er it be for the erection of, or the removal of, a church edifice, for the employment of diocesan funds, for the distribution of charitable contributions, for the deposition of a priest, or his release from his vows. The bishop must present every year full reports upon the condition of his bishopric, upon its schools and institutions, upon the number of communicants, and of conversions from other religions or from dissenting sects; he cannot be absent from his diocese for more than a week without special authorization.
The prodigious centralization noticeable in the machinery of Church government in Russia is the inevitable result of the constant, close relations with each other enforced upon its component parts, and of the intimate connection maintained by the Church with the civil authority. This intimacy is enhanced by the rivalry between the regular and the secular clergy; ecclesiastical honors and preferments are monopolized by the former, and they are the more prone to subserviency towards the State as the source of all power and emolument, while for the latter there is no independent religious head at home, nor supreme pontiff abroad, to whom they may appeal, and they also turn to the civil authority as their natural, and only, protection against episcopal despotism.
While rejoicing in the favor of the State, the Church does not apprehend thereby serious danger to its independence as a Church; confident in the immutability of its dogma, which no authority can impugn, and in the pious devotion of its adherents, upon which the government dare not trespass, it is fully alive to the fact that the interference of the sovereign is limited by the unwritten law of tradition, and that, to undue encroachment, it has but to oppose its passive power of inertia, and to rely upon the fidelity of its followers.
