oss, reprinted in the _Allgemeine Zeitung_ of the 12th March
of this year, 1854:--

"Emissaries travelling about the country succeeded by every kind of
cunning, and by holding out prospects of gain and other advantages, to
convert people from Lutheranism to the Greek Church. All the children,
under seventeen years must follow the religion of their father as soon as
he has entered the orthodox church. Whoever has received the
anointment(103) can no longer return to his former creed, and those who
would try to persuade him to do it would be severely punished. It is even
forbidden to the Protestant clergy to warn their congregations from going
over to the Greek Church by drawing their attention to the difference
which exists between the two religions. A great number of Greek churches
have been built in the Baltic provinces, and already, in 1845, it was
ordered that the converts to the Greek Church should be admitted into
every town; that those peasants who would leave their places of residence
in order to join a Greek congregation should be allowed by their
landowners to do so;(104) and, finally, that the landowners and Protestant
clergymen who would oppose in any way the conversion to the Greek Church
of their peasantry and congregations, should be visited with severe
penalties. These penalties, directed against those who would attempt to
induce any one, either by speeches or writings, to pass from the Greek
Church to any other communion, have been specified in a new criminal code.
They prescribe for certain cases of such a proselytism corporal
chastisement, the knout, and transportation to Siberia." It is also well
known that the Protestant missionaries, who had been labouring in various
parts of the Russian empire for the conversion of Mahometans and heathens,
have been prohibited from continuing their pious exertions. And yet,
strange to say, there is a not uninfluential party in Prussia, which,
pretending to be zealously Protestant, supports with all its might the
politico-religious policy of Russia, and is as hostile to Protestant
England as it is favourable to the power which is persecuting
Protestantism in its dominions. On the other hand, it is curious to
observe in this country some persons of that High Church party which
affects to repudiate the name of Protestant, and with whom _churchianity_
seems to have more weight than Christianity, showing an inclination to
unite with the Graeco-Russian Church; and I have s