John Brown

“ The voices of the Stundist martyrs from their prisons and places of exile in Siberia and the Caucasus, and the patient heroism of their lives amidst the cruellest persecution, have stirred sects like the Molokans as a trumpet-call stirs a soldier. ”

“ In the meantime other evangelists, men who did useful and enduring work, but whose names have not been recorded, had been prepared in Rohrbach, Neu-Danzig, and other colonies, and returning to their own villages they spread the light that had illumined their own souls. In two years, or before 1860, there was hardly a Russian hamlet in the neighbourhood of Nicolaieff that had not its little company of earnest Stundists, teaching and praying, meeting together either openly or in secret, and zealously carrying forward a work dearer to them than life itself. ”

“ Thousands of the Old Believers were then banished, imprisoned, flogged, tortured; and to-day, after the lapse of nearly 250 years, thousands of Stundists and Baptists, of Molokans and Dukhobortsi, are banished to the remotest corners of the vast empire, and imprisoned and tortured in a variety of ways, only a degree less inhuman than the scourgings and rackings of the Middle Ages. The nations of the West do not seem to be alive to this. ”

“ There are numerous villages not far away, all like Osnova in appearance, with the same people, the same low huts and dirty haggards, and oceans of corn surrounding them, but none so famous, none so interesting to the student of religious history, for here, exactly thirty-five years ago, a great movement first saw the light, a mighty movement that may perhaps revolutionise the whole of the religious and social life of ninety millions of people. ”

“ For many years after the arrival of the Germans in Russia, the two peoples kept rigorously aloof from one another; but little by little the stronger race began to acquire an influence over the weaker. The sick Russian would apply to the German apothecary, the impecunious Russian to the German money-lender, the beggars—and there were thousands of them came to the colonies—for alms, and crowds of wandering peasants, discharged soldiers, landless people sought and obtained employment from the affluent German farmers. ”

“ It is beginning to feel that the bitter cry of the Church for secular aid is nothing else than a confession of her impotence, and that any furthur concessions to the bigotry and ineptitude of the clergy may have the effect of surrounding the suffering Protestants with the halo of martyrdom, and of alienating the people from sympathy with the Church. The Church may, indeed, for a time succeed, but we know that in calling on the secular arm to assist her she is seeking help from the very quarter by alliance with which most of her difficulties have sprung. ”

“ As far back as 1778 the great Empress Catherine had colonised Kherson with peasants from the Suabian land, who brought with them their religion, their pastors, and their industrious, sober ways. For many years national prejudices and the barriers of language kept Russians and Germans apart from each other. But sooner or later true life begins to tell. Men may even doubt the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, but they are seldom found doubting the divine inspiration of consistency of life, unselfishness of spirit, and true brotherly service. ”

“ There can be little doubt that the Baptist movement was a distinct advantage to Stundism. It did much to make the ordinary Russian Protestant more vertebrate. Until the Baptist set his face sternly against the Orthodox Church, and all its corruptions and defilements, the Stundist was satisfied to steer diplomatically between his new and his old faith. Afraid of giving offence and of consequent trouble, lie adopted a line of action and a mental attitude—outward conformity to Orthodoxy and inward contempt for it—which, was suicidal, destructive of all true spiritual progress. ”

“ Every gang of criminals which left the central gaols in these provinces counted among its numbers some who were noble servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, who walked in chains with heads shaven, and clad in the ignominious prison garb, for no other offence than that they sought to worship God in accordance with the dictates of their consciences. ”

“ Russia works in secret; her methods are underground, and her victims are voiceless. There is no press in Russia worthy the name to report and denounce each case of persecution as it occurs. The trials of heretics are conducted with closed doors, the public being carefully excluded. Russians themselves do not know a tenth of what is being done. We say that the victims are voiceless. From time to time Russia has tried her hand at persecuting peoples who are not her own—the Lutherans of the Baltic provinces, and the Jews of the south and west ”

