The Stundists/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
GROWTH.
It was in 1867 that Karl Bonekemper arrived in Rohrbach to take up the office vacated by his father's death. We have no direct details as to his method or manner of work for the next ten years; all we know is that he was in close touch with most of the Stundist leaders in Kherson, Kief, and elsewhere. He knew them all, advised them in their difficulties, and conducted an extensive correspondence with them. Some of his letters—epistles, we ought rather to call them—had a most extensive circulation, and were universally acknowledged as authoritative deliverances. These were years of extraordinary growth, and it is interesting to take up the reports of the Russian clergy, and trace the rapid course of the movement from village to village over almost every part of the Southern and South-western provinces of the empire. Bonekemper's influence was paramount. The leaders not only applied to him for instruction as to organisation, but also on points of faith and interpretation. He had one or two cardinal pieces of advice that he never wearied of inculcating: "Learn to read, both men and women of you, and teach your children to read." "God's will and revelation are found in the New Testament; therefore, obtain a New Testament at all costs, and study it day and night." "Look at your neighbours and see what a curse drink is, how it enervates a man, and destroys his best faculties; abstain, therefore, from that which works such 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 the Church. Further arrests were made, arbitrary arrests most of them, made at the instigation of the priests. The secretaries complained to one of the Archbishop's "missionaries" that they were being arrested everywhere, and desired to know where it would all end. "End!" exclaimed the priest ominously, "it is only beginning."
The meetings continued to increase in numbers. "Whole villages gave in their adhesion to Protestantism, and it was computed that in the province of Kherson alone about 30,000 peasants had now joined the movement, and had severed connection with the Orthodox Church. In other provinces, notably in Bessarabia, the cause was also winning its way with wonderful strides. We are unable, unfortunately, to give any definite details of its growth in Bessarabia, but there can be little doubt that this growth was owing more to the labours of German colonists settled there than to the preaching of the Russian brethren from Kherson. The villagers on the lower and middle Dnieper were now all infected with the new heresy, so were the far-lying hamlets in the Crimea, so were some of the stanitsi in the country of the Don Cossacks. When the year 1870 opened, the 70,000 peasants, who were computed at that time to have joined the Stundist movement, were spread over the ten provinces between the Austrian frontier and the Volga—Podolia, Volhynia, Bessarabia, Kief, Kherson, Poltava, Ekaterinoslav, the Taurida, Kursk, and the land of the Don Cossacks. There is reason to suppose that before this period certain villages in the provinces of Orel and Chernigov were also slightly affected. Very little information is forthcoming as to how the Gospel message found its way into these vast territories. The wind blew where it listed, and people heard the sound thereof, but could not tell whence it came or whither it went. The Spirit of God was in the movement, and who can record or measure the Spirit's doings?
Only in two provinces, Kherson and Kief, can we follow with any degree of accuracy the course of this most marvellous revolt. We have already sketched its growth in Kherson; let us now turn to Kief. The first village affected seems to have been Plosskoye. This was in 1868. Here, as elsewhere, here as in Galilee, it was the homeless and landless who first attached themselves to the new Evangel. Tyshkevitch was one of the earliest pioneers of the faith in this province. An able colleague of his was Pavl Zyboulski. Tyshkevitch had lived for many years in Kherson, and had married a Protestant wife there. He had been long under the influence of Bonekemper and other pastors. Indeed, so completely had German ideas penetrated and permeated him that he is said to have worn his beard and his clothes in the German fashion. Zyboulski was undoubtedly an abler man than Tyshkevitch, a man with an extraordinary gift of lucid and persuasive speech. Abjectly poor, totally without means of support, he wandered about from village to village, and was supplied by the brethren with the bare necessities of life. He also had lived some time in Kherson, and his native zeal had been shaped and directed by Bonekemper. The meetings at Plosskoye were at first held secretly for fear of the police and priests, but after a while, seeing that no very strong measures against them were adopted, the brethren grew bolder, and met openly by day in Zyboulski's lodgings. Peasants from the surrounding villages soon heard of the grand new message delivered to their fellows in Plosskoye, and streamed in to hear the preachers. When they returned to their homes they in turn began to preach, and from their villages radii of light went out in turn to villages still more remote. At last the attention of Arseni, Metropolitan of Kief, was attracted. He put the police on the track of Tyshkevitch and other leaders, numerous arrests were made, meeting-places were closed, and arbitrary fines were inflicted on a number of the more prominent Stundists in the district of Tarastch. Both Tyshkevitch and Zyboulski were arrested and conveyed to prison in Tarastch, where they remained for over a year. In gaol they were often visited by priests sent to them by the Metropolitan, who used every effort to persuade the prisoners to return to the Church. Long disputations were held in the prison cell between these devoted men on one side and the inquisition agents on the other. They discussed the worship of the Virgin, the mediation of the Saints, the use of the sign of the Cross, and reverence to icons; but to one and all of the learned arguments of the priests the Stundist leaders made one answer: "These things are altogether absurd and unnecessary, and if they are not idolatrous, they lead to idolatry. We will have none of your theatrical accessories. We want the New Testament and that alone—nothing else."
Early in 1872 Stundism had spread over the whole of Tarastch and into the thickly-peopled Kanev and Vasilkovski districts. The history of its progress in these two districts, especially in Kanev, is full of interest, the element of adventure entering largely into it. Kanev is a small town on the middle Dneiper, and north and south of it are long stretches of reed and sedge, through which the mighty stream flows. Some of the most powerful sermons ever delivered by Stundist preachers were delivered among the rustling sedge on the banks of the river, with scouts out all around watching for the police. Night meetings were frequent. Out in hollows in the steppe, or in outlying cottages, the Kief Stundists met in small but enthusiastic bodies to worship God, unmolested by the police, and their always faithful allies, the priests. There is a well-authenticated story of a leader who, when conducting one of these night services, was hurriedly told that the police were on his track, and would be in the room in a few minutes. He was equal to the emergency. The police met in the doorway a woman with muffled head carrying a baby. Inside they found a few peasants drinking tea. The leader and the baby had escaped to the steppe.