Churchy and of St. Veronica's napkin, upon which was leprodaced the features of the "Suffering" Redeemer.[1]
The sect of the "Vozdoukhantsi," or the "Sighing Ones," was discovered about 1871, among the petty merchants and traders of the city of Kalouga. Their founder was Ivan Tirkhanov, a shoemaker, who preached the abrogation of all Church ceremonies and the ritual; he declared the sacraments to be vain and useless in themselves, and that they should be taken only in a figurative spiritual sense. Man needs no intermediary between himself and his Maker; real religion consists in mute adoration, in mental communion. Prayer uttered by the lips, the spoken word, is too gross and too material for the worship of God, who is a Spirit; in the heart alone should mortals draw near their Creator: the sighings of a contrite heart, the aspirations of a devout soul only are acceptable in His sight, and these sectaries, with the simple-minded, credulous realism of the Russian, appeal to the Deity, and adore Him by silent, long-drawn breathings and heavy sighs.
The "Stundists" appeared first in the neighborhood of Odessa, where there are many German Lutheran communities, and are probably the earliest, perhaps the only, sect of a distinctively foreign origin, and having direct affiliation with Western Protestantism; their name, as well as their doctrine, is German.
Among the Teutonic colonists were sectaries, under the leadership of Michael Katuzhny, who called themselves the "Friends of God" ("Gottesfreunde"), and who met together for the reading of the Bible during their leisure hours ("Stunden"), whence their appellation of "Stundists." They endeavored to spread their doc-
- ↑ Haxthausen, vol. i., pp. 77 and 255.
