Article March 16, 1899 ISSUE

Miscellany

Canadian View of the Doukhobors.

Republished from the Friends' Intelligencer and Journal

The event of the past week, which has interested Christians of all denominations in Winnepeg, Portage la Prairie, Brandon, and other centres, and indeed it may be said throughout Manitoba and the Northwest generally, has been the arrival from the Caucasus, south-eastern Russia, of the Doukhobors, spirit-wrestlers, or Russian Quakers, as they are variously called. Their appearance, the history of their persecutions, and the peculiarities of their religion have been discussed in articles, original or quoted, in every paper in Canada. A point, however, which may well be placed in greater prominence, and kept there permanently, is the stress which they lay upon Christian living. To live right, to have the truth in the heart, and obey it, is with them the main thing.

Mr. Leopold Sulerjitzky, who is with them as Count Tolstoy's representative, tells how he was impressed with their consistent living, when he became acquainted with them, and during his stay among them for the past four years. His observations of nominal Christians in Moscow and elsewhere had made him skeptical as to the fact or the possibility of any one living in strict accordance with the teachings of Christianity; but close study of the Doukhobors showed him nothing in their lives to which he could take any exception. Not only do the adults live as brothers and sisters, treating one another with the utmost love and deference, but even the children are free from angry passions, quarreling and fighting being unknown. A German woman, whose home was in the Caucasus, not far from the Doukhobors, on being asked what she knew of their religion, answered, "They have a very holy religion." She went on to explain that they decline to associate with people who drink intoxicating liquor, or do other bad things.

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