Note 1 — Chapter VII · GORELOVKA AND QUEEN LUKERIA

Greater credence was attached by the people to these terrible predictions by reason of what was passing in their little world. Their clergy were divided on a religious question well calculated to touch to the quick the popular mind. The predominant party succeeded in effecting an alteration in the prayers and hymns of their beloved Church. Passions became inflamed which appeared to herald persecution, which rallied the faithful in defence of the old forms. Were not the days of tribulation already upon them; and in what asylum among the mountains should these Christians of a larger Judæa find the refuge which had been promised by the word of Christ? The same teachers assured them that such an asylum would not be wanting, and might be found in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea. The fearful nature of the Divine warning, the conviction that it would be early realised, the aversion which the new-fangled forms of worship inspired in many earnest souls—all contributed to steel the old Protestant courage; to induce a large body of human beings to leave home and native land behind them, and, without superfluous forethought, to embark on the perilous journey to that distant land where they might await in peace and spiritual contentment the glorious coming of the Redeemer of the human race. Their ranks were swelled—such is the irony of our complex society—by many who were in search of change and adventure; they left Würtemberg 1500 families strong. Two-thirds of these are said to have perished before reaching Odessa, where the remnant was reinforced by a further body of their countrymen, to the number of 100 families. In the Emperor Alexander I. they found a friend who extended to them extensive privileges upon their arrival in Georgia in 1817. They were settled in several colonies in the Governments of Tiflis and Elizabetpol, which have endured to the present day. They have been tried by afflictions and internal dissensions; some have perished by wild beasts, some were carried into captivity during the course of the Persian war. Still their numbers have increased, their standards of life have been maintained, and the traveller rests with pleasure within their villages. But neither the paramount object of their migration nor the wider purpose of Alexander has been fulfilled up to the present time. The jealousy of the Russian Church-State has deprived them of much of their potential usefulness; and mankind are still groping beneath dark clouds of error, faintly silvered with the precious promise of perfect light.1