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210 the peasant or laborer who remains true to the Orthodox Church does not look down upon the Raskolniks as heretics to be hated or despised. On the contrary, he feels, rather, respect for them as holy men, more pious and devout than himself, ready, like the early Christians, to brave obloquy and reproach for the ancient faith. Until recent ameliorations in the morals and condition of the official clergy removed from it the well-merited charge of greed, ignorance, and indolence, it compared unfavorably with the often disinterested, always active and energetic, propagators of Dissent; the Church suffered in popular estimation from the comparison, even among its own children, while the Raskol gained. This feeling of sympathy for it is general; it is evinced in constant willingness to befriend, or screen, its adherents; it is deep-rooted and persistent. By many, even of the more liberal members of the Orthodox communion, it is believed and feared that a very large portion of the nation would lapse into Dissent if all restraint were removed, and grave apprehensions of the consequences to the Church of any radical measures of relief are a serious obstacle to the recognition of perfect freedom of conscience.

The strength of the schism is not to be measured by the number of its adherents or by the extent of popular sympathy with it; there is an additional element to be considered, which is the character of that portion of the nation in which it arose, and where it still exists in its fullest development.

Ridiculed and despised by the educated and the noble, it flourished especially among the people, and was recruited almost wholly among the laboring classes, peasants and mechanics, shop-keepers and petty merchants. In its origin a religious movement, it became a social