We will now travel to the south of Russia, and examine more closely what might be called a laboratory of sects, or in other words a breeding-ground of religions whose idealism, whe...
The pilgrims and "workers of miracles" who wander through Russia can always find, not only free lodging, but also opportunity for making their fortunes. Their gains mount, often, t...
The town of Denver, the "pearl of Colorado," was _en fête_. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were flocking to it from all parts of America, and all, immediately they arrived, made...
During the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, scarcely a single country has been free from religious manifestations of the most varied kind,...
Nearly all Communistic theories when applied in practice prove failures, but there seems to be one infallible safeguard--that supplied by religion. Faith, when mingled with the tri...
From time to time this thirst for the ideal, this dissatisfaction with the actual, gave rise to a series of collective suicides. We may recall the celebrated propaganda of the monk...
The marriage between Science and the Bible, brought about by Mary Baker Eddy, has given birth to a most prosperous sect. In this amalgam, the Christianity is not of the purest, and...
The origin of this sect seems to be lost in the mists of the past. Some connect it with the teachings of Vishnu, some with mysterious practices of antiquity; but the "divine men" w...
It seems enough, in Russia, when a single individual is obsessed by some more or less ridiculous idea, for his whole environment to become infected by it also. The ease with which...
The religious ferment of South Russia was due to some special causes, its provinces having served since the seventeenth century as lands of exile for revolutionaries of all kinds,...
The forms taken by religious mania are not always as harmless as in the case of the "God Sava." Ivan Grigorieff, founder of the Russian Mormons, began by preaching that God created...
The suffering of a people nourishes the spirit of rebellion, enabling it to come to birth and to survive. There are some religious sects based exclusively upon popular discontent....
The official clergy, finding it incumbent on them to defend the articles of the orthodox faith, were themselves frequently swept away by the storm of religious mania. Before the wa...
The Jumpers, or _sopouny_, founded by one Petroff, considered it their duty to blow upon one another during Divine Service. This arose from a misinterpretation of the ninth verse o...
The sect of the "little gods," or _bojki_, was founded about 1880 by a peasant named Sava. Highly impressionable by nature, and influenced by the activities of at least a dozen dif...
The flood of religious mania reached even beyond the borders of European Russia, and its effects were seen as much among the followers of other religions as among the Christians. M...
Side by side with these flourishing sects whose followers could be numbered by millions, there existed other communities, founded upon naïve and child-like superstitions, strange f...
A sect of considerable importance, that of the _molokanes_, owed its origin to the _douchobortzi_. It was founded by a sincere and ardent man named Oukleïne, about the end of the e...
In the American of the United States there exist two distinctly opposed natures: the one positive and practical, the other inclined to mysticism. The two do not clash, but live, on...
Imagination can scarcely conceive of some of the strange forms under which the thirst for religious truth in Southern Russia was revealed. In this great laboratory of sects, all th...
The most propitious and fertile soil in which collective mania can grow is that of unhappiness. Famine, unjust taxation, unemployment, persecution by local authorities, and so on,...
Although most of the sects of which we have spoken sprang from the orthodox church, the _molokanes_ and the _stoundists_ were indirect fruits of the Protestant church, and even amo...
In addition to the sects having their prophets and leaders and a certain amount of organisation, almost every year in Russia saw--and probably still sees--the birth of many separat...
The tragic death of the monk Rasputin made a deep impression upon the civilised world, and truth was lost to view amid the innumerable legends that grew up around his life and acti...
Amid luxuriant vegetation, in an enchanting position overlooking the Pacific Ocean, flourishes the religion of reincarnation "without beginning and without end." Its followers, gat...
Joe Smith was, to speak plainly, nothing but an adventurer. Having tried more than twenty avocations, ending up with that of a gold-digger, he found himself at last at the end of h...
There are certain periodical publications which as a rule are neither examined nor discussed. Yet their existence dates back for many years, and in this age of filing and docketing...
The career of Rasputin provides one of the most disquieting chapters in the history of sexual and religious emotions, and furnishes remarkable proof of the close relationship which...
Sister Helen Petrov, of the convent of Pskov, declared in a moment of "divine illumination" that the Church had no hierarchy, that priests were harmful, that God had no need of int...
On the outskirts of Jaransk, in the Viatka district, a race called the _Tcheremis_ has dwelt from time immemorial. While Russian scholars, like Smirnov, were employed in unveiling...