owes its origin to influences from the East, slowly filtering through the lower ranks of the population. It made its appearance as a distinct sect at St. Petersburg about 1770, the year of the plague at Moscow. Its founder, Andreï Selivanov, died, a centenarian, in 1832; his followers worship him as the incarnation of the Son of God. Their religious belief and their practices resemble those of the Khlysti, from whom they sprang, and are either an exaggeration of the doctrines of the parent sect, or the result of an attempt at reform; an ascetic reaction against the license and sensuality into which the votaries of Souslov had fallen.
The "White Doves," like the "Men of God," base their religious system upon personal inspiration and prophecy, and rely in a similar manner upon bodily exhaustion, caused by violent exertion, to produce the holy trance. At their meetings, which they call "Radenie," "Zeal," or "Earnestness," held in the evening or at early dawn, the disciples, clad in long linen robes, girded about the loins with girdles of peculiar make, worship their Lord seated upon a throne, and listen to the revelations of those whom the Spirit moves.
Proscribed and pursued by the police, they avoid detection by maintaining their membership of the Orthodox Church, and scrupulously conforming to its ordmances.
The peculiar rite enjoined by their creed is not merely an act of asceticism; it has a symbolic sense also, and is based upon a singular interpretation, not, however, originating with them, of the fall of Adam and Eve. They aver that the carnal union of our first parents was the original sin, which must be atoned for by mutilation; they acclaimed Selivanov as the Redeemer, and his emasculation as the scriptural atonement, in which all who
