I met

unwilling to be baptised, and earnestly pleads for mercy. another in January last year, who had come to St. Petersburg to plead for toleration. As the bulk of these unfortunate people have not the faintest inkling of the meaning of Christianity, and cannot speak the only language understood by their apostles, they are only scared by the queer things done to them in the river. Prince Meschtschersky, that enfant terrible of the Tsardom, published a detailed account of the matter some months ago, in consequence of which inquiries were instituted in Siberia. Bishop Benjamin at first felt himself safe and secure under the wing of the Ober-Procuror, but when telegram after telegram was received by him from the capital, and the danger to which he was exposed was made clear, he died of nervous shock.

Bad as this undoubtedly is, the treatment meted out to Protestant sects is infinitely worse. The members of the sect known as the Paschkovites (from one of the leaders, Colonel Paschkoff) have been treated worse than the heathen and the publican. Meetings at which the Bible was read were prohibited, tea-shops and refuges closed, the more zealous preachers imprisoned, and Colonel Paschkoff himselfone of those rare individuals whose beautiful lives do more to convince us of the divine origin of Christianity than all the miracles ever witnessed or recorded-was banished for ever from Russia. In accomplishing this arduous and uncongenial task, M. Pobedonostseff found it very difficult to keep within the bounds of truth, justice, and moderation; and the recollection of his backslidings in this respect is still gall and wormwood to his soul, and intensifies his hatred for an eminently Christian community. Our most odious enemy is he who wittingly or unwittingly drags our weak points into the broad light of day and betrays us into belying our principles and playing false to our convictions. Hymn-books, which M. Pobedonostseff and his clergy had sanctioned or eulogised, were suddenly condemned and withdrawn from circulation, and a hateful class of spies establishedpersons who denied their own religion in order to prevent other people from professing theirs, and who shamelessly lied in the interest of truth. False witnesses were found who swore that members of the sect had desecrated images and blasphemed saints; and on the strength of these depositions many were flogged, fined, and imprisoned, and deported to Siberia. And when a most honourable man came forward and made known the facts to M. Pobedonostseff, asking him to have them officially tested, the Ober-Procuror was deaf, like Festus, to the words of justice and truth. The last stage in this interesting drama was the closing of a coffee-house much frequented by poor students and factory-hands in one of the slums of St. Petersburg, because of the proprietor's refusal to remove certain

'

Gospel texts from the walls, where they had been hanging, to my own knowledge, for twelve years. Some of the texts consisted of Christ's words to his disciples, and Colonel Paschkoff thought that he might safely assume that they would do no positive harm. "I strictly forbid you to preach any more such socialistic sermons; you shall not use the pulpit as a tribune for the spread of revolutionary doctrine," exclaimed a Roman Catholic Bishop in Austria to one of the most gifted of his priests the other day. "To hear is to obey, my Lord, I will never preach another of his sermons," was the humble reply. "Whose sermons ? What do you mean?" asked the astonished prelate. "I mean St. John Chrysostom, my Lord; for it was his homily that I preached in extenso; but of course I will never repeat the offence in future. "Remove those dangerous words," exclaims the director of the Orthodox Church of Christ. "I cannot; they are Christ's own words," was the reply. The cases are very much alike; but there is this difference: the Roman Catholic Bishop was ashamed of his constructive disrespect for the memory of John Chrysostom, but M. Pobedonostseff was unabashed, though he implicitly censures Christ.

But of all the Christian sects in Russia, the Stundists are by far the most cruelly treated. They may be broadly described as Evangelical Christians, who endeavour to worship God in spirit and in truth, and put obedience to His will-as they conceive it-above compliance with the ukases of the Tsar. Vigorous folk like these, who take life seriously and fear only God, are odious to a statesman who acts as the official spokesman of God and Tsar; they are the hard lumps which, refusing to dissolve in the mass, are cast into the mortar and pounded. The loss of civil rights, fines, imprisonment, and banishment to the remotest and most unhealthy tracts of the Empire, were the penalties decreed and enforced against this form of Christianity until a few months ago, when it became evident that they aggravated the evil instead of remedying it. The Stundists touched the hearts of the convicts with whom they mingled; soldiers sent to their prayermeetings for the purpose of giving evidence against them later on, oftentimes dropped upon their knees and begged to be received into the proscribed brotherhood then and there; punishment was courted rather than feared, and the sect throve and spread.

