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204 tain fanatics, called "Dieto-oubiisti," or Child-killers, felt it a religious duty to slay new-born infants, in order that their souls, innocent of sin, might be sure of heaven without risk of damnation; some known as Stranglers, or Fellers (Doushilstchiki, or Tioukalstchiki), conceived that a violent death was the true way of salvation, pleading in grim earnestness that "the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence; the violent take it by force" (Matthew xi., 12), and piously despatched their relatives and friends by strangulation or blows, in case of mortal illness; others, who were very numerous in the early days of the Raskol, the Philipovtsi, disciples of one Phihp, who were also called Burners (Sojigateli), preached redemption by suicide and purification by fire. In the wilds of Siberia and in the Ural Mountains hundreds, whole families at a time, threw themselves into the flames of their burning houses, kindled by their own hands, or offered themselves up on funeral pyres, with prayers and songs, as a holocaust unto the Lord.

Belief in Antichrist and in the triumph of iniquity induced expectation of the millennium and of the second coming of Christ to reign with the faithful for a thousand years. Vehement exhortations of crazed enthusiasts, interpreting literally the prophecies of the Apocalypse, excited the imaginations of the ignorant and superstitious with wild dreams of material happiness soon to be enjoyed by the elect. Even in recent days, in spite of strict laws and prohibitive enactments, impostors have played upon the credulity of the simple and devout population. Accompanied by women, whom they presented for adoration as the Mother of God, or as the Mystic Spouse of the Church, they have asserted themselves to be the promised Messiah, or the "voice of one crying in the wilderness," foretelling the coming of the