NICOLAS ILYIN.
Leaving Solovetsk for the south, I keep the figure of this aged
prisoner in my mind, and by asking questions here and there, acquire
in time a general notion of his course of life. But much of it remains
dark to me, until, on my return from Kertch and Kief to St.
Petersburg, the means are found for me of opening up a secret source.
The details now to be given from this secret source--controlled by
other and independent facts--will throw a flood of light into some of
the darkest corners of Russian life, and bring to the front some part
of the obstacles through which a reforming Emperor has to march.
It will be also seen that in the story of Ilyin's career, there are
points--apart from what relates to the convent spectre, and the
likeness to Constantine the First--which might account for some of the
sympathy shown for him by Poles.
Ilyin seems to have been born in Poland; his mother was certainly a
Pole. His father, though of Swedish origin, held the rank of general
in the imperial service. At an early age the boy was sent by General
Ilyin to the Jesuits' College in Polotsk; that famous school in which,
according to report, so many young men of family were led astray in
the opening years of Alexander the First. The names he bore inclined
him to devote his mind to sacred studies. Nicolas is the poor man's
saint, and Ilyin is the Russian form of Elias, the Hebrew prophet. It
is not by chance, he thought, that men inherit and receive such names.
He was highly trained. In the school-room he was noted for his gentle
ways, his studious habits, his religious turn of mind. He neither
drank nor swore; he neither danced nor gamed. When the time arrived
for him to leave his college and join the army, he passed a good
examination, took a high degree, and entered an artillery corps with
the rank of ensign. By his new comrades he was noted for his power of
work, for his scorn of pleasure, for his purity of life. A hard
reader, he gave up his nights and days to studies which were then
unusual in the mess-room and the camp. While other young men were
drinking deep and dancing late in their garrison-towns, he was giving
up the hours that could be snatched from drill and gunnery to Newton
on the Apocalypse, to Swedenborg on Heaven and Hell, to Bengel on the
Number of the Beast. What his religious doctrines were in these early
days, we can only guess. His father seems to have been a Greek
Catholic, his mother a Roman Catholic; and we know too much of the
genius which inspired the Jesuits' College in Polotsk to doubt that
every effort would be made by the fathers to win such a student as
Nicolas Ilyin to their side.
In Polotsk, as in nearly all Polish towns, reside a good many learned
Jews. Led by his Apocalyptic studies to seek the acquaintance of
Rabbins, Ilyin talked with these new friends about his studies, and
even went with them to their synagogue; in the ritual of which he
found a world of mystical meaning not suspected by the Jews
themselves. In conning the Mishna and Gemara, he began to dream that a
confession of faith, a form of prayer, a mode of communion, might be
framed, by help of God's Holy Spirit, which would place the great
family of Abraham under a common flag. A dream, it may be, yet a noble
dream!
Ilyin toyed with this idea, until he fancied that the time for a
reconciliation of all the religious societies owning the God of
Abraham for their father was close at hand; and that he, Nicolas
Ilyin--born of a Greek father and a Catholic mother; bearing the names
of a Hebrew prophet and a Russian saint; instructed, first by Jesuits
and then by Rabbins; serving in the armies of an Orthodox emperor--was
the chosen prophet of this reign of grace and peace. A vision helped
him to accept his mission, and to form his plan.
Taking the Hebrew creed, not only as more ancient and venerable, but
as simpler in form than any rival, he made it the foundation for a
wide and comprehensive church. Beginning with God, he closed with man.
Setting aside, as things indifferent, all the points on which men
disagree, he got rid of the immaculate conception, the symbol of the
cross, the form of baptism, the practice of confession, the official
Church, and the sacerdotal caste. In his broad review, nothing was of
first importance save the unity of God, the fraternity of men.
