SEPTEMBER 29 the writer set out for an extended tour in Russia. There were to be no less than five general meetings in that empire, besides our visit to the city of Tiflis, in Trans-Caucasus. This would take us from the extreme north14to the extreme south, and from the far western to the very eastern border, of European Russia.
Our first Sabbath away from home was spent with the Berlin church. I found their neat and centrally located chapel well crowded. They were having their quarterly meeting at the time. Elder Frauchiger baptized sixteen, who had recently accepted the message. The Berlin church is the largest we have in the German Union; it contains a membership of three hundred and thirty-eight.
Sunday and Monday were spent in Dantzig and Konigsberg. At the latter place I met Elder Oblander, from whom I learned that the church there had also celebrated baptism the previous Sabbath, and now numbers eighty-three.
October 3 I crossed the border at Wirballen, and reached St. Petersburg next morning, making a distance of five hundred miles from the border, or one thousand one hundred and forty-five miles from Hamburg. Elder Wildgrube met me at the train. For the first time in my experience I rode with him right up to his lodging, took my valise in my hand, and accompanied him up the stairs to his dwelling. (Formerly he would always go ahead with the luggage, and I would quietly come in later alone, that I might not be observed.) We spent the day in careful counsel about the arrangements for the coming meeting, without fear of molestation, for the day of greater freedom to our work had arrived.
As evening drew on, I left the city for Vasa, or, as the Russians have renamed it, Nikolaistadt, which is situated nearly five hundred miles northwest of St. Petersburg. When I reached my destination at midnight, the fifth, Elder F. Anderson, in charge of the Finnish Mission, Brother Jens Olsen, treasurer of the Scandinavian Union, and Brother A. Boettcher, manager of the Helsingfors publishing house, met me at the station. Their meetings were already in progress. Vasa is quite a thriving seaport, nicely laid out, and contains about 15,600 inhabitants.
This is the first time we ever held a general meeting so far north in Europe, or, in fact, anywhere else, showing the advancement the work has made toward the polar regions. The meetings were held in the Firemen’s Hall. As many as three hundred attended our evening services.
We were glad to welcome at this time Elder Oberg and Brother O. Anderson, both of Sweden, who had recently arrived to join the force of workers in this field. God has richly blessed the work in Finland the past year; the prospects now are brighter than ever before. Of the one hundred Sabbath-keepers in this mission, about fifty were able to come to the meeting,—an excellent meeting it was, too, and all the workers seemed of good courage. We were glad to learn that quite a number had been baptized the past year.
One of the most encouraging features of the work here is the rapid growth of the publishing work. The Finnish paper now has a circulation of five thousand, and is more than paying its way. Recently our brethren in Helsingfors have published the book on “Revelation,” translated from the German into the Finnish, and during the first two months the canvassers sold over six hundred copies, a record they had never been able to make in the sale of any other book. The Helsingfors house is now getting out a Swedish edition.
GENERAL VIEW OF VASA
We were glad to notice among the canvassers some native Finns. Although we have now been laboring many years in Finland, yet our efforts have been almost wholly confined to the 354,000 Swedish-speaking people of the land, and we have done comparatively little for the 2,381,000 Finns. The Swedes are scattered in the towns along the coast. At this meeting, definite plans were laid to enter work among the Finns of the interior. As the canvassing work has been attended by such good results, we feel encouraged to believe that the preaching of the word will bring forth fruit. Elder F. Anderson was unanimously chosen as director of the Finnish Mission. He is assisted by one minister, and three other evangelical workers. Brother Jens Olsen, who had come up from Copenhagen to audit the books, reported everything in good shape, and the business growing. Sunday night I spoke to a large congregation upon our missions in general, and the people donated liberally to the work in German East Africa.
So far as the political situation is concerned, the only change we saw was that the Russian government had dismissed the Finnish militia, and in their stead sent ten thousand Russian soldiers into the country. This was the first real sign we had that the government entertained serious fears of trouble. Hidden depots of arms had been discovered among the islands. We little dreamed that a few weeks later the Russian governor would be a prisoner in the hands of the citizens, and would be obliged to flee from the country in a man-of-war. The train was crowded with emigrants, mostly promising young men bound for America to escape the military service.
As we had but recently published a Russian edition of “Steps to Christ,” in the city of Helsingfors, I secured about five pounds of Russian literature, and carried it over the border with me on my return to St. Petersburg. The snow had already begun to fall during the night—the first signs I saw of the approaching winter. Passing the border safely, I was again in the city of St. Petersburg the night of the tenth.
During this trip I had quite a long conversation with an intelligent gentleman, well acquainted with the situation in the Russian empire. He said that before the Russo-Japanese War, the masses hardly ever read a newspaper, but during the war the people became so interested that they would go to the trains and beg the passengers for newspapers giving them the latest news. Thus, people who could scarcely spell the words out, would secure the paper, and try to decipher the news. As a result, there has been a great demand for literature, and a mighty awakening among a people who have been slumbering so long. What this gentleman said, I soon found confirmed. There has been a wonderful change all over Russia. Everybody was demanding literature that would give them information and make them intelligent. This very thing ought to impress upon us the fact that now is just the time for us to circulate literature that will bring the third angel’s message to the one hundred and thirty-five millions of human beings inhabiting this mighty empire.
