he is as incapable of responding to the religious wants of the devout as he is of withstanding the progress of infidelity. Despised by, and isolated from, the community upon which he is dependent, his whole life is a ceaseless, wretched struggle for material existence; all devotional feeling is crushed out of his soul, and religion, for him, is debased to mere form and ceremonial, by which to earn a precarious subsistence.
The obligation of marriage weighs heavily upon him. While great advantages may result from it in many points of view, and in communities where, as in Protestant countries, the minister, properly remunerated, finds, in an intelligent, educated wife, a helpmate and co-worker, in Russia it is far otherwise. Even at the present day, the married pope may not aspire to the higher dignities of the Church; he cannot obtain a curacy without a wife; frequently she brings it to him as her dowry, and he loses it at her death. She feels, and makes him feel, her superiority as the moneyed partner in the association; she is generally without education, and, in her poverty-stricken household, is overwhelmed by domestic cares; she can neither afford him intellectual companionship, nor is she competent to share, or to encourage him, in pious and charitable work. Children come to increase his responsibilities and anxieties. Only recently have other careers than the priesthood been opened for them; and, while they are eager to embrace them, and escape from the sordid cares and degradations they have witnessed in their homes, they seldom find the opportunity; although they are raised, by education, above the laborer and the peasant, poverty, social prejudices, and want of influential relations check their aspirations; but too frequently they help to swell the multitude of disappointed, discontented, and ambitious youths who, hostile to
