The priests of the village in which this man lived gave no evidence of piety; but by his influence over them he kept them from molesting his brethren. This influence he maintained by inviting them frequently to take tea with him. After giving them a good entertainment, he used to bring out his Bible, and engage them in conversation. In the course of conversation he was wont to propose difficulties for their solution, and generally soon puzzled them. They would then clap him on the shoulder and say, "You are always getting us into some such scrape." He used then, instead of pressing his triumph, to call for more provisions, and dismiss them well pleased, and well disposed towards himself and his friends.

One friend in St. Petersburgh said to this man, "Surely the priests are not all so bad as you represent; they give some instruction, and they will read the Scriptures at least to the people." "Yes," said the man, with an arch look-" Yes; as soon as a man is dead they will come and read the Psalms to him, when he cannot hear! So long as he was alive, and might have profited by their reading, they would not go near him; but as soon as he is dead they will read to his corpse, 'Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly! There lies the man; he cannot walk! Nor standeth in the way of sinners!” 'Nor sitteth in the seat of the scorn

There he lies; he cannot stand!

ful! There he is stretched out before them; he cannot sit! and such only is the instruction they give!"

Such

As

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This was said in allusion to a custom which prevails in Russia. soon as a member of the national church dies, one or more priests are sent for. These seated by the corpse commence reading the Psalter, which they continue to do though no one but themselves should be in the apartment. The Psalms are thus read again and again till the burial, the priests relieving one another, when sleep or the discharge of other duties renders it necessary that they should leave the corpse. It was interesting to see the value set upon the Holy Scriptures by this man and his companions; and the delight with which they repeated whole paragraphs, histories, and psalms. Whatever religious subject was introduced in conversation, they brought forward in support of their views copious extracts from the Old and New Testaments. If the chapter and verse were referred to by another, they would immediately quote the words; or if the words were quoted, they were ready

On the death of any one it may have been customary, in a former time, to send for a priest to comfort and edify surviving friends; finding it difficult in such circumstances to carry on conversation with the bereaved, the priests may have read at such times devotional portions of the sacred volume, and, of course, the Psalter; these were probably read to the family in the only apartment they had, and, consequently beside the corpse; and this may gradually have led to the unmeaning ceremony to which the Molakann referred.

to quote the context. Many of their brethren were able, they said, to repeat the whole of the Scriptures.

This intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures is acquired in childhood, and retained by constant reference to what they have learned. As soon as a child begins to speak, it is taught to repeat passages of Scripture. I asked one of them why they were so assiduous in teaching their children to do so. Sir," said he, "we have the Bible in our hands at present; we cannot tell how long this may be permitted; we therefore endeavour to have its truths imprinted on the memories of all; then, though men may deprive us of our Bibles, they will find it impossible to deprive us of the knowledge of the truth."

I found them not only men versed in the words of Scripture, but men who had carefully investigated the truths revealed. Two of them came to spend an hour or two with me one evening. They took the lead in conversation; and an opinion of their attainments may be formed from what passed.

The first subject they introduced was the Lord's Supper. This they do not observe, because they are not convinced that our Saviour did distribute bread and wine amongst his apostles, when he gave the command upon which others found their observance of the Supper. Upon my referring them to the details of what passed at the last supper, as recorded by the evangelists, they referred me to John vi. 4858, "I am the bread of life," &c., and to a few similar passages. These having been read, they very calmly demanded of me, "Are these to be understood literally, or otherwise?" My reply to this question prepared for the next. "Why explain some passages literally, if you do not thus explain all in which the same expressions occur?" I replied, that in many cases the context furnishes a key to the import of the expressions employed; and turning to 1 Cor. xi. 20-34, I gave a running commentary on the passage, directing their attention to the circumstances in which the apostle Paul repeated the command of his Master, as these are stated by the apostle himself. Finding that the explanation I gave was quite new to them, I asked them what interpretation they gave of such a statement as was contained in verses 20 and 21, “ When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's Supper. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper and one is hungry and another is drunken." They replied, "We have never seen what others call the Lord's Supper observed without much mysticism and superstition being connected with it; nor have we ever before heard of its being observed otherwise. consequence of this we may have rashly rejected an ordinance of Divine appointment; but in reading the chapter before us, we have always supposed that it referred to meetings for worship, and that the Corinthians were reproved by the apostle because, instead of regulating their sentiments by the pure and simple word of God, they had re

In

course to reason, and every one brought forward his own sentiments instead of the doctrines of God."

To show them that there was no necessary connexion between superstition and the observance of the Lord's Supper, I told them that many Christians observed it simply as a commemorative rite which they believed the Lord had enjoined. They said the practice of the Greek and the Romish churches in regard to the Supper was very bad; that of the Lutheran churches better, and the practice of those of whom I spoke better still; but they argued that it was still better to give up the observance of the rite, for they could not conceive of its being observed even as a commemorative rite, without some superstitious feeling in regard to it. Their attention was therefore recalled to the injunction, and to the expression, 1 Cor. xii. 1, "Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant," &c. as evidence that it was not to these that the apostle had referred in the passage relative to the Supper. They said they remained unshaken in their opinion of the propriety of their practice in this matter, but that they saw that those who differed from them in this particular could give weighty reasons for their practice; and that if they were only convinced that our Saviour gave real bread and wine to his disciples, when he gave the injunction to commemorate his death, they would resume the observance of the ordinance; that this they could not do with their present views, but that they would investigate the subject further.

