Many of the Finns gradually became Christians almost unconsciously.  The ecclesiastical authorities were extremely moderate in their demands.  They insisted on no religious knowledge, and merely demanded that the converts should be baptised.  The converts, failing to understand the spiritual significance of the ceremony, commonly offered no resistance, so long as the immersion was performed in summer.  So little repugnance, indeed, did they feel, that on some occasions, when a small reward was given to those who consented, some of the new converts wished the ceremony to be repeated several times.  The chief objection to receiving the Christian faith lay in the long and severe fasts imposed by the Greek Orthodox Church; but this difficulty was overcome by assuming that they need not be strictly observed.  At first, in some districts, it was popularly believed that the Icons informed the Russian priests against those who did not fast as the Church prescribed; but experience gradually exploded this theory.  Some of the more prudent converts, however, to prevent all possible tale-telling, took the precaution of turning the face of the Icon to the wall when prohibited meats were about to be eaten!

This gradual conversion of the Finnish tribes, effected without any intellectual revolution in the minds of the converts, had very important temporal consequences.  Community of faith led to intermarriage, and intermarriage led rapidly to the blending of the two races.

If we compare a Finnish village in any stage of Russification with a Tartar village, of which the inhabitants are Mahometans, we cannot fail to be struck by the contrast.  In the latter, though there may be many Russians, there is no blending of the two races.  Between them religion has raised an impassable barrier.  There are many villages in the eastern and north-eastern provinces of European Russia which have been for generations half Tartar and half Russian, and the amalgamation of the two nationalities has not yet begun.  Near the one end stands the Christian church, and near the other stands the little metchet, or Mahometan house of prayer.  The whole village forms one Commune, with one Village Assembly and one Village Elder; but, socially, it is composed of two distinct communities, each possessing its peculiar customs and peculiar mode of life.  The Tartar may learn Russian, but he does not on that account become Russianised.

It must not, however, be supposed that the two races are imbued with fanatical hatred towards each other.  On the contrary, they live in perfect good-fellowship, elect as Village Elder sometimes a Russian and sometimes a Tartar, and discuss the Communal affairs in the Village Assembly without reference to religious matters.  I know one village where the good-fellowship went even a step farther:  the Christians determined to repair their church, and the Mahometans helped them to transport wood for the purpose!  All this tends to show that under a tolerably good Government, which does not favour one race at the expense of the other, Mahometan Tartars and Christian Slavs can live peaceably together.