I was much pleased with Seib.  He and another schoolmaster, named Kapper, have been dismissed from their office of teacher, because of their holding private meetings and preaching in them, or explaining the Scriptures.  Some of the Lutheran ministers are so lifeless that they will not allow the people to meet in private for their edification.  The dead persecute the living, and light struggles with darkness.  This is even the case in some districts among the Mennonites.  The ministers fear that their people should go before them in religious light.  The more I see of the one-man system, the more I prize the gospel liberty in my own beloved religious Society.

They returned to Neuhoffnung, and on the 13th went to Nicolai Schmidt’s at Steinbach.

Attended the meeting there in the morning, and at Gnadenfeld in the evening, in both which places opportunity was given me to communicate what was in my heart for the people.

The settlements of the Molokans, consisting of three villages, each of about a thousand inhabitants, lie to the south of the German colonies.  These people are native Russians and seceders from the Russo-Greek church; they receive their name from the word Moloko, milk, because they drink milk on fast-days, which is forbidden by the national religion.  The Steppes are their Siberia, to which they have been banished.  Their worship is simple, commencing with silence and prayer, and they do not use the ceremonies and discipline common among most other Christians; but they are firm believers in the Christian faith, and many of them are spiritually-minded people.

On the 15th John Yeardley and William Rasche, under the conduct of N. Schmidt, left Neuhoffnung to visit the Molokans.  The first village they came to was Novo-Salifks, a prosperous colony in worldly matters, but said to be behind the others in spiritual life.  At the next, Wasilowkov, they met with Terenti Sederhoff, the apostle of the Molokans, whose remarkable history J.Y. related in a tract called The Russian Peasant, forming No. 12 of his series.  Here they also met with A. Stajoloff, who remembered William Allen’s visit in 1819.  Sederhoff accompanied them to the third village, Astrachanka, where they had a conversational meeting with several of the chief men, but the intercourse was carried on at a double disadvantage.

They spoke, says John Yeardley, nothing but Russ.  T never regretted more the want of the language.  Schmidt had a manifest unwillingness to interpret all I wanted to say, because it did not accord with his own sentiments, and he feared it might strengthen the people in those views from which the Mennonites would draw them.  There was a precious feeling over us, and I felt assured they appreciated our motive in visiting them; they often pressed my hand when comparing Scripture texts on which we were of one mind.  I felt satisfied in having done what I could to direct them in the right way, and to strengthen them in it.  They are well read in the Scriptures.