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448 contrivance of civil marriage was not then in existence, and if it had been, rigorous sacramentarians who were inclined to regard the government as Antichrist would not have submitted to it. Accordingly all marriage was forbidden by the no-priest party. Some understood this requirement of celibacy in a pure, ascetic sense, and anticipated the end of the world by the cessation of births. Others accepted it as an excuse for illicit connections, which, though they admitted them to be sins, they regarded as lesser sins than marriage by a priest tainted with the corruption of the orthodox Church. To some the monstrous position thus brought about became a horror which should be put an end to at any cost. There were child-killers, who sent young infants straight to heaven in order to save them from life in a world now subject to Antichrist. People, known as "clubbers," battered old men and women to death, quoting our Lord's saying, "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." One sect, known as the Philippoftsky, sought redemption by suicide. Whole families, whole villages, put themselves to death. The mania was propagated by prophets, who stood by to see that none shrank back in weakness from the universal self-immolation. Some of these people practised "fiery baptism," in plain words incendiarism and death by burning. A family shuts itself up in its cottage; brushwood is heaped about it; the prophet sets fire to the fuel; and the house and all within it are burnt. Then there were the Iskàleli Khristà—"Christ seekers," who went about seeking Christ and sometimes believed they had found Him in a prince, or perhaps a peasant. One of the most curious forms that the association of the idea of Antichrist with the tsar's government took is said to have been the veneration of the image of Napoleon secretly treasured in the home. There are to be found in Russia pictures representing the French emperor ascending to heaven surrounded by his marshals. It was rumoured that he was not dead, that he had escaped from St. Helena, and that he was in Siberia by Lake Baikal.