakened much sympathy among the people at large, or even among the clergy.  In like manner the missionary societies which have sometimes been formed in imitation of the Western nations have never received much popular support.  Thus with regard to aliens this peculiar theory has led to very extensive religious toleration.  With regard to the Russians themselves the theory has had a very different effect.  If in the nature of things the Tartar is a Mahometan, the Pole a Roman Catholic, and the German a Protestant, it is equally in the nature of things that the Russian should be a member of the Orthodox Church.  On this point the written law and public opinion are in perfect accord.  If an Orthodox Russian becomes a Roman Catholic or a Protestant, he is amenable to the criminal law, and is at the same time condemned by public opinion as an apostate and renegade—­almost as a traitor.

As to the future of these heretical sects it is impossible to speak with confidence.  The more gross and fantastic will probably disappear as primary education spreads among the people; but the Protestant sects seem to possess much more vitality.  For the present, at least, they are rapidly spreading.  I have seen large villages where, according to the testimony of the inhabitants, there was not a single heretic fifteen years before, and where one-half of the population had already become Molokanye; and this change, be it remarked, had taken place without any propagandist organisation.  The civil and ecclesiastical authorities were well aware of the existence of the movement, but they were powerless to prevent it.  The few efforts which they made were without effect, or worse than useless.  Among the Stundisti corporal punishment was tried as an antidote—­without the concurrence, it is to be hoped, of the central authorities—­and to the Molokanye of the province of Samara a learned monk was sent in the hope of converting them from their errors by reason and eloquence.  What effect the