ince
appeared a body of Siberian sectaries, called "Christ-hunters,"
maintaining that the Saviour was about to appear, and scouring desert
and forest to find him. Peasants have even been known to refuse payment
of their taxes under pretext that Christ was come and had done away with
them. The Messiah of the Russian sectaries is sometimes sought in the
person of a simple peasant, and sometimes in a native or foreign prince.
Some have long beheld the expected liberator in Napoleon, for their
persuasion that the Russian state is the reign of Antichrist easily led
to welcoming as a Saviour any one who seemed destined to destroy it; and
in the great enemy of the empire, the great furtherer of a general
abolition of serfdom, many recognized the conquering Messiah of the
prophets. It is said that at their meetings an image of Napoleon is
worshiped, and busts of him are certainly nowhere met with more commonly
than in Russia. An equal veneration is paid to pictures representing the
first emperor surrounded by his marshals and floating above the clouds
in a kind of apotheosis, which is literally accepted by the
matter-of-fact Russian. The story runs among his worshipers that
Napoleon is not dead, but has escaped from St. Helena and taken shelter
on the shores of Lake Baikal, whence he will one day come forth to
overturn the throne of Satan and found the kingdom of justice and peace.

The main point of these millennial hopes was the abolition of forced
labor and the _obrok_, the emancipation of the serfs, and the
equitable distribution of land and other property. A ready reception was
sure to await such a gospel, with its combination of promises of liberty
and faint dreams of communism; and something of the kind is necessary to
explain the easy success of so many extravagant sects, lying prophets
and feigned Messiahs. Dreams like these in the West incited the
revolutions of the peasants in mediaeval times and of the Anabaptists in
the sixteenth century, but they must slowly vanish with the slavery
which gave them birth. The age of freedom anticipated by the mujik, the
kingdom of God of which he caught a glimpse in the promises of the
prophets, is come at last: the Messiah and freer of the people has
appeared, and his reign is begun. The emancipation of the serfs has
given a blow to these millennial dreams, and consequently to the more
advanced sects of the Raskol: its ruin will be completed by education
and material improvement.