#pubdate 2025-10-08T23:59:03.631Z
#author Leo Tolstoy
#title My Religion (Leo Weiner Translation)
#date Originally published in 1884. This version translated in 1904.
#source <[[https://archive.org/details/myreligiononlife00tols][archive.org/details/myreligiononlife00tols]]>
#lang en
#topics Liberation Theology, religion
#notes Translated by Leo Wiener.

*** Introduction

I have lived in the world for fifty-five years, and, with the exception of fourteen or fifteen years of my childhood, have passed thirty-five years as a nihilist in the full sense of the word, that is, not as a socialist and revolutionist, as which this word is generally understood, but as a nihilist in the sense of an absence of every faith.

Five years ago I came to believe in Christ’s teaching, and my life suddenly became changed: I ceased desiring what I had wished before, and began to desire what I had not wished before. What formerly had seemed good to me, appeared bad, and what had seemed bad, appeared good. What took place with me was what takes place with a man who goes out on some business and suddenly decides on his way that he does not need that business, and returns home. And everything which was on the right is now on the left, and what was on the left is now on the right: the former desire — to be as far as possible away from the house — is now changed to a desire to be as close as possible to it. The direction of my life, my desires, became different: what was good and bad changed places. All this was due to the fact that I came to understand Christ’s teaching differently from what I had understood it before.

I do not mean to interpret Christ’s teaching, but want to tell only how I came to understand what simple, clear, 3

intelligible, indubitable, universally accessible qualities Christ’s teaching possessed, and how that which I now understood upturned my soul and gave me peace and happiness.

I do not wish to interpret Christ’s teaching; the one thing I want is to prevent men from interpreting it.

All the Christian churches have always acknowledged that all men, who are not equal in learning and reason, — the wise and the foolish, — are equal before God, that the divine truth is accessible to all. Even Christ said that it is the will of God that what is hidden from the wise be revealed to the unwise.

Not all men can be initiated into the deepest secrets of dogmatics, homiletics, patristics, liturgies, hermeneutics, apologetics, and so forth, but all men can and ought to understand what Christ has told all the millions of simple, unwise men who have lived since his day. So it is this, which Christ told those simple people, who had not yet had the chance of turning to Paul, to Clement, to Chrysostom, and to others, for the elucidations of his teaching, that I had not understood before and came to understand then: and it is this that I wish to communicate to all men.

The robber on the cross believed in Christ, and was saved. Would it really have been bad and harmful for any man, if the robber had not died on the cross, but bad come down from it, and had told all men how he came to believe in Christ?

Even so I, like the robber on the cross, believed in Christ, and was saved. This is not a far-fetched comparison, but a very close approximation to that spiritual condition of despair and terror before life and death, in which I was formerly, and of that condition of peace and happiness, in which I now am.

Idke the robber, I knew that I lived badly, that the majority of men around me lived as badly. Like the robber, I knew that I was unhappy and suffered, and that around me men were as unhappy and suffered as much, and saw no way out, except death, from this condition. Like the robber on the cross, I was nailed by some power to this life of suffering and of evil.

And as for the robber there was in store the terrible darkness of death after senseless sufferings and the evil of life, so also the same was in store for me.

In all this I was precisely like the robber, but there was this difference between the robber and me, that he was already dead, while I was still living. The robber could believe that his salvation would be there, beyond the grave: but I could not believe that, for besides the life beyond the grave, I still had to live here. And I did not understand this life. It seemed terrible to me. Suddenly I heard Christ’s words, and I understood them, and life and death no longer appeared to me as an evil, and instead of despair I experienced the joy and happiness of life, which are not impaired by death.

Can it really harm any one, if I tell how this happened with me?

*** I. The Fundamental Contradiction of Human Life

I have written two large works, the Critique of Dogmatic Theology, and a new translation and harmonization of the four gospels with explanations, in which I explain why I had not comprehended Christ’s teaching, and how I came to understand it. In these works I try methodically, step by step, to analyze everything which conceals the truth from men, and verse after verse translate anew, collate, and harmonize the four gospels.

This work has been going on for six years. Every year, every month, I find new explanations and confirmations of the fundamental idea, correct the mistakes which have crept in through hurry and overzeal, and add to what has been done. My life, of which not much is left, will, no doubt, be ended before this work. But I am convinced that this labour is needed, and so I do what I can, while <strong>I</strong> live.

Such has my assiduous external work been on the theology, on the gospels. But the internal work, of which I wish to tell here, was different. It was not a methodical investigation of the theology and texts of the gospels, but a sudden removal of everything which concealed the very meaning of the teaching, and a sudden illumination by the light of truth. It was an event which was like what would happen to a man who from a false drawing tries to reconstruct a statue out of a heap of small pieces of marble, when suddenly he discovers from one insignificant piece that it is an entirely different statue, and, having begun the new reconstruction, suddenly sees the confirmation of his idea, instead of the former incoherency of the fragments, in every piece, which with all its lines combines with the neighbouring pieces and forms one whole. It was this that happened with me. And of this I wish to tell-

I want to tell how I found this key for the comprehension of the teaching of Christ, who revealed to me the truth with a clearness and a conclusiveness that exclude every doubt.

This discovery was made by me in the following manner: ever since the first period of my childhood, when I began to read the Gospel for myself, I was most touched and affected by that teaching of Christ, where he preaches love, meekness, humility, self-renunciation, and retribution of evil with good. Such always remained for me the essence of the Christian teaching, and I loved it with my heart, and in the name of it I, after despair and unbelief, recognized as true the meaning which the labouring people ascribe to the Christian life, and in the name of it I subjected myself to the beliefs which these people confess that is to the Orthodox Church.

But, in submitting to the church, I soon observed that I should not find in the church doctrine the confirmation and elucidation of those principles of Christianity which to me seemed to be of greatest importance: I observed that this essence of Christianity, which was so dear to me, did not form the chief point in the church doctrine. I observed that that which to me seemed to be of most importance in Christ’s teaching was not regarded as such by the church. The church regarded something else as of greatest importance. At first I did not ascribe any meaning to this peculiarity of the church teaching.

Well, I thought, in addition to the meaning of love, humility, self-renunciation, the church recognizes also the dogmatic, the external meaning. This meaning is foreign to me, even repels me, but there is nothing harmful in it.

But the longer I lived, submitting to the church doctrine, the more obvious it became to me that this peculiarity of the church doctrine was not so immaterial as it had seemed to me to be at first. What repelled me from the church was the strangeness of the church dogmas, and the recognition and approval given by the church to persecutions, capital punishment, and wars, and the mutual rejection of the various creeds; but what shattered my confidence in it was that indifference to what to me seemed to be the essence of Christ’s teaching and the bias for what I regarded as inessential. But I could not make out what was wrong; I could not make it out, because the church doctrine, far from denying that which to me seemed to be of prime importance in Christ’s teaching, fully recognized it, but it did so in such a way that what was of prime importance in Christ’s teaching did not occupy the first place I could not rebuke the church for denying the essential things, but the church recognized them in such a way that they did not satisfy me. The church did not give me what I expected from it.

I passed from nihilism to the church only because I was conscious of the impossibility of living without faith, without the knowledge of what is good and what bad, in spite of my animal instincts. I hoped to find this knowledge in Christianity. But Christianity, as it presented itself to me at that time, was only a certain, very indefinite mood, from which did not result clear and obligatory rules of life. I turned to the church for these rules. But the church gave me such rules as did not in the least bring me nearer to the Christian mood, which was so dear to me, and only removed me farther from it, and I could not follow it. The life which was based on the Christian truths was necessary and dear to me; but the church gave me rules of fife which were entirely foreign to the truths which I valued so highly. I did not need the rules which the church gave me about the belief in dogmas, about the observance of sacraments, fasts, and prayers, and there were none that were based on the Christian truths. Moreover, the church rules weakened, and at times destroyed outright, that Christian mood, which alone gave me the meaning of my life. What troubled me more than anything else was that all the human evil — the condemnation of private individuals, of whole nations, of other creeds, and the executions and wars, which resulted from such condemnations — was all justified by the church. Christ’s teaching about meekness, about refraining from condemnations, about forgiveness of offences, self-renunciation, and love, was exalted by the church in words, and yet, in fact, that which was incompatible with this teach-^ ing was justified by it.

Could it be that Christ’s teaching was such that these contradictions ought to exist? I could not believe it. Besides, it had always seemed strange to me that, in so far as I knew the Gospel, those passages on which the definite rules of the church about the dogmas were based were the most obscure of all, while those from which resulted the execution of the teaching were most definite and clear. And yet, the dogmas and the obligations of a Christian which result from them were defined by the church in a most clear and precise manner; while the execution of the teaching was mentioned by it in most obscure, hazy, mystical terms.

Is it possible Christ had that in mind, when he imparted his teaching to men? The solution of my doubts I could find only in the gospels, and I read and re-read them. Out of all the gospels the sermon on the mount always stood out as something special, and I read it often- est of all. Nowhere else does Christ speak with such solemnity as in this place; nowhere else does he give so many moral, clear, intelligible rules, which reecho at once in the hearts of all men; nowhere does he speak to a greater assembly of all kinds of simple people. If there existed clear, definite Christian rules, they must bn expressed here. In these three chapters of Matthew I tried to find an explanation of what troubled me. Many, many a time did I read the sermon on the mount, and every time I experienced the same feelings of enthusiasm and meekness of spirit, as I read the verses about offering the cheek, giving up the coat, making peace with all men, and loving our enemies, and the same feeling of dissatisfaction. The words of God, which were directed to all men, were not clear. There was demanded a too impossible renunciation of everything, which destroyed life itself, as I understood it, and so the renunciation of everything, I thought, could not be a peremptory condition of salvation. And as long as it was not a peremptory condition of salvation, there was nothing definite and clear.

I read not only the sermon on the mount, but also all the gospels and all the theological commentaries upon them. The theological explanations, that the utterances of the sermon on the mount were an indication of that perfection toward which man must strive, but that the fallen man was abiding in sin and could not with his powers attain this perfection, and that man’s salvation was in faith, prayer, and grace, did not satisfy me.

I could not agree to this, because it had always seemed strange to me why Christ, who knew in advance that the execution of his teaching was impossible with the human powers alone, gave such clear and beautiful rules, which had reference directly to every individual man. As I read these rules, it seemed to me that they had special reference to me and demanded that I, if no one else, should execute them.

As I read these rules, I was always overcome by the joyful certainty that I could henceforth, from that very hour, do all that. I wanted and tried to do it; but the moment I experienced a struggle in the execution, I involuntarily recalled the teaching of the church that man is weak and cannot do it of himself, and I weakened.

I was told that we must believe and pray.

But I felt that I had little faith, and so could not pray. I was told that I must pray so that God might give me faith, that faith which gives prayer, which gives that faith, which gives that prayer, and so on, <em>ad infinitum.</em>

But reason and experience showed me that only my efforts to carry out Christ’s teaching could be real: and so, after many, many vain searchings and studies of what had been written in proof of the divinity of this teaching and in proof of its un-divinity, after many doubts and sufferings, I was again left alone with my heart and with the mysterious book before me. I could not give it the meaning which others ascribed to it, and could find no other meaning for it, and yet could not reject it. And only after I had lost faith in all the interpretations of both the learned criticism and the learned theology, and had rejected them all, according to Christ’s saying, If you receive me not as do the children, you will not enter into the kingdom of God, did I suddenly understand what I had not understood ‘before. I did not understand because I in some way artificially and cunningly transposed, collated, interpreted; on the contrary, everything was revealed to me because I forgot all interpretations. The passage which for me was the key to the whole was Verses 38 and 39 of the fifth chapter of Matthew. It hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil. I suddenly for the first time understood the last verse in its direct and simple meaning. I understood that Christ said precisely what he said. And immediately, not something new appeared, but there disappeared that which obscured the truth, and truth arose before me in all its significance. Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say, Do not resist evü. These words suddenly appeared entirely new to me, as though I had never met them before.

Formerly, when I read this passage, 1 always, by some strange blindness, omitted the words, But I say, Do not resist evil. It was as though these words did not exist, or had no definite meaning.

Later I frequently had occasion in my conversations with many, very many Christians, who knew the Gospel, to observe the same blindness in respect to these words. Nobody remembered these words, and often, when talking about this passage, Christians would take up the Gospel in order to assure themselves that the words were there. Similarly I used to omit the words, and began to understand only from the next words on, But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him, etc. And these words always presented themselves to me as a demand for sufferings and privations which are not proper to human nature. These words affected me, and I felt that it would be nice to fulfil them. At the same time I felt that I should never be able to fulfil them, merely to suffer. I said to myself, Very well, I will turn my other cheek to a man, and he will strike me a second time; I will give them what they ask of me, and they will take everything from me. I shall have no life. Life is given to me, why should I deprive myself of it? Christ could not have asked for this.

Formerly I used to say that to myself, imagining that in these words Christ praised sufferings and privations, and, praising them, was speaking in exaggeration and so without precision or clearness; but now that I came to understand the saying about non-resistance to evil, it became clear to me that Christ did not exaggerate at all and did not demand any suffering for the sake of suffering, but meant very definitely and clearly what he said.

He said, Do not resist evil; and doing so, remember that there will be found people who, having struck you on one cheek and finding no resistance, will strike you on the other also; having taken your coat, will take your cloak also; having made use of your labour, will compel you to work more; who will take without returning. And when this happens, you must still not resist evil. Continue to do good to those who will strike and offend you.

And when I comprehended these words, in the mannei in which they were said, everything which had been dark became clear, and what had seemed exaggerated became entirely clear. I understood for the first time that the centre of gravity of the whole thought was in the words, Do not resist evil, and that what follows is only ri: explanation of the first proposition. I understood that Christ does not at all command us to offer our cheek ana give up our coat in order that we may suffer, but commands us not to resist evil, and says that, in doing so, we may also have to suffer. Just as a father, sending his son out on a long journey, does not order him to stay awake nights, go without eating, be drenched, and freeze, when he says, Travel on the road, and even if you are to be drenched and frozen, keep to the road, — so Christ does not say, Offer your cheek, suffer, but, Do not resist evil, and no matter what may happen to you, do not resist evil.

These words, Do not resist evil, understood in their direct sense, were for me indeed the key that opened everything to me, and I marvelled how I could have so perverted the clear, definite words. You have been told, A tooth for a tooth, and I say, Do not resist evil, and no matter what evil persons may do to you, suffer, give up, but do not resist evil. What can be clearer, more intelligible, and more indubitable than this? I needed only to understand these words in a simple and direct manner, just as they w’ere said, and everything in Christ’s teaching, not merely in the sermon on the mount, but in all the gospels, everything which had been tangled, became clear; what bad been contradictory became concordant; and, above all else, what had seemed superfluous became necessary. Everything welded into one whole and each thing indubitably confirmed everything else, as pieces of a broken statue, when they are recomposed as they ought to be. In this sermon and in all the gospels the same teaching of non-resistance to evil was confirmed on all sides.

In this sermon, as in all other passages, Christ represents to himself his disciples, that is, the men who carry out the rule of non-resistance to evil, not otherwise than men who offer their cheek and give up their cloak, as persecuted, beaten, and poor. .

Christ says again and again that he who has not taken the cross, who has not renounced everything, that is, he who is not prepared for all the consequences arising from the execution of the rule of non-resistance to evil, cannot be his disciple. To his disciples Jesus says, Be mendicants; be prepared, while not resisting evil, to receive persecutions, suffering, and death: he prepares himself for suffering and death, without resisting the evil men, and sends away Peter, who is sorry about it, and dies himself, forbidding men to resist evil, and without becoming untrue to his teaching.

All his first disciples carry out this rule of non-resistance, and pass all their life in poverty and persecutions, and never repay evil with evil.

Consequently Jesus says exactly what he says. We may affirm that the constant execution of this rule is very difficult; we may not agree with this, that every man will be blessed in carrying out this rule; we may say that it is foolish, as the unbelievers say, that Christ was a dreamer and idealist, who uttered impracticable rules, which his disciples in their foolishness carried out; but we cannot fail to admit that Christ very clearly and definitely said what he wanted to say, namely, that man, according to his teaching, must not resist evil, and that, therefore, he who has accepted his teaching cannot resist evil. And yet neither believers, nor unbelievers, understand this simple and clear meaning of Christ’s words.

*** II. The Contradiction of Life Has Been Recognized by Men Since Remote Antiquity

When I understood that the words, Do not resist evil, meant, Do not resist evil, all my former conception of the meaning of Christ’s teaching suddenly changed, and I was horrified, not at the lack of comprehension, but at the strange comprehension of the teaching, in which I had lived until then. I knew, we all know, that the meaning of the Christian teaching is in the love for men. To say that we must offer our cheek and love our enemy is to express the essence of Christianity. I knew this since childhood, but why had I not understood these simple words in a simple manner, and why had I looked in them for some allegorical meaning? Do not resist evil, means, Never resist evil, that is, never use violence, that is, do not commit an act which is always opposed to love. And if thou shalt be offended in doing so, endure the insult, and still use no violence against others. He has said this as clearly and as simply as it can be said. How, then, could I, who believed, or tried to believe, that he who said this was God, say that it was impossible to do this with one’s own strength?

