lean upon his advice in regard to matters of State as well as in ecclesiastical business. Three years later Alexis made him metropolitan of Novgorod, and he then had the exceptional honour of being consecrated by the patriarch of Jerusalem, who happened to be in Russia at the time on one of the begging expeditions to which the once venerated chief bishops of the Greek Church were compelled to humiliate themselves.
Nicon was now entrusted with great power. For instance, he had the right to enter the prisons, hear the prisoners' complaints, and if he thought them innocent, order their release; so that his position in this respect was something like that of the English Home Secretary. He proved his heroism during a riot, when he faced the mob and was knocked down and left for dead in the square at Novgorod. Helped up by his assistants, he persisted in penetrating to the most dangerous part of the city, walking in procession with the cross, and actually entered the building where the rebels were assembled. Struck with admiration for his intrepidity, they did not molest him any more. The rebellion went on for a time. But at last Nicon was able to quell it by his personal influence.
In matters of religion Nicon was also felt to be a great leader. Preaching was now almost extinct in the Russian Church. Dreary homilies prescribed by authority and monotonously read took the place of real sermons. The services consisted for the most part of the chanting of long archaic liturgies on the part of the priests, unintelligible to a later generation, or genuflections and prostrations by the congregation. Nicon revived the practice of preaching. His sermons were scriptural in teaching and full of life and power. Crowds gathered to hear him, and felt the spell of his eloquence. We may regard him as the Chrysostom of the Russian Church. Nicon also reformed the order of the liturgical service, which had drifted into confusion, and improved the singing arrangements after the model of the Greek chanting.
Saint worship was as characteristic of the Russian
