and influence. A few illustrations will suffice to indicate their nature, which exhibits the singularly contradictory tendencies still existing among the people, ranging from gross materialism, combined with fanciful mysticism, to exalted spirituality and rationalism.
In 1866 the "Tchislenniki," the "Counters," or "Enumerators," proclaimed, in the government of Saratov, a new revelation contained in a book brought down from heaven by angels. Their leader was an illiterate peasant who preached a new gospel to the effect that God's people must be "counted" and set apart, that the order of time had been disturbed, holy festivals and fast days were wrongly calculated, and hours which should be sacred to the Lord were profaned by secular work. They kept Wednesday as the day of rest, instead of Sunday, and celebrated Easter on Ash-Wednesday. They rejected the priesthood, and held that every believer may administer the sacraments; they declared the established Church to be an institution of Satan's devising, ridiculed its ceremonies, and cursed it with all belonging to it. Their doctrines are said to resemble those of the renegade monk Seraphim, and teach that sin is the only way to salvation, the necessary prelude to pardon. In practice they seem to unite the ritualism of the Old Believers with the radicalism of the Milk Drinkers, and the license of the Jumpers.
In the government of Tambov a small burgher, named Panov, gave himself out as Christ, and collected a band of followers who claimed to be the only pure and righteous ones, and held themselves carefully aloof from a world of sinners doomed to hell-fire.
At Troïtsa and Zlotooust, the "Pliasouni," or "Dancers," appeared in 1870; ostensibly belonging to the Church, but following the lead of a male and a female
