Page:Stundists.pdf/15

Rh revived Evangelical communions, deeply impressed with the nearness of the Second Advent, and they readily seized on Catherine's offer, as enabling them to be a stage nearer Jerusalem when that long-expected day should arrive. The piety, integrity and steadiness which distinguished them in their Würtemberg homes they transplanted to Russia. Out on the steppe they built their trim houses, surrounded them with fruit trees and flower gardens, and carefully tilled their land, raising splendid crops of wheat and barley. They brought their earnest pastors with them, and built commodious churches and schools. Clean and well dressed, they crowded the churches for the numerous services, and the schools were filled with their eager children. The colonies became little paradises on the steppe, and small wonder that the Russian's heart filled with bitterness when he looked on the brightness, purity, harmony and comparative opulence of the strangers' villages, and compared them with the disorder, dirt, drunkenness and discord in his own.

For many years after the arrival of the Germans in Russia, the two peoples kept rigorously aloof from one another; but little by little the stronger race began to acquire an influence over the weaker. The sick Russian would apply to the German apothecary, the impecunious Russian to the German money-lender, the beggars—and there were thousands of them came to the colonies—for alms, and crowds of wandering peasants, discharged soldiers, landless people sought and obtained employment from the affluent German farmers. It was in no stingy or superior way that these German Pietists treated their Russian dependents. The wealthy Russian is in the habit of looking on his poor fellow-countryman as belonging to an inferior order, with wants very similar to the wants of a horse—sufficient food and shelter to keep him able to work. The Germans treated their labourers as men and brothers, and not only