3©2 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



him to be the medium through which the blessings or 

 the curses of the Church and the saints affect them 

 and their interests, and of this belief the commercial 

 pope takes every advantage to transfer from their lean 

 pockets to his own their hard-earned kopecks. Per- 

 haps it was studying, at close range, the ungodly trans- 

 actions of the commercial pope that brought Count 

 Tolstoi' to the conclusion that the primary duty of 

 every minister of the gospel is to earn his own living as 

 a husbandman. 



To the foreigner who has been accustomed to regard 

 the wearers of the cloth with something akin to the 

 same reverence that he feels for the Church, the Rus- 

 sian pope, and the place he occupies in the minds of 

 the people, is something of an enigma. In the Russian 

 mind the pope seems to have no connection with the 

 Church beyond a financial interest in its forms and 

 ceremonies. The government has appointed him 

 official purveyor of baptismal forms, marriage rites, 

 holy water, and masses, for which he receives fees, and 

 by means of which he makes capital out of the super- 

 stition and ignorance of the peasantry. 



The Church they reverence ; but the pope who 

 stands between it and the people and acts the middle- 

 man in dispensing or withholding its blessings, is the 

 butt of the national satire and figures largely in popu- 

 lar songs and stories as a charlatan and a despicable 

 fellow generally. The Russian who has committed 

 some grievous sin, and is prepared to go to any ruinous 

 length in regaining the favor of the saint, approaches 

 the pope on the subject of special masses for the pur- 

 pose in much the same spirit as he would approach a 



