Such are the expedients of the more gentle or enthusiastic to escape from the religious vacuum into which schism has precipitated them. Quite different is the course of the more strict and dauntless theologians; and the ascendency of logic over pious feeling carries with these the majority of the Bezpopovtsy. No consequence is too revolting for them, and no hesitating subterfuge worthy of a thought. The priesthood, they hold, is extinct, leaving only the sacrament of baptism, which the laity may administer. Make-believes are of no avail. The chain that linked Heaven with earth is snapped, and can be reunited only by miracle. Meanwhile, the faithful are like men shipwrecked on a desert island without a priest among them. Eucharist, penitence, chrism, and, more than all, marriage, are alike impossible. The priest alone can pronounce the nuptial benediction; and where there is no priest there can be no marriage. Such is the ultimate consequence of the schism--the rock on which the Bezpopovtsy split. With marriage the family goes, society with the family, and such teachings can never be in harmony with the feelings, with society or with morality. Marriage is their stumbling-block and the principal matter on which their discussions and divisions turn, giving rise to the wildest aberrations and strangest compromises. The more practical retain marriage as a social conventionality, while the more logical make celibacy universally binding, thereby fostering anything but asceticism. Among the Russian sectaries the familiar combination is repeated of sensuality and mysticism. Free-love has been both preached and practiced among them; and among the lower classes the grossest heresies of ancient Gnosticism have mingled with the wildest and most morbid of modern social theories. Most of their theological writers, while avoiding such extremes, urge the most extraordinary maxims in connection with their forbiddance of marriage, such as that immorality, being but a passing weakness, is less criminal than marriage, which is interdicted by the faith.... To such a point as this have the conscientious champions of old ceremonial been brought. They have carried with them a few shreds of ancient ritual, and they have not only abandoned Christian and natural morality, but in their struggle with modern government and civilization deny the principle which upholds all society.