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 discussions and divisions turn, giving rise to the wildest aberrations and strangest compromises. The more practical retain marriage as a social conventionality, while the more logical make celibacy universally binding, thereby fostering anything but asceticism. Among the Russian sectaries the familiar combination is repeated of sensuality and mysticism. Free-love has been both preached and practiced among them; and among the lower classes the grossest heresies of ancient Gnosticism have mingled with the wildest and most morbid of modern social theories. Most of their theological writers, while avoiding such extremes, urge the most extraordinary maxims in connection with their forbiddance of marriage, such as that immorality, being but a passing weakness, is less criminal than marriage, which is interdicted by the faith.... To such a point as this have the conscientious champions of old ceremonial been brought. They have carried with them a few shreds of ancient ritual, and they have not only abandoned Christian and natural morality, but in their struggle with modern government and civilization deny the principle which upholds all society.
Even fanatics must stand affrighted before conclusions like these, and the Bezpopovtsy feel the need of some justification for their subversal of the cultus and the morality of Christianity. They find but one solution for the awful enigma presented by Christ's abandonment of the Church and mankind, by the extinction of appointed sacraments and means of grace, and by the impious rupture of the tie between man and God. The downfall of Church and priesthood and the triumph of falsehood and wrong were foretold by the prophets. This is the time predicted in Holy Writ, when the very elect shall be wellnigh seduced, and when God shall seem to give up His own into the hand of the Adversary. The priestless Church is the Church in the state of widowhood foretold by Daniel in the last days. Thus, the Raskol was brought by the new path of theology to that belief in the approaching end of the world and the reign of Antichrist to which we have already seen it led by its aversion to ecclesiastical and civil reforms. That the reign of Antichrist is begun is the fundamental doctrine of the Raskol, and particularly of the Bezpopovstchin. In the light of this new dogma all the contradictions of the latter are explained and justified. This is the reason for the extinction of the priesthood, of marriage and of the family. Wherefore—many ask—wherefore continue the race when the archangel's trump is about to proclaim the end of humanity?
The end of the world was announced to be nigh even before Peter the Great; and they who proclaimed it are not yet weary of awaiting it. Like Christians in the West in other periods, they are not undeceived by the delay of the destined time, and are at no loss to explain it. Many consider the reign of Antichrist to be a period or era which may last for centuries, as one of the three great epochs in religious history, and as having, like those of the old and the new dispensations, a law of its own which abrogates what went before. All of the Raskolniks, or even of the Bezpopovtsy, however, do not agree as to Antichrist; for while his reign is generally admitted, it seems to be very differently understood. Those who retain the priesthood and the more moderate of their opponents hold his reign to be spiritual and invisible, and government and established Church to be the unconscious or unwilling tools of Satan; while the extremists of the Bezpopovstchin maintain that Antichrist reigns materially and palpably. He it is, as we have seen, who occupies the throne of the czars since Peter the Great, and his Sanhedrim that usurps the name of the holy synod. Trivial as the difference is, theologically speaking, its political consequences are considerable; for the state may arrive at some understanding with sects that only regard it as blind and misled, while even a truce is out of the question with those which look upon it as the incarnate enemy of souls.
Very singular are the vagaries to which the ignorant peasants are naturally led by this belief. Since the world is in subjection to "Satan, the son of Beelzebub," all contact with it was defiling, and submission to its laws nothing short of a denial of the faith. To escape the hellish contagion the best means was isolation or rigid withdrawal into inaccessible retreats or desert places. In their spiritual confusion and terror some of the sectaries saw no refuge but death, and murder and suicide were systematically resorted to for the purpose of shortening the time of probation and hastening their departure from the accursed world. With some fanatics, called "child-slayers" (dietoubütsy), it was held a duty to expedite the entrance to heaven of newborn children, and thus to save them infernal anguish. Others, called "stranglers" or "butchers" (duchelstchiki, tiukalstchiki), think they render a valuable service to their relatives and friends by anticipating a natural death, in hastening the end of those who are seriously ill. Taking with a savage literalness the text, "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matt. xi. 12), they hold that none can enter into the kingdom of heaven but those who die a violent death. One of the most numerous and powerful bodies in the first century of the Raskol, the Philipovtsy, or "burners," like the Indian fakeers, preached redemption by suicide, and salvation by the baptism of fire, holding that the flames alone could purify men from the defilements of a world which had fallen under the rule of Satan. In Siberia and the neighborhood of the Ural these sectaries have been known to burn themselves in hundreds on enormous piles built for the purpose, or by families in their hovels, to the sound of hymns and chants. Such acts have been known even during the present century.
