PARADISE—FIRST-CLASS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16543, 29 September 1921, Page 6

PARADISE —FIRST-CLASS.

•SOME WEIRD AND WONDERFUL RELIGIONS.

There are very few vacant places in Paradise. Then© places are of two kinds—first and second-cl&6s. The first-class (price ten roubles) enables the purchaser to repose upon a celestial sofa. Occupiers of the second-class (live roubles) have to spend eternity seated upon footstools.

It is a remarkable and almost unbelievable fact that such twaddle as this should have been believed. Yet there actually was a sect of people—- “ The Merchants of Paradise” they were called—who seriously believed it all. The sect was founded in Russia by a man named Athanasius Konovaloff, and some of the peasants actually went without food in order to save money and so be able to buy places in Paradise 1

Another sect of people in the same country called themselves “The Stranglers.” It was their belief that death is not terrible, but that the last agony before death is terrible. Therefore, when one of their number was taken seriously ill, they called in a doctor, and if they found that there wae no hope, they carried the dying person to some isolated spot and tied up his head firmly but kindly in a cushion until all was over.

“ The Molokanee *’ was another sect that became of considerable importance in the country. The chief feature of their religion was a diet which consisted of practically nothing else but milk.

And another sect believed that it was only necessary to climb upon the roofs of houses in order to take flight to heaven 1 These, and many other weird religions are described by Jean Finat in “ Modern Saints and Seers.”