Youth, beauty, or even virtue are secondary considerations; Akoulina was very aged when she proclaimed Selivanov, and of her successors many have been of mature years and of dubious reputations, owing their elevation to talent for intrigue, or gift of prophecy, or a fluent tongue.
The predominance of female influence in matters of religion cannot be attributed to indifference on the part of the men, nor is it peculiar either to Russia or to Russian sects. In England and America the Shakers and similar denominations have had at their head a "mother" or a "bride," the "Lamb's wife" (Rev. xxi., 9); and the practice seems a natural consequence of the more emotional, excitable temperament of the "pious" sex.
The ever-changing manifestations of the spirit of unrest pervading the Russian people present a dreary spectacle, as monotonous in its general character as it is diversified in its special aspects. They are as evanescent as clouds flitting over a landscape; scarcely more persistent or more definite. Every important crisis, every national event, evokes a corresponding spiritual movement to satisfy the aspirations or emotions of the moment.
It was natural to suppose that the abolition of serfdom, by removing the heaviest grievance bearing upon the people, would have been a fatal blow to sectarian protestations against existing evils, but, after a short lull of expectation, they were, on the contrary, aroused by it to new life and productive energy. The discontent of the peasantry at the conditions affixed to the purchase of land found vent in demonstrations taking religious form, and based on religious and Biblical grounds.
At Perm, in 1866, Pouschkine, a small burgher of unsound mind, became notorious by proclaiming that the
