“Much knowledge will make you old before your time.”
Soon after this Mitka fell ill. He had probably strained himself with lifting the heavy sacks. For days he lay in his underground room, moaning and groaning. Tichon went to see him, gave him sage-brandy to drink and rubbed him with camphorated spirit and other medicaments, obtained from a friendly German apothecary. It was damp in the cellar and Tichon removed Mitka to his own warm bright room over the main storehouse. Mitka was affectionate. He became attached to Tichon, and began to talk more openly with him.
Tichon gathered from these talks and Mitka’s songs, that at the beginning of the reign of Tsar Alexis Michailovitch, in the Murom district, before a great crowd of people, the Lord Sabaoth, surrounded by angels, archangels Cherubim and Seraphim, had come down from heaven in a fiery chariot. The angels returned to heaven, the Lord remained and entered the pure body of Daniel Philipovitch, a soldier deserter, declaring the peasant Ivan Timofeyevitch to be his Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and they set out wandering through the world in the guise of two beggars.
Escaping from persecutors they suffered cold and hunger; they were obliged to hide themselves in pig-sties, in fetid ditches, or to sleep under haystacks. One day a peasant woman concealed them in the cellar under a cattle shed. The cattle drainage from the floor oozed through into the cellar. Daniel Philipovitch on seeing it, said to Ivan Timofeyevitch: “You will get wet,” and Ivan answered: “It is nothing, if only you, my king, remain dry.”
They spent the last years of their lives in Moscow, on the Mestchanskaia Street, in a separate house, called “Zion.” They both died there and in glory ascended into heaven.
After Ivan Timofeyevitch, the same as before him, many Christs revealed themselves, since the Lord resides nowhere more readily than in a pure human body. It is written: “Ye are the temples of the living God.” God begets a Christ whenever the world is in danger of dying. Christ accomplished His work in one body and has begun it in several others.
“This means there are many Christs?” said Tichon.
“There is one spirit, Christ, yet the bodies in which He appears are many,” replied Mitka.