One insanity begets another, and belief in the presence of Antichrist leads to belief in the approaching restoration of the earth, the second advent of Christ and the millennium, which has infected the more extreme sects of the Bezpopovstchin, thus connecting it with Gnostic sects of various origins. Russian literalism, like many early Christian heresies, interprets the prophets and the Apocalypse in a purely material sense. The mujik or artisan looks for the establishment of Christ's temporal kingdom, and anticipates the dominion promised to the saints. Such a belief opens the door to a trust in prophets, and to all the extravagances and rascalities that come in its train. In vain does the Russian statute-book condemn false prophets and lying miracles: from time to time the country is overrun by illuminati proclaiming the Second Advent, and occasionally giving themselves out as the expected Messiah. They are frequently accompanied by a woman, who plays the part of mystical mother or spouse, and to whom they give the title of the Mother of God or the Blessed Virgin. Sometimes it is only the simple folk who are themselves hunting for the Redeemer; and not long since appeared a body of Siberian sectaries, called "Christ-hunters," maintaining that the Saviour was about to appear, and scouring desert and forest to find him. Peasants have even been known to refuse payment of their taxes under pretext that Christ was come and had done away with them. The Messiah of the Russian sectaries is sometimes sought in the person of a simple peasant, and sometimes in a native or foreign prince. Some have long beheld the expected liberator in Napoleon, for their persuasion that the Russian state is the reign of Antichrist easily led to welcoming as a Saviour any one who seemed destined to destroy it; and in the great enemy of the empire, the great furtherer of a general abolition of serfdom, many recognized the conquering Messiah of the prophets. It is said that at their meetings an image of Napoleon is worshiped, and busts of him are certainly nowhere met with more commonly than in Russia. An equal veneration is paid to pictures representing the first emperor surrounded by his marshals and floating above the clouds in a kind of apotheosis, which is literally accepted by the matter-of-fact Russian. The story runs among his worshipers that Napoleon is not dead, but has escaped from St. Helena and taken shelter on the shores of Lake Baikal, whence he will one day come forth to overturn the throne of Satan and found the kingdom of justice and peace.
The main point of these millennial hopes was the abolition of forced labor and the obrok, the emancipation of the serfs, and the equitable distribution of land and other property. A ready reception was sure to await such a gospel, with its combination of promises of liberty and faint dreams of communism; and something of the kind is necessary to explain the easy success of so many extravagant sects, lying prophets and feigned Messiahs. Dreams like these in the West incited the revolutions of the peasants in mediæval times and of the Anabaptists in the sixteenth century, but they must slowly vanish with the slavery which gave them birth. The age of freedom anticipated by the mujik, the kingdom of God of which he caught a glimpse in the promises of the prophets, is come at last: the Messiah and freer of the people has appeared, and his reign is begun. The emancipation of the serfs has given a blow to these millennial dreams, and consequently to the more advanced sects of the Raskol: its ruin will be completed by education and material improvement.
The sects whose general evolution we have sketched may appear to us ridiculous and childish. We are tempted to look with contempt upon a people capable of such extravagances; but such an estimate would be erroneous. Absurdity and extravagance have always found a ready welcome when presented under the garb of religion; and countries boasting of older and more widespread civilization are not behind Russia in this regard. The Raskol has its counterpart in the past and the contemporary sectarianism of England and of the United States. A strong likeness holds between the Puritans and the Old Believers; and both as to originality and religious eccentricities the Anglo-Saxon and the inhabitant of Greater Russia may be compared. The Russians delight in pointing out the resemblances between their country and the great republic of the New World; and this is not the least of them. The Americans have their prophets and prophetesses, just like the old Russian serfs, and no absurdity or immorality is too gross to find preachers and converts among them. How shall we account for so striking an analogy between the two most extensive empires of the two continents? To characteristics of race and an incomplete blending of different stocks, or to the nature of the soil, the extremes of heat and cold, and the strong contrasts of the seasons? to the vastness of their territories and the scanty diffusion of population and culture over areas so immense? or still again to the rapid and inharmonious growth of the two countries—to the lack of popular education in the one, and the low standard of the higher education in the other? Separately or combined, these causes fail completely to explain the curious phenomenon; and still they are the most striking points of resemblance between the two colossal powers. In some respects, the sectarian spirit presents itself in a different and almost opposite manner in the democratic republic and the despotic empire. In the United States the ranker growths of religious enthusiasm spring from an excess of individualism and enterprise—from the independent and pushing temper transported from politics and business into religion. In Russia, on the contrary, the popular mind has thrown off all restraint in the religious sphere, simply because this was long the only one in which it could disport itself unchecked. The religious boldness and extravagance which in the one country is the direct consequence of the state of society is in the other rather a reaction against it. Russia's advantage over America lies in the fact that there the excesses of fancy and zeal prevail in a more primitive, unsophisticated and childlike race. Some diseases are best passed through early in life, before the time of full development. It is no less true of some moral maladies: childhood suffers from them less than youth or maturity. Russia is still in that stage of civilization which is naturally subject to attacks of feverish and mystical religion, but one day it will emerge from it; and the precocious skepticism of a large portion of its educated classes shows plainly that no inexorable fate condemns the national character to credulity and superstition.
The Raskol is more than a morbid symptom or a sign of weakness. If it does little credit to the sense or cultivation of the people, it does much to its heart, its conscience and its will. Independence and individuality are often said to be lacking in it, but the Old Believers show that firmness and conception of duty which are as needful as intelligence to a nation's strength. Beneath the dull, monotonous surface of political society these sects give us a glimpse of the hard rock which is the groundwork of this seemingly inert race: its originality and stern individuality are what are dear to it. One day Russia will display in other spheres the originality and patient, sturdy energy which these religious struggles have called forth. That a considerable portion of the people have revolted against the liturgic reform shows that it is not the stupid, sluggish herd Europe has so long imagined. On one ground at least its conscience has displayed sufficient independence, and told despotism that it is not all-powerful. And if mere ritual alterations have aroused such opposition, what would result from a change of religion—from the transition to Catholicism or Protestantism so often dreamed of and advised by Western theologians? So far from being always docile and void of will and determination, the Russian people, even in their religious vagaries, have displayed a singular power of organization and combination.