must, however, be said that the persecution has never been of a very searching kind.  In persecution, as in all other manifestations, the Russian Church directs its attention chiefly to external forms.  It does not seek to ferret out heresy in a man’s opinions, but complacently accepts as Orthodox all who annually appear at confession and communion, and who refrain from acts of open hostility.  Those who can make these concessions to convenience are practically free from molestation, and those who cannot so trifle with their conscience have an equally convenient method of escaping persecution.  The parish clergy, with their customary indifference to things spiritual and their traditional habit of regarding their functions from the financial point of view, are hostile to sectarianism chiefly because it diminishes their revenues by diminishing the number of parishioners requiring their ministrations.  This cause of hostility can easily be removed by a certain pecuniary sacrifice on the part of the sectarians, and accordingly there generally exists between them and their parish priest a tacit contract, by which both parties are perfectly satisfied.  The priest receives his income as if all his parishioners belonged to the State Church, and the parishioners are left in peace to believe and practise what they please.  By this rude, convenient method a very large amount of toleration is effectually secured.  Whether the practise has a beneficial moral influence on the parish clergy is, of course, an entirely different question.

When the priest has been satisfied, there still remains the police, which likewise levies an irregular tax on heterodoxy; but the negotiations are generally not difficult, for it is in the interest of both parties that they should come to terms and live in good-fellowship.  Thus practically the Raskolniki live in the same condition as in the time of Peter:  they pay a tax and are not molested—­only the money paid does not now find its way into the Imperial Exchequer.

These external changes in the history of the Raskol have exercised a powerful influence on its internal development.

When formally anathematised and excluded from the dominant Church the Nonconformists had neither a definite organisation nor a positive creed.  The only tie that bound them together was hostility to the “Nikonian novelties,” and all they desired was to preserve intact the beliefs and customs of their forefathers.  At first they never thought of creating any permanent organisation.  The more moderate believed that the Tsar would soon re-establish Orthodoxy, and the more fanatical imagined that the end of all things was at hand.* In either case they had only to suffer for a little season, keeping themselves free from the taint of heresy and from all contact with the kingdom of Antichrist.

     * Some had coffins made, and lay down in them at night, in
     the expectation that the Second Advent might take place
     before the morning.