Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/458

432 salary of a village pope allows him no means for saving. But when he dies his wife and family are not to be left destitute, and the bishop has them on his hands. The easiest way to provide for them is to pass them on to the deceased man's successor by giving him one of the daughters for his wife. The result is that the priests have become a caste. The office is hereditary in a sort of Levitical tribe. The position of a country pope is very anomalous and most unsatisfactory. He feels himself above the peasants, and his wife affects the dress of Western Europe; but he is not received into society, and in this respect he is very differently situated from the English clergyman. "I know he gets drunk once in a while," said a peasant of his pope, "but he is a good Christian, and he is never drunk on Saturday night or Sunday morning."

It must be allowed that not only is the orthodox Church in Russia intellectually inert; it is a hindrance rather than a help to the national development. Its functions are ceremonial, not spiritual. The people attend the liturgy as by law required; but they do not understand the old Sclavonic dialect of the service books. There is no idea in the Russian Church corresponding to that of the Roman Church where the priest says mass regardless of the attendance of the laity. The liturgy is supposed to be congregational; the laity must be present. Yet the people who stand through the weary hours of the lengthy ritual do not know the meaning of the words chanted in their hearing. This is a result of the pedantry of archaism that has fossilised the Church, for the Greek liturgies of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom were originally translated into Sclavonic for the express purpose of being understood by the congregations who took part in them. With the ignorant peasant, bowing to icons is the chief religious performance. Icons are in every house, in every room of every house. On entering a room a Russian looks