To those who have been familiar from childhood with the observance of the Lord's Supper, it may appear strange that what appears to them so obvious should be questioned by any. Let such consider the case of these men, familiar only with the observances of a church in the worship of which are numerous rites and ceremonies professedly founded on declarations of Scripture. Some of these they have examined, and finding them involved in mysticism and superstition, unwarranted by the passages of Scripture adduced in their defence, and altogether unscriptural, they have abandoned them, and, at the same time, all similar rites; and seeing many deluded by a worship in which they consider there is no profit, what more natural than that they should look with a jealous eye upon every ceremonial; assigning as their reason, the injunction of the apostle, "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage?"

The subject of the Lord's Supper having been discussed, they next asked what I considered to be the meaning of 1 Cor. vi. 19, "What! know ye not that ye are the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" They knew some, they said, who considered that God the Holy Ghost dwelt in the man as in a house; this they thought had led to many errors. It is customary

with many to bow three times before each other; and some do this, they said, as an act of worship to the Deity supposed to be dwelling in the person; but the majority, if not all of the Duehovnee Christianee, consider this wrong; they bow at such times because they implore blessings on those they meet, and consider that thus they ought to present their prayers; they bow three times, because they pray to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, as three persons, though one God. Some, they said, had innovated on their practice, and bow very low at first, then bow less profoundly, and again still less so; but this was generally considered heretical; for if these inclinations be intended for the different persons in the Godhead, these being Divine, they must necessarily, said they, be equal: the Holy Spirit equal to the Son, and the Son to the Father.

They considered the import of the passage in question to be simply, that Christians may be considered devoted to the service of God, as the temple was consecrated to his worship.

They next asked to whom I considered the terms "Anointed" and "Son," in the second psalm refer. They had concluded that it must be to the Messiah; but they felt uncertain, as they thought the reference might possibly be to David.

They then turned to Isaiah vii. 15, "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel;" and said, that the singularity of the phraseology, and its remarkable coincidence with the circumstances of our Saviour's birth, led them to think that the reference might possibly be to him, but that the context had shut them up to the conclusion that the reference was to the birth of Maher-shalal-hash-baz.

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They then requested my opinion of the reference of the declaration and prediction contained in Isaiah ix. 7, Unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder," &c. This passage, they thought, could only refer to Christ; but as there were many other prophecies relating to deliverers raised up before Christ came, they wished to know if any had appeared in the days of the prophet, or shortly after, in whom this prediction had been fulfilled.

They also desired to know what I thought of the prediction, Luke xxi. 56, "And as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, he said, As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." In this they thought that our Saviour not only foretold the destruction of the building, but the abolition of all superstitious rites and ceremonies, and the destruction of all false churches.

They said, that some time before, one of their brethren had said, the predictions concerning the second coming of Christ were about to

be fulfilled.

This was not generally believed among them; but it had occasioned a schism. In speaking of the activity induced by the expectation of Christ's again appearing on earth, they said, "Come when he may, his coming affects not our duty. It is not for us to know the times, and the seasons which God hath put in his own power. The day of our death is the day of our judgment, and we ought not to serve with eye-service, but at all times, and that from love."

With the exception of the cases mentioned, I never observed any tendency to spiritualize plain declarations of Scripture; neither was there exhibited any attempt to philosophize; they called no man master, but brought everything to the standard of Scripture, without giving any preference to an opinion because it was old or was new, or because it had the sanction of great names. I once quoted the saying of a great and good man, but was met with the simple and touching reply: "Oh sir, men have deceived us; and even good men may deceive us. What does God say? He will not deceive us."

On another occasion, in consequence of a difference betwixt the English and the Sclavonian version of a passage quoted, I found it necessary to remind them that neither version was an inspired translation. "Oh,” said one of them, "we know that the Bible was written in another language; and the Spirit of God is only responsible for his own dictations, not for the correctness of translations of his words. The writers, not the translators, were inspired. How I wish I could see the Bible in that language in which it was first written!" They were surprised and delighted when I produced a Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament. They mentioned a number of passages which they wished to have examined, and requested me to translate them. I reminded them that I was not more inspired than was the translator of the version they possessed. One of them replied that he was aware of that; but if I would close my English Bible, and translate one word at a time into English, and let a friend, who had assisted as interpreter betwixt us, translate the English word into Russ, they might ascertain what dependence was to be placed upon their version. "We know," said he, "what is in the Sclavonian version, which your friend does not; and there is no Russian version of the Old Testament from which he can borrow phrases; if, then, what is expressed by him as a translation of your words corresponds with what is found in our Bibles, we shall have evidence of the general correctness of our version."

Thus careful were they in their investigation of revealed truth, and a uniform testimony to the love of the truth is borne by all acquainted with them. Let the following suffice.

In conversation with a Russian gentleman residing in St. Petersburgh, he informed me that he had been in a bookseller's shop a short time before, when two peasants came in and wished to purchase a Bible. He asked them, "For whom do you purchase the Bible?" "For