A FAMILY OF OLD BELIEVERS.
In the forest village of Kondmazaro lives a family of Old Believers,
named Afanasevitch; two brothers, who till the soil, fell pines, and
manufacture tar. Their house is a pile of logs; a large place, with
barn and cow-shed, and a patch of field and forest. These brothers are
wealthy farmers, with manly ways, blue eyes, and gentle manners. Fedor
and Michael are the brothers, and Fedor has a young and dainty wife.
The family of Afanasevitch is clerical, and the two men, Fedor and
Michael, were brought up as priests. On going into their house you see
the signs of their calling, and on going into their barn you see a
chapel, with an altar and sacred books.
That barn was built by their grandfather, in evil days, as a chapel
for his flock; and during many years, the father of these men--now
gone to a better place--kept up, in the privacy of his farm, the forms
of worship which had come down to him from his sire, and his sire's
sire. This barn has no cupola, no cross, no bell. So far as takes the
eye, it is a simple barn. Inside, it is a quaint little chapel, with
screen and cross, with icon and crown. It has a regular altar, with
step and desk, and the customary pair of royal gates.
The father of Fedor and Michael, following in his father's wake,
appeared to the outside world a farmer and woodman, while to his
faithful people he was a priest of God.
These lads assisted him in the service, while his neighbors took their
turn of either dropping in to mass, or mounting guard in the lane. His
altars were often stripped, his books put in a well, his pictures
hidden in a loft; for the police, informed of what was going on by
monkish spies, were often at his gates. At length a brighter day is
dawning on the Popular Church. A new prince is on the throne; and
under the White Tsar, the congregations which keep within the rules
laid down are left in peace.
"You hold a service in this church?"
"My brother holds it; not myself," says Fedor, with a sigh. "My
priesthood is gone from me."
"Your priesthood gone? How can a priesthood go away? Is not the law,
once a priest always a priest?"
"Yes, in a regular church; but we are not now a regular church, with a
sacred order and an apostolic grace. We are a village priesthood only;
chosen by our neighbors to serve the Lord in our common name."
"How was your personal priesthood lost?"
"By falling into sin through love. My wife, though village born, had
scruples about the form of marriage in use among our people, and
begged me to indulge her weakness on that point by marrying her in the
parish church. It was a proper thing for her to ask; a very hard thing
for me to grant; for law and right are here at strife, and one must
take his chance of rejecting either man or God. The time is not a
reign of grace, and nothing that we do is lawful in the sight of
Heaven. We take no sacraments; for the apostolic priesthood has passed
away. No man alive has power to bind and loose, or even to marry and
to shrive."
"Still you marry?"
"Yes; outwardly, according to a form; not inwardly, according to the
Spirit. Besides, the law does not admit our form; the Orthodox say we
are not married, and the courts declare our children basely born.
Hence, some of our women crave to be wedded as the code directs, in
the parish church, by an Orthodox priest. I could not blame poor Mary
for her weakness, though she wished me to marry her in a way that
would insult my kindred, harass my mother, and cause me to be removed
from my office, and degraded from my rank as priest. I loved the girl
and we went to church."
Fedor stands beside me, tall and lank, with mild blue eyes and yellow
locks, a serge blouse hanging round his figure, caught at the waist by
a broad red belt; his figure and face suggesting less of the meek Russ
peasant than of the fiery northern skald. Quaint books, with old
bronze clasps and leather ties, are in his arms. These books he
spreads before me with mysterious silence, pointing out passage after
passage, written in a dashing style--partly in red letters, partly in
black--in the dead Slavonic tongue. He looks a very unlikely man to
have lost the world for love.
"Your marriage got you into trouble?"
"Yes; a man who marries plunges into care."
"But though you have lost your priesthood, you are not expelled from
the community?"
"Not expelled in words; yet I am not received into fellowship; not
having yet performed the necessary acts."
"What acts?"
"The acts of penitence. Being married, I am not allowed to pass the
church door; only to stand on the outer steps, salute the worshippers,
and listen to the sacred sounds. I am expected to stand in the street,
bareheaded, through the summer's sun and the winter frost; to bend my
knee to every one going in; to beg his pardon of my offense; and to
solicit his prayers at the throne of grace."
"How long will your time of penitence last?"
"Years, years!" he answers sadly; "if I were rich enough to do nothing
else, I could be purified in six weeks. The penance is for forty days;
but forty successive days; and I have never yet found time to give up
forty days, in any one season, to the cleansing of my fame. But some
year I shall find them."
"How does this failure affect your wife? Is she received into the
church?"
"If you note this house of God, you will observe a part railed off
behind the screen; this is the female side, and has an entrance by a
separate door. No woman goes in at the principal gate. The space
behind the screen is not considered as lying within the church; and
there my wife can stand during service; bending to our neighbors as
they enter, asking every woman to forgive her offense, and help her in
prayer with her patron saint."
"Are you considered impure?"
"Yes; until our peace is made. You see, an Old Believer thinks that
for most people a single life is better than a wedded life. It is the
will of God that some should marry, in order that His children shall
not die off the earth. Sometimes it is the will of Satan, that hell
may be replenished with fallen souls. In either case, it is a sign of
our lost estate; an act to be atoned by penitence and prayer. But
getting married is not the whole of our offense. We went into the
world: we held communion with the heathen; and we put ourselves beyond
the pale of law."
