Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XV. Later Sects
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vilifying the Stundists. For the better understanding of what
follows, it will be well to give more details of these. One of
them consisted of a newspaper extract, reporting the sermon
of an Archbishop, Ambrosius, in which he said: “The
Paschkovites and Stundists destroy the foundations of the
moral life of our people, because they deny the power of the
holy sacraments, tliey spoil the true believers’ efforts for
righteousness and the experiences of their spiritual life. The
Stundists take everything from the true believer, and give him
nothing in return but denunciation and slander against the
Church; and Paschkov’s teaching altogether denies the efficacy
of good works towards salvation, and, in so doing, opens the
door to every possible crime. That this really is the case is
seen in the life of the young among the people, in the increasing
drunkenness, theft, murder, attempts at railroad robberies,
parricide, child murder, &c., which were formerly unheard of.”
How unreasonable is this attempt to brand the evangelical
Christians as the cause of the increase of crime may be seen
from the fact that the Russian press has for twenty years
criticised the life and teaching of the sectarians, and
continually condemned them for schism and rejection of the
Orthodox Church, but never for offences against morality.
Moreover, from the mouths of the Orthodox leaders
themselves have come the most weighty testimonies to the strictly
moral life of the Nonconformists. In 1891, for example, the
great Orthodox missionary gathering in Moscow reported the
following:—
“We have examined the Stundists from the moral point of
view. They have no fixed creed, but endeavour to build on a
foundation of practical Christian morality. In their outer life
they try earnestly to fulfil the ethical commands. In contrast
to the surrounding people, the Stundists keep Sunday as holy,
drink no intoxicants, smoke no tobacco, use no foul language,
abuse no one, &c.”
Still stronger is the following, from a sermon by an Orthodox
bishop, Nikanor, in the government of Odessa. Taking for
his text Deut. xxviii. 44, “He (the stranger in the land) shall
lend to thee, but not thou to him; he shall be the head and
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