o successor to the Patriarch of Moscow when
he died in 1700. It was very interesting to hear, from the Procurator of
the Holy Synod himself, M. Sabloff, when I first went to Petrograd, what
great importance Peter attached to this office when he constituted the
Holy Synod in 1721 to take the place of the Patriarchate.

"He used to say," he mused, looking down upon the ground, "that the
Procurator of the Holy Synod was the _oculus imperatoris_ (the Emperor's
right hand, literally 'the Emperor's eye')," and as he said so one could
not but remember how his predecessor, M. Pobonodonietzeff had upheld
that tradition, and, next to the Emperor, had himself been the most
prominent and autocratic figure in the whole empire.

The Procurator, however, is not the President of the Holy Synod, as the
Metropolitan of Petrograd fills that office, but he is present as the
Emperor's representative, and though all the other members of the Synod
are the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Russian Church, yet as
they are summoned by the Emperor, and his special lay representative is
there always to represent and state his opinion and wishes, the Emperor
himself must have an infinitely greater influence than our own
sovereigns possess, though theoretically they fill the same office of
"Defender of the Faith." He is described in one of the fundamental laws
as "the supreme defender and preserver of the dogmas of the dominant
faith," while immediately afterwards it is added "the autocratic power
acts in the ecclesiastical administration of the most Holy Governing
Synod created by it." The Emperor must have unlimited power, typified by
his crowning himself at his coronation, in ecclesiastical
administration, and the bishops and other clergy, who are intensely
loyal, would probably not wish it otherwise; but he could not affect or
change, even by a hair's breadth, any of the doctrines of the Church nor
one of the ceremonies of its Liturgy.

Should the reader wish to know more about Church and State in Russia he
will find a most admirable chapter (XIX) with that heading in Sir
Donald M. Wallace's book. Interesting and important as the position of
the Russian Church--in many ways so like our own--is for us to-day, it
is only possible now to glance briefly at its constitution.

The clergy are divided into two classes, the black and the white, the
black being the monastic and the white the secular and married clergy.
All the patriarchs or arc