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4 attended to their material wants, but sought in every way to improve their moral and spiritual condition. It was with no deep design to effect a Reformation, no presentiment of what was coming, that the pious farmer, the day's work done, would sit side by side with his Russian workman, and German New Testament in hand, or book of German hymns, would laboriously translate for his tattered disciple the words of Christ, or the noble spiritual songs of the Vaterland. This was the attitude of the Germans in the colony of Rohrbach, a flourishing little place near the River Boug, and not very far from the great commercial city of Odessa. The pastor there was a certain Bonekemper, a man full of zeal, who not only laboured for the spiritual welfare of his own Germans, but for the enlightenment of their Russian dependents. He decided on taking two important steps. The Germans were in the habit of meeting together for prayer and praise at stated times. These exercises they called Stunden, or "hours." Bonekemper decided to invite the Russian labourers who had acquired a smattering of German to attend the Stunden. Here they first heard Protestant worship, and it was their attendance at these services that first earned for them the title of Stundists, a title of opprobrium attached to them by the Orthodox priests of the neighbourhood. Bonekemper's second step was to procure a supply of Russian New Testaments. These he readily obtained from German and English friends in St. Petersburg. To those of the Rohrbach labourers who promised to learn to read the energetic pastor made a present of a New Testament. Classes of Russians were formed; Germans taught them to read their own Russ language; writing was added; German tracts were distributed; there was ferment, and stir, and inquiry, and much searching of heart. This was in 1858, a memorable date, for it was the birth-year of Stundism.