privilege. The clergy were the instigators of this abominable persecution. From first to last they had never faltered in their ruthless determination to break the power of men who. set at naught their authority, and valued at their true estimation the pretensions which made these ignorant and coarse-living men the sole representatives, of true religion in their land. Unaided, the clergy soon discovered that they were powerless against the growing strength of the Stundists. They saw that village after village became infected by heresy, and that their flocks, hitherto so amenable to their guidance, or so callous, were no longer either docile or indifferent. It could not be tolerated longer. Violent reports of Stundist immorality and blasphemy came pouring in to the bishops and archbishops, and at a conference held in Kief under the presidency of the Metropolitan Platon, and at which the representatives of nine dioceses were present, it was resolved to petition the secular powers to lend their aid in suppressing a movement dangerous alike to Church and to State. In justice to the secular powers, it should be stated that their aid was not willingly given at first. Probably they had not fully gauged the strength of the Protestant movement; more probably they were loth to begin a course of action the end of which could not be foreseen, and which would inevitably give strength to the Protestants, and bestow on all who suffered the enviable reputation and authority of martyrs. In 1878, however, the worldly and the spiritual powers combined their forces, and the persecution began. It began by police raids on certain villages in Kherson and Kief. New Testaments and manuscript hymn-books were confiscated by the hundred, and a large number of meeting-houses were ordered to be closed. The principal leaders were placed under police surveillance, their passports were taken from them, and they were forbidden to leave their own villages. It is impossible in the