A few months since, the Ober-Procuror turned over a new leaf, changing the system of repression. The members convicted now are no longer scattered over the country, but either imprisoned or else employed in public works for the benefit of their indolent Orthodox brethren, generally at a long distance from home. They forfeit their right to work at their trades, and, employed as night-watchmen, foresters, &c., receive but a wretched pittance fixed expressly with the object of keeping them and their families on the famine line. This

1

is a somewhat heavy penalty to have to pay for the right to practise what most sane people hold to be a virtue; and it is to be hoped that no more than this was ever intended by the Ober-Procuror. Unfortunately, a good deal more regularly occurs: doings which it is difficult to describe in the language of propriety, and impossible to qualify in terms of moderate condemnation. The wives and daughters of these men remain at home, while their husbands and fathers are absent for days and nights at a time; and the rural police and village ruffians profit by the occasion to visit these helpless females, bring their vodka with them, and hold their brutish orgies in their presence. A veil must be drawn over the scenes that ensue, over the crimes that cry to Heaven for vengeance. Nor are these crimes only imagined. I have lately read some heartrending appeals to Christians of the civilised world, nay, to men and women of every faith, written with the life blood of the despairing victims, in which these horrors are described. These appeals, I believe, have not yet been published. I know that they have been made in vain. People have not time in this busy age to join a crusade which has religion or religious freedom for its object. And, besides, what business is it of foreigners to meddle in Russian politics? These are matters for the Russian Government to settle; and it has decreed that Stundism, which undeniably constitutes a serious danger to Orthodox-autocracy, must be stamped out in self-defence. And who will gainsay the Government?

One hopes that the Tsar's "old man," who is technically responsible for these things, disbelieves them. There is no doubt he has heard of them; not indeed from his agents, who would suffer martyrdom rather than pain him by implying that his favourite method depends for its efficacy upon crime, but from candid Russians living at a distance, who delight in pointing out the drawbacks of his system, and measuring the distance that separates it from justice and humanity. And yet we must not confound the workman with his work. We may believe as firmly in the excellence of M. Pobedonostseff's motives as in the pitiable plight of the people, for whose possible good he is working such real evil. He is a remarkable Russian rather than a great man. He has twice saved the Tsardom from the pangs that accompany growth and expansion, by giving it the shadow and the shelter of the American moss which, now already felt to be irksome, will soon be recognised as deadly. He is still engaged in preserving the most salutary truths and sublime ideals ever revealed to man, by pinning them to the unshapely forms of fetishes. It is not exaggerated praise to affirm that, of all the advisers of the Tsar, he is the most orthodox, consistent, far-seeing and successful; and that he is likewise the only genuine Russian statesman in the Empire. What more he is, had best be left to be determined by the future historian

1

whose judgment, if lenient, will consist in the following reversal of the beautiful words attributed to Jesus with as much reason as any inserted in the Gospels: "Man, if thou knowest not what thou art doing, blessed art thou; but if thou knowest it, thou art accursed, and a transgressor of the law."*

E. B. LANIN.

* One of the most Christian of the aypapa, Cod. Cantabrigiensis, D., ad Lucam, vi. 4. "On the same day, seeing a certain person working on the Sabbath, He said unto him: 'Man, if thou knowest what thou art doing, blessed art thou, but if thou knowest it not, thou art accursed, and a transgressor of the law." Tŷ aỷτî ǹμépa, θεασάμενός τινα ἐργαζόμενον τῳ σαββάτῳ εἶπεν αὐτῷ· ἂνθρωπε, εἰ μὲν οἶδας τί ποιεῖς, μακάριος εἶ· εἰ δὲ μὴ οἶδας, ἐπικατάρατος καὶ παραβάτης εἶ τοῦ νόμου.

[ERRATUM.-In last month's issue, page 396, line 7, for "path" read "bath."]

THE FINANCIAL SCHEME OF THE HOME

RULE BILL.

SPE

PEAKING at Manchester, on April 12, Mr. Goschen is reported to have said: "The financial clauses" (of the Home Rule Bill) "are dead. They have been killed already. Never was there such a financial fiasco as these clauses. The Government have not attempted yet to defend them." The Government will, no doubt, take up Mr. Goschen's challenge in due course; but perhaps an independent postmortem examination of the clauses may be permissible, and likewise useful, inasmuch as financial proposals do not readily lend themselves to be treated piecemeal in speeches.

The principle underlying the financial scheme in the Home Rule Bill is pretty evident. It is that Ireland should provide for her own Civil charges, and that, accordingly, there should be handed over to her revenue sufficient to meet those charges, and, at the same time, give her a working balance.

On the one hand, the Irish Civil charges, both those met out of Exchequer Revenue and those met out of Local Taxation Revenue, and the charges connected with the collection of the Inland Revenue and the Post Office Revenue, were computed in the aggregate, for the years 1892-3, at £5,660,000.*

On the other hand, apparently by a fortunate coincidence, it was found that the excise duties paid by the consuming classes in Ireland, on account of beer and spirits, the proceeds of the whole of the stamp duties, income-tax, and excise licences levied in Ireland, the amount of Postal Revenue, collected in the country, and what was * Cf. Parliamentary Return No. 91 of 1893. Total Irish Civil charges Collection of Inland Revenue

Postal Services

VOL. LXIII.

£4,710,000

160,000

790,000

£5,660,000

2 s