yield, he ordered them to be transported to the Caucasus (a.d. 1840). There the Molokans have built villages and become prosperous in their industry and thrift.
The Doukhobors have more mystical tendencies. Possibly they inherit ideas and influences from the Bogomiles, and so continue that tradition of Protestantism in the Eastern Church which was long cherished by the Paulicians in Armenia. As "champions of the Spirit" the Doukhobors are less bound to the letter of Scripture than the Molokans. Their doctrine of the indwelling Christ, so rich and fruitful when spiritually accepted, has been taken too literally by some of their people. Kapoustine, a distinguished leader of the body, gave prominence to the idea that Christ is born again in every believer, while he taught the immanence of God in all mankind. His theology was Adoptionist. God descended into Jesus and made Him Christ because He was the purest and most perfect of mankind. From generation to generation, however, this incarnation has been repeated. "Thus," Kapoustine said, "Sylvan Kolisnisk, of whom the older among you know, was Jesus; but now, as truly as the heaven is above me and the earth under my feet, I am the true Jesus Christ your Lord!" He was taken at his word and adored, for the Russian peasant is credulous. Such an aberration, however, is not characteristic of the community as a whole. It is merely a fanatical perversion of its central principle—a principle which it shares with the soberest of Quakers. The Doukhobors are abstainers from alcohol, non-smokers, and for the most part vegetarians. Communism is with them a religious principle.[1]
The first known apostle of the doctrine of the Doukhobors was a returned soldier, or a German prisoner, who appeared at a village in Ukraina about the year 1740. Therefore the sect is more recent than the kindred body of the Molokans. They are said to have issued a confession of faith in the year 1791. By the end of the eighteenth century they had spread from Moscow to the Volga.
- ↑ Elkington, The Doukhobors, p. 147.