My master says to me, Go and chop some wood; and I reply to him, I cannot do this with my own strength. When I say so, I say one of two things: either that I do not believe in what my master is telling me, or that I do not wish to do what my master wants me to do. Of the commandment of God, which he gave to be kept, and of which he said, He who shall keep it and teach so, shall be accounted greater, and so forth, and of which he said that only those who fulfil it receive life, of the com- 15

mandment, which he himself kept, and which he expressed so clearly and simply that there cannot be any doubt as to its meaning, of this commandment I, who had never even attempted to keep it, said, Its execution is impossible with my own strength, — I must have a supernatural aid

God came down upon earth to give salvation to men. The salvation consists in this, that the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, suffered for men, redeemed their sin before the Father, and gave men the church, in which is preserved the grace that is transmitted to those who believe; besides all this, this God the Son gave men a teaching and an example of life for salvation How, then, could I say that the rules of life, which are so simply and so clearly expressed for all, are so hard to execute that this cannot be done without supernatural aid? He not only said nothing of the kind, but said definitely. By all means fulfil it, and he who will not fulfil it, will not enter the kingdom of heaven. And he never said that the execution was difficult, but, on the contrary, My yoke is good, and my burden light; John the evangelist said, His commandments are not hard. How, then, could I say that that which God has commanded men to do; that that, the execution of which he so clearly defined, and of which he said that it was easy to do it; that that which he himself executed as a man, and which his first followers executed; how could I say that this execution was so difficult that it was even impossible without supernatural aid?

If a man puts all the effort of his mind on destroying a certain law, what more effective objection, in order to destroy this law, could the man bring forward than that this law is by its essence impracticable, and that the lawgiver held in respect to his law that it was impracticable, and that supernatural aid is necessary in order that it be executed? It was precisely this that I thought in respect to the commandment of non-resistance to evil.

I tried to recall how and when this strange idea had got into my mind that Christ’s law was divine, but that it could not be executed; and analyzing my past, I understood that this idea had never been communicated to me in all its nakedness (it would have repelled me), but that I, imperceptibly to myself, had imbibed it with my mother’s milk from my earliest childhood, and that my subsequent life only confirmed me in this strange delusion.

I have been taught since childhood that Christ is God and his teaching divine, but, at the same time, I was taught to respect the institutions which through force secured my immunity from evil, — I was taught to respect these institutions as sacred. I was taught to resist evil, and was impressed with the idea that it is base and disgraceful to submit to evil and to suffer from it, and praiseworthy to resist it. I was taught to judge and punish. Then I was taught to make war, that is, to resist evil men with murder, and the military caste, of which I was a member, was called the Christ-loving military, and their activity was sanctified by a Christian blessing. Besides, from childhood up to my manly estate I had been taught to respect what directly opposed Christ’s law. To resist the offender, to avenge by the use of violence a personal, family, national insult, — all this they not only did not deny, but impressed upon me as something beautiful and not contrary to Christ’s law.

Everything which surrounded me, my family’s peace and their safety and my own, my property, everything was based on the law which Christ rejected, cn the law, A tooth for a tooth.

The church teachers taught that Christ’s teaching was divine, but that its execution was impossible on account of human weakness, and that only Christ’s grace could cooperate in its execution. The worldly teachers and all the structure of life directly recognized the impracticability and visionariness of Christ’s teaching, and by their words and deeds taught what was contrary to this teaching. This recognition of the impracticableness of God’s teaching had so slowly and so imperceptibly percolated in me and become habitual with me, and to such a degree coincided with my lusts, that I had never before noticed the contradiction in which I lived. I did not see that it was not possible at one and the same time to confess Christ the God, the foundation of whose teaching is non-resistance to evil, and consciously and calmly to work for the establishment of property, of courts, government, and army; to establish a life which was contrary to the teaching of Christ, and to pray to this Christ that the law of non-resistance to evil and of forgiveness be fulfilled among us. It did not yet occur to me, what now is so clear, that it would be much simpler to arrange and establish life according to Christ’s law, and then only to pray for courts, executions, and wars, if they are so necessary for our good.

And I understood whence my delusion came. It arose from confessing Christ in words and denying him in fact.

The proposition about non-resistance to evil is a proposition which binds the teaching together, but only when it is not an utterance but a rule which must be executed, — when it is a law.

It is indeed a key which unlocks everything, but only when the key is put into the lock. The recognition of this proposition as an utterance, which is impossible of execution without supernatural aid, is an annihilation of the whole teaching. How can such a teaching, from which the fundamental, binding principle has been removed, present itself otherwise than as impossible? But to unbelievers it simply appears stupid, and it cannot appear in any other light.

To put up an engine, fire the boiler, set the engine in motion, and not connect the transmitting belt, — it is precisely this that has been done with Christ’s teaching, when they began to teach that a man may be a Christian without executing the proposition about non-resistance to evil.

A little while ago I read the fifth chapter of Matthew with a Jewish rabbi. At nearly every utterance the rabbi said, <em>t</em> This is in the Bible, this is in the Talmud,” and pointed out to me in the Bible and in the Talmud utterances which very closely resembled those in the sermon on the mount. But when we reached the verse about non-resistance to evil, he did not say, This, too, is in the Talmud, but only asked me with a smile, “And do the Christians execute this? Do they offer the other cheek?”

I could make no reply, the more so, since I knew that just at that time the Christians not only failed to offer their cheeks, but struck the Jews on the cheeks which they turned to them. Still it interested me to know whether there was anything like it in the Bible or in the Talmud, and I asked him about it.

He said, No, that is not there, but tell me, Do the Christians keep this law? With this question he told me that the presence of such a rule in the Christian law, which not only no one executes, but which also the Christians consider impracticable, is a recognition of the irrationality and uselessness of this rule. And I could not answer him.

Now that I have come to understand the direct meaning of the teaching, I see clearly the strange self-contradiction in which I had lived. Since I recognized Christ as God and his teaching as divine and, at the same time, arranged my life contrary to this teaching, what was there left for me to do but recognize this teaching as impracticable? In words I recognized Christ’s teaching as sacred, but in reality I did not at all confess the Christian teaching, and bowed before non-Christian institutions, which on all sides embraced my life.

The whole Old Testament says that the misfortunes of the Jewish people were due to their believing in false gods, and not in the true God. Samuel, in the First Book, Chapters VIII. and XII., accuses the people of having, to their previous transgressions against God, added a new one: in the place of God, who was their king, they placed a man-king, who, in their opinion, was to save them. Do not believe in <em>thohu,</em> emptiness, Samuel says to the people (xii. 12). It will not help you, and will not save you, for it is <em>thohu,</em> empty. If you do not wish to perish with your king, keep the one God.

Now the belief in this <em>tholiu,</em> in these empty idols, veiled the truth from me. On the way toward it, barring its light, stood before me those <em>tholiu,</em> which I was unable to renounce.

The other day I went through the Borovftski Gate; in it sat an old man, a lame mendicant, wrapped to his ears in a dirty rag. I took out my purse, to give him something. Just then a young, dapper, red-cheeked grenadier, in a Crown fur coat, came running down from the Kremlin. When the mendicant saw the grenadier, he jumped up in fright and ran limping toward the Alexander Garden. The grenadier started in pursuit after him, but stopped before reaching him, and began to curse the mendicant for disobeying the order not to sit down in the gate. I waited in the gate for the grenadier to return. When he was in a line with me, I asked him whether he could read.

“I do, what of it?”

“Have you read the Gospel?”

“I have.”

“Have you read, And he who shall feed the hungry?”

I quoted the passage to him. He knew it, and listened to it, and I saw that he was troubled. Two passers-by stopped to listen. It was evident that the grenadier was pained to feel that he, who excellently executed his duty, which was to drive people away from where they were not permitted to stay, suddenly appeared unjust. He was confused and, apparently, was trying to find a justification. Suddenly a fight gleamed in his bright black eyes, and he turned sidewise toward me, as though ready to walk away.

“Have you read the Military Regulation?” he asked.

I told him that I had read it.

“Then don’t talk,” said the grenadier, with a victorious toss of his head, and, wrapping himself in the fur coat, he went dashingly back to his place.

This was the only man in my whole life who in a strictly logical way solved that eternal question, which in our social structure had stood before me and stands before every man who calls himself a Christian.

*** III. The Delusions of the Scribes

They speak in vain who say that the Christian teaching touches the personal salvation, and not the general questions of state. This is only a bold and barren assertion of a most palpable untruth, which is destroyed at the first serious thought of it. Very well, I will not resist evil, will offer my cheek as a private individual, I say to myself, but there comes an enemy, or nations are oppressed, and I am called to participate in the struggle with the evil men, — to go and kill them. I must inevitably solve the question, In what does the service of God and the service of <em>tJiohu</em> consist? Must I go to war, or not go to war? I am a peasant; I am chosen an elder, a juryman, and am compelled to swear, to judge, to punish, — what must I do? Again I must choose between the law of God and the law of man. I am a monk, who lives in the monastery, and the peasants have taken our mowing away, and I am sent out to take part in the struggle with the evil men, to enter a complaint in the court against the peasants. Again I must choose.

Not a single man can get away from the necessity for a solution of this question. I am not speaking of our class of society, almost the whole of whose activity consists in resisting the evil, being warriors, men of the legal profession, administrators; there is no private individual, no matter how modest he may be, who is not confronted with this necessity for a solution between serving God and keeping his commandments, and serving <em>thohu,</em> the institutions of state. My personal life is interwoven with the social, political life, and the political life demands of me a non-Christian activity, which is directly opposed to Christ’s commandment. Now, with the unh versal military service and the participation of all in the court in the capacity of jurymen, this dilemma is with striking distinctness placed before all people. Every man has to take up the weapon of murder, the gun, the knife, and, though he does not kill, he must load his gun and whet his knife, that is, be prepared to commit murder. Every citizen must come to court and be a participant in the court and in the punishments, that is, every man has to renounce Christ’s commandment of non-resistance to evil, not only in words, but in action as well.

The grenadier’s question — the Gospel or the Military Regulation, the law of God, and the law of men — is standing now before humanity as it did in the time of Samuel. It stood also before Christ and before his disciples. It stands before those who want to be Christians in fact; it stood also before me.

Christ’s law, with his teaching of love, humility, self- renunciation, had always before touched my heart and attracted me. But on all sides, in history, in the contemporary life which surrounded me, in my own life, I saw the opposite law, which was contrary to my heart, my conscience, my reason, which pampered my animal instincts. I felt that, if I accepted Christ’s law, I should be left alone, and I might fare ill: I might be persecuted and have to weep, precisely what Christ said about it. If I accepted the human law, all would approve of me, and I should be quiet and secure, and all the cunning of reason would be at my service, pacifying my conscience. I would laugh and rejoice, precisely what Christ said about it. I felt this, and so not only failed to penetrate Christ’s law, but tried to understand it in such a way that it should not keep me from living my animal life. But it was not possible to understand it thus, and I did not understand it at all.

In this lack of comprehension I now reached a remarkable degree of blindness. As an example of such a blindness I will adduce my former comprehension of the words, Judge not, that ye be not judged (Matt. vii. 1). Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned (Luke vi. 37). The institution of the courts, in which I took part, and which protected my property and made me secure, seemed so unquestionably sacred and so far from breaking God’s law that it never occurred to me that this utterance could mean anything but that one should not judge his neighbour in words. It did not occur to me that Christ could in these words have spoken of courts, of the provincial court, the criminal court, the circuit and justice of the peace courts, and all kinds of senates and departments. Only when I comprehended the direct meaning of the words about non-resistance to evil, the question presented itself to me as to what Christ’s relations were to all these courts and departments. When I saw that he would have rejected them, I asked myself, Does it mean only, Do not judge your neighbour in words? Does it not mean also, Do not sit in judgment, do not judge your neighbour in human institutions?

In Luke, Chapter VI., from Verse 37 to Verse 49, these words are said immediately after the teaching about nonresistance to evil and repaying evil with good. Immediately after the words, Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful, it says, Judge not, and ye shall not be judged. Does not this mean that not only is one not to judge his neighbour, but also not to establish courts and not to judge his neighbours in them? I asked myself. And I need only to put this question to myself, in order that my heart and common sense should immediately answer me in the affirmative.

I know that the comprehension of these words is startling at first. It startled me also. To show how far removed I was from the proper understanding, I will confess a disgraceful stupidity: after I had become a believer and read the Gospel as a divine book, I, upon meeting prosecuting attorneys and judges of my acquaintance, used to say to them in a playful way, And so you still continue to judge, though it says, Judge not, that ye be not judged ! I was so sure that these words could not mean anything but a prohibition of gossip, that I did not understand that terrible blasphemy which I was uttering in saying those words. I had reached such a point that, having convinced myself that these clear words did not mean what they meant, I playfully used them in their real meaning.

I will tell in detail how there was destroyed in me every doubt as to this, that the words could not be understood in any other sense than that Christ forbids all human institutions of courts, and could not say anything else with these words.

The first thing that startled me, when I came to understand the commandment about non-resistance to evil in its direct sense, was that the human courts not only failed to agree with it, but were positively opposed to it, and opposed to the meaning of the whole teaching, and that, therefore, Christ must have rejected the courts, if he thought of them.

Christ says, Do not resist evil. The purpose of the courts is to resist evil. Christ prescribes doing good in return for evil. The courts retaliate evil with evil. Christ says, Make no distinction between the good and the bad. All the courts do is to make this distinction. Christ says, Forgive all men; forgive, not once, not seven times, but without end; love your enemies, do good, to those who hate you. The courts do not forgive, but punish; they do not do good, but evil, to those whom they call enemies of society. Thus it turns out, according to the meaning, that Christ must have rejected the courts.

But, I thought, maybe Christ had nothing to do with human courts and did not think of them. But I see that that cannot be assumed: From his very birth until his death, Jesus came in contact with the courts of Herod, of the sanhedrim, and of the high priests. And, indeed, I see that Christ frequently speaks directly of courts as of an evil. He says to his disciples that they will be judged, and tells them how they must bear themselves in court. Of himself he says that he will be condemned, and he shows how we must act toward a human court.

Consequently, Christ thought of those human courts which were to condemn him and his disciples, and which have condemned millions of people. Christ saw this evil and directly pointed to it. In passing judgment on the harlot, he denies the court outright, and shows that a man cannot condemn, because he is himself guilty. The same idea he expresses several times, saying that with a dust- filled eye it is impossible to see the dust in another man’s eye, that a blind man cannot guide the blind. He even explains what follows from such a delusion. The pupil will be like the teacher.

But, perhaps, having expressed this in respect to the condemnation of the harlot, and having pointed out the common human weakness in the parable of the mote, he, none the less, does not forbid turning to human justice in order to find defence against evil men; but I see that this can in no way be conceded.

In the sermon on the mount he turns to all men and says, And if a man wants to take away thy coat by suing thee at law, give him thy cloak also. Consequently, he forbids all to go to law.

But, perhaps, Christ is speaking only of the personal relation of each man to the courts, and does not deny the courts of justice themselves, and in Christian society recognizes men who judge others in established institutions? But I see that this, too, cannot be conceded. Christ commands in his prayer all people without exception to forgive others, that their guilt be also forgiven them, and he repeats this thought several times. Consequently, every man must forgive all, both in his prayer and before he offers a gift. How, then, can a man judge and sentence in court, since, according to the faith which he professes, he must always forgive? And so I see that, according to Christ’s teaching, there cannot be such a person as a Christian judge, who punishes men.

But, perhaps, from the connection in which the words stand with other words, Judge not and condemn not, Christ, speaking here, Judge not, did not have in mind human courts? But that is not true, either; on the contrary, it is evident from the context that, saying, Judge not, Christ is speaking of courts as institutions; according to Matthew and Luke, he precedes the words, Judge not, by, Do not resist evil, suffer evil, do good to all men. And before this he, according to Matthew, repeats the words of the Jewish criminal law, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And after this reference to the criminal law, he says, But do not do so, do not resist evil, and then only, he says, Do not judge. Consequently Christ is speaking of the criminal law of men, and rejects it with the words. Do not judge.

Besides, according to Luke, he not only says, Do not judge, but, Do not judge and do not condemn. There must be some reason why this word, which has nearly the same meaning, is added. The addition of this word can have but one aim: the explanation of the meaning in which this first word is to be taken.

If he wanted to say, Do not condemn your neighbour, he would have added this word; but he adds a word, which means, Do not sentence. And then he says, And you will not be sentenced; forgive all, and you will be forgiven.

But, perhaps, Christ was still not thinking of the courts, when he said this, and I put my own thought into his words, which have a different significance.

I look to find out how the first disciples of Christ, the apostles, considered the human courts, and whether they recognized and approved them. In Chapter IV., Verses 1-11, Apostle James says, Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judg- eth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judges! another?

