and they introduced certain moderate reforms, literary rather than dogmatic, in the externals of ritual, and in the liturgical books. An illiterate clergy had allowed abuses to take root, and were excessively intolerant of change. A schism arose between the established church with its rectified texts and improved ceremonial, and the large minority who rejected them.
Everybody knows Newman's story of the ancient priest who fell into the habit, at mass, of saying, "quod ore mumpsimus" instead of "quod ore sumpsimus," and, when admonished of his error, refused to exchange old "mumpsimus" for new "sumpsimus." Although "mumpsimus" is the very motto for the Russian schismatics, and although ignorance and superstition were the root of the matter, they combined with a dread of arbitrary change by an arbitrary power, and supplied a basis for resistance to Erastianism and the fusion of Church and State. This was the heart of the opposition to the later reforms, to which the Church in general yielded reluctantly, and the sectaries not at all, choosing death, and even suicide by fire, to compromise. The reforming government was driven into persecution by the fanaticism of these men.
The new spirit began to reign when the young Tsar Peter triumphed over family intrigues that were supported by the party of reaction. He was uneducated, unmannerly, uncivilised; but he had a clear notion of that which his people required, and the energy and force of character to achieve it. As there were no roads in Russia, and not much material for making them, the waterway was the easy and natural line to follow. The Russian rivers flowed to the Caspian and the Euxine, and invited to the conquest of Persia and Central Asia, or to the deliverance of the Slavonic and Greek brethren from the Turk. Peter was not carried away by either prospect. He did indeed send a fleet down the Volga, and another down the Don. He conquered the Persian coast of the Caspian, but resisted the temptation of pushing his arms to the Indian Ocean. He was repeatedly at
