The latter are probably so named because they refuse to keep the Lenten fasts, and partake freely of milk, and of food prepared from milk, on the days when its use is prohibited by the Orthodox Church; this designation, which is contemptuously applied to them, is also supposed to be derived from the name of the Molotchnaya, the Milky Stream, a river of the south of Russia, so called from the chalky white color of its waters, along the banks of which their first and principal communities were originally established.
The adherents of both these sects are distinguished for their utter disregard of all ritual, and of the traditionary religious festivals, fasts, and forms of which the Bussian people generally are scrupulously observant. The lines of demarkation between them are not strictly drawn, and their members pass frequently from one to the other. They call themselves "Istinie Khristiane," "True" or "Spiritual Christians," and reject all external practices and ceremonies, as being, in their nature, materialistic and idolatrous.
The Doukhobortsi reject the sacraments, the Molokani receive them only in their spiritual sense. They both appeal to reason and to conscience as against the formalism and superstitions of the Orthodox and of the Raskolnik, empty sources of endless and vain disputes. "The Rasknolnik," they say, "will die a martyr for the right to make the sign of the cross with two fingers; we do not cross ourselves at all, either with two or with three fingers; we strive to attain to a better knowledge of God."
The Molokani, like the Bezpopovtsi, recognize no priesthood, but for a different reason; not because the Church has lost its sacerdotal power, but because, in the true Church, there is no need of a clergy. What the "No