The word which is rendered by <em>speak evil</em> is <em>KaraXaXea.</em> Even without referring to the dictionary, we can see that it must mean <em>to accuse:</em> and this it does mean, which any one may verify by looking into the dictionary. It is translated, He that speaketh evil of his brother, speaketh evil of the law. Involuntarily the question arises, Why? No matter how much evil I may speak of my brother, I do not speak evil of the law; but if I accuse and judge my brother in court, it is evident that I thus accuse Christ’s law, that is, I consider Christ’s law insufficient, and accuse and judge the law. Then it is clear that I no longer execute his law, but am myself a judge. But a judge, says Christ, is he who can save. How, then, can I be a judge, and punish, since I am not able to save?

This whole passage speaks of the human court, and denies it. The whole epistle is permeated by the same idea. In the same epistle (ii. 1-13), it says:

1. My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons.

2. For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment;

3. And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool:

4. Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?

5. Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?

6. But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?

7. Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?

8. If ye fulfil the royal law according to the Scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Lev. xix. 18), ye do well:

9. But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.

10. For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

11. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. (Deut. xxii. <em>22;</em> Lev. xviii. 17-25.)

12. So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.

13. For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.

The last words have frequently been translated by, Mercy is proclaimed at the judgment, so as to mean that there can be a Christian court, but that it must be merciful.

James admonishes the brethren not to make any distinction between men. If you do make a distinction, you <em>^LeKpiOjjre</em> you are partial, as judges with evil thoughts are in the court. You have decided that the poor man is worse, whereas, in reality, the rich man is worse. He oppresses you and drags you to court. If you live according to the law of love for your neighbour, according to the law of mercy (which, in distinction from the other, James calls royal), it is well. But if you respect persons, make distinctions among men, you become transgressors of the law of mercy. And, having in view, no doubt, the example of the harlot, who was brought before Christ, in order that she might be stoned to death according to the law, or in general the crime of adultery, James says that he who puts to death the harlot will be guilty of murder, and will break the eternal law, for the same eternal law forbids both fornication and murder. He says, Do as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty, for there will be no mercy to him who is without mercy, and so mercy destroys the court.

How could this be said more clearly and more definitely? Every distinction between men, every judgment as to this man being good, and that one bad, is prohibited; the human court is pointed out as being unquestionably bad, and it is shown that this judgment is criminal, in that it puts to death for crimes, and that, therefore, the courts are naturally destroyed by God’s law, — by mercy.

I read the epistles of Apostle Paul, who suffered from the courts, and in the very first chapter of his epistle to the Romans I read an admonition, which the apostle makes to the Romans for all their vices and delusions, and among these for their courts:

I. 32. Who, knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

II. 1. Therefore thou art inexcusable, 0 man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judges! another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.

2. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.

3. And thinkest thou this, 0 man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?

4. Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?

Apostle Paul says, Knowing the righteous judgment of God, they themselves act unrighteously and teach others to do likewise, and so a man who judges cannot be justified.

Such a relation to the courts I find in the epistles of the apostles; but in their lives, as we all know, the human courts appeared to them as an evil and offence, which it was necessary to bear with firmness and with devotion to the will of God.

If we reconstruct in our imagination the condition of the first Christians amidst the Gentiles, we shall easily understand that it could not have occurred to the Christians, who were persecuted by human courts, to forbid the courts. Only occasionally they could touch on this evil, denying its foundations, even as they did.

I consult the teachers of the church of the first centuries, and I see that they always defined their doctrine, as distinguishing them from all the others, by saying that they never compel others or judge any one (Athenagoras, Origen), nor put to death, but only endure the torments which are imposed upon them by human courts. All the martyrs attested the same by their acts. I see that all Christianity, up to Constantine, never looked differently at the courts than as at an evil which one must patiently endure, and that it never could have occurred to a single Christian of that time that a Christian could take part in a judgment.

I see that Christ’s words, Do not judge, and do not condemn, were understood by his first disciples just as I have come to understand them, in their direct sense, Do not judge in courts, and do not take part in them.

Everything incontestably confirmed my conviction that the words, Do not judge, and do not condemn, meant, Do not judge in courts; but the interpretation that it means, Do not calumniate thy neighbour, is so universally accepted, and the courts flourish so boldly and so arrogantly in all Christian countries, basing themselves even on the church, that I for a long time doubted the justice of my comprehension. If all men could interpret in such a way and have established Christian courts, they, no doubt, must have had some foundation for them, and there is something about it which you do not understand, I said to myself. There must be some grounds on which these words are meant to mean calumny, and there must be grounds on which Christian courts are established.

I turned to the interpretations of the church. In all these commentaries, beginning with the fifth century, I found that these words were usually understood to mean a verbal condemnation of one’s neighbour, that is, calumny. And since these words are accepted to mean a verbal condemnation of one’s neighbour, there arises a difficulty: how can we help condemning? The evil cannot help but be condemned. And so all the interpretations turn about what one may condemn, and what not. They say that for the servants of the church that cannot be taken as a prohibition against judging, and that the apostles themselves judged (Chrysostom and Theophi- lactes). They say that, in all probability, Christ by these words points to the Jews, who accuse their neighbours of small sins, and themselves commit great sins. But nowhere is there a word said about the human institutions, the courts, about the relation that these courts bear to the prohibition against condemning. Does. Christ forbid them, or does he permit them?

To this natural question there is no answer, as though it were too obvious that the moment a Christian sits down in the judgment-seat, he can not only condemn his neighbour, but also put him to death.

I consult the Greek, Catholic, and Protestant writers and the writers of the Tubingen school and of the historical school. By all these, even the most freethinking interpreters, the words are understood as a prohibition against calumniating. But why these words, contrary to the whole teaching of Christ, are understood in such a narrow sense that into the prohibition against judging there does not enter the prohibition against keeping court; why it is assumed that Christ, in prohibiting the condemnation of one’s neighbour which, as a bad deed, accidentally escapes one’s mouth, does not consider bad the same kind of a condemnation which is pronounced consciously and is combined with the exertion of violence over the condemned person, — to this there is no answer; and there is not even the slightest hint as to the possibility of understanding by condemnation what takes place in courts and causes millions to suffer. More than that: on the occasion of the words, Do not judge and do not condemn, this same cruel method of legal condemnation is cautiously obviated and even fenced off. The theological commentators mention that courts must exist in Christian countries, and that they are not contrary to Christ’s law.

When I noticed this, I doubted the sincerity of these interpretations, and turned to the translation of the w’ords, Judge and condemn, — to that which I ought to have turned to in the start.

In the original these words are <em>tcpivw</em> and <em>/caraBifcd^ü).</em> The incorrect translation of the word <em>KaTaSifcd&o</em> in James’s epistle, which is translated by the word <em>calumniate,</em> confirmed my doubt in the correctness of the translation.

I investigate how the words <em>Kpi'vw</em> and <em>fcaraSiKcíÇto</em> are translated in the gospels in the different languages, and I find that in the Vulgate the last is translated by <em>condam- nare,</em> and similarly in French; in Slavic it is <em>osuzhdat’;</em> in Luther, <em>verdammen,</em> to curse.

The variability of these translations increases my doubts, and I ask myself, What do the Greek word <em>/cpívco,</em> which is used in both the gospels, and the word <em>KaraSi-</em> <em>kclÇco,</em> which is used in Luke, mean, and what can they mean, especially in the case of Luke, an evangelist who, in the opinion of scholars, wrote in fairly good Greek? How would <em>a</em> man translate these words, if he knew nothing of the gospel teaching and its interpretations, and had before him this one utterance?

I consult the general dictionary, and I find that <em>nptvw</em> has many different meanings, and among them the very usual significance, <em>to pass sentence,</em> even <em>to put to death,</em> but never <em>to calumniate.</em> I consult the dictionary of the New Testament, and I find that in the New Testament it is frequently used in the sense of <em>to put aside,</em> but never as <em>to calumniate.</em> And so I see that the word <em>nptvw</em> may be differently translated, but that a translation which would give it the meaning of <em>to calumniate</em> is most farfetched and unexpected.

I investigate the word <em>KaraZaca^,</em> which is attached to the word <em>xplvco,</em> which has many meanings, apparently in order to define the special meaning which the author had in view with the first word. I look up the word <em>KaraBtKáÇa)</em> in the general dictionary, and I find that this word never has any other meaning than <em>to condemn at a trial to punishments, to sentence.</em> I consult the dictionary of the New Testament, and I find that this word is used in the epistle of James, v. 6, where it says, Ye have condemned and killed the just. The word <em>condemned,</em> the same <em>KaraZiKaXw,</em> is used in relation to Christ, who is condemned to death. In no other sense is this word ever used in the whole New Testament, or in any Greek language.

What is this? Have I grown so stupid? I, and every one of us, who lives in our society, if he has at all thought of the fate of men, has been terrified before the sufferings and before the evil which the criminal laws of men have introduced into life, — an evil both for the judged and for the judges, — from the executions of Dzhingis-Khan and of the Revolution to the executions of our own day.

No man with a heart has escaped that impression of terror and of doubt in the good, even at the recital, not to speak of the sight, of the executions of men by just such men, by means of rods, the guillotine, the gallows.

In the Gospel, each word of which we consider sacred, it says clearly and outright, You had a criminal code — a tooth for a tooth — and I give you a new one: do not resist evil; you must all keep this commandment, Do not return evil for evil, but always do good to all men,— forgive all men.

And further, it says, Do not judge. And, that no doubt be left as to the meaning of the words which were said, it adds, Do not condemn by trial to punishments.

My heart says clearly and distinctly, Do not put to death; science says, Do not put to death; the more you put to death, the more evil there is; reason says, Do not put to death; you cannot stop an evil with an evil. The Word of God, in which I believe, says the same. And I, reading all the teaching, reading the words, Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned; forgive, and ye shall be forgiven, acknowledge that these are the words of God, and say that what they mean is that we must not busy ourselves with gossiping and calumniating, and must continue to regard the courts as a Christian institution, and me as a judge and Christian.

I was horrified at the grossness of the deception in which I had been living.

*** IV. The Doctrine of the Scribes Substitutes the Visible Phenomena of His Animal Existence for the Concept of the Whole Life of Man, and From These Makes His Deductions as to the Aim of His Life

I now understood what Christ meant when he said, You were told an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; and I tell you, Do not resist evil, and endure it. Christ says, You have been impressed with the idea, and you have become accustomed to it, that it is good and rational by force to repel the evil and to pluck an eye out for an eye, to establish criminal courts, the police, the army, to resist the enemy: but I say, Use no violence, do not take part in violence, do no evil to any one, even to those whom you call your enemies.

I now understood not only that in the proposition about non-resistance to evil Christ was telling what would immediately result for each man from non-resistance to evil, but that — in contradistinction to the principle by which humanity lived in his day according to Moses and the Roman law, and now lives according to all kinds of codes—he put the proposition of non-resistance to evil in such a way that, according to his teaching, it was to be the foundation of the joint life of men and was to free humanity from the evil which it inflicted upon itself. He says, You think that your laws mend the evil, but they only increase it. There is one way of cutting off evil, and that is, to do good for evil to all without any distinction. You have tried your principle for a thousand years, try now the reverse.

Here is a remarkable thing. Of late I have frequently had occasion to speak with a large variety of men about this law of Christ concerning non-resistance to evil. Though rarely, I have now and then met people who 36

agreed with me: but there are two classes of men who never, not even in principle, admit the direct comprehension of this law and who warmly defend the justice of resistance to evil. These men belong to the two extreme poles: they are the patriotic and conservative Christians, who acknowledge that their church is the true one, and the atheistic Revolutionists. Neither the one nor the other will renounce the right of forcibly resisting what they regard as an evil. Not even the wisest and most learned among them want to see the simple, obvious truth that, if we concede to one man the 'right forcibly to resist what he considers an evil, a second person may with the same right resist what he regards as an evil.

Lately I had in my hands an instructive correspondence of an Orthodox Slavophile with a Christian Revolutionist. One of them defended the violence of war in the name of the oppressed Slavic brothers, and the other defended the revolutions in the name of his oppressed brothers, the Russian peasants. Both demand violence, and both fall back on Christ’s teaching.

They all understand Christ’s teaching in the most varied manner possible, only not in the direct, simple sense which inevitably flows from his words.

We have established all our life on the very foundations which he denies, do not wish to understand his teaching in its simple and direct sense, and assure ourselves and others, either that we profess his teaching, or that his teaching is not good for us. The so-called believers believe that Christ is God, the second person of the Trinity, who came down upon earth in order to give men an example of life, and they do the most complicated things, which are necessary for the performance of the sacraments, the building of chiirCheSj the despatch of missionaries, the establishment of pastors, the government of the congregation, the confession of faith, but forget one small circumstance, — to do what he said.

The unbelievers try to arrange their life in every manner possible, except by Christ’s law. having decided in advance that this law is not good for them. No one wants to endeavour to do what he says but, moreover, before attempting to do so, both believers and unbelievers decide in advance that this is impossible.

He says simply and clearly, The law of resisting evil with violence, which you have put at the basis of your life, is false and unnatural; and he gives us another basis, that of non-resistance, which alone according to his teaching, can free humanity from evil. He says, You think that your laws of violence mend the evil; but they only increase it. You have tried for thousands of years to destroy evil by evil, and you have not destroyed it, but have only increased it. Do what I tell you and what I do, and you will see whether it is true.

And he not only speaks of this, but in his whole life and in his death executes his teaching about non-resistance to evil.

The believers hear all this and read it in the churches, calling it divine words, and call him God, but they say, All this is very nice, but it is impossible with our social structure, — it disorganizes our whole life, whereas we are used to our life and love it. And so we believe in all this in the sense of its being an ideal toward which humanity must strive, an ideal which is attained by prayer and faith in the sacraments, in the redemption, and in the resurrection from the dead.

But the others, the unbelievers, the free interpreters of Christ’s teaching, the historians of the religions, Strauss, Renan, and others, who have adopted in full the church interpretation as to Christ’s teaching not having any direct applicability to life, arid being only a visionary teaching which consoles half-witted people, say in a most serious manner that Christ’s teaching was good enough to be preached to the savage inhabitants of the backwoods of Galilee, but that to us, with our culture, it presents itself only as a sweet dream “<em>die charmant docteur”</em> as Renan says. According to their opinion, Christ could not rise to the height of comprehending the whole wisdom of our civilization and culture. If he had stood on the same height of education, on which these learned men stand, he would not have mentioned such sweet trifles, as the birds of heaven, the turning of the other cheek, and the care for the present day alone.

These learned historians judge of Christianity from the Christianity which they see in our society; but according to the Christianity of our society and time, our life with all its arrangement is regarded as true and holy, — with its prisons, solitary confinement, Alcazars, factories, periodicals, brothels, and parliaments, and only so much is taken out of Christ’s teaching as does not interfere with this life. And since Christ’s teaching rejects this whole life, nothing is taken out of Christ’s teaching but words. The learned historians see this, and, as they have no need of concealing it, as the so-called believers do, subject this teaching of Christ, after it is bereft of its meaning, to a profound criticism, and reject it in its entirety, and prove that there never was anything in Christianity but visionary ideas.

One would think that, before passing judgment on Christ’s teaching, it would be necessary to understand wherein this teaching consists; and, in order to decide whether this teaching is sensible or not, that it would be necessary, above all, to ascertain that he said what he said; but this we, neither the clerical, nor the freethinking interpreters, have done, and we know why we have not done it.

We know very well that Christ’s teaching, rejecting them, has always embraced those human delusions, those <em>thohus,</em> empty idols, which we, calling them the church, the state, civilization, science, art, culture, imagine we can segregate from the series of delusions; but Christ speaks against them, without segregating any <em>thohus.</em>

Not only Christ, but all the Jewish prophets, John the Baptist, all the true sages of the world, speak of precisely this church, this state, this culture, this civilization, calling them evil and destruction of men.

Let us say a builder says to a householder, Your house is bad, it has to be rebuilt; and then he will proceed to explain in detail what beams are needed, how they are to be cut, and where to be placed. The householder will overhear the statement that the house is bad and needs to be rebuilt, and will with feigned respect listen to the builder’s words about the further arrangement and distribution of the house. Apparently all the counsels of the builder will seem inapplicable, and he who pays no attention to the builder will simply call them foolish. Precisely the same takes place in regard to Christ’s teaching.

Being unable to find a better comparison, I used this one; and I recalled that Christ, in imparting his teaching, made use of this very comparison. He said, I will destroy your temple, and in three days will I build up a new one. And for this he was crucified; and for the same thing they now crucify his teaching.

The least that can be demanded of men who are judging of a person’s teachings is that they should judge of the teacher’s teaching, as he himself understood it. Now, he did not understand his teaching as a distant ideal of humanity, the execution of which is impossible, not as visionary, poetical fancies, with which he captivated the simple-minded inhabitants of Galilee, but as a deed which would save humanity. And he did not dream on the cross, but spoke loud, and died for his teaching, and in exactly the same manner many other men have died and will die. We cannot say of such a teaching that it is a dream.

