ruthfulness, probity, temperance and
steadfastness, to the energetic determination to observe the watchword
received by man in two forms and which he finds in two concordant
examples, in the Scriptures as interpreted by his conscience, and in his
conscience as enlightened by the Scriptures. As another consequence,
the Protestant priest has ceased to be a delegate from on high, the
indispensable mediator between man and God, alone qualified to give
absolution and to administer the rites by which salvation is obtained;
he is simply a man, graver, more learned, more pious and more exemplary
than other men, but, like the others, married, father of a family and
entering into civil life, in short a semi-layman. The laymen whom
he leads owe him deference, not obedience; he issues no orders; he
sentences nobody; speaking from the rostrum to a gathering is his
principal, almost unique, office, and the sole purpose of this is
instruction or an exhortation.--With the Greeks and Slaves, with whom
the authority of the Church is merely of a preservative nature, all
the observances of the twelfth century have subsisted, as rigorously in
Russia as in Asia Minor or in Greece, although fasting and Lents, which
Southern stomachs can put up with, are unhealthy for the temperaments
of the North. Here, likewise, these observances have assumed capital
importance. The active sap, withdrawn from theology and the clergy,
flows nowhere else; these, in an almost paralyzed religion, constitute
almost the sole vivifying organ, as vigorous and often more so,
than ecclesiastical authority; in the seventeenth century, under the
patriarch Nicon, thousands of "old believers," on account of slight
rectifications of the liturgy, the alteration of a letter in the Russian
translation of the name of Jesus, and the sign of the cross made by
three instead of two fingers, separated themselves and, to-day, these
dissenters, multiplied by their sects, count by millions. Defined by
custom, every rite is sacred, immutable, and, when exactly fulfilled,
sufficient in itself and efficacious; the priest who utters the words
and makes the motions is only one piece in the mechanism, one of
the instruments requisite for a magic incantation; after his
instrumentation, he falls back into his human negativity; he is nothing
more than an employee paid for his ministration. And this ministration
is not exalted in him by an extraordinary and visible renunciation,
by perpetual cel