§10
Of the Finnish population some accepted Christianity before Peter’s reign, others were baptised in the time of Elizabeth,[[101]] and others have remained heathen. Most of those who changed their religion under Elizabeth are still secretly attached to their own dismal and savage faith.
[101]. Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, reigned from 1741 to 1762.
Every two or three years the police-inspector and the priest make a tour of the villages, to find out which of the natives have not fasted in Lent, and to enquire the reasons. The recusants are harried and imprisoned, flogged and fined. But the visitors search especially for some proof that the old heathen rites are still kept up. In that case, there is a real ‘rainy day’—the detective and the missionary raise a storm and exact heavy blackmail; then they go away, leaving all as it was before, to repeat their visit in a year or two.
In the year 1835 the Holy Synod thought it necessary to convert the heathen Cheremisses to Orthodoxy. Archbishop Philaret nominated an active priest named Kurbanovski as missionary. Kurbanovski, a man eaten up by the Russian disease of ambition, set to work with fiery zeal. He tried preaching at first, but soon grew tired of it; and, in point of fact, not much is to be done by that ancient method.
The Cheremisses, when they heard of this, sent their own priests to meet the missionary. These fanatics were ingenious savages: after long discussions, they said to him: “The forest contains not only silver birches and tall pines but also the little juniper. God permits them all to grow and does not bid the juniper be a pine tree. We men are like the trees of the forest. Be you the silver birches, and let us remain the juniper. We don’t interfere with you, we pray for the Tsar, pay our dues, and provide recruits for the Army; but we are not willing to be false to our religion.”
Kurbanovski saw that they could not agree, and that he was not fated to play the part of Cyril and Methodius.[[102]] He had recourse to the secular arm; and the local police-inspector was delighted—he had long wished to show his zeal for the church; he was himself an unbaptised Tatar, a true believer in the Koran, and his name was Devlet Kildéyev.
[102]. In the ninth century Cyril and his brother Methodius, two Greek monks of Salonica, introduced Christianity among the Slavs. They invented the Russian alphabet.
He took a detachment of his men and proceeded to besiege the Cheremisses. Several villages were baptised. Kurbanovski sang the Te Deum in church and went back to Moscow, to receive with humility the velvet cap for good service; and the Government sent the Vladímir Cross to the Tatar.
But there was an unfortunate misunderstanding between the Tatar missionary and the local mullah. The mullah was greatly displeased when this believer in the Koran took to preaching the Gospel and succeeded so well. During Ramadan, the inspector boldly put on his cross and appeared in the mosque wearing it; he took a front place, as a matter of course. The mullah had just begun to chant the Koran through his nose, when he suddenly stopped and said that he dared not go on, in the presence of a true believer who had come to the mosque wearing a Christian emblem.
The congregation protested; and the discomfited inspector was forced to put his cross in his pocket.
I read afterwards in the archives of the Home Office an account of this brilliant conversion of the Cheremisses. The writer mentioned the zealous cooperation of Devlet Kildéyev, but unfortunately forgot to add that his zeal for the Church was the more disinterested because of his firm belief in the truth of Islam.