i have continually come across protestants in russia. they are undoubtedly increasing in numbers very rapidly. several times when i was out in the mountains i came across proselytising baptists and molokans. the molokan is a sect of protestant exclusively russian, i think. they differ from orthodox peasants by their ethics. they hold it a sin to smoke or to drink, and they do not recognise the ikons. even in lisitchansk there had been a baptist family, and in moscow i had found lutherans.
m. stolypin’s ukase marked the decease of pan-slavism, that policy summarised in the words—one tsar, one tongue, one church. it was comparatively little noticed, this emancipation bill of russia, but it will probably prove a more important concession to the forces of democracy than any other fruit of the revolutionary struggle. it began a new era: historians in the future will take it as a starting-point in the history of russian freedom. meanwhile, despite rumours to the contrary, russia as a whole is as peaceful 236as bedfordshire. the revolutionary storm has passed away; the new issues of life and death germinate in silence. the flushed red fruit burst out, the seeds were scattered. to-day the seeds gather strength and grow and put forth shoots, and even the ordinary observer is aware of the beginning of a crop whose nature is sufficiently enigmatical. on another day there will be another harvest. and if elizabethan puritans meant ultimately the whitehall gallows, one may ask apprehensively for the significance of the puritanism that is springing into existence in the reign of nicholas ii.
i was talking to the pastor one evening shortly after i came.
“we increase, brother,” said he to me, “we increase. three years ago there were only 120 of us and now we are 300; in three more years we shall be half a thousand, not less.”
“but is it not dangerous?” i said. “surely you come into conflict with the authorities.”
“not much now. three of us were hanged two years ago. and often meetings are forbidden. the last governor forbade our meetings altogether; that was ten years ago. many of us suffered through that; some are in prison now and some died in prison. but we held our meetings despite the ukase of the governor. we used to gather together at a friend’s house, and then after tea we would have our few hymns and a prayer or two. these meetings were generally very happy, the 237common bond of danger made us closer than brothers.”
“and you?” i asked. “were you ever arrested?”
“yes, with four others one night; two of them died in prison, they were old men and it was hard on them. i served five years’ penal servitude. that was for holding a meeting against the order.”
the minister was silent as if recalling old memories, and then suddenly he went on as if brushing aside his thoughts. “but things are quieter now. in all russia there are twenty thousand baptists alone, besides many thousand other protestants, and we are added to in numbers every year. in rostof a little congregation has become three thousand since the duma came in. and now dotted all over the country we have little missions among the peasants; it’s the peasants who’re coming to us, and nobody else has been able to teach them. every year new missions start. next month i make my little country tour, when the harvesters are in the fields, and i go to five new places—five places to which the gospel has come this year.”
on the very first sunday morning comes my host to warn me not to be late for service. i prepared to go to chapel seriously; it was long since i had been in any place of worship other than a temple of the orthodox church.
half a mile distant i found the building, the little defiant, heterodox place so brave in its denial and protest. 238here was no church, not even a chapel, just a plain wooden building. this black, gaunt building, less beautiful and less ornamented than a house. god dwells in those jewelled, perfumed caskets of the orthodox church; he dwells here also. how well and how daringly the paradox had been asserted! and they called it a meeting, not a service, and it was held upstairs and not down; and instead of standing all through one sat all through, and there were no crosses and no ornaments and no collections, and the women sat on one side while the men sat on the other.
the room was large. wooden forms ranged on each side, there was a narrow passage down the middle, and at the head of it stood the preacher’s platform, slightly elevated from the people. the whole looked somewhat like a chapel schoolroom.
the congregation was in its way quite a grand one. not that it was by any means numerous; the little place was full, one couldn’t say more than that. but there wasn’t a woman dressed in anything finer than printed cotton, and the minister was the only man who wore a collar. something in the people called out one’s reverence. each woman had a cotton shawl for head-dress, and as the women’s side filled one looked along a vista of shawled heads, and when now and then one of them turned to look at a stranger one saw the broad-browed, pale face of a peasant woman.
