Front matter

THE most extraordinary and inexplicable phase of Christianity is the persecution of Christians by Christians. Persecution is absolutely opposed to the nature and teaching of the Lord, who said to His disciples, when they desired to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans who refused them hospitality, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." In my former story, "The Highway of Sorrow," I attempted to set forth the religious principles of the Stundist men, and their steadfast courage in maintaining them. I have received a letter from Russia saying that this narrative "is true to fact." "In the Hollow of His Hand" endeavours to show the bitter sufferings of women and children in the storm of persecution now raging in Russia. The latest suggestion made for the complete stamping out of Stundism is that all children should be taken from their Stundist parents and brought up in the Orthodox Church. When this was done, in the Middle Ages, to the Jews in Spain, many parents adopted the awful alternative of slaying their children. In writing both stories I have drawn largely from two sources. One is a pamphlet, called "The Stundists: the Story of a Great Religious Revolt," published in 1893 by James Clarke & Co. The other is a most valuable work, entitled "Siberia and the Exile System," by George Kennan, from whose volumes I have drawn many of the details of the protracted journey to Eastern Siberia. Both of these stories are sorrowful, but they are true. And I would earnestly ask my readers to ponder over the words of our Lord, "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. 'Rejoice,' and be 'exceeding glad:' for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." This blessing the Stundists realise. HESBA STRETTON. 1897.