Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/218

Rh Dispensation, similar to the old and the new, which both have passed away. The more moderate, together with the Popovtsi, understand them in a spiritual sense; they look more kindly on the civil government and on the established Church, as having been unwittingly made ministers of the powers of darkness, and as being capable of regeneration. The more rabid and extreme of the Bezpopovtsi comprehend them literally. Peter was Antichrist in person, who, in Peter's successors, still sits upon the throne, and the Holy Synod is the ministerial council of His Satanic Majesty. Herein lies a wide difference between the extreme branches of the Raskol, less important in its religious aspect, but more so in its political bearing and consequences. With those who regard the Church and the State as merely wandering from the faith, blind, it may be, to the truth, but not irredeemably perverse, some degree of harmony and some hope of eventual reconciliation are possible; but with the others, for whom all existing institutions, civil and religious, are the incarnation of evil, the handiwork of the devil, no understanding, truce, or peace can be expected.

The general belief in the actual advent of Antichrist has given rise, among the more extreme, who are at the same time the more ignorant and credulous, to the wildest vagaries, subversive of all law, government, and society.

Inasmuch as the tsar was the personification of evil, and his counsellors were imps of Satan, obedience to his decrees was sinful and infamous, and all communication with him or them was pollution. To escape from contamination they fled to desert places and shut themselves up in hidden retreats. Many deemed death preferable to life amid error and iniquity, and shortened their probation in an accursed world by murder and suicide. Cer-