Every teaching of the truth is a dream for those who have gone astray. We have reached such a point that there are many men (I was among their number) who say that this teaching is visionary because it is not in accord with human nature. It is not in accord with human nature, they say, to offer the other cheek, when a man is struck on one cheek, nor to give up one’s property to a stranger, nor to work for another, and not for oneself. It is human nature, they say, to defend one’s safety, the safety of one’s family, one’s property, in other words, it is in accord with human nature to struggle for existence. A learned jurist will prove in a scientific manner that it is man’s most sacred duty to defend his rights, that is, to struggle.

But we need but for a moment to renounce the idea that the social structure, which exists and is made by men, is the best, the most sacred social structure, and the objection that Christ’s teaching is not in accord with human nature is immediately turned against these who object. Who will deny that it is repulsive and painful to human nature, not only to torture or kill a man, but even to torture a dog, or to kill a chicken or a calf? (I know men living by agricultural labour, who have stopped eating meat only because they had themselves to kill their animals.) And yet the whole structure of our life is such that every personal good of man is gained by the sufferings of other men, which are contrary to human nature. The whole structure of our life, the whole complicated mechanism of our institutions, which have violence for their aim, testify to this, that violence is exceedingly repulsive to human nature.

Not one judge would have the courage to strangle the man whom he has sentenced according to his law. Not one chief would have the courage to take a peasant away from a weeping family and lock him up in prison. Not one general or soldier would, without discipline, oath, or war, kill a hundred Turks or Germans, and lay waste their vil- lages; he would not even have the courage to wound a single man. All this is done only thanks to that complicated political and social machine, whose problem it is so to scatter the responsibility of the atrocities which are perpetrated so that no man may feel the unnaturalness of these acts. Some write laws; others apply them; others again muster men, educating in them the habit of discipline, that is, of senseless and irresponsible obedience; others again — these same mustered men — commit every kind of violence, even killing men, without knowing why and for what purpose. But a man need but a moment mentally free himself from this net of the social structure, in which he is caught, and he will know what is not in accord with his nature.

If we will not affirm that the habitual evil, which we practise, is an unchangeable, divine truth, it will be clear to us what is natural and proper for man, — whether it is violence, or Christ’s law; whether to know that my peace and security and that of my family, all my joys and pleasures, are bought by the poverty, debauch, and suffering of millions, — by annual gallows, hundreds of thousands of suffering prisoners and millions of soldiers, policemen, and guards, torn away from their families and dulled by discipline, who with loaded pistols, to be aimed at hungry men, secure the amusements for me; whether to buy every dainty piece which I put into my mouth, or into the mouths of my children, at the cost of all that suffering of humanity, which is inevitable for the acquisition of these pieces; or to know that any piece is only then my piece when nobody needs it, and nobody suffers for it.

We need only to understand that it is so, that every joy of mine, every minute of peace, is in our structure of life bought at the cost of the privations and sufferings of thousands who are restrained by violence; we need but understand this, in order that we may comprehend what is proper for a man’s whole nature, that is, not only for his animal, but both for his rational and his animal nature; we need only understand Christ’s law in all its significance, with all its consequences, in order that we may understand that Christ’s teaching is in accord with human nature, that it consists even in this, that we reject the visionary teaching of men about resisting evil, which is not in accord with human nature, and which makes their life miserable.

Christ’s teaching about non-resistance to evil is a dream! And this, that the life of men, into whose souls pity and love for one another is put, has passed, for some, in providing stakes, knouts, racks, cat-o’-nine-tails, tearing of nostrils, inquisitions, fetters, hard labour, gallows, executions by shooting, solitary confinements, prisons for women and children, in providing slaughter of tens of thousands in war, in providing revolutions and seditions; and for others, in executing all these horrors; and for others again, in avoiding all these sufferings and retaliating for them, — such a life is not a dream !

We need only understand Christ’s teaching, in order that we may comprehend that the world, not the one which was given by God for man’s joy, but the one which is established by men for their destruction, is a dream, the wildest, most terrible dream, the delirium of an insane man, from which we need only once awaken, in order that we may never again return to this terrible vision.

God came down upon earth; the Son of God, one of the persons of the Holy Trinity, became incarnate and redeemed Adam’s sin; this God, so we have been taught to believe, must have said something mysterious and mystical, something which it is hard to understand, which can be understood only by means of faith and grace, and suddenly God’s words are so simple, so clear, so rational. God says simply, Do not do evil to one another, and there will be no evil. Is it possible God’s revelation is so simple? Is it possible this is all God said? It seems to us that we know all this, for it is so simple.

Elijah the prophet, running away from men, hid himself in a cave, and he had a revelation that God would appear to him at the entrance of the cave. There was a storm, and the trees were broken by it. Elijah thought that this was God, and he looked out, but God was not there. Then there came a rain-storm; the thunder and lightning were terrible. Elijah went out to see whether God was there, but he was not. Then there was an earthquake; fire rose from the earth, rocks were split, and mountains caved in. Elijah looked out, but God was not there. Then it quieted down, and a light breeze blew from the refreshed fields. Elijah looked out, and God was there. Even so are these simple words, Do not resist evil.

They are very simple, but in them is expressed the law of God and of man, the only and eternal law. This law is to such a degree eternal that, if there is in historical life a movement toward abolishing evil, it exists only thanks to those men who so understood Christ’s teaching, and who endured the evil and did not resist it through violence. The movement of humanity toward the good takes place, not thanks to the tormentors, but to the tormented. As fire does not put out fire, so evil does not put out evil. Only the good meeting the evil, and not becoming contaminated by it, vanquishes the evil.

In the world of the human soul there is an immutable law, like the law of Galileo, only more immutable, more clear, and more full. Men may depart from it, concealing it from others, and still the progress of humanity toward the good can take place Only On this path. Every step in advance has boon made only in the name of non-resistance to evil. And a disciple of Christ may, with greater assurance than Galileo, affirm in view of all possible offences and menaces, And yet the evil has been destroyed not by violence, but by good. And if this progress is slow, it is so because the clearness, simplicity, rationality, inevitableness, and obligatoriness of Christ’s teaching have been concealed from the majority of men in a most cunning and dangerous manner; they have been concealed under a false teaching which falsely calls itself his teaching.

*** V. The False Teachings of the Pharisees and of the Scribes Do Not Give Any Explanations of the Meanings of Actual Life, nor Any Guidance in It.

Everything confirmed the correctness of the meaning of Christ’s teaching, as it was now revealed to me. For a long time I could not get accustomed to the strange idea that, after the eighteen hundred years that Christ’s law had been professed by billions of people, and after the thousands of men who had devoted their lives to the study of this law, I should now have discovered this law as something new. However strange this was, it was so: Christ’s teaching of non-resistance to evil arose before me as something entirely new, of which I did not have the least conception. And I asked myself, How could this have happened? I must have had some false idea of the meaning of Christ’s teaching, since I was able so to misunderstand it. And there was a false idea.

When I approached the study of the Gospel, I was not in the position of a man who, having never before heard of Christ’s teaching, suddenly heard of it for the first time. There was in me already a whole theory of how I must understand it. Christ did not present himself to me as a prophet, who reveals to me a divine law, but as a continuator and elucidator of God’s familiar and unquestionable law. I already had a whole, definite, and very complicated teaching about God, the creation of the world and man, and his commandments, given to men through Moses.

In the gospels I came across the words, You have been told, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I tell you, Do not resist evil. The words, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, were Moses’ commandment.

The words, I say, Do not resist evil, were a new commandment, which rejected the first.

If I had looked straight at Christ’s teaching, without that theological theory which I had imbibed with my mother’s milk, I should have understood the simple meaning of Christ’s words in a simple manner. I should have understood that Christ rejects the old law and gives a new law. But it had been impressed upon my mind that Christ does not reject Moses’ law, but, on the contrary, confirms it down to the smallest point and tittle, and complements it. Verses 17 and 18 of Chap V. of Matthew, in which this is asserted, had always during my former readings startled me by their obscurity, and had provoked doubts. In so far as I then knew the Old Testament, especially the last books of Moses, in which those trifling, senseless, and often cruel rules are laid down, each time with the statement, And God said to Moses, — it seemed strange to me how Christ could have confirmed all this law, and unintelligible why he should have done so. But I then left the question, without trying to solve it. I took on trust the interpretation, with which I had been impressed since childhood, that both these laws were the productions of the Holy Ghost, that these laws were in agreement, and that Christ confirmed the law of Moses and fulfilled and complemented it.

How this complementing was done, how the contradictions were solved that are so startling in the Gospel itself, and in these verses, and in the words, But I say, I never accounted to myself clearly. But now, since I came to understand the simple and direct meaning of Christ’s teaching, I comprehended that the two laws were contradictory, and that there could be no such a thing as a harmonization or complementing of one by the other, that it was necessary to accept one of the two, and that the interpretation of Matt. v. 17 and 18, which had startled me before on account of their obscurity, must be incorrect.

When I read these verses again, the verses which heretofore had seemed so obscure to me, I was struck by the simple and clear meaning which was suddenly revealed to me.

This meaning was revealed to me, not because I interpreted something into them, or transposed anything, but only because I rejected the artificial interpretation which has been attached to this passage.

Christ says (Matt. v. 17 and 18): Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

And Verse 20 adds, Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven.

Christ says, I have not come to break the eternal law, for the fulfilment of which your books and prophecies have been written, but to teach you to fulfil the eternal law; I am not speaking of the law which the Pharisees, your teachers, call the law of God, but of the eternal law which is less subject to change than heaven and earth.

I express the same idea in other words for the purpose of taking the mind away from the habitual false interpretation. If it were not for this false comprehension, the idea could not be expressed more exactly and better than it is expressed in these verses.

The interpretation that Christ does not reject the law is based on this, that, thanks to the comparison with the jot of the written law, the meaning of written law has here without any foundation and contrary to the meaning been ascribed to the eternal law. But Christ is not speaking of the written law. If Christ were speaking in this passage of the written law, he would use the customary expression, The law and the prophets, which he always uses when he speaks of the written law; but he employs

an entirely different expression. The law or the prophets. If Christ were speaking of the written law, he would in the next verse, which is the continuation of the thought, use the words, The law or the prophets, and not the word, The law, without any addition, as it stands in this verse. Moreover, Christ, according to the Gospel of Luke, uses the same expression in such a context that its meaning becomes indubitable.

In Luke xvi. 16, Christ, speaking to the Pharisees, who see righteousness in the written law, says, Ye justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. And immediately after, in Verse 17, he says, It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.

With the words, The law and the prophets until John, Christ nullifies the written law. With the words, It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail, he confirms the eternal law. In the first words, he says, The law and the prophets, that is, the written law; in the second he says simply, The Law, consequently be means the eternal law. Consequently it is clear that here the eternal law is opposed to the written law,[1] and that precisely the same distinction is made in Matthew, where the eternal law is defined by, The law or the prophets.

The history of the text of Verses 17 and 18 is remarkable from the variants. In the majority of texts we find only the word <em>law,</em> without the addition of <em>prophets.</em> With such a reading there can be no interpretation which would make it mean the written law. But in the other texts, in Tischendorf’s and in the canonical, there is added <em>the prophets,</em> not with the conjunction <em>and,</em> but with <em>or, —</em> the law and the prophets, — which again excludes the meaning of the written law.

[1] Moreover, as though on purpose that there should be no doubt as to what law he is talking about, he, in connection with this, immediately adduces an example, a most glaring example, of the rejection of the law of Moses by means of the eternal law, from which not one jot can be omitted; in quoting the most glaring contradiction to the law of Moses which there is in the Gospel, he says (Luke xvi. 18), Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, com- mitteth adultery, — that is, in the written law divorce is permitted, but according to the eternal law it is a sin. — <em>Author's Note.</em>

But in certain texts, which are not accepted by the church, the word <em>prophets</em> is connected by <em>and,</em> and not by <em>or ;</em> and in the same texts, where the word <em>law</em> is repeated, <em>and the prophets</em> is again added. Thus, with this change the whole utterance is made to mean that Christ is speaking only of the written law.

These variants give the history of the interpretations of this passage. The only clear meaning is, that Christ, as also according to Luke, is speaking of the eternal law; but among the number of the recorders of the gospels there are those who want to acknowledge the obligatoriness of the written law of Moses, and they add <em>and the prophets</em> to the word <em>law,</em> and change the meaning.

Other Christians, who do not recognize the books of Moses, either exclude the addition, or change the word <em>and, teal,</em> to <em>or, y.</em> And with this <em>or</em> the passage gets into the canon. But, in spite of the clearness and obviousness of the text in the form in which it has entered the canon, the canonical commentators continue to interpret it in the spirit in which were made the changes that did not enter into the text. This passage has been subjected to innumerable interpretations, which depart the more from the direct meaning, the less the commentator agrees with the directest, simplest meaning of Christ’s teaching, and the majority of the commentators retain the apocryphal meaning, the one which is rejected by the text.

To convince ourselves completely that in these verses Christ speaks only of the eternal law, we need only grasp the meaning of the word which has given rise to the false interpretations. In English law, in Greek po/zoç, in Hebrew <em>thorah</em> has two chief meanings, one, that of law independently of its expression; and the other, the written expression of what certain men regard as the law. The distinction between these two meanings exists in all languages.

In Greek, in the epistles of Paul, this distinction is occasionally defined by the use of the article. Without the article Paul uses this word generally in the sense of the written law; with the article, in the sense of God’s eternal law.

With the ancient Jews, in the prophets, in Isaiah, the word <em>law, thorah,</em> is always used in the sense of the eternal, only, unexpressed revelation, — God’s injunction. The same word, <em>law, thorah,</em> is for the first time used by Ezdra, and later in the Talmud, in the sense of the written five books of Moses, over which the general title <em>Thorah</em> is written, just as we use the word <em>Bible,</em> but with this difference, that we have a word with which to distinguish between the Bible and God’s law, while with the Jews the same word is used to express both ideas.

And so Christ, using the word <em>law, thorah,</em> employs it, now confirming it, like Isaiah and the other prophets, in the sense of God’s law, which is eternal, now rejecting it, in the sense of the written law of the five books. But, to distinguish the two, whenever in rejecting it he employs the word in the sense of the written law, he always adds, <em>and the prophets,</em> or the word <em>your,</em> adding it to the word <em>law.</em>

When he says, Do not unto another what thou wouldst not should be done unto thee, — in this is the law and the prophets, he is speaking of the written law. He says that the whole written law can be reduced to one expression of the eternal law, and with these words he nullifies the written law.

When he says (Luke xvi. 16), The law and the prophets until John the Baptist, he is speaking of the written law, and with these words rejects its obligatoriness.

When he says (John vii. 19), Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law, or (John viii. 17), It is also written in your law, or (John xv. 25), That is written in their law, — he is speaking of the written law, of the law which he rejects, of that very law which condemns him to death. John xix. 7: The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die. It is evident that this law of the Jew’s, the one by which they put to death, was not the law which Christ taught. But when Christ says, I am not come to destroy the law, but to teach you to fulfil it, for nothing can be changed in the law, but everything must be fulfilled, — he is not speaking of the written law, but of the divine, eternal law, which he is confirming.

But let us assume that all these are formal proofs; let us assume that I have carefully picked out contexts and variants, and have carefully concealed everything which was against my interpretations; let us assume that the interpretations of the church are very clear and convincing, and that Christ really did not destroy the law of Moses, but left it in its full force. Let us assume that this is so. In that case what does Christ teach?

According to the interpretations of the church he taught that he, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God the Father, came upon earth and with his death redeemed Adam’s sin. But every person who has read the Gospel knows that in the gospels Christ either says nothing about this, or speaks in very doubtful terms. But let us assume that we do not know how to read, and that the gospels do speak of it. In any case, Christ’s reference to his being the second person of the Trinity and redeeming the sins of humanity occupies a very small and obscure part of the Gospel. In what does the rest of Christ’s teaching consist? It is impossible to deny, and all Christians have always recognized it, that the chief contents of Christ’s teaching are the teaching about the life of men, — how men must live among themselves.

If we recognize that Christ taught a new manner of life, we must represent to ourselves certain definite men, among whom he taught.

Let us represent to ourselves Russians, or Englishmen, or Chinamen, or Hindoos, or even savages on some islands, and we shall see that every nation always has its own rules of life, its own law of life, and that, therefore, if a teacher teaches a new law of life, he by this very act destroys the former law; if he does not destroy it, he cannot teach. So it will be in England, in China, and with us. The teacher will inevitably destroy our laws, which we consider dear and almost sacred; but among us it may happen that the preacher, teaching us the new life, will destroy only our civil and political laws, our customs, but will not touch on the laws which we consider divine, though it is hard to suppose so. But among the Jewish nation, who had only one law, — all of it divine and embracing the whole life with all the minutest details, — what could a preacher preach among such a nation, having declared in advance that all the law of the nation to whom he was preaching was inviolable? But let us assume that this, too, is not a proof. Let those who interpret Christ’s words as meaning that he confirmed the law of Moses explain to themselves whom Christ arraigned during his whole activity, against whom he rose, calling them Pharisees, lawyers, scribes.

Who are those who did not receive Christ’s teaching and with their high priests crucified him? If Christ recognized the law of Moses, where were those real executors of the law, whose actions Christ would have approved of? Was there really not one?

