the Russian
model by the Government. The clergy, disabled for religious purposes by
the necessity of providing for their families, have little education and
little influence, and have no part in the revival of the Grecian
intellect. But the people are attached to their ecclesiastical system,
not for religion's sake, for infidelity generally accompanies education,
but as the defence of their nationality.

In Russia the Catholic Church is considered heretical because of her
teaching on the procession of the Holy Ghost, and schismatical in
consequence of the claims of the Pope. In the doctrine of purgatory
there is no essential difference; and on this point an understanding
could easily be arrived at, if none had an interest in widening the
breach. In the seventeenth century, the Russian Church retained so much
independence that the Metropolitan of Kiev could hold in check the power
of the Czar, and the clergy were the mediators between the people and
the nobles or the crown. This influence was swept away by the despotism
of Peter the Great; and under Catherine II. the property of the Church
was annexed to the crown lands, in order, it was said, to relieve the
clergy of the burden of administration. Yet even now the Protestant
doctrine that the sovereign is supreme in all matters of religion has
not penetrated among the Russians. But though the Czar does not possess
this authority over the national Church, of which he is a member, the
Protestant system has conceded it to him in the Baltic provinces. Not
only are all children of mixed marriages between Protestants and
schismatics brought up in the religion of the latter, by which the
gradual decline of Protestanism is provided for, but conversions to
Protestanism, even of Jews, Mohammedans, and heathens, are forbidden;
and, in all questions of doctrine or of liturgy, the last appeal is to
the emperor. The religious despotism usually associated with the Russian
monarchy subsists only for the Protestants.

The Russian Church is dumb; the congregation does not sing, the priest
does not preach. The people have no prayer-books, and are therefore
confined to the narrow circle of their own religious ideas. Against the
cloud of superstition which naturally gathers in a religion of
ceremonies, destitute of the means of keeping alive or cultivating the
religious sentiments of the people, there is no resource. In spite of
the degeneracy of their clergy, which they are unable to feel,