the same feelings which have wrought so strongly against our
nineteenth-century revision of the Bible acted even more forcibly
against that revision in the seventeenth century. Straightway great
masses of the people, led by monks and parish priests, rose in revolt.
The fact that the revisers had written in the New Testament the name of
Jesus correctly, instead of following the old wrong orthography, aroused
the wildest fanaticism. The monks of the great convent of Solovetsk,
when the new books were sent them, cried in terror: "Woe, woe! what
have you done with the Son of God?" They then shut their gates, defying
patriarch, council, and Czar, until, after a struggle lasting seven
years, their monastery was besieged and taken by an imperial army. Hence
arose the great sect of the "Old Believers," lasting to this day, and
fanatically devoted to the corrupt readings of the old text.(470)

(470) The present writer, visiting Moscow in the spring of 1894,
was presented by Count Leo Tolstoi to one of the most eminent and
influential members of the sect of "Old Believers," which dates from
the reform of Nikon. Nothing could exceed the fervor with which this
venerable man, standing in the chapel of his superb villa, expatiated on
the horrors of making the sign of the cross with three fingers instead
of two. His argument was that the TWO fingers, as used by the "Old
Believers," typify the divine and human nature of our Lord, and hence
that the use of them is strictly correct; whereas signing with THREE
fingers, representing the blessed Trinity, is "virtually to crucify all
three persons of the Godhead afresh." Not less cogent were his arguments
regarding the immense value of the old text of Scripture as compared
with the new. For the revolt against Nikon and his reforms, see Rambaud,
History of Russia, vol. i, pp. 414-416; also Wallace, Russia, vol. ii,
pp. 307-309; also Leroy-Beaulieu, L'Empire des Tsars, vol. iii, livre
iii.

Strange to say, on the development of Scripture interpretation, largely
in accordance with the old methods, wrought, about the beginning of the
eighteenth century, Sir Isaac Newton.

It is hard to believe that from the mind which produced the Principia,
and which broke through the many time-honoured beliefs regarding the
dates and formation of scriptural books, could have come his discussions
regarding the prophecies; still, at various points even in this work,
his power appears. From internal e