We were told that the Pharisees were a sect. The

Jews do not say so. They say, The Pharisees are <strong>the</strong> true executors of the law. Let us assume that they are a sect. The Sadducees are a sect, too. Where, then, were the real men, those who were not the sect?

According to the Gospel of John they are all enemies of Christ and are directly called Jews. They do not agree with Christ’s teaching and oppose him, only because they are Jews. But in the gospels it is not the Pharisees and Sadducees alone who are pointed out as the enemies of Christ; it is also the lawyers, those who guard the law of Moses, the scribes, those who read the law, the elders, who are always regarded as the representatives of the national wisdom.

Christ says, I have not come to call the righteous to repentance, to a change of life, <em>peravota,</em> but the sinners. Where were those righteous? Who were they? Is it possible it was only Nicodemus I But even Nicodemus is represented to us as a good man gone astray. We are so accustomed to this, to say the least, strange interpretation that the Pharisees and some evil Jews crucified Christ that the simple question as to where the real Jews were, who were not Pharisees and not evil, and who kept the law, does not even occur to us. We need only put this question in order that all may become entirely clear. Christ — be he God or man — brought his teaching into the world amidst a people that kept the law, which determined the whole life of man and which was called God’s law. What could Christ’s relation to this law be?

Every prophet and teacher of faith, in revealing to men the law of God, always finds among men what they consider to be the law of God, and cannot escape the double use of the word <em>law,</em> which signifies what these men falsely call the law of God, <em>your law,</em> and what is the true, eternal law of God. Moreover, in addition to <strong>not</strong> being able to escape the double meaning of this word, the preacher frequently does not wish to escape it, and purposely combines the two conceptions, in order to point out that in the law, which the men profess whom he is converting, and which in its totality is false, there are eternal truths; and every preacher takes these laws, in so far as they are directed toward the truth, for the basis of his sermons. Christ does the same among the Jews, with whom both laws are called by the one name of <em>thorah.</em> In relation to Moses' law, and still more in relation to the prophets, especially Isaiah, whose words he quotes all the time, Jesus admits that in the Jewish law and in the prophets there are eternal, divine truths, which agree with the eternal law, and these, like the utterance, Love God and thy neighbour, he takes for the basis of his own teaching.

Christ several times expresses the same idea (Luke x. 26). He says, What is written in the law? How read- est thou? — Even in the law it is possible to find an eternal truth, if you know how to read it. And he frequently points out that the commandment of their law about the love of God and of their neighbour is a commandment of the eternal law (Matt. xiii. 52). After all those parables with which he explains to his disciples the meaning of his teaching, at the end of everything, as referring to all that precedes, Christ says, Therefore every scribe, that is, educated man, who is taught the truth, is like a householder, who takes out of his treasure (together, indifferently) things new and old.

St. Irenmus, and with him the whole church, understands these words in the same way, but quite arbitrarily, and, violating the meaning of the discourse, ascribes to these words a meaning as though everything old were sacred. The clear significance is this, that he who needs the good takes not only the new things, but also the old, and that because it is old it cannot be rejected. Christ says with these words that he does not reject that which in the old law is eternal. But when they speak to him of the whole law or of its forms, he says that it is not possible to put new wine into old bottles. Christ cannot confirm the whole law, neither can he reject the whole law and the prophets, — the law, in which it says, Love thy neighbour as thyself, — and those prophets, in whose words he frequently utters his thoughts. And so, in place of this simple and clear comprehension of the simplest words, as they are said, and as they are confirmed by the whole teaching of Christ, there is substituted a hazy interpretation, which introduces a contradiction where it does not exist, and thus destroys the meaning of the teaching: it reduces the teaching to words, and reestablishes in fact the teaching of Moses in all its savage cruelty.

According to all church interpretations, especially since the fifth century, Christ did not destroy the written law, but confirmed it. But how did he confirm it? How can the law of Christ be united with that of Moses? To this there is no answer. In all the commentaries they have a play on words, and say that Christ fulfilled the law of Moses in that in him were fulfilled the prophecies, and in that Christ through us, through men’s faith in him, fulfilled the law. But the only essential question for every believer as to how we are to unite the two contradictory laws, which determine the life of men, remains without even an attempt at a solution. And the contradiction which exists between the verse in which it says that Christ does not destroy the law, and the verse in which it says, You have been told . . . but I say, — and between the whole spirit of Moses’ teaching and that of Christ, remains in full force.

Let any man who is interested in this question himself consult the church interpretations of this passage, from John Chrysostom until our time. Only after reading these long interpretations will he be clearly convinced that an artificial contradiction has been introduced where it did not exist.

The impossible attempts at harmonizing what cannot be united show clearly that this harmonization is not an error of thought, but that it has a clear and definite purpose, — it is necessary, and it is even obvious why it is necessary.

This is what John Chrysostom says, in replying to those who reject the law of Moses (Commentary to the Gospel of Matthew, Vol. I. pp. 320 and 321):

“Investigating further the ancient law, in which we are commanded to pluck out an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, they retort, How can he who says this be good? What shall we say to this? This, that, on the contrary, it is the highest token of God’s love of men. He did not establish this law that we might pluck out each other’s eyes, but that, fearing lest we should suffer this evil from others, we might not commit this evil against them. Similarly, when he threatened the Nine- vites with destruction, he did not wish to destroy them (for if he had wished to do so, he ought to have kept silent); he wished only to make them better through this threat, to leave his anger. Even so he determined a punishment for those who were so bold as to be ready to pluck out their neighbours’ eyes, with this purpose in view that, if they should not refrain from their cruelty of their own free will, fear at least should restrain them from depriving their neighbours of their eyesight. If this were a cruelty, then the prohibition against murder and adultery would also be a cruelty. Only insane men, who have reached the last degree of madness, can speak in this manner. But I to such a degree abhor calling these propositions cruel that I should regard the contrary as a lawless deed, as judged in the light of sound human reason. Thou sayest that God is cruel because he has commanded us to pluck an eye out for an eye; but I say that, if he had not given such a command, it would have been more correct for many to consider him such as thou callest him.’'

John Chrysostom openly recognizes the law, A tooth for a tooth, as being divine, and what is contrary to the law, A tooth for a tooth, that is, Christ’s teaching about non-resistance to evil, as a lawless deed.

(Pp. 322 and 323): “Let us suppose that the whole law is destroyed,” John Chrysostom continues, “and that no one fears the punishment determined by it, and that all sinful men are allowed fearlessly to live according to their inclinations, whether they be adulterers, murderers, thieves, or perjurers: will then not everything be perverted? and will not the cities, the market-places, the houses, the land, the sea, and the whole universe be filled with innumerable misdeeds and murders? This is obvious to all men. If with the existing laws, with the terror and the threats, the evil intentions are with difficulty restrained, what would prevent men from deciding on evil deeds, if this barrier were removed? What calamities would then encroach upon human life ! It is cruel, not only to permit evil men to do what they please, but also to allow a man, who has done no wrong, to suffer, though he be innocent, without any redress. Tell me, — if a man, collecting evil men on all sides, and arming them with swords, ordered them to go through the city and kill all the people they met, — could there be anything more inhuman than that? On the contrary, if another man bound these armed men and locked them up by force in a prison, and snatched those who were threatened with death out of the hands of the lawless men, — could there be anything more humane than this?”

John Chrysostom does not say what this other man will be guided by in determining who is evil. What if he himself is evil and will put good men into prison?

“Now apply these examples to the law: he who commands us to pluck out an eye for an eye imposes this terror, as certain firm fetters, on the souls of the sinful, and is likened unto the man who bound those armed men: but he who should not have determined any punishment for the transgressors would arm them with fearlessness, and would be likened unto the man who distributed the swords to the malefactors and sent them through the city.”

If John Chrysostom recognizes Christ’s law, he ought to say, Who will pluck out the eyes and teeth, and put men into prison? If he who commands us to pluck out an eye for an eye, that is, God, plucked them out himself, there would be no contradiction here; but it is men who have to do this, whereas the Son of God told men that they must not do it. God said, Pull out the teeth; but the Son said, Do not pull them out. One or the other has to be accepted, and John Chrysostom, and with him the whole church, recognizes the command of God the Father, that is, of Moses, and rejects the command of the Son, that is, of Christ, whose teaching they claim to profess. Christ rejects the law of Moses, and gives his own.

For a man who believes Christ there is no contradiction. He pays no attention to the law of Moses, but believes in Christ’s law, and fulfils it. For a man who believes in the law of Moses there is also no contradiction. The Jews recognize the words of Christ as void, and believe in the law of Moses. The contradiction appears only to those who want to live according to the law of Moses, and yet assure themselves and others that they believe in the law of Christ, — to those whom Christ calls hypocrites, a generation of vipers.

Instead of recognizing one or the other, the law of Moses or the law of Christ, they recognize both as divinely true.

But when the question touches the affairs of life itself, they reject outright the law of Christ and recognize the law of Moses.

If we try to grasp the meaning of this false interpretation, we find in it a terrible, frightful drama of the struggle of evil and darkness with good and light.

Among the Jewish people, entangled by numberless external rules, which are imposed upon them by the Levites in the shape of divine laws, before each of which it says, And God said to Moses, — there appears Christ. Not only man’s relation to God, his sacrifices, feasts, fasts, but also man’s relations to man, — the national, civil, domestic relations, all the details of his private life, — the circumcision, the cleansing of himself and of his vessels and garments, — all this is determined down to the minutest details, and everything is acknowledged to be a commandment of God, a law of God. Now, what could, I do not say Christ-God, but a prophet, the commonest teacher do, in teaching such people, if he did not destroy the law which had already determined everything down to the minutest details?

Like all other prophets, Christ takes out of what men call the law of God what is really the law of God, the foundations, rejects everything else, and with these foundations connects his revelation of the eternal law. There is no need of destroying everything; but the law which is regarded as equally binding in everything is inevitably destroyed. Christ does this, and he is accused of violating what is regarded as the law of God, and for this he is executed. But his teaching remains with his disciples, and passes into another circle and to the ages. But in the other circle similar strata, interpretations, and explanations grow up on this new teaching; again there is a substitution of base human inventions for the divine revelation; instead of, And God said to Moses, they say, It pleased us and the Holy Ghost. And again the letter covers the spirit. What is most striking is this, that Christ’s teaching is connected with that whole <em>thorali,</em> in the sense of the written law, which he could not help but reject. This <em>thorah</em> is acknowledged to be a production of the revelation of his spirit of truth, that is of the Holy Ghost, and he is himself caught in the snare of his revelation, and the whole teaching is reduced to nothing.

So this is the reason why, after eighteen hundred years, there happened with me the strange thing that I had to discover the meaning of Christ’s teaching, as something new.

I did not have to discover, but to do what all men have done, who seek God and his law, — to find what is the eternal law of God, amidst all that which men cal] by that name.

*** VI. The Doubling of the Consciousness in the Men of Our World

And so, when I understood Christ’s law as Christ’s law, and not as that of Moses and of Christ, and understood that precept of the law which directly denied the law of Moses, — all the gospels, instead of the former obscurity, disconnectedness, contradictions, united for me into one inseparable whole, and amidst them was segregated the essence of the whole teaching, expressed in the simple, clear, and accessible five commandments of Christ (Matt, v. 21-48), of which I had not known anything heretofore.

All the gospels speak of Christ’s commandments and of fulfilling them. All the theologians speak of Christ’s commandments; but what these commandments were, I had not known before. It seemed to me that Christ’s commandment consisted in loving God and our neighbour as ourselves. And I did not see that this could not be Christ’s commandment, because it was a commandment of the ancients (Dent, and Lev.). The words (Matt. v. 19), Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall 'be called the least in the kingdom of heaven, — I referred to the commandments of Moses; and it never occurred to me that Christ’s new commandments were clearly and definitely expressed in Verses 21-48 of Chap. V. of Matthew. I did not see that where it says, You have been told, but <strong>I</strong> say unto you, there were expressed the new definite commandments of Christ, namely, according to the number of references to the old law (counting the two references to adultery as one), five new, clear, definite commandments of Christ.

The beatitudes and their number I had heard and seen mentioned and explained, when I was taught religion at school; but I had never heard of Christ’s commandments. To my surprise, I had to discover them.

This is the way I discovered them. In Matthew (v. 21—26) it says: Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment (Isaiah xx. 13); But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Baca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

When I understood the commandment about nonresistance to evil, it occurred to me that the verses about anger must have a similarly clear meaning, which is applicable to life, as the commandment about non-resistance to evil. The meaning which I formerly ascribed to these words was this, that every man must always avoid anger against men, must never use curses, and must live in peace with all men without exception; but in the text there was an expression which excluded this meaning. It says, Be not angry <em>without a cause,</em> so that no unconditional peace followed from this precept. This expression troubled me. To clear my doubts, I turned to the commentaries of the theologians; and, to my surprise, I found that the interpretations of the fathers were directed mainly to this, when anger is excusable, and when not. All the interpreters of the church, putting special emphasis on the expression <em>without a cause,</em> explain this passage to mean that one must not without a cause offend people, or use curses, but that anger is not always unjust, and in confirmation of this interpretation they adduce examples of anger in the apostles and the saints. I could not help acknowledging that the explanation that anger, according to their expression, was not forbidden by the word of God, though it was contrary to the whole meaning of the Gospel, was consistent, and had its foundation in the expression <em>without a cause,</em> which stands in Verse 22. This expression changed the meaning of the whole utterance.

Be not angry without a cause. Christ commands us to forgive all men, to forgive without end; he forgives himself, and forbids Peter’s being angry with Malchus, when Peter defends his teacher who is being led to the place of the crucifixion, consequently not without a cause. And this same Christ says, instructing all men, Be not angry without a cause, and so permits people to be angry for a good cause. Christ preaches peace to all simple people, and suddenly, as though with a mental reservation, that this does not refer to all cases, as there are cases when one may be angry with a brother, he puts in the expression <em>without a cause.</em> In the commentaries it is explained that there is a seasonable anger; but who is the judge, I said, of when it is seasonable? I have never yet seen angry men who did not consider their anger seasonable. All consider their anger legitimate and useful. This expression destroyed the whole meaning of the verse; but it stood in Holy Scripture, and I could not throw it out. This expression was as though to the utterance, Love thy neighbour, there were added, Love thy good neighbour, or the neighbour whom thou likest.

The whole meaning of the passage was for me destroyed by the expression <em>without a cause.</em> Even so the verses about being reconcile»I to him who has anything against thee, before thou prayest, which without the expression <em>without a cause</em> would have a direct, obligatory meaning, also received a conditional meaning.

I imagined that Christ ought to forbid all anger, all ill- will, and that, in order that it should not exist, he commanded, Before bringing thy gift to the altar, that is, before getting into communion with God, thou must remember whether there is a man who is angry with thee. And if there is such a one, without a cause or with a cause, go and be reconciled to him, and then only bring thy offering or pray. Thus it seemed to me, but from the interpretations it turned out that this passage had to be taken in a conditional way.

All the interpretations explain that we must make peace with all men; but if this is impossible to do on account of the corruption of men, who are inimical toward thee, it is necessary for thee to be reconciled spiritually, in thought: and then the enmity of the others toward thee will not interfere with thy prayer. .

Besides, the words, Whosoever shall say, Baca, and, Thou fool, are terribly guilty, always seemed strange and obscure to me. If this is meant as a prohibition against cursing, why are there chosen such weak, almost innocuous words? Then again, why is such a terrible threat hurled against those who forget themselves with such a weak word as Baca, that is, insignificant? All that was obscure.

I felt that there was here the same kind of a lack of comprehension as in the words, Do not judge; I felt that, as in the other interpretation, everything passed here from what was simple, important, definite, practicable into a hazy and indifferent sphere. I felt that Christ could not have comprehended the words, Go and be reconciled to him, as they interpret it, Be reconciled in thought. What is meant by, Be reconciled in thought? I thought that Christ was saying what he expressed in the words of the prophet, I do not want sacrifices, but compassion, that is, love for men. And so, if thou wantest to please God, remember who is angry with thee, before praying, in the morning and in the evening, at mass and at vigils; and go and arrange it in such a way that he may not be angry with thee, and then pray, if thou wantest.

But, in thought! I felt that the whole interpretation, which destroyed the direct and clear meaning, was based on the expression <em>without a ca/use.</em> If I could throw it out, the meaning would be clear; but all the interpretations were against my way of understanding it, and so was the canonical Gospel with its expression <em>without a cause.</em> If I departed from this, I could arbitrarily depart in another direction, and others could do the same. If it were not for this word, everything would be clear. And so I try philologically to explain this expression <em>without a cause,</em> so that it may not break the sense. I consult the general dictionary, and I see that this Greek word <em>elfcrj</em> means <em>without a plan, heedlessly ;</em> I try to give it a significance which would not do violence to the sense, but evidently the word gives the meaning which is ascribed to it. I consult the New Testament dictionary, and I find the meaning which is given to it here. I investigate the context, and I find that the word is but once used in the Gospel, namely in this place. In the epistles it is used several times. In 1 Cor. xv. 2 it is used in precisely this sense. Consequently there is no possibility of explaining it otherwise, and I must assume that Christ said, Be not angry without a cause.

