these practices, if carried on at all, are very rare indeed, and that some of those communities in which they were once found are now quite clear of them.
There is one sect, however, the nature of whose doings cannot be doubted. This consists of the Skopsty, the "Eunuchs," the members of which may be recognised by their pallid faces, thin voices, and unmanly bearing. Regarding marriage as impossible owing to the failure of sacramental grace, they aim at removing all difficulties in that direction by mutilating themselves. This is not done to them in childhood, but after attaining to manhood, when the operation is very serious. Some of them have children first, for the propagation of the sect. But they are found in two grades. There are some to whom marriage is allowed; and others, the elect, become eunuchs. The elect are credited with direct inspiration from God with the gift of prophecy, which issues in ecstasy. But in daily life they are the mildest and simplest of men.
None of these extravagant sects can be called Christian. They have attracted much attention on account of their eccentricities and owing to the sensational descriptions of them that have appeared in popular books. But they are not symptomatic of the Raskol or of religion in Russia.
Of an entirely different character are the movements carried on among earnest Christian people of high character, the very salt of the land. The most important of these Russian dissenters are the Molokans[1] and the Doukhobors ("Spirit-wrestlers "). These two bodies have much in common, and their members pass freely from one to the other. They not only stand outside the State Church like the Raskol, but they entirely repudiate the hierarchical and sacerdotal system of the orthodox communion. They reject
- ↑ Said to be so named as "milk-drinkers" from their habit of taking milk and food prepared from milk on the fast days when it is prohibited by the orthodox Church, but more probably so called after the name Molotchnaya, a river in the south of Russia, in the neighbourhood of which they once flourished.
