Note 12 — Chapter VII · GORELOVKA AND QUEEN LUKERIA

The religion of the Dukhobortsy resembles that of our own extreme Protestants; it is the Government fans their zeal into destroying flames. That they are Christians there can, I think, be scarcely any doubt; they told me positively that they acknowledged and worshipped Christ as God.12 But God is a spirit, and they that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth. The spirit of God dwells in the souls of His servants, who themselves are sons of God. How therefore can a church, an image or an eikon claim reverence as a holy thing? In these there dwells no spirit, no effluence of Godhood; the Church of God is the human soul. Reasoning thus, the Dukhobortsy bow to one another after prayer, saluting the divinity that resides in man. Scripture they accept; but the book of God must be a living book, a book to which there is never any end. Hence their religious conceptions float about in the mouths of the people, in the form of psalms. New psalms may be sung; but the old psalms never perish—the Word of God, old yet ever new. They reject priests and all the apparatus of official religion, and themselves conduct whatever simple ceremonies may be necessary upon birth, at marriage and after death.