I must confess that assuming that Christ could in this passage have used such indistinct words, making it possible for us to understand them in such a way that nothing is left of them, was the same as renouncing the whole Gospel. One last hope is left: I will try to find out whether this word is to be found in all the texts. I investigate the variants. I consult Griesbach, who gives all the variants, that is, in what texts and in what fathers a certain expression is used. I consult him, and am at once in raptures, for I find that there are variants to this passage. I look and I find that the variants all refer to the expression <em>without a cause.</em> The majority of the Gospel texts and quotations have not the expression <em>without a cause</em> at all. Consequently, the majority understood it in the same way as I understand it. I consult Tischendorf, and the word is wanting in the oldest text. I look into Luther’s translation, from which I might have found it out in the shortest way, and the word is wanting there, too.

The very word which impaired the whole meaning.of Christ’s teaching is an interpolation of the fifth century, which has not entered into the best texts of the Gospel.

A man was found who put in this word, and other men were found who approved of this interpolation, and explained it.

Christ could not have said this terrible word, and he did not say it, and that first, simple, straight meaning of the whole passage, which startled me and which startles everybody, is the true one.

But more than this: It was enough for me to understand that Christ’s words forbid being angry with anybody at any time, in order that the prohibition, which had troubled me before, of using the words <em>Raca</em> and <em>fool</em> should also receive a different meaning, and should not be a prohibition against using curses. The strange untranslated Hebrew word <em>Raca</em> gave me the new sense. <em>R'aca</em> means <em>trampled down, destroyed, non-existing ;</em> the word <em>raca</em> is very common, and means <em>exception, only not. Raca</em> means <em>a man who is not to be regarded as a man.</em> In the plural the word <em>rekim</em> is used in the Book of Judges ix. 4, where it means <em>lost.</em> So it is this word that Christ does not permit us to use of any one.

Similarly he does not allow us to use the other word <em>fool,</em> like <em>raca,</em> which, as it were, would free us from our human obligations to our neighbour. We are angry and do evil to men, and, to justify ourselves, we say that he with whom we are angry is a lost or foolish man. And so it is these two words that Christ tells us not to use in respect to men and toward men. Christ tells us that we must not be angry with any one and justify our anger by considering another person lost or foolish.

And so, in place of the hazy, indefinite, and unimportant expressions, which were subject to interpretations and arbitrariness, there was disclosed to me, from Verse 21 to Verse 28, Christ’s clear and definite first commandment: Live in peace with all men, and never consider thy anger against people just. Consider not a man lost or foolish, and do not call him so (Verse 22). Never consider thy anger as being with a cause, and never consider another man’s anger against thee as without a cause; and so, if there is a man who is angry with thee, even though it be without a cause, go to him, before thy prayer, and destroy this hostile feeling (Verses 23 and 24). Try in advance to destroy the enmity between thee and other men, so that the enmity may not flame up and destroy thee (Verses 25 and 26).

Immediately after the first commandment the second, which begins with a reference to the ancient law, was disclosed to me with the same clearness. Matt. v. 27-32 says: Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery (Ex. xx. 14-28): But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, aud cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement (Deut. xxiv. 1-32): But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of adultery, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

The meaning of these words presented itself to me as follows: a man must not even admit the idea that he can unite with another woman than the one with whom he has once been united, and he can never, as was the case according to the law of Moses, exchange this woman for another.

As in the first commandment against anger the advice is given that this anger should be put out in the beginning, an advice which is elucidated by the comparison with a man who is led to the judge, even so here Christ says that fornication is due to this, that women and men look upon one another as upon an object of lust. That this may not be, it is necessary to remove everything which can provoke lust, and to avoid all that which provokes lust, and, having united with the wife, under no condition to abandon her, because the abandonment of wives leads to debauch. The abandoned wives tempt other men and introduce debauch into the world.

The wisdom of this commandment startled me. All the evil between men, which arose from the sexual relations, was removed by it. Knowing that the enjoyment of the sexual relations leads to dissensions, men avoid everything which provokes lust, and, knowing that the law of man is to live in pairs, they unite in pairs, never under any condition violating this union, and all the evil of dissensions on account of the sexual relations is destroyed, in that there are no single men and no single women who are deprived of the marital life.

But the words which always startled me in the reading of the sermon on the mount, Saving for the cause of adultery, which are taken to mean that a man may he divorced from his wife in case of her adultery, now startled me more than ever.

Not to speak of the fact that there would be something unworthy in the form itself in which this thought was expressed, that side by side with what by their significance are the profoundest truths of the sermon, there should, like a note to an article of the code of laws, be this strange exception to the general rule, this exception itself contradicted the fundamental idea.

I consult the commentaries, and all (John Chrysostom, p. 365, and the others), even the learned theological critics, like Reuss, acknowledge that these words mean that Christ permits divorce in the case of the wife’s adultery, and that in Chapter XIX., in Christ’s discourse, which prohibits divorce, the words, Except it be for adultery, mean the same. I read and re-read Verse 32, and it seems to me that this cannot mean a permission to be divorced. To verify my opinion, I consult the contexts, and I find in Matt, xix., Mark x., Luke xvi., in Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians the explanation of the same doctrine of the inseparableness of marriage, without any exception whatever.

In Luke xvi. 18 it says, Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.

In Mark x. 4-12 it says, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder. And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter. And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery. ’

The same is said in Matt. xix. 4-9.

In Paul’s epistle, 1 Cor. vii. 1-12, the idea of preventing debauch is developed in detail. It says there that husband and wife, having once been united, should not put one another away, and should satisfy one another in the sexual relation; and just as directly does it say that one of the married pair can under no condition put away the other for the purpose of having relations with a third party.

According to Mark, Luke, and Paul’s epistle divorce is not permitted. From the sense of the interpretation that husband and wife are one body united by God, an interpretation which is repeated in two gospels, it follows that divorce is not permitted. From the meaning of the whole teaching of Christ, who enjoined men to forgive all, not excluding even the fallen wife, it follows that divorce is not permitted. From the sense of the whole passage, which explains that the putting away of the wife, especially one of loose morals, leads to debauch, it follows that divorce is not permitted.

On what, then, is the interpretation based that divorce is permitted in the case of the wife’s adultery? On those words of Verse 32 of Chapter V., which startled me so much. These words are interpreted by all to mean that Christ permits divorce in the case of the wife’s adultery, and these very words are repeated in Chapter XIX. by many texts of the gospels and by many fathers instead of the words, Except it be for adultery.

I began once more to read these words, but for a long time could not understand them. I saw that there must be some error of translation and interpretation here, but I was unable for a long time to discover where it was. The error was obvious. In opposing his commandment to that of Moses, according to which any man, as it says there, hating his wife, could put her away, and give her a writing of divorcement, Christ says, I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of adultery, causeth her to commit adultery. In these words there is nothing which is opposed, and there is not even any definition whether it is allowable to be divorced, or not. All it says is, that the putting away of the wife causes her to commit adultery.

Suddenly an exception is made here in the case of the wife who is guilty of adultery. This exception, which has reference to the woman guilty of adultery, when the husband is under discussion, is in general strange and unexpected, and in this place simply stupid, because it destroys even that doubtful sense which there was in these words. It says that the putting away of the wife causes her to commit adultery, and then it permits the putting away of a wife who is guilty of adultery, as though a wife who is guilty of adultery will not commit adultery.

But more than this: When I analyzed this passage more attentively, I saw that it had even no grammatical sense. It says: Whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of adultery, causeth her to commit adultery; and the sentence is ended. It speaks of the husband, saying that in putting away his wife he causes her to commit adultery. What has <em>saving for the cause of adultery</em> to do with it? If it said that the husband who puts away his wife, except for her adultery, commits adultery, the sentence would be correct. But as it is, for the subject <em>husband,</em> who is getting divorced, there is no other predicate than <em>causeth.</em> How can we refer <em>saving for the cause of adultery</em> to this predicate? You caunot cause, saving for the cause of adultery of the wife. Even if to the words, Saving for the cause of adultery, there were added the words <em>of the wife,</em> or <em>her,</em> which are not added, these words could not be referred to the predicate <em>caiLseth.</em> These words, according to the accepted interpretation, refer to the predicate; the main predicate is <em>causeth.</em> What, then, has <em>saving for the cause of adultery</em> to do here? Whether with the cause of adultery, or without it, the husband, in putting her away, causeth her to commit adultery. This is an expression like the following: he who deprives his son of sustenance, saving for the cause of cruelty, causes him to be cruel. This expression can obviously not have the meaning that the father can deprive his son of sustenance, if the son is cruel. If it makes any sense at all, it means this, that the father, depriving his son of sustenance, in addition to his own guilt of cruelty, causes also his son to be cruel. Even so the evangelical expression would have sense if, instead of the words, Saving for the cause of adultery, we had, For the cause of lechery, debauchery, or something similar, which does not express an act, but a property.

And I asked myself, Does it not say here simply that in getting a divorce a man, in addition to being himself guilty of adultery (for a man gets a divorce in order that he may marry another woman), causes his wife also to commit adultery? If the word adultery in the text could be rendered by such words as to give it the meaning of debauch, the meaning would be clear.

And there was repeated what had so frequently happened to me. The text confirmed my supposition, so that there could not even be any doubt.

The first thing that startled me in reading the text was this, that the word <em>iropveia,</em> which is translated by the same word <em>adultery,</em> just like the word is in reality an entirely different word. But, perhaps, these words are synonyms, or in the gospels one word may be used for the other. I consult all the dictionaries, the general and the New Testament dictionaries, and I see that the word <em>Tropveia,</em> which corresponds to the Hebrew rVOT, the Latin <em>fornicatio</em> [as which it is given in the King James Bible], the German <em>Hurerei,</em> the Russian <em>rasputstvo,</em> has a most definite meaning, and has never, in any dictionary, meant, and could not mean, the act of adultery, <em>adultere, Ehebruch,</em> as which it is translated. It means a vicious condition or property, but not an act, and cannot be translated by <em>adultery.</em> More than this: I see that the word, <em>adultery, to commit adultery,</em> is everywhere in the gospels and even in these verses designated by another word, <em>yoc^aco.</em> All I had to do was to correct this obviously intentional mistranslation in order that the meaning ascribed by the commentators to this passage and to the context of Chap. XIX. should become entirely impossible, and that the meaning which makes the word <em>Tropveia</em> refer to the husband should become indubitable.

The translation which any man who knows Greek would make would be the following: <em>Trapeicrds</em> besides, Xo'you the guilt, <em>Tropveias</em> of fornication, <em>Trocel</em> causes, <em>avrrjv</em> her, <em>pouxaadac</em> to commit adultery, and get word for word, He who gets divorced from his wife, besides the guilt of fornication, causes her to commit adultery.

The same sense is got from Chap. XIX. We need only correct the wrong translation of both the word <em>Tropveia</em> and the preposition <em>cttI,</em> which is translated by <em>for,</em> and instead of <em>adultery</em> put the word <em>fornication,</em> and instead of <em>for</em> put <em>for the sake of,</em> and it becomes clear that the words <em>el pg eirl Tropveia</em> cannot refer to the wife. Thus the words Trape/cròç <em>Xóyov</em> <em>Tropveias</em> can mean nothing but <em>besides the guilt of the husband’s fornication,</em> just as the words <em>el pn</em> <em>cttI Tropveia,</em> which are given in Chap. XIX, cannot refer to anything but the husband’s fornication.

It says, <em>el yg</em> evrl <em>Tropvetq,</em> word for word, <em>If not for the sake of fornication,</em> and not <em>for fornication.</em> The sense we get is, that Christ, replying in this place to the thought of the Pharisees, who imagined that a man did not commit adultery if he left his wife, not in order to fornicate, but to live in wedlock with another woman, says that it is none the less adultery. Thus we get a simple meaning, which is in accord with the whole teaching, with the words with which it is connected, and with grammar and logic.

This simple, clear meaning, which results from the words themselves and from the whole teaching, I had to discover after the greatest labour. Indeed, read these words in German, in French, where it says directly <em>pour cause I</em><em>infidclité,</em> or <em>à rnoins</em> <em>que cela ne soit pour cause linfidclitc,</em> and guess that it means something entirely different. The word <em>Trape/cró^,</em> which according to all the dictionaries means <em>excepte, aiLsgcnornmen, except,</em> is translated by a whole clause, <em>d moins que cela ne soit.</em> The word <em>Tropveta</em> is translated <em>infidélité, Ehebruch, adultery</em> [but <em>fornication</em> in the King James Bible]. And on this intentional distortion of the text they base the interpretation which violates the moral, and religious, and grammatical, and logical sense of Christ’s words.

Again there was confirmed for me that terrible and joyous truth that the meaning of Christ’s teaching is simple and clear, that its precepts are important and determined, but that its interpretations, which are based on the desire to justify the existing evil, have so obscured it that it can be discovered only with an effort. It became clear to me that if the gospels were discovered half burned or effaced, it would be easier to reconstruct their meaning than is the case at present, when they have been touched by the unscrupulous interpretations, whose direct purpose it is to pervert and conceal the meaning of the teaching. In this case it is even more obvious than in the former how the special purpose of justifying the divorce of some John the Terrible served as a pretext for obscuring the whole doctrine of marriage.

We need only reject the interpretations, and, instead of what is hazy and indefinite, we get the definite and clear second commandment of Christ.

Make no sport of the lust of sexual relations; every man who is not a eunuch, that is, who is in need of sexual relations, should have a w’ife, and let a man have one wife, and a woman have one husband, and under no consideration violate the sexual union between yourselves.

Immediately after the second commandment we have again a reference to the ancient law, and the third commandment is expounded. Matt. v. 33-37: Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths (Lev. xix. 12; Deut. xxiii. 21): But I say unto you, swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne: nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black; But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

This passage used to trouble me very much with my former readings. It troubled me, not by its obscurity, as in the case of the passage on the divorce, not by its contradictions with other passages, like the permission for anger not without cause, not by the difficulty of execution, like the passage about turning the other cheek: it troubled me, on the contrary, by its clearness, simplicity, and ease. By the side of the rules, whose depth and significance frightened and affected me, there suddenly stood such a useless, frivolous, easy rule, which was of no consequence, either for me or for others. I never swore by Jerusalem, or by God, or by anything else, even before this, and that never gave me any trouble. Besides, it seemed to me that, whether I should swear or not, that could be of no importance. Wishing to find an explanation of this rule, which troubled me by its ease, I turned to the commentaries. In this case the commentators helped me. All the commentators see in these words a confirmation of the third commandment of Moses, which is, that we should not swear by anything divine. They explain these words by saying that Christ, like Moses, forbids us to use the name of God in vain. In addition to this, the commentators explain that this rule of Christ about not swearing is not always obligatory and in no way refers to that oath which every citizen swears to the powers that be. And they pick out texts of Holy Scripture, not in order to confirm the direct meaning of Christ’s precept, but in order to prove that it is possible and necessary not to execute it.

They say that Christ himself confirmed the oath in court, when to the words of the high priest, I adjure thee by the living God, he replied, Thou hast said; they say that Paul the apostle invokes God to testify to the truth of his words, which is obviously the same oath; they say that oaths were prescribed by Moses’ law, and that the Lord did not abolish them; they say that all that is abolished is the frivolous, Pharisaically hypocritical oaths.

When I comprehended the meaning and the aim of all these explanations, I saw that Christ’s precept about the oath was not at all so insignificant, simple, and unimportant as it had seemed to me, when I had not included the political oath among the number prohibited by Christ.

I asked myself: Does it not say here that even that oath is forbidden which the church commentators have so cautiously excluded? Does not the prohibition cover the oath without which the division of men into countries is impossible, or the military cast? The soldiers, those men who commit all violence, call themselves “the oath.” If I asked the grenadier how he solved the contradiction between the Gospel and the Military Regulation, he would tell me that he swore an oath, that is, swore on the Gospel. All the military men have given me such answers. This oath is just as necessary for the formation of that terrible evil which produces violence and war, so that in France, where Christianity is denied, they still stick to the oath.

Indeed, if Christ had not said so, he ought to have said so. He came to destroy the evil, and did not destroy the oath ’ What an enormous evil is still left in the world ! Perhaps, they will say, this evil was not so great in the time of Christ. But that is not true; Epictetus, Seneca, had said that we must not swear to any one; this rule is also in the laws of Manu. How can I say that Christ did not see this evil, especially since he has said so openly, clearly, and in detail?

He said, Do not swear at all. This expression is as simple, clear, and indubitable as the words, Do not judge, and do not condemn, and is as little subject to misinterpretations, the more so since at the end it adds that everything which will be demanded of thee beyond Yes and No is from the principle of evil.

If Christ’s teaching consists in doing the will of God, how can a man swear that he will do the will of man? The will of God may not coincide with the will of man. Christ says this very thing in this place. He says, Do not swear by thy head, for not only is thy head not thine, but every hair upon it is in the power of God. The same is said in the Epistle of James.

At the end of his epistle, as though in conclusion of all, Apostle James says (v. 12), But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.

