Modern Saints and Seers. Jean Finot
to authority. Their special imagery included, among other things, the devil offering a candle to the Tsar, and inviting him to become the agent for Satanic work upon earth. Sometimes their feelings led them to commit acts of violence; one, for instance, would interrupt divine service; another would strike the priest. A peasant named Samarin threw himself upon the priest in a Russian church, forced him away from the altar, and, having trampled the Holy Sacraments under foot, cried out, "I tread upon the work of Satan!"
When arrested and condemned to penal servitude for life, Samarin was in despair because the death sentence had not been passed, so sure was he that he would have gone straight to heaven as a reward for his heroic exploit.
CHAPTER V
THE SOUTAÏEVTZI
The Soutaïevtzi (founded in 1880 by a working-man of Tver, named Soutaïeff) scoffed at the clergy, the ikons, the sacraments, and military service, while upholding the principle of communal possession. They very soon became notorious. Soutaïeff travelled all over the country preaching that true Christianity consists in the love of one's neighbour, and was welcomed with open arms by Tolstoi himself. He taught that there was only one religion, the religion of love and pity, and that churches, priests, religious ceremonies, angels and devils, were mere inventions which must be rejected if one wished to live in conformity with the truth.
As to Paradise, when all the principles of love and compassion were realised upon earth, earth itself would be Paradise. Private ownership being the cause of all misery, as well as of crimes and lies, it must be abolished, together with armies and war. Further, Soutaïeff preached non-resistance to evil, and the avoidance of all violence. One of his sons, when enrolled as a conscript, refused to carry a rifle. Arguments and punishments had no effect. He proved that heaven itself was opposed to the bearing of arms by quoting the Gospel to all who tried to compel him; and in the end he was imprisoned.
Neither did Soutaïeff allow that a man should be judged by his neighbour. "Judge not, that ye be not judged," was his motto, and his life filled his followers with enthusiasm, and many besides with astonishment. This uncultured peasant, who had the courage to throw on the fire the money he had earned as a mason in St. Petersburg, who carried the idea of compassion to such lengths that he followed thieves in order to give them good flour in place of the bad that they had stolen from him by mistake—this simple-minded being, whose only desire was to suffer for the "truth," possessed without doubt the soul of a saint and a visionary.
CHAPTER VI
THE SONS OF GOD
The "sons of God" held that men were really gods, and that as divinity is manifested in our fellows and in ourselves, it is sufficient to offer prayers unto—our neighbours! Every man being a god, there are as many Christs as there are men, as many Holy Virgins as there are women.
The "sons of God" held assemblies at which they danced wildly, first together and then separately, until the moment when the women, in supreme ecstasy, turned from the left, and the men from the right, towards the rising sun. The dance continued until all reached a state of hysterical excitement. Then a voice was heard—"Behold the Holy Spirit!"—and the whole company, emitting cries and groans, would pursue the dizzy performance with redoubled vigour until they fell to the ground exhausted.
Their sect originated in the neighbourhood of a great hill, where dwelt a man named Philipoff with his disciples. He had retired there to work against the influence of anti-Christ, and it was there that God appeared to him, and said, "Truth and divinity dwell in your own conscience. Neither drink nor marry. Those among you who are already married should live as brothers and sisters."
Women were held in high esteem by the "sons of God," being venerated as "mothers or nieces of the Saviour."
CHAPTER VII
THE TOLSTOYANS
The numerous admirers of Count Tolstoi will find in his writings some derivations, whether conscious or unconscious, from the principles elaborated by many of the Russian sects. The doctrine of non-resistance, or inaction, the abolition of the army, vegetarianism, the defiance of law, and of dogmatic Christianity, together with many other conceptions which either scandalised or enraptured his readers, were already widespread among the Russian peasantry; though Tolstoi was able to give them new forms of expression and an original, if disquieting, philosophic basis.
But even as the products of the earth which we consume return to earth again, so do ideas and doctrines ever return to the source from which they sprang. A great reformer usually gathers his ideas from his environment, until, transformed by the workings of his brain, they react once more upon those to whom they actually owed their origin.
Renan has traced very accurately the evolution of a religious leader, and Tolstoi passed through all its logical phases, only stopping short of the martyrdom necessary ere he could enter the ranks of the prophets.
Imbued with the hopes and dreams that flourished all around him, he began, at a ripe age and in full possession of his faculties, to express his philosophy in poetic and alluring parables, the hostility of the government having only served to fire his enthusiasms and embitter his individual opinions. After first declaring that the masters of men are their equals, he taught later on that they are their persecutors, and finally, in old age, arrived at the conclusion that all who rule or direct others are simply criminals!
"You are not at all obliged to fulfil your duties," he wrote, in the Life and Death of Drojine, 1895, dedicated to a Tolstoyan martyr. "You could, if you wished, find another occupation, so that you would no longer have to tyrannise over men. … You men of power, emperors and kings, you are not Christians, and it is time you renounced the name as well as the moral code upon which you depend in order to dominate others."
It would be difficult to give a complete list either of the beliefs of the Tolstoyans, or of their colonies, in many of which members of the highest aristocracy were to be found.
"We have in Russia tens of thousands of men who have refused to swear allegiance to the new Tsar," wrote Tolstoi, a couple of years before his death, "and who consider military service merely a school for murder."
We have no right to doubt his word—but did Tolstoi know all his followers? Like all who have scattered seed, he was not in a position to count it. But however that may be, he transformed the highest aspirations of man's soul into a noble philosophy of human progress, and attracted the uneducated as well as the cultured classes by his genuine desire for equality and justice.
Early in June, 1895, several hundreds of verigintzi (members of a sect named after Veregine, their leader) came from the south of Russia to the Karsk district. The government's suspicions were aroused, and at Karsk the pilgrims were stopped, and punished for having attempted to emigrate without special permission. Inquiries showed that all were Tolstoyans, who practised the doctrine of non-resistance to evil on a large scale. For their co-religionists in Elisabethpol suddenly refused to bear arms, and nine soldiers also belonging to the sect repeated without ceasing that "our heavenly Father has forbidden us to kill our fellowmen." Those who were in the reserve sent in their papers, saying that they wished to have nothing more to do with the army.
One section of the verigintzi especially distinguished themselves by the zeal with which they practised the Tolstoyan doctrines. They reverenced their leader under the name of "General Tolstoi," gave up sugar as well as meat, drank only tea and ate only bread. They were called "the fasters," and