time exposes them to
evils of a different kind, from which they might be preserved by a
few stubborn prejudices. "False prophets arise among us," said an old,
sober-minded member to me on one occasion, "and lead many away from the
faith."

In 1835, for example, great excitement was produced among them by
rumours that the second advent of Christ was at hand, and that the
Son of Man, coming to judge the world, was about to appear in the New
Jerusalem, somewhere near Mount Ararat. As Elijah and Enoch were to
appear before the opening of the Millennium, they were anxiously
awaited by the faithful, and at last Elijah appeared, in the person of
a Melitopol peasant called Belozvorof, who announced that on a given
day he would ascend into heaven. On the day appointed a great crowd
collected, but he failed to keep his promise, and was handed over to the
police as an impostor by the Molokanye themselves. Unfortunately they
were not always so sensible as on that occasion. In the very next year
many of them were persuaded by a certain Lukian Petrof to put on their
best garments and start for the Promised Land in the Caucasus, where the
Millennium was about to begin.

Of these false prophets the most remarkable in recent times was a man
who called himself Ivan Grigorief, a mysterious personage who had at one
time a Turkish and at another an American passport, but who seemed in
all other respects a genuine Russian. Some years previously to my visit
he appeared at Alexandrof-Hai. Though he professed himself to be a good
Molokan and was received as such, he enounced at the weekly meetings
many new and startling ideas. At first he simply urged his hearers to
live like the early Christians, and have all things in common. This
seemed sound doctrine to the Molokanye, who profess to take the
early Christians as their model, and some of them thought of at once
abolishing personal property; but when the teacher intimated pretty
plainly that this communism should include free love, a decided
opposition arose, and it was objected that the early Church did not
recommend wholesale adultery and cognate sins. This was a formidable
objection, but "the prophet" was equal to the occasion. He reminded his
friends that in accordance with their own doctrine the Scriptures should
be understood, not in the literal, but in the spiritual, sense--that
Christianity had made men free, and every true Christian ought to use
his freedom.

This account of the n