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THE STUNDISTS.

havoc." "Be generous to your brother in darkness; be not spiritually proud; seek to enlighten him, he is your brother." This was nearly the whole of Bonekemper's teaching.

In 1867 and 1868 we see the evangelical movement streaming out into the villages of the populous district of Ananieff. A good many disturbances marked its course here. The Protestants of Ananieff were not gifted with the patience or tact of their brethren in other districts. Under their leader, Adam Voisarovski, they carried on an unrelenting campaign against relics, icon-worship, and prayers to saints; and the clergy in their reports denounced them as awful blasphemers, and urged the authorities to take stern vengeance on the heretics. A number of prominent Stundists were arrested in consequence, but they only suffered imprisonment for a few weeks. Archbishop Dimitri, of Kherson, was greatly exercised as to the best course to pursue to stem the rising tide. He decided on selecting a number of priests, well acquainted with the history and doctrines of the Orthodox Church, and these he sent to the disaffected districts to entreat the peasants back to the fold. The experiment was not encouraging. The priests were everywhere vanquished in argument, and not a single Stundist could they persuade to recant his errors. The Archbishop thereupon denounced Stundism as a "dangerous" sect. "They do not believe in the efficacy of the holy sacraments," he wrote, "nor in the necessity for a clergy. They refuse to reverence the icons, or pray to the saints," and he called upon the secular power to aid him in extirpating so pestilent a swarm of mischief-makers, dangerous alike to Church and State. We can gather from this that towards 1870, when this appeal was made, the Stundists were gradually sundering themselves from all connection with the Orthodox faith, and refusing any longer to hold to the forms and ceremonies of