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Like the molokanes, the stoundists refused to reverence the ikons, the sacraments, or the hierarchy of the orthodox church, and considered the Holy Scriptures to be simply a moral treatise.
Taking advantage of freedom to expound the Gospel, they profited by it for use and abuse, and it seemed to be a race as to who should be the first to start a new creed. Even as the douchobortzi had given birth to the molokanes, so were the latter in turn the parents of the stoundists.
Wealth being thus equalised, it was useless to try to amass it. Trade was similarly condemned, and a system of exchange of goods advocated. The stoundists did not attend church, and avoided public-houses, "those sources of disease and misery." The government made every effort to crush them, but the more they were persecuted, the more they flourished.
But the sentence was ratified, and the religion of the Great Candle procured for its followers the martyrdom that they had so little desired. Although most of the sects of which we have spoken sprang from the orthodox church, the molokanes and the stoundists were indirect fruits of the Protestant church, and even among the Jews there were cases of religious mania to be found.
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