“ Nations are vastly nearer to each other in these days of the Press and of swiftly-flying intelligence than they were a century ago, and even the strongest nation must yield at length to that love of justice and right which, in the last resort, is stronger than battalions and mightier than the edicts of kings. ”

“ Men told their neighbours what God had done for their souls, and so the heavenly contagion spread from cottage to cottage, from village to village, and from province to province, till at length the Russian Stundists were found in all the provinces from the boundaries of the Austrian Empire in the West to the land of the Don Cossack in the East, and were supposed to number something like a quarter-of-a-million souls. ”

“ He had commenced life intending to devote himself to a mercantile career in Russia, but as he grew older ambition led him to seek his fortunes in America. At Smyrna he embarked for New York. In a great storm at sea he felt his mind led towards heavenly things, and determined that on his arrival in the New World he would devote himself to the service of his Master. ”

“ To continue fining and imprisoning the insignificant Stundists in the villages—men whose work in no way affected the general movement, and allow the organisers and preachers to go scot-free, was not a wise system of persecution. ”

“ Let us all hope and pray that the triumphs of the past thirty years will pale before the triumphs of the near future, and that the day is fast approaching when the mighty empire, of which the Stundists are the salt, will be drawn to seek and to serve the kingdom of God and His righteousness. ”

“ It was in no stingy or superior way that these German Pietists treated their Russian dependents. The wealthy Russian is in the habit of looking on his poor fellow-countryman as belonging to an inferior order, with wants very similar to the wants of a horse—sufficient food and shelter to keep him able to work. The Germans treated their labourers as men and brothers, and not only attended to their material wants, but sought in every way to improve their moral and spiritual condition. ”

“ Here the people would learn for the first time in their own language of the wonderful works of God. Those who desired them, bought New Testaments, or rough Russian translations of German hymns in manuscript. In a surprisingly short time the peasants in most districts of the extensive province of Kherson had heard the Gospel preached, and sang with perfect ease queer Russianised versions of "O sacred Head surrounded," "The Lord our God is King," "Lead us, O Father, to the heavenly gates," and other favourites. ”

“ It may be gathered from this that the early Stundists did not at first altogether break with the rites of the Greek Church. Icon worship, the use of the sign of the Cross, yearly confessions, were still outwardly observed, although no one knew better than the revolted peasants that all these things were idolatrous, and that adhesion to their use was dissimulation and humiliating to themselves. Some of the reports from the village priests, men altogether ignorant of the true inwardness of what was going on, are amusing, as well as instructive. ”

“ PERSECUTION. In the chapters preceding this we have alluded more than once to the extreme hostility of Church and State to the Stundists. Hostility to anything and anybody that is enlightened and loves freedom is a settled policy in Russia, and has characterised the government of that country for more than three hundred years. Let a movement raise its head, having for its object either the spiritual enlightenment or the temporal benefit of the people, and it is ruthlessly crushed. The fabric of Russian power is an autocracy based on ignorance and superstition ”

“ Every governor of a province in Russia has the power to get rid of persons living within his jurisdiction, who in his sole opinion are suspected of designs against the peace of the province. No trial at law is necessary. The governor can transport either to Siberia or the Caucasus any persons who are considered troublesome, but against whom the evidence is not sufficiently strong to allow of a trial by jury. ”

“ From its earlier beginnings, exactly thirtyfive years ago, in an insignificant German colony, from the conversion of the Russian peasant Onishenko, the seeds of native Protestantism have taken firm root, and have spread outwards and upwards into a mighty growth. ”

“ The Baptist wing of the Stundists is undoubtedly the best organised and equipped. But if the German Baptists were at first so friendly and sympathetic, it is a matter of deep regret that latterly, when the storm and stress of persecution has beaten alike upon both sections of the Russian brethren, the Germans have held themselves studiously aloof. Secure in their own rights to worship God in their own way, they have proved themselves lacking in sympathy for their Russian co-religionists. ”