The apostle says distinctly why we should not swear: the oath does not seem criminal in itself, but from it men fall into condemnation, and so, Do not swear at all. How can that which has been said by Christ and by the apostle be expressed more clearly?

But I was so mixed up that I for a long time asked myself in surprise, Does it really mean what it does? For do we not all swear by the Gospel? It cannot be.

I had already read the commentaries, and I knew how the impossible was done.

What had happened in explaining the words, Do not judge, be not angry with any man, do not sever the union between man and wife, was the case here too. We have established our order of things, we love it and wish to consider it holy. There comes Christ, whom we consider to be God, and he says that this our order of things is not good. We call him God and do not wish to renounce our order of things. What shall we do? Where possible we will put in the expression without a cause, and reduce the rule about anger to nothing; where possible, we will, like the most unscrupulous evil judges, so misinterpret the meaning of the article of the law that the very opposite shall result: so that, instead of saying that you must not be divorced, it may say that you may; and where it is not possible to misinterpret, as in the case of the words, Do not judge and do not condemn, do not swear at all, let us boldly act contrary to the teaching, affirming that we are following it. Indeed, the chief obstacle toward the comprehension of the fact that the Gospel forbids every oath is this, that the pseudo-Christian teachers with extraordinary daring compel men to swear on the Gospel and by the Gospel, that is, compel them to do what is contrary to the Gospel.

How can it occur to a man, who is made to swear by the Gospel and the cross, that the cross is holy for the very reason that on it they crucified him who forbids us to swear, and that he who is pronouncing the oath is perhaps kissing as a holy thing that very place where it says clearly and definitely, Swear not at all.

But I was not longer troubled by this boldness. I saw clearly that in Verses 33-37 there was expressed the clear, definite, practicable third commandment, Never swear to any one about anything. Every oath is extorted by people for evil.

Immediately after this third commandment we find the fourth reference, and the fourth commandment is expounded. Matt. v. 38-42; Luke vi. 29, 30: Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.

I have already said what definite, direct meeting these words have, and how we have no reason to explain them allegorically. The interpretations of these words, from John Chrysostom to our time, are truly wonderful. Everybody likes these words, and all of them utter profound reflections concerning them, except the one that these words have the meaning which they really have.

The church commentators, not in the least embarrassed by the authority of him whom they recognize as God, most calmly limit the meaning of his words. They say: “It is self-understood that all these commandments about enduring insults, about renouncing retaliation, being directed against the Jewish love of revenge, do not exclude the social measures for the limitation of evil and for the punishment of those who commit evil, not even the private, personal efforts and cares of each man concerning

the inviolability of truth, the correction of offenders, the restraining of the evil-minded from doing harm; for else the spiritual laws of the Saviour would in Jewish fashion turn into a letter, which might serve for the success of evil and the suppression of virtue. The love of a Christian must be like the love of God, but the love of God limits and punishes evil in proportion as it remains more or less harmless for the glory of God and the salvation of our neighbour; contrariwise, it is necessary to limit and punish evil, a duty which is especially imposed upon the authorities.” (The Interpretation of the Gospel, by Archimandrite Mikhail, all based on the interpretation by the holy fathers.)

The learned and freethinking Christians are just as little embarrassed by the meaning of Christ’s words, and correct him. They say that these are very exalted utterances, but devoid of every possibility of application to life, because the application of the rule of non-resistance to evil destroys all that order of things which we have arranged so well: so speak Renan, Strauss, and all the freethinking commentators.

But we need only bear ourselves toward the words of Christ as we bear ourselves toward the words of any man we meet, when he speaks to us, that is, assume that he means what he says, and the necessity of all profound reflections is at once removed. Christ says, I find that the method for making your life secure is very stupid and bad. I propose an entirely different one to you, — * namely, this; and he goes on to utter his words from

Verse 38 to Verse 42. One would think that before correcting these words it would be necessary to understand them; but this no one wants to do, for every one decides in advance that the order in which we live and which is impaired by these words is a sacred law of humanity.

I did not consider our life either good or sacred, and so I understood this commandment before the rest. And when I understood them just as they are said, I was struck by their truth, accuracy, and clearness. Christ says, You want to destroy evil by evil. That is not sensible. That there be no evil, do no evil. Then Christ counts up all the cases in which we are wont to do evil, and says that in these cases we must not do so.

This fourth commandment of Christ was the first which I comprehended, and which opened to me the meaning of all the rest. The fourth simple, clear, practicable commandment says, Never resist evil with force; never employ force in answer to force: if they beat thee, suffer; if they take away from thee, give it; if they make thee work, work; if they wish to take from thee what thou considerest thy own, give it to them.

Upon this fourth commandment follows the fifth reference and the fifth commandment. Matt. v. 43-48: Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy (Lev. xix. 17, 18): But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

Formerly these words used to present themselves to me as an elucidation, complement, and confirmation, I shall even say exaggeration of the words about non-resistance to evil. But, having found a simple, applicable, definite meaning for every passage which begins with a reference to the ancient law, I anticipated a similar meaning for the present passage. After each reference the commandment was expounded, and every verse of the commandment had a meaning, and could not be thrown out, and so the same was to be expected here.

The last words, which are repeated in Luke, about this, that God makes no distinction between men and gives his good to all alike, and that, therefore, you must be like God, making no distinction between men, and must not do as the Gentiles do, but must love all and do good to all alike, — these words were clear: they presented themselves to me as a confirmation and explanation of some clear rule; but wherein this rule consisted, I was for a long time unable to comprehend.

To love our enemies? That was something impossible. That was one of those beautiful expressions upon which one cannot look otherwise than as upon an indication of an inaccessible moral ideal. That was either too much, or nothing. It is possible not to harm our enemy, but to love him, — never. Christ could not have prescribed the impossible. Besides, in the very first words, in the reference to the law of the ancients, You are told, Hate thine enemy, there was something doubtful. In all the former passages Christ quoted the actual, original words of the law of Moses; but here he adduces words which were never said. It is as though he calumniated the law.

The commentaries, as in all my former doubts, explained nothing to me. In all the commentaries they admit that the words, You are told, Hate thine enemy, are not to be found in the law of Moses, but no explanation is given of this incorrectly quoted passage from the law. They speak of how difficult it is to love our enemies, — evil men, — and generally they attempt corrections of the words of Christ; they say that it is impossible to love our enemies, but that it is possible not to wish them any evil or do them any harm. At the same time they impress upon us the permission and necessity of arraigning, that is, resisting evil; they speak of various degrees of attain<strong>ing</strong> this virtue, so that from the interpretations of the church the final deduction is that Christ for some unknown reason misquoted the words of the law of Moses and uttered many beautiful, but really frivolous and inapplicable, words.

It seemed to me that that could not be so. There ought to be here a clear and definite meaning, such as is found in the first four commandments. In order to understand this meaning, I first tried to understand the meaning of the words of the incorrect reference to the law, You are told, Hate thine enemy. There is some reason why Christ with every rule quotes the words of the law, Do not kill, do not commit adultery, and so forth, and to these words opposes his own teaching. If we do not understand what be meant by the words of the law quoted by him, it is impossible to understand what it is he prescribes. In the commentaries it says outright (nor can they help saying it) that he quotes words that were not in the law, but no explanation is given why he does so, and what this incorrect quotation means.

It seemed to me that first of all it ought to be explained what Christ could have meant when he quoted the words which were not in the law. I asked myself, What can the words mean which are incorrectly quoted by Christ from the law? In all the former references to the law, Christ quoted only the mere wording of the ancient law, as, Kill not, Commit no adultery, Keep thy oaths, A tooth for a tooth, and on the ground of this one precept he expounded the corresponding doctrine. But here two opposing precepts are quoted, You have been told, Love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy, so that it is evident that the distinction itself between the two precepts of the old law concerning the neighbour and the enemy is to serve as the basis of the new law. In order that I might understand more clearly wherein this distinction lay, I asked myself, What do the words neighbour and enemy mean in the Gospel language?

Having consulted the dictionaries and the contexts, I convinced myself that <em>neighbour</em> in the language of a Jew always means <em>a Jew</em> only. Such a definition of <em>neighbour</em> is given in the Gospel in the parable of the Samaritan. According to the idea of the lawyer, who asked who was a neighbour, a Samaritan could not be a neighbour. The same definition of <em>neighbour</em> is given in Acts vii. 27. <em>Neighbour</em> in Gospel language means <em>a countryman, a man belonging to the same nationality.</em> And thus, assuming that the contrast which Christ points out in this place, when he quotes the words of the law, You have been told, Love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy, consists in contrasting a countryman with a foreigner, I ask myself, what is an enemy according to the ideas of the Jews, and I find a confirmation of my assumption. The word <em>enemy</em> is used in the Gospels almost always, not in the sense of personal, but general, national enemies (Luke i. 71-74; Matt. xxii. 44; Mark xii. 36; Luke xx. 43, and elsewhere). The singular number in which the word <em>enemy</em> is used in these verses in the expression, Hate thine enemy, shows me that here the enemy of the nation is meant. In the Old Testament the idea of the nation’s enemy is always expressed by the singular.

The moment I understood this, there was at once removed the difficulty as to why and in what manner Christ, who every time quoted the precise words of the law, should have adduced here words which had never been uttered. We need only understand the word <em>enemy</em> in the sense of a national enemy, and a <em>neighbour</em> in the sense of a countryman, in order that this difficulty should not at all exist. Christ speaks of how, according to the law of Moses, the Jews are to treat their national enemy. All those scattered passages in the various books of the Scripture, where the Jews are enjoined to oppress, and kill, and destroy the other nations, Christ unites into one expression, To hate, to do evil to the enemy. And he says.

You have been told that you must love your neighbours and hate the national enemy; but I tell you, You must love all without distinction as to the nationality, to which any one may belong. And as soon as I comprehended these words, there was also removed the other difficulty as to how I was to understand the words, Love your enemies. It is impossible to love personal enemies; but it is possible to love the men of a hostile nation as your own. And it became clear to me that Christ says that all men are taught to consider the men of their own nation neighbours, and the foreign nations enemies, and that he commanded us not to do this. He says, According to the law of Moses a distinction is made between Jews and non-Jews, the national enemies, but I tell you, You must not make this distinction. And, indeed, according to Matthew and Luke, he says immediately after this rule that all are alike to God, that the sun shines and the rain falls on all men alike; God makes no distinction between nations, and does the same good to all alike; the same ought men to do for all men, without distinction of nationality, and not as the Gentiles do, who divide themselves into separate nations.

Thus there was again confirmed for me from various sides the simple, important, clear and applicable comprehension of Christ’s words. Instead of a hazy utterance and indefinite philosophizing there again appeared a clear, definite, important, and practicable rule: not to make any distinction between one’s own and a foreign nation, and not to do what results from this distinction, — not to harbour ill-will toward other nations, nor wage war, nor take part in wars, nor arm for war, — but to act toward all men, no matter of what nationality, as though they were of our own.

All this was so simple, so clear, that I wondered how it was I did not understand it at once.

The reason why I did not understand this was the same as in the case of the prohibition of courts and oaths. It is very hard to understand that all the courts, which are opened with Christian prayers and are blessed by those who consider themselves guardians of Christ’s law, are incompatible with the confession of Christ and are directly opposed to him. Still more difficult is it to divine that the oath, to which the guardians of Christ’s law lead us, is directly forbidden by this law; and it is terribly difficult to guess that that which in our life is regarded not only as necessary and natural, but also very beautiful and virtuous, — love of country, its defence and glorification, the struggle with the enemy, and so forth, — is not only a transgression of Christ’s law, but even an obvious renunciation of the same.

We have closed our ears to what he has told us of our life, or have forgotten that he has told us that we must not kill, and not even be angry with another man, that we must not defend ourselves, but offer the second cheek, and that we must love our enemies, — so that now, since we are accustomed to call men, who have devoted their life to murder, the Christ-loving military, who are used to hear Te Deums addressed to Christ concerning the victory over the enemy, who base their glory and pride on murder, who have advanced the symbol of murder, the sword, to a certain kind of holiness, so that a man without this symbol — without the knife — is a disgraced man, we think that Christ has not forbidden war and that, if he had forbidden it, he would have spoken more clearly.

We' forget that Christ could not have imagined that men who believe in his teaching of humility, love, and universal brotherhood would calmly and consciously establish the murder of their brothers.

Christ could not have imagined it, and so he could not have forbidden a Christian to wage war, just as a father who instructs his son how to live honestly, without offending any one and by giving his own to others, would

not think of forbidding him to kill men on the highway. .

Nor could one of the apostles, nor one of the disciples of Christ of the first centuries of Christianity, have imagined that it was necessary to forbid murder, called war. This, for example, is what Origen says in his reply to Celsius.

He says (Chap. LXIII.): “Celsius admonishes us that we should with all our strength aid the emperor, take part in his lawful labours, arm ourselves for him, serve under his standards, if necessary, ‘ lead his armies in war.’ To this we must reply that we occasionally offer aid to kings, but, so to speak, divine aid, for we are girded in the mail of God. In this conduct we submit to the voice of the apostle. ‘ I exhort that first of all,’ he says, ‘ supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority.’ Thus, the more a man is pious, the more he is useful to kings, and his use is more efficacious than that of a soldier, who, having enlisted under the standards of the king, kills as many enemies as he can. Besides, to men who, not knowing our religion, demand of us that we should kill people, we can reply that even your priests do not defile their hands, in order that your God may receive their sacrifices. Even so do we.”

And, concluding this chapter by an explanation that the Christians are more useful by their peaceful lives than the soldiers, Origen says: “Thus we struggle better than any one for the salvation of the emperor. It is true, we do not serve under his standards. We will not serve, even if he compels us to do so.”

Such were the relations of the Christians of the first ages to war, and thus spoke their teachers, turning to the mighty of the world, at a time when the martyrs died by hundreds and by thousands for the confession of Christ’s faith.

And now? Now there does not even exist the question as to whether a Christian can participate in wars. All young men, who are brought up in the church law, called Christianity, go every autumn, when their turn has come, to the military enlisting-offices, and with the aid of the church pastors renounce the law of Christ. It was only lately that a peasant refused to enter military service, basing his refusal on the Gospel. The teachers of the church tried to persuade him of his error, but as he believed Christ, and not them, he was put in prison, where he was kept until he renounced Christ. All this is done after our God announced to us Christians eighteen hundred years ago the very clear and definite commandment, Do not consider the men of the other nations thy enemies, but regard all men as thy brothers and treat all men as thou treatest the men of thy own nation, and so not only refrain from killing thy enemies, but love them and do them good.

When I thus understood the simple, definite commandments of Christ, when they were subject to no misinterpretations, I asked myself, What would happen if the Christian world believed in these commandments, not in the sense that they are to be sung or read for the propitiation of God, but in the sense of fulfilling them for the happiness of men? What would happen if men believed in the obligatoriness of these commandments at least as firmly as they believe that we must pray every day, go to church on Sunday, eat fish on Friday, and prepare ourselves every year for communion? What would happen if men believed in these commandments as they believe in the demands of the church?

I imagined the whole Christian society as living and educating the young generations in these commandments. I imagined that all of us and our children were impressed from childhood in word and deed, not by what they are impressed by now, that a man must preserve his dignity,. defend his rights before others (which cannot be done otherwise than by humbling and offending others), but by this, that not one man has any rights and can be higher or lower; that only he is lower and more disgraceful who wants to stand higher than the rest; that there is no more debasing condition for man than the condition of anger against another man; that the seeming insignificance or senselessness of a man cannot justify my anger against him and my dissension with him.

Instead of the whole structure of our. life, from the windows of the shops to the theatres, novels, and female apparel, which provoke carnal lusts, I imagined that we all and our children were impressed in word and deed with the idea that the enjoyment of lewd books, theatres, and balls is a very base enjoyment, and that every action which has for its purpose the adornment of the body or its accentuation is a most base and contemptible act.

Instead of the structure of our life, in which it is considered necessary and good for a young man to live in debauch before his marriage; instead of considering a life, which separates husband and wife, a most natural one; instead of legalizing a condition of women who serve for debauch, — instead of all that, I imagined that we were impressed in word and deed by the idea that the single, celibate state of a man, who has matured for sexual relations and has not renounced them, is a monstrosity and a shame, and that the abandonment by a man of a woman, with whom he has come together, and the exchange for another, are not only unnatural acts, like incest, but also cruel, inhuman acts.

Instead of having the whole life based on violence and every joy obtained and guarded by violence; instead of seeing each one of us punished or inflicting punishment from childhood to deepest old age, — I imagined that we were all impressed in word and deed by the idea that vengeance is a very low, animal feeling; that violence is not only a disgraceful act, but also one which deprives man of true happiness; that only that is the joy of life which need not be protected by violence; that the highest respect is not due to him who takes away and keeps his own from others, and whom others serve, but he who gives away his own and serves others.

Instead of considering it beautiful and legitimate for every man to swear and give everything which is most precious to him, that is, his whole life, to the will of somebody he does not know, I imagined that all were impressed with the idea that man’s reasonable will is that highest holiness which man cannot give to any one, and that to promise anything to any one with an oath is a renunciation of one’s rational essence, a defilement of the highest holiness.