"You hold the outer world to be unclean?"
"In one sense, yes. The world has been defiled by sin. A man who goes
from our village into the world--who crosses the river in order to
sell his deals and buy white flour--must purify himself on coming
back. He may have to cut his bread with an unclean knife, to drink his
water from an unclean glass. He carries his knife and cup beneath his
girdle for common use; yet he may be forced, by accident, to eat with
a strange knife, to drink out of a strange mug. On his return, he has
to stand at the chapel door, and beg the forgiveness of every member
of the community for his sins."
"Yet you are said to differ from the Orthodox clergy only in a few
points?"
"On many points. We differ on the existence of a State Church; on the
Holy Governing Synod; on the number of sacraments; on the benediction;
on the cross; on the service-books; on the apostolical succession; and
on many more. We object to the civil power in matters of faith; object
to Byzantine pomp in our worship. What we want in our Church is the
old Russian homeliness and heartiness; priests who are learned and
sober men; bishops who are actual fathers of their flocks."
"Show me how you give the benediction."
"Christ and His apostles gave the blessing so; the first and second
finger extended; the thumb on the third finger; not as the Byzantines
give it, with the thumb on the first finger. We follow the usage
introduced by Christ."
"You make much of that form?"
"Much for what it proves; not much for what it is. Pardon me, and I
will show you. Here is a small bronze figure of our Lord; the work
good and ancient; older than Nikon, older than St. Vladimir; it is
said to have come from Kherson, on the Black Sea. This figure proves
our case against Nikon the Monk, who altered things without reason,
only to puff himself out with pride. Our Lord, you will observe, is
giving the blessing, just as our saints, from Philip to Vladimir, gave
it. The Greek fathers in Bethlehem bless a pilgrim in this way now.
Our form is Syrian Greek, the Orthodox form is Byzantine Greek."
"And the cross?"
"We keep the old traditions of the cross. On every ancient spire and
belfry in the land you find a true cross. Observe the spires in
Moscow, Novgorod, and Kief. In places it has been removed, to make way
for the Latin cross; but on many towers and steeples it remains; a
lofty and silent witness for the truth."
"How do you prove that your cross is the true one? Think of it; the
cross was a Roman gibbet: a thing unknown to either Jew or Greek. Are
not the Latins likely to have known the shape of their own penal
cross?"
"All that is true; but the Holy Cross on which our Lord expired in the
flesh was not a common cross, made of two logs. We know that it was
built of four different trees; cypress, cedar, palm, and olive;
therefore it must have had three arms."
"You take no sacraments?"
"At present, none. We have no priests ordained to bless the bread and
wine. Saved without them? Yes; in the providence of God. Men were
saved before sacraments; Judas Iscariot took them and was lost. A
sacrament is a good form, not a saving means."
Fedor is a type of those Old Believers who are said to be slackening
at the joints, in consequence of their present freedom from
persecution. He has not learned to smoke; but he sees no harm in a
pipe, except so far as it might cause a brother to fail and fall. He
does not care for wine; but he will toss off his glass of whisky like
a genuine child of the north. Some strict ones in his village drink no
tea, having doubts on their mind whether tea came into use before
Nikon's reign; and nearly all his neighbors refuse to mix sugar with
their food, to put pipes into their mouths, to plant potatoes in their
soil. Fedor objects to sugar, as being a devil's offering, purified
with blood. Whisky he thinks lawful and beneficial, St. Paul having
commanded Timothy to drink a little wine--which Fedor says is a
shorter name for whisky--for his stomach's sake. Fedor is willing to
obey St. Paul.
Fedor is a Bible-reader. Every phrase from his lips is streaked with
text, and every point in his argument backed by chapter and verse.
Except in some New England homesteads, I have never heard such floods
of reference and quotation in my life.
"You say your Church has lost the priesthood?"
"Yes; our priests are all destroyed; the heavenly gift is lost, and we
are wandering in the desert without a guide. This is our trial. Our
bishops have all died off; we can not consecrate a priest; the
consecrating power is in the devil's camp."
"How can you get back this gift?"
"By miracle; in no other way. The priesthood came by miracle; by
miracle it will be restored."
"In our own day?"
"No; we do not hope it. Miracles come in an age of faith. _We_ are not
worthy of such a sign. We have to walk in our fathers' ways; to keep
our children true; and hope that they may live into that better day."
"You think the Orthodox rite will be overthrown?"
"In time. In God's own time His kingdom will be restored; and Russia
will be one people and one Church."
"What would you like the Government to do?"
"We want a free Church; we want to walk with our fathers; we want our
old Church discipline; we want our old books, our old rituals, our old
fashions; we want to read the Bible in our native tongue."
"Are the Old Believers all of one mind about these points?"
"Ha, no! There are Old Believers and Old Believers. In the north we
are pretty nearly of one mind; in the south they are divided into two
bodies, if not more. The Government is active in Moscow; Moscow being
our ancient capital; and most of the traders in that city Old
Believers. Ministers are trying to win them over to the Orthodox
Church. Visit the Cemetery of the Transfiguration near Moscow; there
you will see what Government has done."
Let us follow Fedor's hint.