n account sent by Count Leo
Tolstoi to the London 'Times' of the Russian sect called Dukhobortsy
(The Times, October 23, 1895). This sect sprang up in the last century,
and the narrative says:

"The first seeds of the teaching called afterwards 'Dukhoborcheskaya'
were sown by a foreigner, a Quaker, who came to Russia. The fundamental
idea of his Quaker teaching was that in the soul of man dwells God
himself, and that He himself guides man by His inner word. God lives
in nature physically and in man's soul spiritually. To Christ, as to an
historical personage, the Dukhobortsy do not ascribe great importance...
Christ was God's son, but only in the sense in which we call, ourselves
'sons of God.' The purpose of Christ's sufferings was no other than to
show us an example of suffering for truth. The Quakers who, in 1818,
visited the Dukhobortsy, could not agree with them upon these religious
subjects; and when they heard from them their opinion about Jesus
Christ (that he was a man), exclaimed 'Darkness!' From the Old and New
Testaments,' they say, 'we take only what is useful,' mostly the moral
teaching.... The moral ideas of the Dukhobortsy are the following:--All
men are, by nature, equal; external distinctions, whatsoever they may
be, are worth nothing. This idea of men's equality the Dukhoborts have
directed further, against the State authority.... Amongst themselves
they hold subordination, and much more, a monarchical Government, to be
contrary to their ideas."

Here is an early Hicksite Quakerism carried to Russia long before the
birth of Elias Hicks, who recovered it from Paine, to whom the American
Quakers refused burial among them. Although Paine arraigned the union
of Church and State, his ideal Republic was religious; it was based on
a conception of equality based on the divine son-ship of every man. This
faith underlay equally his burden against claims to divine partiality by
a "Chosen People," a Priesthood, a Monarch "by the grace of God," or
an Aristocracy. Paine's "Reason" is only an expansion of the Quaker's
"inner light"; and the greater impression, as compared with previous
republican and deistic writings made by his "Rights of Man" and "Age
of Reason" (really volumes of one work), is partly explained by the
apostolic fervor which made him a spiritual, successor of George Fox.

Paine's mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently instructive.
That he should have waited until his fifty-seventh year