In the melancholy upshot of the Bezpopovtsy movement there was nothing to satisfy the fondness for ceremonial and tradition to which the schism owed its birth; and it was hard to fill the gap left by the loss of priesthood and sacraments.  The old orthodox law had become impossible to carry out, yet it had not been abrogated.  Though perfectly united as to rejecting the priesthood, they accordingly fell into new fragments, marked now by hesitations and compromises, and now by grotesque fancies or by cruel doctrines.  For the timid and for those who clung to public worship it was impossible to believe in Christian life and salvation without the divinely-appointed means; and in the perplexed effort to supply the loss of the sacraments their piety resorted to all manner of ingenious make-believes.  Priestly absolution being out of the question, confession is sometimes made to the “elder” or to a woman, and the promise of pardon has to do duty for the direct absolution.  As the Eucharist cannot be consecrated, famishing souls resort to types or memorials of the holy sacrament; and for this quasi communion rites have been devised which are sometimes pleasing, sometimes bloody and horrible.  One of these is the distribution of raisins by a young girl; while one sect (which is, however, but indirectly connected with the Raskol) use the breast of a young maiden instead of the element of bread.  To one of the Bezpopovtsy sects the name of “gapers” is given, because they are accustomed to keep their mouths open during the Maundy-Thursday service, that the angels, God’s only remaining ministers, may give them drink from an invisible chalice, since, as they hold, Christ cannot have wholly deprived the faithful of the flesh and blood offered upon the cross.

Such are the expedients of the more gentle or enthusiastic to escape from the religious vacuum into which schism has precipitated them.  Quite different is the course of the more strict and dauntless theologians; and the ascendency of logic over pious feeling carries with these the majority of the Bezpopovtsy.  No consequence is too revolting for them, and no hesitating subterfuge worthy of a thought.  The priesthood, they hold, is extinct, leaving only the sacrament of baptism, which the laity may administer.  Make-believes are of no avail.  The chain that linked Heaven with earth is snapped, and can be reunited only by miracle.  Meanwhile, the faithful are like men shipwrecked on a desert island without a priest among them.  Eucharist, penitence, chrism, and, more than all, marriage, are alike impossible.  The priest alone can pronounce the nuptial benediction; and where there is no priest there can be no marriage.  Such is the ultimate consequence of the schism—­the rock on which the Bezpopovtsy split.  With marriage the family goes, society with the family, and such teachings can never be in harmony with the feelings, with society or with morality.  Marriage is their stumbling-block and the principal matter on which their