ST. PETERSBURGH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 223, 10 August 1877, Page 1

ST. PETERSBURGH.

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against it, but -whilst casting off its yoke, has retained its vices. Peter the Great it was who reft the ties that bound the church of his people to that of Constantinople by abolishing the patriarchate of Moscow, in order to establish the Holy >ynod which should, in subservience to the designs of the Czar, rule the religious affairs of the empire. "We must gather around \Bussia," said he. "all the Greeks, scattered by discords, who *are spread in Hungary, in Turkey, and in the south of Poland; make ourselves their centre, their support; and thus found, by anticipation and by a sort of sacerdotal supremacy, a universal hegemony." Peter cared not a jot about religion ; indeed it is probable that a man of his genius must have perceived that if there were truth at all, it lay with Eome. It is at any rate certain that he replied to the Bishop of Novgorod, who solicited the restoration of the patriarchate of Moscow, in the following words :— "I recognise no other legitimate patriarch but the Bishop of Rome. Since you will not obey him, you shall obey me alone. Behold your Patriarch!" His sole desire was to strengthen his power, and knit together his vast empire; and, knowing the great force of superstition, he gladly enlisted it in his service. A Church so constituted could not be otherwise than corrupt, and corrupt to her heart's core is that of Russia. Its priests are frequently chosen from the lowest of the people, and no particular Training is required to fit them for the offices of their calling. Dr. Dollinger quotes an authority who says, "It may happen to anyone to dismiss a servant one day for misconduct, and meet him on the morrow as a priest. People whom you have known as petty chandlers, day-labourers, or boatmen, you may see in a few days appear at the altar or in the pulpit." It is no wonder then if such a priesthood is debased beyond the limits of ordinary credibility ; if ignorance, drunkenness, and vice of every kind are its dietinguishing characteristics, or even if its members are frequently accused before the tribunals of infamous crimes, and, to such an extent criminal, that it has been proved that within a period of four years one-sixth part of the whole body had undergone the sentences of the law. This is the communion that attracts the sympathies of a certain portion of the Anglican sect ! Ignorance, however, of the actual state of the case can alone incline the mind of the gentlemanly and honourable clergyman of the sect referred to, to court connection, or desire to place himself on a par with the unsavoury roughs that swell the sacerdotal ranks of the Russo-Greek church.