BAPTISTS. 



BEKE, CHARLES T. 



87 



souls. The increase in five years had been 

 only 9,444 souls, or less thaii one per cent, a 



The aiituiniiiil meetings of the Union were 

 held at Newcastle- on -Tyne. They were 

 opened on the evening of October 5th, with a 

 ii by the Rev. A. Mursel, on " The 

 Lamp of Faith," in which a reply was rnade to 

 sunn- of the views advanced by Prof. John 

 Ty n i lull, in his address delivered a few days 

 previously before the British Association. 

 The formal session of the Union was opened 

 October 7th, with an address by the Rev. 0. 

 Stovel, president. Reports were received 

 from several societies. That of the Education 

 Jio<trd returned the receipts for the year at 

 *>-' 19. 8A, of which 284 10. Id. were 

 still on hand. Forty-four children were under 

 the patronage of the board. The receipts of 

 the Pattort 1 Income Augmentation Fund had 

 IK-I-II 2,340 19. Qd. The amount of income 

 and the number of churches receiving the ad- 

 vantages of the fund had multiplied fivefold 

 since 1870. 



VI. GENERAL BAPTISTS IK ENGLAND. The 

 Association of General Baptists in England 

 met at Loughborough, June 23d. The Rev. 

 Thomas Barrass, of Peterborough, presided, and 

 delivered an opening address. He spoke par- 

 ticularly of the unveiling of the statue of John 

 Bunyan, at Bedford, which had taken place a 

 short time before, and of the circumstance that 

 on this occasion a duke and a dignitary of the 

 Church of England had attended to do honor to 

 the memory of a man whom nobles and clergy 

 of the time of the Restoration had acquiesced in 

 imprisoning. The statistical returns showed 

 the number of members in the churches to be 

 22,086. The work of the Foreign Missionary 

 Society was described as presenting an unusual- 

 ly hopeful aspect. Numerous additions had 

 been made at the Orissa Mission. Canon 

 Grass6, a convert from the Roman Catholic 

 Church, had been enrolled as an agent for the 

 society in Italy. 



VII. BAPTISTS IN RUSSIA. For a period of 

 about twenty years, by means of the preach- 

 ing of the Rev. Mr. Oncken, of Hamburg, Bap- 

 tist principles have been extended through 

 Prussia, and into parts of Poland and South- 

 ern Russia. The Russian Government offered 

 no interference with their spread within its 

 territory, so long as the conversions were con- 

 fined to foreigners, and to persons not consid- 

 ered members of the Orthodox Church. So 

 soon, however, as it was found that native 

 Russians, and persons claimed as members by 

 the Church, had joined the Baptists, the law 

 against proselytism was put in force. In the 

 course of 1872, thirteen persons, inhabitants 

 of the district of Tarashavsky, government 

 of Kiev, were arrested and imprisoned for 

 apostatizing from the faith. As the impris- 

 oned converts were Russian subjects, no no- 

 tice of the case could bo taken through dip- 

 lomatic channels of communication. The sub- 



ject was brought to the attention of the 

 World's Conference of the Evangelical Alli- 

 ance, which met in the city of New York in 

 October, 1878. A committee was appointed 

 by the American branch of the Alliance, with 

 the Rev. Dr. Sampson aa chairman, who pre- 

 sented a memorial to the Russian minister, 

 and an argument on the subject. These pa- 

 pers were politely returned. A gentleman, a 

 member of the Baptist Church, who was in 

 St. Petersburg, afterward brought the subject 

 to the attention of several members of the im- 

 perial court, among whom was the Baron de 

 Rosen. This nobleman interested himself ac- 

 tively in behalf of the imprisoned religionists. 

 He advocated their cause before Count Sievers, 

 and secured his promise to make the neces- 

 sary inquiries about the legal proceedings to 

 be observed in the case. Ho also wrote to 

 Prince Dondonkoff-Korsakoff, Governor-Gen- 

 eral of Kiev, claiming his good offices for the 

 liberation of the prisoners. The prince replied, 

 April 9th, that the prisoners had all been re- 

 leased but one, who was at Odessa, beyond the 

 jurisdiction of the government, and that they 

 had all been acquitted by the civil courts of 

 Kiev. He added a pledge that he could guar- 

 antee to the Baptists safety and peace so long 

 as they did not try to make proselytes, in op- 

 position to the present laws of the empire, and 

 so long as they did not by action or manner at- 

 tack the Orthodox Church in their unauthor- 

 ized public meetings, " which," he remarked, 

 " they have, however, done repeatedly." He 

 repeated this pledge, promising again that, so 

 long as they observed the conditions named 

 above, " they will have positively nothing to 

 fear from the local administration which is in- 

 trusted to me for this country." 



The following memorandum, embodying an 

 official report of the action of the court in the 

 case, was attached to the letter of Governor- 

 General Prince Dondonkoff-Korsakoff : 



From the correspondence of the bureau of the gov- 

 ernor-general relative to the Stundists, it appears 

 that the indictment for belonging to that sect em- 

 braced fifty-three persons, of whom twelve were pat 

 under arrest the prosecution calling for other per- 

 sons as accessories. Further investigation of the 

 civil court at Kiev demonstrated that, although they 

 were implicated in following a heresy, to such a 

 heresy cannot be applied the provisions of the sec- 

 tion 208 of the code " Penalties and Fines." Con- 

 sequently the following of such a heresy cannot be 

 made punishable. Accordingly, then, the chamber 

 court at Kiev acknowledged the said persons cannot 

 be considered guilty of disseminating a heresy among 

 the people. 



At present none of the accused is under arrest 

 except a leader of the Stundists in the district of 

 Taraska, by the name of Jerome Balaban, who was 

 exiled to the government of Cherson, as he was con- 

 sidered guilty of disseminating a false doctrine. 



With Balaban's expulsion from the district of Ta- 

 rnska, the Stundists became more calm, and less ve- 

 hemently opposed to the Orthodox Greco-Russian 

 creed. They now even bring their children to be 

 baptized by the Orthodox priests. 



BEKE, CHABLES TILS-TONE, Ph. D., F. S. A., 

 F. R. G. S., etc., an English traveler, geologist, 



