Let us turn our attention from the Raskolniks, or Old Believers of the far North, who, as we have seen, so literally "forsook all" for their ancient Faith, to some few of the many new, or lately developed creeds whose followers are seeking after truth with equal earnestness and vigour, but along very different lines. Sect begets sect in the world of theology, much as cell begets cell in the economy of life. Change seems the active principle of all dissent; new cults are forever springing up in the mystic childlike minds of the Tsar's great peasant family, nor could one expect uniformity of confession, when the size and neighbours of that family are considered, for Mohammedan, Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, and Shamanist surround it, are made subject to it, and eventually become a part thereof. A Mosque stands opposite the Orthodox church in the great square which forms the centre of Nijni-Novgorod, a Roman Catholic and a German Lutheran church almost face the magnificent Kazan Cathedral, in the Nevski-Prospekt of St. Petersburg. The waiters of nearly all restaurants, from Archangel to Baku, are Mohammedan Tartars, the Jew is in every market-place, the native heathen races, Lapp, Samoyede, Ostiac, Yakout, and a score of others, are closely connected by the bonds of commerce: can it be wondered at if the ideas of the peasant become tinted by his surroundings? It cannot be gainsaid that the lifelessness and emptiness of the State Church, with its hireling and often ignorant priesthood, fails to satisfy the great mind of Russia--the peasant mind--but now awakening from its long infant slumber, as did the mind of Western Europe three centuries ago. Next perhaps to the extreme literalness with which the Mujik interprets Holy Writ, this dissatisfaction with the official Church is the greatest cause of the grip which the chameleon-like "dissent" has taken hold of the popular mind. With very few exceptions--notably the Skoptsy--the 150 sects which are stated to exist within the pale of Christianity and the borders of the Empire of the Tsar, begin and end with the Mujik; the official world is of necessity Orthodox, the wealthy world careless, and this fact, of the peasant origin and development of the denominations, must be carefully borne in mind when attempting to form any idea of the widely different meanings and shades of meaning which have been put upon the one Bible story.