they were all peasant folk, or working men or artisans, 239and very simple and earnest. one knew much of them when one heard the words of their elected pastor. ivan savelev, when he came in, walked directly to his place and knelt, and then after a few minutes’ silence closed his prayer by a few words spoken on behalf of the congregation—gentle, simple words, such as a mother might put into the mouth of her child. he is a tall, douce man, the minister, of a scottish type of countenance. his calm face and eyes suggest an infinite reserve of wisdom, and his gentle, musical voice tells of a mind and will in harmony. presently he read from the bible, and then gave out a hymn, and afterwards spoke from a text, first to the women, then to the men, and then to both collectively, and then gave out another hymn. what struck me was that he did each thing as if it were worth while, so that the numbers of the hymns sounded beautifully.
the people sang with a will and kept in tune. the pastor, after giving out the number, stepped over to the harmonium and played a tune. he is choir-master as well as preacher, and teaches his people new tunes from two books of his own—hymns, ancient and modern, and an old copy of moody and sankey; priceless treasures, one would say, though the printed english words remain inscrutable. we went off to the tune of “see the conquering hero comes,” the russian words seeming very irrelevant. when the tune was in full swing one really felt oneself back in england—old 240memories crowded to my mind. just before the sermon there was another hymn, and this to the tune of “oh, god, our help in ages past;” but a presto motif, and a quaint alteration in the phrasing of the tune, reminded one of peals of church bells. they sang it as if the lines ran:
“oh, god, our help in ages past our
hope for years to come.
our shelter from the stormy blast and
our eternal home.”
the pastor’s sermon was direct; to him the issue was clear. not alone those who say “gospody, gospody,” but those who do the will of my father shall enter into the kingdom. he counselled them to lead earnest, sober lives, and to bring up their families in the truth. everyone listened in resolute stillness. one felt their god in the midst of them—the god of the puritans.
i found my thoughts straying back to england, and i wondered if i saw before me a picture of what the early independents or early methodists were like. i was accustomed to chapels in london where each person belongs to our advanced civilisation, and where the preacher hands more than the simple bread of life. here each man was of the crude, rough material out of which civilisations are made. here was a passion for simplicity; everything was elemental, original. there were strange, new silences to be divined below the 241voices and the sounds, strange barenesses and nakednesses underneath the scanty nature of the service. for a moment one shut one’s eyes to the room, and opened other eyes to another scene—to the stable and the manger and the straw. yes, here were the beginnings of things.
after service i walked home with the pastor. “you will become a political force,” i said. “who knows?” he replied. “i hope not, but we increase in numbers. everyone added to us is one added to the forces of truth and purity.”
some pilgrims passed us. “there they go,” he said, “hundred of miles to pray to god in an ancient monastery. god is there, he is not here, so they say. they go to pray, and they waste their money and their time, and it all ends in vodka drinking. god grant they may become less and less.”
the pilgrims retreated, staff in hand, hooded and with great bundles on their backs. slowly, as it were, reluctantly, they moved away, and to me they seemed the living figure of the past, and this fresh, strong man beside me was the new.
“you are laying the foundation of a russian democracy,” i went on. “in england or america you would see a democracy three hundred years ahead of this. have you heard of the london slums, or of chicago? are you not afraid of the responsibility?”
he smiled. “three hundred years is a long time, 242brother. we teach the truth. if your people have gone wrong it was because they turned away, they took wrong turnings. it is god’s will that we preach and spread the truth.”
ivan savelev carried himself with the air of one who had uttered an unquestionable truism. his truths were his own, and for him indisputable. i left him and went to meditate on the secret life i had discovered.
it moves silently and unseen, like running water under snow, and on countless hillsides and valleys and plains the spring movement has begun. one day russia will awake and find the season new. then there will come another autumn and another harvest, and the good seed will be found to have multiplied thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and some an hundredfold.
