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Rh allowed, and its priests were ordained by, and subordinate to, the bishops of the established Church; they consequently inspired neither confidence nor respect, but rather suspicion and dislike, as the paid functionaries of an alien, if not a hostile, authority, and the denomination itself occupied an inferior, uncertain, and humiliating position, being neither one thing nor the other.

The real and most serious obstacle to its success was the radical change wrought by time in the principle and spirit of this branch of the Raskol, and which also affords an explanation of its persistent vitality. It was no longer a mere sticking for ancient form and ceremony; it had become, what it now actually is, the expression of popular resistance to the enforced union of civil and religious government, to the absolute dependence of the Church upon the State.

Old Believers, accustomed by long habit to freedom from clerical authority, favor the separation of the spiritual from the temporal. While they demand the ancient rites and former ecclesiastical constitution, with a national patriarch as supreme head of the Church, they do so with a keen sense of the importance of restricting clerical power within due bounds, and of giving the lay portion of the community its just and proportionate share in the administration of the Church.

Their ideal would seem to be a national, popular, and democratic establishment, united and strong, but independent and free from government interference; its affairs under the charge of, and its clergy chosen by, all its members acting in concert.

With these aspirations, and from this point of view, Popovtsism, or the Raskol of the priestly branch, can no longer be deemed a petty, sectarian, or unreasonable movement; it becomes an object of universal interest,