Gifted with a noble presence and an eloquent tongue, he began to teach
this doctrine of the coming time; announcing his belief in a general
reconciliation of all the friends of God. The monks who have lodged
him in the Frozen Sea, accuse him of deceit; alleging that he affected
zeal for the Orthodox faith; and that on converting General Vronbel,
his superior officer, from the Roman Church to the Russian Church, he
sought, as a reward for this service, a license to go about and
preach. The facts may be truly stated; yet the moral may be falsely
drawn. A general in the Russian service, not of the national creed,
has very few means of satisfying his spiritual wants. Unless he is
serving in some great city, a Roman Catholic can no more go to mass
than a Lutheran can go to sermon; and an officer of either confession
is apt to smoke a pipe and play at cards, while his Orthodox troops
are attending mass. Ilyin may have deemed it better for Vronbel to
become a good Greek than remain a bad Catholic. In these early days of
his religious strife, he seems to have dreamt that the Orthodox Church
afforded him the readiest means of reconciling creeds and men. In
bringing strangers into that fold, he was putting them into the better
way. Anyhow, he converted his general, and obtained from his bishop
the right to preach.
It was the hope of his bishop that he would bring in stragglers to the
fold; not that he should set up for himself a broader camp in another
name and under a bolder flag. Ilyin went out among the sectaries who
abound in every province of the empire; and to these men of wayward
mind he preached a doctrine which his ecclesiastical patrons fancied
to be that of the Orthodox faith. In every place he drew to himself
the hearts of men; winning them alike by the splendor of his eloquence
and by the purity of his life.
Early married, early blessed with children, happy in his home, Ilyin
could give up hand and heart to the work he had found. He took from
the Book of Revelation the name of Right-hand Brethren, as an
appropriate title for all true members of the church; his purpose
being to proclaim the present unity and future salvation of all the
friends of God.
A good soldier, a good man of business, Ilyin was sent to the
government works, in the province of Perm, in the Ural Mountains,
where he found time, in the midst of his purely military duties, for
preaching among the poor, and drawing some of those who had strayed
into separation back into the orthodox fold. His enemies admit that in
those days of his work in the Ural Mountains he lived a holy life.
Going on state affairs to the mines of Barancha, where the Government
owns a great many iron works and steel works, he saw among the
sectaries of that district, most of whom were exiles suffering for
their conscience' sake, a field for the exercise of his talents as a
preacher of the word, a reconciler of men. But the martyrs of free
thought whom he met in the mines of Barancha, were to him what the
Kaffir chieftains were to the Bishop of Natal. They put him to the
test. They showed him the darker side of his cause. They led him to
doubt whether reconciliation was to be expected from metropolites and
monks. Forced into a sharper scrutiny of his own belief, Ilyin at
length gave up his advocacy of the Orthodox faith, and even ceased to
attend the Orthodox mass.
A secret Church was slowly formed in the province of Perm, of which
Ilyin was the chief. Not much was known in high quarters about his
doings, until Protopopoff, one of his pupils, was accused of some
trifling offense, connected with the public service, and brought to
trial. Protopopoff was a leading man among the Ural dissenters. His
true offense was some expression against the Church. Ilyin appeared in
public as his friend and advocate. Protopopoff was condemned: and
Ilyin closely watched. Ere long, the director-general of the Ural
Mines reported to his chief, the minister of finance in St.
Petersburg, that in one of his districts he had found existing among
the miners a new religious body, calling themselves, in secret,
Right-hand Brethren, of which body Nicolas Ilyin, captain of artillery
in the Emperor's service, was the chief and priest.
Not a little frightened by his discoveries, the director-general lost
his head. In his report to the minister of finance, he said a good
deal of these reconcilers that was not true. He charged them with
circumcising children, with advocating a community of goods and lands,
with propagating doctrines fatally at war with imperial order in
Church and State.