“ On the other hand, the Russian peasants of the South, a race altogether distinct in sentiment and imagination from the phlegmatic people of the Central and Northern provinces—Little Russians as they are called—had examples before their eyes of men leading upright, God-fearing lives, modelling their conduct on New Testament teachings, cleanly, thrifty, able agriculturists. ”

“ These are some of the ideas which the Stundists aroused, and which have gone circling and rippling into remote regions of the empire where Stundism has never been thought of. And if we turn to the other dissenting bodies in Russia, and especially to those of them who in their early history were identified with spiritual life, as distinguished from the Dissenters whose dissent was only a matter of ritual, we find that the Stundists have been more than influential—they have simply revivified them. ”

“ Since Peter the Great's days, when the Old Believers were so ruthlessly scourged, burnt, and banished, until the present time, a steady policy of repression has been maintained against dissent from the Orthodox Church. ”

“ During the space of eighteen months, twelve families here were fined the incredible sum of two thousand six hundred roubles, equivalent in our currency to £260. One man, more than usually obstinate in his views, was fined altogether over seven hundred roubles. His name is Khariton Konotop, and he and all his brethren, rather than pay these iniquitous fines, went to prison, and had their effects sold by the police. The deeds done in Nerubalsk were only a sample of the proceedings in scores of other villages where Stundists lived. ”

“ The clergy were the instigators of this abominable persecution. From first to last they had never faltered in their ruthless determination to break the power of men who. set at naught their authority, and valued at their true estimation the pretensions which made these ignorant and coarse-living men the sole representatives, of true religion in their land. Unaided, the clergy soon discovered that they were powerless against the growing strength of the Stundists. ”

“ Now what are the prospects of the Stundists as a Church? There can be no doubt that within this community there are enormous powers of proselytising zeal, held in present check by the drastic measures of the police and clergy. We would fain believe that the energy thus kept under must, in great measure, sooner or later, find vent for itself, and that a glorious future is yet in store for Stundism. ”

“ The great revolt of our own time is that of a people leaving, not the territory, but the religion of the Russian Empire. The story of this second revolt is here told for us with great vividness and power by one who is exceptionally qualified for the task, as being probably better acquainted with the Stundists than any one else who has written about them. ”

“ It is a story of deepest interest, one that ought to come close home to every Christian heart, and both writer and publisher are rendering eminent service to the sacred cause of religious freedom and humanity by letting the facts be known far and wide. ”

“ Ivan Solovev's case is interesting, as it displays another method of breaking a man's heart and ruining his worldly prospects. He also was one of the Kief leaders, a young man of bright intelligence and ardent temperament. Accused before the governor of spreading heretical tenets, he received notice that within fourteen days he was to clear out of the bounds of the province of Kief. He had five children and a wife, and worked a flourishing little farm. Everything had to be sold at a ruinous loss. ”

“ But in good heart he left all, and settled in the province of Kherson, where he resolutely began to repair his broken fortunes. His seed was hardly in the ground when he was informed by the local authority that the governor had ordered him to "move on." He was in debt for his seed and his cattle, so the Jews came in, seized everything, and one morning he and his family began a long tramp of 150 miles to Bessarabia. One old horse that they were able to save helped to relieve them on their march, for they all took turns at riding. ”

“ Abjectly poor, totally without means of support, he wandered about from village to village, and was supplied by the brethren with the bare necessities of life. He also had lived some time in Kherson, and his native zeal had been shaped and directed by Bonekemper. The meetings at Plosskoye were at first held secretly for fear of the police and priests, but after a while, seeing that no very strong measures against them were adopted, the brethren grew bolder, and met openly by day in Zyboulski's lodgings. ”

“ Archbishop Dimitri, of Kherson, was greatly exercised as to the best course to pursue to stem the rising tide. He decided on selecting a number of priests, well acquainted with the history and doctrines of the Orthodox Church, and these he sent to the disaffected districts to entreat the peasants back to the fold. The experiment was not encouraging. The priests were everywhere vanquished in argument, and not a single Stundist could they persuade to recant his errors. ”