tenets of the Baptist. In a word, they were German Baptists. These Teutonic emigrants were essentially missionaries in spirit, because they were genuine Christians. At first they only attempted to influence their neighbours morally and spiritually, without making any effort to detach them from the orthodox Church. But as Russian converts began to gather about them, these followers felt it necessary of their own accord to break away from the national Church and found independent communities. Thus the movement spread. From Odessa and the government of Kherson it passed on to the neighbouring provinces of Ekaterinoslaff and Kiev. The Stundists are a sober, frugal, industrious, intelligent, peaceable people, obedient to the laws, and exact in the payment of the taxes. They are said to advocate an equal division of the land, and they may have socialistic tendencies. But they have not tried to put these views in force by revolutionary methods. If the Russian autocracy had been broad-minded and far-seeing it would have welcomed the appearance of such a people as the best harbinger of the regeneration of the country. Instead of this the government has dealt with them harshly, breaking up their communities and scattering the individual members. This policy, the aim of which is to destroy the heresy, has had the very opposite effect. It has sown the seed broadcast. Every exiled Stundist is a missionary of evangelical truth in the district to which he is sent. Stundism is the only religious novelty that has appeared in the south of Russia. All the other schisms and heresies arose at Moscow or farther north or west. But, thanks to the policy of the government, this promising awakening of religious life is now to be met with in widely separated parts of the empire. It is spreading rapidly in the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg. Amidst the terrible troubles with which the realm of the tsar is oppressed, some see the greatest hope in this remarkable growth of an earnest religious life of a Protestant type.
A study of religion in Russia would be incomplete