It is true that under the name of Gospel love, the followers of Ilyin
taught very strongly the necessity and sanctity of mutual help. They
spoke to the poor, and bade them take heart of grace; bidding them
look, not only for bliss in a better world, but for a reign of peace
and plenty on the earth. In the great questions of serf and soil, two
points around which all popular politics then moved, they took a part
with the peasant against his lord, though Ilyin was himself of noble
birth. These things appeared to the director-general of mines
anarchical and dangerous, and Ilyin was denounced by him to the
minister of finance as a man who was compromising the public peace.
But the fact which more than all else struck the council in St.
Petersburg, was the zeal of Ilyin's pupils in spreading his doctrine
of the unity and brotherhood of mankind. The new society was said to
be perfect in unity. The first article of their association was the
need for missionary work; and every member of the sect was an apostle,
eager to spend his strength and give his life in building up the
friends of God. A man who either could not or would not convert the
Gentile was considered unworthy of a place on His right hand. At the
end of seven years a man who brought no sheep into the fold was
expelled as wanting in holy fire. Ilyin is alleged to have declared
that there was no salvation beyond the pale of this new church, and
that all those who professed any other creed would find their position
at the last day on the left hand of God, while the true brethren found
their seats on His right. This story is not likely to be true; and an
intolerant Church is always ready with such a cry. It is not asserted
that the new Church had any printed books, or even circulars, in which
these things were taught. The doctrine was alleged to be contained in
certain manuscript gospels, copied by proselytes and passed from one
member to another; such manuscript gospels having been written, in the
first instance at least, by Ilyin himself.
A special commission was named by the ministers to investigate the
facts; and this commission, proceeding at once into the Ural Mines,
arrested many of the members, and seized some specimens of these
fugitive gospel sheets. Ilyin, questioned by the commissioners, avowed
himself the author of these Gospel tracts, which he showed them were
chiefly copies of sayings extracted from the Sermon on the Mount. In
scathing terms, he challenged the right of these commissioners to
judge and condemn the words of Christ. Struck by his eloquence and
courage, the commission hardly knew what to say; but as practical men,
they hinted that a captain of the imperial artillery holding such
doctrines must be unsound in mind.
A report from these commissioners being sent, as usual, to the Holy
Governing Synod, that board of monks made very short work of this
pretender to sacred gifts. The reconciler of creeds and men was lodged
in the Convent of the Frozen Sea until he should put away his
tolerance, give up his dream of reconciliation, and submit his
conscience to the guidance of a monk.
And so the reconciler rests in his convent ward. The Holy Governing
Synod treats such men as children who have gone astray; looking
forward to the wanderer coming round to his former state. The
sentence, therefore, runs in some such form as this: "You will be sent
to ...., where you will stay, under sound discipline, until you have
been brought to a better mind." Unless the man is a rogue, and yields
in policy, one sees how long such sentences are likely to endure!
Nicolas Ilyin is a learned man, with whom no monk in the Convent of
Solovetsk is able to contend in speech. A former Archimandrite tried
his skill; but the prisoner's verbal fence and knowledge of Scripture
were too much for his feeble powers; and the man who had repulsed the
English fleet retired discomfited from Ilyin's cell.
Once the prisoner got away, by help of soldiers who had known him in
his happier days. Escaping in a boat to Onega Point, he might have
gone his way overland, protected by the people; but instead of hiding
himself from his pursuers, he began to teach and preach. Denounced by
the police, he was quickly sent back to his dungeon; while the
soldiers who had borne some share in his escape were sent to the
Siberian mines for life.
The noble name and courtly family of Ilyin are supposed to have saved
the arrested fugitive from convict labor in the mines.
My efforts to procure a pardon for the old man failed; at least, for a
time; the answer to my plea being sent to me in these vague words:
"Après l'examin du dossier de l'affaire d'Ilyin, il resulte qu'il n'y
a pas eu d'arrêt de mise en liberté." Yet men like Nicolas Ilyin are
the salt of this earth; men who will go through fire and water for
their thought; men who would live a true life in a dungeon rather than
a false life in the richest mansions of the world!