Priest" deplores as a calamity, they acclaim as righteous doctrine. According to their belief there is no bishop, no pontiff, no master save Christ; their elders, who read and expound the Word, are appointed by themselves, as God-fearing men, whom they choose as directed by the apostle Peter, and who have no priestly character nor authority, and wear no special garb.
"God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth" (John iv., 24); this is the fundamental maxim of their creed, which they apply and follow out with the inflexible logic of the Russian peasant. All ceremonious observances during prayer, the repeated cross-signing, the "pokloni," or genuflexions and prostrations, dear to the heart of the Raskolnik and the Orthodox, they abstain from; the holy images, which all, save the most fanatic of the Bezpopovtsi, worship and revere, they deny as useless, unmeaning symbols. "God is a Spirit," they repeat, "and images are but idols. A picture is not Christ; it is but a bit of painted board. We believe in Christ, not a Christ of brass, nor of silver, nor of gold, the work of men's hands, but in Christ, the Son of God, Saviour of the world."
Their idea of a Church is according to the words of Christ: "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." They have no sacred edifices. "Solomon built himself a house, but the Almighty dwells not in temples made by the hands of men;" "the heart of man is God's only temple."[1]
Their services are simple and plain; they meet at each other's houses to listen to the Scriptures, repeat the Lord's Prayer, and sing Psalms.
They acknowledge the sacraments only in their spirit-
- ↑ Haxthausen, vol. i., p. 288.
