Mother Anicia, arrested in her village, has been put under the severest trials; yet nothing has been found against her credit and her fame. She is forty years old. She has been married nineteen years. A medical board, appointed by the governor, reports that she is still a virgin, and her neighbors, far and near, declare that she has lived amongst them a perfectly blameless life.
The police are not yet beaten in their game. An agent of their own has sworn to having been present in one of the sheds in which they conducted their indecent rites. Peter Mironoff, he declares, took down the ordinary icons from the wall, spat on them, cursed them, banged them on the floor, leaped on them, and ground them beneath his feet. After cursing the images, Mironoff kneaded a peculiar cake of ashes, foul water, and paste, in mockery of the sacred bread, and gave to every man in the shed a piece of this cake to eat. When they had eaten this cake, he called on them to strip, each one as naked as when he was born—garments being a sign of sin; and when they had all obeyed his words he bade them sing and pray together, in testimony against the world.
Each man, says this agent, is bound by the rules to choose for himself a bride of the Spirit, with whom he must live in the utmost purity of life.
What can a reforming minister do in such a case? A jurist would be glad to leave such folk alone; but the Holy Governing Synod will not suffer them to be left alone. Peter and Anicia remain in jail; their case is under consideration; and the model soldier and blameless villager will probably end their days in a Siberian mine.
COUNTERS.
In the province of Saratof, a wild steppe country, lying between the lands of the Kalmuks and the Don Kozaks, I hear of a new sect, called the Counters or Enumerators (Chislenniki). The high-priest of this congregation is one Taras Maxim, a peasant of Semenof, one of the bleak log villages in the black-soil country.
Taras speaks of having been out one night in a wood, when he met a venerable man, holding in his hands a book. This book had been given to the old man by an angel, and the old man offered to let Taras read it. Parting the leaves, he found the writing in the sacred Slavonic tongue, and the words a message of salvation to all living men. The book declared that the people of God must be counted and set apart from the world. It spoke of the Official Church as the Devil's Church. It showed that men have confused the order of time, so as to profane with secular work the day originally set apart for rest; that Thursday is the seventh day, the true Sabbath, to be kept forever holy in the name of God. It mentioned saints and angels with contempt; denounced the official fasts as works of Satan; and proclaimed in future only one fast a year. It spoke of the seven sacraments as delusions, to be wholly banished from the Church of God. It said the priesthood was unnecessary and unlawful; every man was a priest, empowered by Heaven to confess penitents, to read the service, and inter the dead.
Having read all these things, and some others, in the book, Taras Maxim left his venerable host in the wood, and going back into Semenof, told a friend what he had seen and learned. Men and women listened to his tale, and, being anxious for salvation, they counted themselves off from a corrupt society, and founded the Secret Semenof Church.
So far as I could learn—the sect being unlawful, and the rites performed in private—one great purpose seems to inspire these Counters; that of pouring contempt, in phrase and gesture, on the forms of legal and official life. Sometimes, I can hardly doubt, they carry this protest to the length of indecent riot. Holding that Sunday is not a holy day, they meet in their sheds and barns on Sunday morning, while the village pope is saying mass, and having closed the door and planted watchers in the street, they sing and dance, they gibe and sneer; using, it is said, the roughest Biblical language to denounce, the coarsest Oriental methods to defile, the neighbors whom they regard as enemies of God.
Semenof stands east of Jerusalem, and even east of Mecca.