turning over the leaves of a book, pointed with her finger to the unmeaning wood-cuts at the top of every chapter, and said to all alike, 'Bojinka'-'little god." He replied, "That is only sheer and gross stupidity in mujiks (peasants) and women." "If they are the offenders," I said, "you must have stupidity and ignorance enough among you. You make things to be worse than I supposed." "Well," he answered, "there is plenty of it among the people." After a few minutes, he added, "No Russian thinks the Icons to be gods, but peasants and women may sometimes speak as though they were through stupidity."

A

CHAPTER LXVI.

His Deliverances continued.

T another time he said: "Count Pratasoff has been

Ober-Prokuror now for about four

years. Before that, I only know of him that he was one of the Emperor's suite. As for Prince Alexander, who held that office in the last reign, it could scarcely be said of him that he held any particular creed. The Ober-Prokuror has no vote in the Synod, but yet, what is strange," he added, laughing, "he has very great influence.

"As to the definition of the visible Church," he said, "it depends upon the sense that one attaches to the word heresy. We think the Latins to be secundum quid heretics, but not in relation to Luther and Calvin. As we think the Latin Church to agree almost entirely with us, we have never been disposed to recognize any other Churches or Societies in the West, as competing with it, but we recognize only the Latin. Yet in one sense they are heretics, though in another they are not." I said, "They either are heretics, and out of the

Church, or they are not." "No," he said, "not so. Our Church has remained the same, and has preserved everything. We certainly answer to the definition of the visible Church; but we have no need to include others in that definition which is fulfilled in the Greco-Russian communion: she stands alone, and self-sufficing. She needs not any others; and that absolute external unity and precise definition, which you require, would only do harm, for it would establish a sharp line of separation between us, who are within the definition and all others, and would destroy that tolerance and mutual friendly intercourse, and half recognition, which now subsists. I think that external differences cannot be avoided, but the essential unity of the faith is preserved internally. Other ecclesiastical bodies are not entirely bad; the Latins are partly right; the Lutherans also."

I said, "One ought not to confound confessions with organized Societies. One should distinguish between the Apostolical Churches according to their dioceses; differences in secondary and variable matters do not justify them in invading one another and setting up a new altar against the original altar. All individuals should conform to the customs of the local Church in which they happen to be, until they gain leave to act otherwise by the local Bishop."

M. Fortunatoff laughed at the Latin charges of the eleven or twelve heresies of the Greeks. 66 'Any one

may easily see," he said, "how flimsy they are; they all depend on the primary assumption of the Pope's absolute authority and infallibility. When I was a student in the Academy," he said, "I went several times from curiosity to see the Latin rite; and I thought their Mass, not only vastly inferior to ours, but contemptible, and even ridiculous;-a congregation sitting or squatting on chairs with their faces in books, an organ at work, priests gesticulating in dumb show, and such a theatrical air about it all. I saw the Bishop sitting on one side of the sanctuary-not in the middle of the Church, and the celebrant retiring from him backwards with three reverences; whereas our priests merely bow to the Bishop, and turn round and proceed to their sacred duty."

He added, "You, from being neighbours, are still half Latins; you excuse the Pope and the Latin Church in almost everything." "That certainly is a

most unjust assertion," I answered.

Two days later

he said, alluding to this conversation, "I often am disputing for disputing's sake" (to put the case on both sides, I suppose he meant); "but in truth I think that the Latins scarcely differ by any real difference from us; and those two or three whom I have seen, explained away their fire of purgatory, and on all points seemed to have a very poor defence of themselves, and rather apologized for their variations, and explained them in our sense, than proved any point against us."

H

CHAPTER LXVII.

M. Fortunatoff on the Sacraments.

E hears confessions chiefly in Lent. A crowd of

people, waiting for their turn, stand together in the body of the church, and the Priest, standing on the solea,' in his epitrachelion, with a disk and light before the Icon of Christ, reads the preparation, &c., down to the questions, once for all. Then he repeats the Ten Commandments, and the people go up, one by one, behind a movable screen, set on the solea. The priest asks against which of the commandments they have sinned; they confess; and then he imposes penance, and absolves them, laying his epitrachelion, and his hand, on their heads. "They ought, no doubt," he said, "to particularize, so far as is necessary, to make clear the nature and degree of the greater sins; but there may be sometimes a thousand to confess in one day, or at least in two or three days, in one week; and it is unavoidable that there should be many bad confessions."

[This seems to be the step before the iconostasis leading into the sanctuary.]