GREEK CHURCH. 



ever and ever. Many attempts have been made 

 by the Russian Government to suppress the 

 Scoptsi, but as yet they have proved fruitless. 



In 1869 the authorities made a raid upon 

 the Scoptsi of Marshausk, seized their common 

 fund, and imprisoned several of their leading 

 members. The latter are to be brought to 

 trial at Moscow, when it is expected that a 

 degree of light will be thrown upon the secret 

 history of the sect, which is at present involved 

 in mystery. 



Another peculiar sect is that of the Khlisti, 

 or Scourgers, whose notion of a religious ser- 

 vice is a wild dance accompanied by severe casti- 

 gation. In the middle of the room in which 

 they meet stands a vessel containing water, and 

 to this they go from time to time, in order to 

 wet their heads or to drink out of their hands. 

 Then they resume their stamping and their flog- 

 ging, until they fall down utterly exhausted, 

 or convulsions seize them, during which they 

 utter ravings which they call prophecies. 

 Every Easter night, the fanatics " all assemble 

 for a great solemnity, the worship of the 

 Mother of God. A virgin fifteen years of age, 

 whom they have induced to act the part by 

 tempting promises, is bound, and placed in a 

 tub of warm water; some old women come 

 and first make a large incision in the left breast, 

 then cut it off, and stanch the blood in a won- 

 derfully short time. Other barbarities follow, 

 too shocking to be told. During these opera- 

 tions a mystical picture of the Holy Spirit is 

 put into the victim's hand, in order that she 

 may be absorbed in regarding it." Afterward 

 a wild dance takes place around the tub, kept 

 up by the whole congregation until their 

 strength is exhausted. The girls who have 

 been thus mutilated are ever afterward con- 

 sidered sacred. At the age of nineteen or 

 twenty they are said to look like women of 

 fifty or sixty, and they generally die before 

 reaching their thirtieth year. 



The Beslovesniki, or dumb, existed in con- 

 siderable strength in former days, but appear 

 to have died out. Scarcely any thing is known 

 about them, for as soon as any one joined the 

 community he became mute, and from that 

 time forward no articulate sound ever escaped 

 his lips. Various attempts have been made at 

 different times to torture them into speaking, 

 but always in vain. 



From among the Molokani have arisen the 

 Dukhobortsi or Soul-wrestlers, who hold that 

 " the Dukhoborets is God, and cannot sin, but 

 the non-Dukhoborets is radically wicked all 

 that he does, even what appears to be good, is 

 sin." One of their characteristics is "the re- 

 markably handsome forms of both the men and 

 women, and the health and strength they dis- 

 play." This is partly to be accounted for by 

 the fact that they put to death every child that 

 is delicate or deformed. " The soul," they say, 

 "being the likeness of God, must dwell in a 

 worthy, noble, and vigorous body. If we find 

 it in a weak and poor one, we are bound to 



GRESWELL, EDWARD. 



331 



free it from its ignoble prison ; it then chooses 

 for itself, according to the law of transmigra- 

 tion of souls, another and a better body." 

 Such child-murder gives little pain to the par- 

 ents, for their theory is, that " the soul, the 

 image of God, recognizes no earthly father or 

 mother," and that "there is only one father, 

 the totality of God, who lives in every indi- 

 vidual; and one mother, universal matter or 

 Nature, the earth." Consequently, the Duk- 

 hobortsi never call their parents "father" or 

 " mother," but only " old man " and " old wo- 

 man ; " and the parent does not speak of " my " 

 children, but of " ours," meaning the com- 

 munity's. 



GRESWELL, Rev. EDWAED, D.D., a learned 

 theological and chronological writer, Senior- 

 Fellow and Yice-President of Corpus Christi 

 College, Oxford, born at Denton, England, Au- 

 gust 3, 1797 ; died at Oxford, June 29, 1869. 

 His early education was conducted by his 

 father, and subsequently at the Manchester 

 Grammar-School, and in 1815 he was elected 

 to a scholarship in Brasenose College, which he 

 soon exchanged for the Lancashire scholarship 

 at Corpus Christi College. He graduated B. A. 

 in 1818, a double first class in classics and 

 mathematics. He was appointed college tutor 

 in 1822, and served till 1833. He was elected 

 to a fellowship in 1823. In 1833 he resigned 

 his tutorship to devote himself more exclusively 

 to the great theological and chronological works 

 on which he had then been engaged for fifteen 

 years, and to which he determined to dedicate 

 his life. Thenceforward he held no college 

 appointment except that of vice-president, 

 the duties of which were very light. He de- 

 voted many years of close and wearisome study 

 to the investigation of the primitive calendars 

 and their relations to the chronology of the 

 Scriptural events. His investigations on this 

 difficult subject were exhaustive ; he had pub- 

 lished, between 1840 and 1863, seventeen oc- 

 tavo volumes of these "Histories of the Prim- 

 itive Calendar," taking up in succession the 

 calendars of the Egyptians, Chinese, Hindoos, 

 the early Italians, the early and later Romans, 

 the early and later Greeks, the Jews, etc., and 

 had nearly completed a fourth instalment em- 

 bracing the Mexican and South American and 

 some of the African calendars, and an elaborate 

 treatise on the chronology of the Old Testa- 

 ment which would have occupied eight or nine 

 more volumes. He had also published in 1840 

 a very elaborate work on the chronology of 

 the Scriptures to the close of the Evangelists, 

 as a prolegomena to his great work on the gos- 

 pel harmony ; and in 1862 " The Three Wit- 

 nesses and the Threefold Cord," being the tes- 

 timony of the natural measures of time, of the 

 primitive civil calendar, and of antediluvian 

 and postdiluvian tradition, on the principal 

 questions of fact, in sacred or profane antiquity. 

 In addition to these labors, which consumed 

 the greater part of fifty years of sedulous and 

 constant work, Dr. Greswell had prepared a 



