It is not easy to follow accurately every stage of this revival of God’s Spirit in Russia, especially as up to the year 1880, most of our information is derived from the reports of the priests. But, if we move on from Kherson to Kief, in the year 1868, we find meetings being held at the village of Plosskoye, at first secretly, for fear of the police and priests, but afterwards as their courage increased, openly by day, in the house of a man named Zyboulski. He had learned the gospel from Tyshkevitch, who had lived for years in Kherson, before returning to his native place to spread the glad tidings among his comrades. There was no small stir in the neighborhood, and as might be expected, the police were soon on the track. Arrests were made, fines imposed, and the meeting houses closed. Tyshkevitch and Zyboulski were both carried off to prison, where they remained for more than a year, visited by the priests and government emissaries in hopes of inducing them to recant. But to one and all they made answer: “We will have none of your theatrical accessories. We want the New Testament, and that alone nothing else.”
These were not he only arrests which were made before the year 1870, but I give them as an example of what went on.
The Stundists might now be computed at 70,000 being spread over ten provinces between the Austrian frontier and the Volga. In the year 1872 They had overrun the whole of Tarastch, and it is interesting to read the accounts of meetings held in the town of Kanev, on the Banks of the Dnieper, scouts being set to watch, while these poor peasants assembled, amidst the rustling sedge on the banks of the river, to worship God, or to listen to a sermon from one of their leaders. At any moment they might be secretly seized by the police, and carried off to jail, or banished to a remote corner of the Empire, for in Russia there was no press to expose these cases of persecution, and so-called heretics were tried and sentenced within closed doors.
From this time and onwards most of the converts broke at once with the rites and ceremonies of the Greek church, and when summoned to appear before the Consistory officials to answer for their conduct, they invariably replied from Scripture. When told that the law forbade the laity to interpret Scripture, they would quote Col. 3:1616Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. (Colossians 3:16): “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” Their reason for not going to the Greek church was that they desired to worship God in spirit and in truth according to John 4:20-2420Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. 21Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. 23But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. 24God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:20‑24). To bow before an icon, a thing made with hands, would be idolatry.
A young girl, when asked why she did not make the sign of the cross, replied that Christ’s sufferings on the cross were graven in her heart, so that she did not need an outward sign to remind her of them.
Ratushni, of whom we have already spoken, when offered the bribe of holy orders in the orthodox church and a comfortable career if he would forswear his religious convictions, replied that he set greater store by God’s promise than man’s favor, and that he would not sell his birthright for a mess of pottage.
In 1873 some of the Stundists were sent to monasteries, in the hope that the monks would be able to reconvert them, but they remained firm in the faith; so much so, indeed, that entreaties came from some of the monasteries to send them no more Stundists, as the monks were not steadfast enough to resist them, and were in danger of being perverted themselves.
In these monasteries the Stundists were subjected to a form of torture called “doing penance,” which consisted often in their being reduced to a state of starvation, and having then to listen to the endless harangues of the monks. But they were unmoved, and one of the exhorting priests, whose honesty exceeded his prudence, wrote: “The fact is that these men either have done no wrong, or else their hearts have been hardened by the ceaseless questioning and cross-questioning to which they have been subjected.” There were secret reports of the priests and bishops which still lay hidden in the archives of monasteries and consistories, showing how great was already the thirst for vengeance on these Christians.
“One of the first of these pleas for violence was drawn up in 1873 by Father Terletsky, a priest selected by the Archbishop of Kief for his energy, erudition and eloquence to bring back the lost sheep to the true fold. He had been a Roman Catholic priest, and having changed his own faith with profit to himself, now exerted himself to the utmost to dissuade others from the crime of changing theirs. His failure to convert a single Stundist was a terrible blow to his orthodoxy and self-love, and afforded some excuse for the report which he drew up and sent to the Metropolitan, setting forth that the wandering sheep could only be restored by adopting the following measures: (1) Strictly prohibiting all Bible readings and prayer meetings, and, lest they should be convened at night in secret, quartering soldiers in the huts of all who were suspected of Stundism, and dogging the steps of all wandering pedlars; and (2) condemning without trial or accusation all Stundist preachers to penal servitude in the mines of Siberia.”
A copy of this report was sent to St. Petersburg, and little by little the government was overwhelmed with similar projects.
But it was not until the years 1877 and 1878 that the real fire of persecution commenced, and the priests, as we may suppose, were mainly instrumental in this. Indignant at finding their authority set at naught, their pretensions to be the sole representatives of the orthodox church despised, and finding themselves powerless to arrest the growing strength of the Stundists, they had recourse to foul and violent measures. At a conference of bishops and archbishops held in Kief in 1878, the most slanderous reports were sent in as to the conduct of the Stundists, and the secular powers were induced, not without some difficulty, to lend their aid in suppressing the movement, which was represented as dangerous to both Church and State.
