unspotted to the kingdom of heaven. It is to be noted that all these data are unreliable, because no stranger is admitted to the secret devotions, while the imaginations of the denouncers have just as much tendency to revel in sexual and sanguinary ideas as that of the exalted devotees. The persecution of these sects by the government is easy to understand. Spiritual epidemics must be fought as much as physical disease. The persecution of the rationalistic sects is quite unjustifiable. They do not deserve the name of sects at all, for in other countries similar ones form simply free political, ethical, or philosophical societies. Certainly they can only benefit the communities in which they exist by their high ideal of integrity and strict morality. Count Leo Tolstoï has already made the banishment of the Doukhobors known to all the world as an infamous proceeding, and has thereby raised large contributions for their settlement in Canada. The Shaloputy and the Malevents, for the most part Ruthenians, have a really ideal character, free from the narrowness and superstition of the church, without ritual, industrious, helpful, peaceful, and kindly. They live together in a state of free-love marriages, without constraint of church or state, neither lie nor swear, and do good even to their enemies. The Stundists, who are said to have originated with the German pastor Bonekemper, in the Rohrbach colony near Odessa, are similarly virtuous communists, who do not trouble themselves about the state, hold all property in common, adjust all quarrels among themselves, and harm nobody. The formula of the report with which the gendarmes are accustomed to give notice of the discovery of a Stundist is characteristic: "I was passing the house of Farmer X---- and his son and saw them both reading in a book. I entered and ascertained that this book is the Gospel. Farmer X---- and his son are therefore Stundists, and as such are most respectfully reported to the authorities." Russian nobles have been exiled to Siberia for the crime of reading the Gospel to their servants. A former officer of the guards, Vassili Alexandrovitch Pashkov, who dedicated all his means to philanthropy and held religious exercises, was expelled from St. Petersburg and the movement named for him was suppressed.