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PREFACE.

Stundists than any one else who has written about them. It is a story of deepest interest, one that ought to come close home to every Christian heart, and both writer and publisher are rendering eminent service to the sacred cause of religious freedom and humanity by letting the facts be known far and wide. Yonder in the neighbourhood of Kherson, where our great philanthropist John Howard fell before the plague in 1790, and where he lies buried, the Stundist movement took its rise some five and thirty years ago. The cause of its rise is an old and oft-repeated story in the history of Christianity. The official, State-recognised Church had become corrupt, had sunk into worldliness and death; gross immoralities and sensual lives on the part of the clergy had brought religion into uttermost contempt, when, at length, in the most unexpected way the breath of God began to breathe life among the dead. For even a corrupt Church cannot altogether keep God out of His own world or shut Christ out from the souls for which He died. The Stundist movement, as its name implies, had a German origin. As far back as 1778 the great Empress Catherine had colonised Kherson with peasants from the Suabian land, who brought with them their religion, their pastors, and their industrious, sober ways. For many years national prejudices and the barriers of language kept Russians and Germans apart from each other. But sooner or later true life begins to tell. Men may even doubt the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, but they are seldom found doubting the divine inspiration of consistency of life, unselfishness of spirit, and true brotherly