At first he simply urged his hearers to live like the early Christians, and have all things in common.

This seemed sound doctrine to the Molokanye, who profess to take the early Christians as their model, and some of them thought of at once abolishing personal property; but when the teacher intimated pretty plainly that this communism should include free love, a decided opposition arose, and it was objected that the early Church did not recommend wholesale adultery and cognate sins.

This was a formidable objection, but "the prophet" was equal to the occasion.

He reminded his friends that in accordance with their own doctrine the Scriptures should be understood, not in the literal, but in the spiritual, sense--that Christianity had made men free, and every true Christian ought to use his freedom.
This account of the new doctrine was given to me by an intelligent Molokan, who had formerly been a peasant and was now a trader, as I sat one evening in his house in Novo-usensk, the chief town of the district in which Alexandrof-Hai is situated.

It seemed to me that the author of this ingenious attempt to conciliate Christianity with extreme Utilitarianism must be an educated man in disguise.