Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/173

Rh anointed of the Lord, where great Patriarchs used to offer up their prayers, where the sacred remnants of saints are buried, there the rabble of the enemies of God and of the Cross are now doing the will of Antichrist! &hellip;

This is the leading idea of the movement.

It is necessary to prove this to obtain visible symp toms of its existence.

And here one is thrust back into the Middle Ages with all their dark realities.

Just as at the time of the Napoleonic wars people used to find out from the apocalyptic numbers, from the initials of the people's commissars the name of demon, of Satan, trying to find the proper name of Antichrist, so they find new symptoms of the approach of "the last times" in astronomical phenomena, and even in common, every-day incidents of nature. The eclipse of the sun or the moon, falling stars, the shape and colour of the passing clouds, all impress the conviction of the professors of the Antichrist idea, everything they encounter suggests terrifying thoughts. Here a boy was born with long red hair or green eyes, there a girl with a couple of teeth in her gums or abnormal finger-nails—they are regarded as children of Antichrist, as his forerunners.

Many such babies born during that dark period of spiritual distraction were strangled or drowned.

Or else, the first cry of the new-born babe sounds almost like the name of Beezlebub. Then the child is