has not been allayed by the lapse of two centuries.  According to some, as Christianity cannot exist without a priesthood, its complicity with Nikon’s heresy has not deprived the Russian Church of apostolic powers—­of the cheirotonia, or right to consecrate bishops and priests by the laying on of hands; and as their ordination is valid, the schismatics have only to bring back priests of the official Church to the observance of the ancient ritual.  To this it is answered that by abandoning the ancient books and anathematizing the ancient traditions the sect of Nikon has lost all claim to the apostolical succession, so that the established clergy constitute no longer a Church, but the synagogue of Satan.  All communion with these emissaries of hell is a sin, and ordination by the apostate bishops a defilement.  The Oriental patriarchs have shared the heresy of the Russian prelates by agreeing to their anathemas against the ancient rites, and orthodoxy has carried with it in its fall the episcopate, apostolical succession and the lawful priesthood.

Thus, in the first generation the Raskol fell into two sections—­the Popovtsy, who adhere to the priests, and the Bezpopovtsy, who do not.  To recruit their clergy the Popovtsy were fain to have recourse to deserters from the established Church, and were thus dependent upon it; though we shall see that of late they have succeeded in getting an independent episcopate along with a complete ecclesiastical hierarchy.  By maintaining a priesthood, however scanty and ignorant, the Popovtsy preserve the sacraments and the orthodox Christian system; and, despite the inconsistency of admitting the priests of a Church that they condemn, they have paused at the first step of schism and maintain the original position.  It is almost impossible, on the other hand, for the Bezpopovtsy to stop on the slope down which their logic inexorably drags them.  Involved in the abandonment of the priesthood is that of orthodoxy, or at least of the orthodox ritual, and the sacrament of orders carries with it the sacraments which none but the priest can administer.  Of the seven traditional channels of divine grace, baptism alone remains open:  the other six are dried up for ever.  Thus, the first step of the Bezpopovtsy brings them to the destruction of the first principle of Christian worship.  The more rigid of them do not shrink from this most glaring of contradictions.  To save the entire ritual they have sacrificed its most essential parts.  For the double Hallelujah and the sign of the cross with two fingers instead of three they have foregone the whole Christian life and the one visible link between man and God, which is to be found only in the sacraments.  The abolition of the sacred ministry and divine service is their protest against the trifling changes introduced into their devotional customs by the established Church.  In barring the entrance to Nikon’s so-called innovations they have done away with the priesthood, and so with every dyke against sectarian whimsies or the very novelties against which they blindly contend.