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178 is imperilled. The only reduction that may be yet safely made is among the multitudes of the minor clergy, the most ignorant and the most useless, whose services could, for the most part, be dispensed with without danger, and perhaps to advantage.

With efforts for the improvement of the material condition of the parish clergy, there is also a strong inclination to raise their social position. By marriage they are debarred from the episcopal dignity. Church discipline ordains that a bishop may not be married in the flesh; according to Timothy, he must be "the husband of one wife," and as, by a subtle interpretation of the text, he has already one spouse, the Church, he can have no other, and the episcopate remains the monopoly of the black clergy; but positions of trust and eminence are being brought within the reach of married priests, especially of those who are connected with the higher clerical education. A pope has recently been appointed rector of the ecclesiastical academy of St. Petersburg, an important post, hitherto always held by a monk. Measures of this nature, persistently pursued, would inaugurate a new era of reform, and, while instilling into the Church a more catholic and liberal spirit, would open, for the white clergy, a vast and hitherto closed sphere of usefulness.