The behavior of the Stundists was so exemplary, that over and over again their enemies had been unable to bring in a verdict against them. But when man wanted to get rid of Christ, His innocence was no impediment. “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him, crucify Him,” was only cried the louder.
From this time the Stundists were given to understand, as a body, that their separation from the Greek church meant the loss of every personal right and privilege.
And in what did this consist? It meant that they were to be treated like fugitives and vagabonds on the earth. That their names were to be placarded up in all railway offices, dockyards and workshops, so that no work of any kind might be given to them. It meant that they were not to purchase or rent land under any pretext. That their children were to be torn from them and handed over to strangers. That at any moment, when they were found reading the Bible or praying with one or more persons, they might be arrested and transported to some dreary spot in Siberia, and there “shot out like rubbish on the dumping-ground that is to prove their last resting-place on earth.”
ILLUSTRATION
“Their children were to be torn from them and handed over to strangers.”
The police in Kherson and Kief after this rigorously closed every meeting house, and confiscated hundreds of Testaments and manuscript hymnbooks. The leaders had their passports seized and were forbidden to stir from their own villages. This kind of thing went on for four years, but still it failed in hindering what was manifestly the working of God’s Spirit. If the meeting houses were closed, the Stundists gathered together at night for prayer in some nook or corner on the open steppe, and when deprived of their books, they found means of procuring others.
“By day, some of them would take their stand outside the taverns and await the habitual drunkard or the weak-willed farmer come to squander the proceeds of the sale of his cattle or corn.”
Many a poor sinner was reached in this way, and brought to repentance and to God, at the cost of prison or penal servitude to the one who had sought and won him.
The government, seeing all this, resorted to stronger measures, and in 1882 we find arbitrary and exorbitant fines levied on any poor peasant who continued to attend the meetings. One pound and eight shillings per head was the sum levied on each Stundist every time he went to a prayer meeting. Men and women were flogged, and the lash, to increase its efficacy, was sometimes wielded by the heretic’s own brothers.
“All through the winter of 1882 and 1883 it was quite a common thing to see in the villages auctions of the affects of Stundists their bedding, clothes and sticks of furniture being sold to liquidate these scandalous fines. We have before us a list of the Stundists fined and imprisoned in the village of Nerubalsk. 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 pounds.”
The same manner of proceeding went on in scores of other villages where Stundists lived, yet the priests were not satisfied.
“My predecessors knouted the Stundists with whips,” exclaimed the newly consecrated Bishop Sergius, “but I will beat them with scorpions.”
“Give alms to a needy Stundist!” exclaimed a village priest when he was asked to assist a hungry woman, whose husband had died, leaving her nothing but the Cain’s mark of the Stundist name; “I had rather fling the food to the dogs.”
The police were empowered to drive the Stundists by force into the churches to listen to sermons against their religious tenets. In fact it would be difficult to find any form of suffering and ill-treatment to which they were not exposed.
The titles of two of the most widely distributed leaflets after the year 1883, were, “No salvation outside the orthodox church,” and “The Damned Stundist.” The latter was printed in the government printing office, and distributed at the express desire of the Archbishop of Kharkoff, and shows how terribly strong was the hatred against God’s people.
ILLUSTRATION
“The police were empowered to drive the Stundists by force into the churches to listen to sermons against their religious tenets.”
Boom, ye church thunders!
Flash forth ye curses of the Councils!
Crush with eternal anathemas
The outcast race of Stundists!
The Stundist strikes at our dogmas,
Scoffs at our traditions,
Loathes our holy icons,
The heretic, the damned Stundist!
God hath blessed our Russian church
With high renown and fame,
Slandered is our Mother dear,
Slandered by the damned Stundist.
Our fanes and holy temples
That shine throughout the land,
Like stars in the blue firmament,
Are shunned by the damned Stundist.
Our prayers before the altar,
The hymns by which we honor God,
The mysteries we celebrate
Are blasphemed by the damned Stundist.
All the blessed and holy Saints,
Guardians of our Fatherland,
Our patrons and our watchful guides,
Are scorned by the damned Stundist.
The relics of the slaves of God,
Our images most holy,
Our processions of the cross,
Are loathed by the damned Stundist.
When we our fields and meadows bless,
Our brooks and springs we consecrate,
Nay, when we kneel and kiss the cross,
Then gibes the damned Stundist.
Dark and gloomy, demon-like,
He shuns the flock, the orthodox,
He skulks in nooks and corners dark,
God’s foe, the damned Stundist.
The simple sheep who venture near
The lair of this evil-working beast,
Shudder at his blasphemy,
And are entrapped by the damned Stundist.