Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/212

Rh riors; sympathy for their brethren, oppressed on religious grounds, inspired sympathy for all victims of authority. The Raskol opened its ranks, and afforded protection to the fugitive from justice, as well as to the sufferer from religious persecution. Its many sects, hostile and warring each with the other, were united in opposition, not only to the established Church, but also to the newly constituted order of things throughout; and the spirit of resistance to clerical intolerance was in close accord with resistance to civil authority, each, by mutual reaction, supporting and sustaining the other.

In the vast field of theological discussion there is but slight hinderance to the wildest efforts of the imagination; no material facts, no perfectly ascertained nor minutely defined beliefs arrest the speculative flights of thought, or direct them to positive and necessary conclusions. They may wander on indefinitely, developing most contradictory, yet logical, consequences; and the excitable, imaginative disposition of the Russian people, their devout and superstitious temperament, render them especially prone to indulge in ratiocinations of this nature; while the methodical, argumentative bent of their mind leads them on, from deduction to deduction, to the utmost extremes, which, however irrational, or even absurd, they are boldly prepared to accept. The fundamental dogmas of Orthodoxy, moreover, while being immutable, are simple and elementary, conveyed in language often vague and mysterious, capable of divers interpretations; consequently an inclination to refine and speculate is developed as a means of satisfying a spiritual craving. From this proclivity, freely exercised by an illiterate but intelligent people, untrammelled by any restraint, without guidance from any recognized authority, has arisen the multiplicity of sects in the Raskol, the widely diverging doctrines,