p. 203 | SPECIAL MENTION

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · March 25, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 13

SPECIAL MENTION.

THE POWER BEHIND NIHILISM.

Bro. F. R. Richmond sends us for the Review the following article, which appeared in the Springfield Republican of Feb. 20, 1880, stating that the author is well known, and is considered an honest man; that he is well educated, speaks and writes fourteen different languages, and has traveled extensively in this country and in Europe, especially in Russia. We give it, as anything pertaining to this subject has special interest at the present time:—

To the Editor of The Republican:—

Permit me to express my indignation through your paper at the deliberate falsehoods reprinted at the present time in many publications in America. I refer to the article on Nihilism in the Nineteenth Century, which I again see in Appleton’s Journal. Many a man is earning a good livelihood by writing at the desire of a tyrannical government against liberty, and Fritz Cunliffe Owen is not an exception. Michael Bakunin, the very soul of virtue and honor, is made to have said at meetings in various places in Europe, that “there are two lies,—the first lie is God, the second lie is right.” I ask, How would a son of Massachusetts feel should he read when abroad that Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, or Gov. Andrew had uttered such sentiments as these,—advocating the necessity of breaking up family ties, the destruction of all that is noble, pure, and virtuous, asserting that there is no God, that God is a lie,—at meetings held in Pecowisc, Ashleyville, Pine City, or in the grand opera-house in Agawam, without or with giving the date of such utterances? Now there is just as much truth in the article of Mr. Owen, which is a forgery and a parody, perpetrated years ago and repeated now, because Bakunin is where Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson are.

I did not think it wise to give to the world up to this time the true power behind Nihilism, nor was I permitted to do so without consultation, but Mr. Owen’s article makes it necessary and removes the restriction. The real power behind Nihilism are Christians, and orthodox Christians at that, and they mean to conquer in the end. Not in the Dark Ages, but in my own time, there were in Russian Poland and the provinces that once belonged to Poland two millions and a half of Uniats, or united Greek Christians, who had magnificent churches and a large number of clergy,—and to-day in liberal and tolerant Russia not a church or clergyman can be found of that denomination,—which differs much both from the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, and in their worship and rites is about as near as it is possible for an Eastern church to be to Protestantism. Now let us see how they were treated and what became of them.

The Russian government resolved to convert the confessors of this church to the Russian Greek, of which the Czar is the infallible head (and I here repeat a statement I made five years ago, and which has not yet met a denial, that in Russia the Czar is actually worshiped as very God on earth,—and in making this statement I am not, like Bakunin, dead, but living). This people had not the slightest desire to change their faith, and declined to be converted. The Christian government of the Czar replied with bayonets. Gloomy dramas were played in Russia about that time. First, the clergy were seized and banished to the salt and lead mines in Siberia, there chained day and night to hard work in the mines. Others only had one choice, death or Russian Christianity; the majority swallowed lead and died. The next mode of conversion was by starvation, which consisted of giving them food every other day only; and then the clergy and Sisters of Charity and nuns, totally nude, were driven at the point of the lance, or while receiving the terrible knout upon their naked backs, to the river or pond covered with thick ice, and pulled in by ropes. An Orthodox priest, always present at such Russian “revival” meetings, asked now and then, “Will you accept the true faith?” Faint voices replied, “No! No!” Then the priest ordered, “Pull, pull well!” The rope strained to the utmost, the sharp ice was broken by the benumbed bodies in different directions. What a sight! Even the Russian soldiers, used to such doings, and the peasantry who came out of curiosity to the river banks, broke out in crying and screaming. The Hebrews present, who came with clothing and food for their miserable fellow-creatures, cried, “Jehovah! Jehovah! dost thou not see it?” When charged and lashed by the Cossacks with their knouts, the “converts” cried out, “Take all that we have, the last kopeck, the last piece of bread, but leave us our faith, the faith of our fathers!” But these cries were not heard in St. Petersburg, and to-day no Uniats are to be found in Russia.

Their bishops and minor clergy are wandering under various disguises, or, those who are married, living with their wives in foreign lands and there laboring for the re-establishment of their faith; but not for that purpose alone, but to free the whole of Russia. Some have betaken themselves to trades, others are living by teaching, others practicing medicine, and some have entered as clergymen into different denominations; some, again, are in Russia and Poland, ready to become martyrs for their country. The prelates and clergy of this branch of the Christian church are the true leaders and power behind the Nihilists, and as such they do not believe that God and right are lies. I, a Pole, but the son of a Uniat sainted mother, who with her and the rest of my family were forced into the Russian church against our will—knowing fully the true aims and purposes, and having also undergone the unmentionable hardships and woe of many who are liberators, but are called by the Russian government destructionists—I am proud to be one of them.

Nine-tenths of the true leaders, heavy contributors to Nihilism, are true, devout Christians and communicants of churches when outside of Russia; but they somehow are laboring under the idea that it is the duty of a Christian to remove corruption, licentiousness, and vice, in official as well as in private life; they are also under the impression that Christ when on earth preached as he does to-day through the New Testament, liberty and equality, virtue and truth, and believing this, they mean to introduce it in the Czar’s dominions. They may be in the wrong; if so, in the name of true Christianity I would ask the re-printers of Mr. Owen’s article, and especially the editor who commented upon it so learnedly in last week’s Congregationalist, what Christianity really means, if it does not mean what it seems to mean to the Uniat and other Christians who have lived in Russia, and who outside of that dismal country have heard for the first time perhaps of a Huss, a Wycliffe, a Calvin and a Luther, who set them an example which they honestly try to follow. If Nihilism is not right, as those ignorant and deceived professors of colleges, men and women of wealth and refinement, and peers mentally—nay, not only peers, but superiors—to many a scribbler in religious journals, believe, then the blame should be placed where it belongs, namely, upon the first and true teacher of Nihilism,—Jesus of Nazareth.—W. C——KY (known as JOHN BAKER).