I reminded him of his definition of religion given me on one of our previous walks, and he repeated it, declaring religion to be the feeling which man has regarding his relation to the universe, including his fellow-men, and to the power which governs all. The afternoon was closed with a visit to a Raskolnik, or Old Believer, and of all our experiences this turned out to be the most curious. The Raskolniks, or Old Believers, compose that wide-spread sect which broke off from the main body of the Russian Church when the patriarch of Moscow, Nikon, in the seventeenth century attempted to remove various textual errors from the Bible and ceremonial books. These books had been copied and recopied during centuries until their condition had become monstrous. Through a mistake of some careless transcriber, even the name of Jesus had been travestied and had come to be spelled with two e's; the crudest absurdities had been copied into the test; important parts had become unintelligible; and the time had evidently arrived for a revision. Nikon saw this, and in good faith summoned scholars from Constantinople to prepare more correct editions; but these revised works met the fate which attends such revisions generally. The great body of the people were attached to the old forms; they preferred them, just as in these days the great body of English-speaking Protestants prefer the King James Bible to the Revised Version, even though the latter may convey to the reader more correctly what was dictated by the Holy Spirit. The feeling of the monks, especially, against Nikon's new version became virulent. They raised so strong an opposition among the people that an army had to be sent against them; at the siege of the Solovetsk Monastery the conflict was long and bloody, and as a result a large body of people and clergy broke off from the church. Of course the more these dissenters thought upon what Nikon had done, the more utterly evil he seemed; but this was not all. A large part of Russian religious duty, so far as the people are concerned, consists in making the sign of the cross on all occasions. Before Nikon's time this had been done rather carelessly, but, hoping to impress a religious lesson, he ordered it to be made with three extended fingers, thus reminding the faithful of the Trinity. At this the Raskolniks insisted that the sign of the cross ought to be made with two fingers, and out of this difference arose more bitterness than from all other causes put together. From that day to this the dissenters have insisted on enjoying the privilege of reading the old version with all its absurdities, of spelling the word Jesus with two e's, of crossing themselves with two fingers, and of cursing Nikon.