I imagined that instead of those national hatreds which are impressed on us under the form of patriotism, instead of those glorifications of murder, called wars, which from childhood are represented to us as most valiant deeds, we were impressed with horror and contempt for all those activities, political, diplomatic, military, which serve for the separation of men; that we were impressed with the idea that the recognition of any countries, especial laws, borders, lands, is a sign of the grossest ignorance, and that to wage war, that is, to kill strangers without any cause, is a most terrible misdeed, possible only for an erring and corrupt man, who has fallen to the level of an animal.

I imagined that all men believed in this, and I asked myself what would then be.

Before this I had asked myself what would come of the execution of Christ’s teaching, as I understood it, and I had involuntarily replied to myself, Nothing. We shall all pray, make use of the grace of the sacraments, believe in the redemption and salvation of ourselves and of the whole world by Christ, and still the salvation will not come from us, but from this, that there will be an end of the world. Christ will come in the proper time in his glory to judge the living and the dead, and the kingdom of God will be established independently of our life. But now the teaching of Christ, as it presented itself to me, had also another meaning: the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth depended also on us. The fulfilment of Christ’s teaching, as expressed in the five commandments, established this kingdom of God. The kingdom of God on earth is the peace of all men among themselves. Peace among men is the highest accessible good on earth. Thus the kingdom of God had presented itself to all the Jewish prophets, and thus it presents itself to every human heart. All prophecies promise peace to men.

The whole teaching of Christ consists in giving the kingdom of God — peace — to men. In the sermon on the mount, in the discourse with Nicodemus, in the sending forth of the disciples, in all his instructions, he speaks only of what separates men and keeps them from being at peace and entering the kingdom of God. All the parables are only descriptions of what is the kingdom of God, which can be entered only by loving our brothers and living at peace with them. John the Baptist, Christ’s precursor, says that the kingdom of God is at hand, and that Jesus Christ gives it to the world.

Christ says that he brought peace upon earth. John xiv. 27: Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Indeed, these five commandments give this peace to men. All five commandments have no other purpose than that of giving peace to men. Men have only to believe in Christ’s teaching and fulfil it, and there will be peace upon earth, not the peace which is established by men, temporary, accidental, private peace, but general, inviolable, eternal peace.

The first commandment says, Live in peace with all men; do not permit thyself to regard another man as insignificant or senseless (Matt. v. 22). If the peace has been broken, use all thy efforts to reestablish it. The service of God is the annihilation of enmity (23 and 24). Make peace at the least dissension, so that thou mayest not lose the true life. In this commandment everything is said; but Christ foresees the offences of the world, which impair the peace among men, and so he gives a second commandment against the offence of the sexual relations, which impairs the peace. Do not look upon carnal beauty as upon an amusement: avoid this offence in advance (28-30); let a man take one wife, and a wife one man, and do not abandon one another under any considerations (32). Another offence is the oaths, which lead men into sin. Know in advance that it is an evil, and make no promises (34-37). The third offeuce is vengeance, which is called human justice; wreak no vengeance, and do not find excuses by saying that they will offend thee: bear insult, and do not return evil for evil (38-42). The fourth offence is the discrimination of nationalities, — the enmity of races and governments. Know that all men are brothers and sons of the one God, and do not break the peace with any one in the name of national purposes (43-48). If men shall not fulfil one of these commandments, peace will be broken. If men shall fulfil all the commandments, the kingdom of peace will be on earth. The commandments exclude all evil from the life of men.

Through the fulfilment of these commandments the life of men will be what every human heart seeks and desires. All men will be brothers, and everybody will always be at peace with others, enjoying all the benefits of the world during the term of life which is apportioned to them by God. Men will forge the swords into ploughshares, and spears into sickles. There will be that kingdom of God, that kingdom of peace, which all the prophets have promised, and which was at hand in the time of John the Baptist, and which Christ announced and proclaimed, speaking with the words of Isaiah, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke iv. 18 and 19; Isaiah Ixi. 1 and 2).

The commandments of peace given by Christ are simple and clear; they foresee all cases of possible dissension and provide for them, and disclose this kingdom of God on earth. Consequently, Christ is indeed the Messiah. He has fulfilled the promise. It is we who are not fulfilling what all men have eternally wished, — what we have been praying for.

*** VII. The Doubling of the Consciousness Is Due to Confusing the Animal Life with the Human Life

Why do men not do what Christ has told them to do, and what gives to them the highest accessible good, for which they have been wishing all the time? And on all sides I hear one and the same answer, expressed in different words, Christ’s teaching is very good, and it is true that, if it were executed, the kingdom of God would be established upon earth, but it is hard and so impracticable.

Christ’s teaching as to how men should live is divinely good and gives good to men, but it is hard for men to execute it. We repeat and hear this so often that we are not startled by the contradiction which is contained in these words.

It is a characteristic of human nature to do what is better. Every teaching about the life of men is only a teaching of what is better for men. If it is shown to men what is better for them to do, how can they say that they wish to do what is better, but are not able to do so? What men cannot do is that which is worse and they cannot help but do what is better.

Man’s rational activity, ever since man has existed, has been directed to finding out what is better among those contradictions with which the life of each individual and of all men together is filled.

Men fight for land, for objects which they need, and then reach a point when they divide everything up and call it property: they find that, though it is difficult to establish this, it is better, and so maintain the property; men fight for wives, abandon their children, and then find that it is better for every man to have a family, and, although it is hard to support a family, they hold on to property, family, and many other things. The moment men discover something which is better, they act accordingly, however hard it may be. What, then, is meant by saying, “Christ’s teaching is beautiful, life according to Christ’s teaching is better than the one we now live, but we cannot live as is better, because it is hard?”

If this word <em>hard</em> is to be taken as meaning that it is hard to sacrifice the momentary gratification of the appetites to the greater good, why do we not say that it is hard to plough in order that we may have bread, and to set out apple-trees, in order that there may be apples?

Every being which is endowed with incipient reason knows that it is necessary to endure hardships for the sake of the greater good. Suddenly it turns out that we say that Christ’s teaching is beautiful, but that it is impracticable, because it is hard: and it is hard, because, in following it, we shall be deprived of what we had not been deprived of before. We art as though we never heard that at times it is more advantageous to suffer and be deprived of something, than not to suffer at all and always to gratify our appetites.

A man may be an animal, and no one will rebuke him for it; but a man cannot reflect that he wishes to be an animal. The moment he reflects, he recognizes himself as a rational being, and, recognizing himself as such, he cannot help recognizing what is rational, and what irrational. Reason does not command anything; it only enlightens.

I have hurt my hands and knees, trying to find the door in the dark. A man comes in with a light, and I see the door. I shall no longer strike against the wall when I see the door, and still less can I affirm that I see the door and that I find that it is better to pass through the door, but that this is hard, and so I want to continue striking my knees against the wall.

In this marvellous reflection, The Christian teaching is good and gives the good to the world, but men are weak and bad, and want to do what is better, but do what is worse, and so cannot do what is better, there is an obvious misunderstanding.

It is evidently not an error of reasoning, but something else. There must be here some false conception. Only a false conception that w’hat is not exists, and what is does not exist can bring people to that strange denial of the practicability of that which, according to their admission, gives them the good.

The false conception which has led them to this is what is called the dogmatic Christian faith, which is taught from childhood to all those who profess the Christian faith of the church according to all kinds of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant catechisms.

This faith, according to the definition of the believers, is the recognition of what seems as existing (this is said in Paul and is repeated in all theologies and catechisms, as the best definition of faith). And it is this recognition of what seems as existing which has led men to this strange assertion that Christ’s teaching is good for men, but that it is of no use for them.

The doctrine of this faith in its most exact expression is like this: the personal God, who exists for ever, one in three persons, suddenly took it into his head to create the world of spirits. The good God created this world of spirits for their benefit; but it happened that one of the spirits became very bad and, therefore, unhappy. Much time passed, and God created another world, the material world, and man, again for his good. God created man blessed, immortal, and sinless. Man’s blessedness consisted in using the good of the world without labour: his immortality consisted in this, that he was to live <strong>so for ever ;</strong> his sinlessness consisted in his not knowing <strong>evil.</strong>

This man was tempted in paradise by that spirit of the first creation, who of himself became evil, and then man fell, and there were born just such fallen men, and after that men began to work, be sick, suffer, die, struggle bodily and spiritually, that is, the imaginary man became the real man, such as we know him, and such that we cannot and have no right or reason to imagine him otherwise. The condition of a working, suffering man, who chooses the good and avoids the evil, and who dies, such as it is and outside of which we cannot imagine anything, is, according to the doctrine of the faith, not the real condition of man, but his unreal, accidental, temporary state.

Although this state has, according to this doctrine, lasted since Adam’s expulsion from paradise, that is, since the beginning of the world to the birth of Christ, and has been continued the same for all men, it is only an accidental and temporary state. According to this doctrine, the son of God, God himself, the second person of the Trinity, was sent by God upon earth in the shape of a man, that he might save men from this improper, accidental, temporary state, take off of them all the curses which were imposed on them by the same God for Adam’s sin, and reestablish them in their former natural state of bliss, that is, of freedom from disease, of immortality, sinlessness, and idleness. The second person of the Trinity, Christ, according to this teaching, redeemed Adam’s sin by the very fact that men executed him, and put a stop to this unnatural condition of man, which had lasted since the beginning of the world. Since then, man, believing in Christ, became once more such as he had been in paradise, that is, immortal, free from disease, sinless, and idle.

On that part of the realization of the redemption, by dint of which after Christ the earth began for the believers everywhere to bear without labour, the diseases stopped, and children were born of mothers without suffering, this doctrine does not dwell, because it is difficult to impress those who have to work hard and who suffer grievously that it is not hard to work and not painful to suffer. But that part of the doctrine, according to which there is no death and no sin, is affirmed with especial force.

It is affirmed that the dead continue to live, and since the dead are not able in any way to confirm the fact that they are dead, nor that they live, just as a stone cannot confirm that it can speak or not, this absence of any denial is taken as a proof, and it is affirmed that the men who have died are not dead. And with still greater solemnity and confidence it is affirmed that after Christ a man is freed from sin through faith in him, that is, that after Christ a man no longer needs illuminate his life through reason and choose what is best for him. All he has to do is to believe that Christ redeemed him from sin, and then he is sinless, that is, entirely good. According to this teaching, men must imagine that reason is powerless in them, and that, therefore, they are sinless, that is, cannot err.

A true believer must imagine that since the time of Christ the earth has brought forth fruit without labour, children are born without pain, there are no diseases, there is no death and no sin, that is, there are no errors, that is, there is not what is, and there is what is not.

Thus speaks the strictly logical theological theory.

This doctrine is harmless in itself. But the departure from truth is never harmless, and leads to consequences which are the more serious, the more serious the subject is, in respect to which the untruth is said. But here the subject in respect to which the untruth is said is the whole human life.

What according to this doctrine is called the true life, is the personal, blissful, sinless, and eternal life, that is, such as nc one ever knew and as does not exist. But the life which exists, which alone we know, which we live, which all humanity has lived, is according to this doctrine a fallen, bad life, — a sample only of the good life which is due us.

The struggle between the striving after the animal life and that after the rational life, which lies in the soul of each man and forms the essence of the life of each man, is according to this doctrine entirely removed. This struggle is transferred to the incident which took place in paradise with Adam at the creation of the world. The question as to whether I shall eat the apples that tempt me, or not, does not exist for man according to this teaching. This question was once for all solved in paradise by Adam in a negative sense. Adam sinned for me, that is, made a mistake, and all men, all of us, are irretrievably fallen, and all our efforts to live sensibly are useless and even godless. I am incorrigibly bad, and must know this. My salvation is not in this, that I can enlighten life by means of reason and, having learned what is good and bad, do what is best. No, Adam has once for all acted badly for me, and Christ has once for all corrected this evil done by Adam, and so I must, as a spectator, be contrite concerning Adam’s fall and rejoice at Christ’s salvation.

But all that love of goodness and truth which lies in the soul of man, all Iris efforts to enlighten the phenomena of life by means of reason, my whole spiritual life, — all that is not only of no importance according to this doctrine, but is also seduction or pride.

Life, such as there is here upon earth, with all its joys and beauties, with all the struggle of reason against darkness,— the life of all men who have lived before my time, my whole life, with my internal struggle and conquests of reason, is not the true life, but a fallen and hopelessly corrupted life: but the true, sinless life is in faith, that is, in imagination, that is, in insanity.

Let a man, renouncing the habit, acquired in childhood, of admitting this, try and look at this doctrine in a simple and direct manner; let him mentally transfer himself into a fresh man, educated outside this teaching, and imagine how this doctrine will appear to such a man. Why, it is the merest madness !

No matter how strange and terrible it was for me to think so, I could not help but acknowledge this, because this alone explained to me that remarkable contradictory, senseless resort which I hear on all sides against the practicableness of Christ’s teaching: It is good and gives happiness to men, but men cannot fulfil it.

Only the conception of what does not exist as existing, and of what exists as not existing, could have brought men to this strange contradiction. And such a false conception I found in the pseudo-Christian faith which has been preached for fifteen hundred years.

But it is not the believers alone who object to Christ’s teaching, saying that it is good, but impracticable; this is done also by the unbelievers, by men who do not believe, or think that they do not believe, in the dogma of the fall and the redemption. The objection to Christ’s teaching, which consists in its impracticableness, is made by men of science, by philosophers, in general by educated men, who consider themselves free from the superstition of the fall and the redemption. And so it had seemed to me at first. It had also seemed to me that these learned men had other grounds for denying the practicableness of Christ’s teaching. But, when I entered deeper into the foundations of their denial, I convinced myself that the unbelievers had the same false conception that our life is not what it is, but what it seems to them, and that this conception is based on the same foundation as the conception of the believers. Those who profess to be unbelievers, it is true, believe neither in God, nor in Christ, nor in Adam; but they believe even more firmly than the theologians in the fundamental false conception as to man’s rights to a blessed life, on which everything is based.

Let privileged science with its philosophy boast as much as it please, assuring us that it is the moderator and guide of the minds, — it is not the guide, but the servant. The world conception is always given to it ready-made by religion, and science only works on the path indicated to it by religion. Religion discloses the meaning of the life of men, and science applies this meaning to the various sides of life. And so, if religion gives a false meaning to life, science, which is educated in this religious world conception, will from various sides apply this false meaning to the life of men. Even so it has happened with our European, Christian science and philosophy.

The church doctrine gave the fundamental meaning of the life of men, asserting that man had a right to a blessed life, and that this blessedness is obtained not by the efforts of man, but by something external, and this world conception has become the foundation of our whole science and philosophy.

Religion, science, public opinion all say in one voice that the life which we lead is bad, but that the teaching as to how we may ourselves try to be better, and thus make life itself better, is impracticable.

Christ’s teaching in the sense of improving the life of man by his rational efforts is impracticable, because Adam fell and the world lies in evil, says religion.

This teaching is impracticable, because human life is accomplished according to certain laws which are independent of the will of man, says our philosophy. Philosophy and the whole science says with other words precisely what religion says with its dogma of the first fall and the redemption.

In the doctrine of the redemption there are two fundamental propositions, on which everything is based: (1) the lawful life of man is the blessed life, while the life of the world is bad and cannot be mended through man’s efforts, and (2) the salvation from this life is in faith.

These two propositions became the foundation of the world conception both of the believers and the unbelievers of our pseudo-Christian society. From the second proposition resulted the church with its establishments. From the first proposition result our social opinion and our philosophical and political theories.

All the philosophical and political theories which justify the existing order, Hegelism and its children, are based on this proposition. Pessimism, which demands of life what it cannot give, and which, therefore, denies life, results from the same.

Materialism, with its remarkable rapturous. assertion that man is a process and nothing else, is a lawful child of this doctrine, which assumes that the present life is a fallen life. Spiritualism, with its learned followers, is the best proof of this, that the scientific and p hilosophical conceptions are not free, but are based on the religious doctrine of the blessed eternal life, which is peculiar to man.

The distortion of the meaning of life has distorted the whole rational activity of man. The dogma of man’s fall and redemption has screened from men the most important and legitimate sphere of man’s activity and has excluded from the whole sphere of the human knowledge the knowledge of what a man must do that he may be happier and better. Science and philosophy, imagining that they act hostilely to the pseudo-Christianity, and priding themselves on it, work only for it. Science and philosophy treat of everything you please, except of how a man can be and live better. What is called ethics — moral teaching — has entirely disappeared in our pseudo-Christian society.

Both believers and unbelievers alike do not ask themselves how we must live and use the reason which is given to us, but, Why is our human life not sucn as we imagined it to be, and when will it be such as we want it to be?

Only thanks to this false doctrine, which has entered the flesh and blood of our generations, could there have happened that remarkable phenomenon, which is that man has apparently disgorged that apple of the knowledge of good and evil, which, according to tradition, he ate in paradise, and, forgetting that man’s whole history consists only in solving the contradictions of the rational and the animal nature, has begun to use his reason for the purpose of finding the historical laws of his animal nature alone.

The religious and philosophical teachings of all the nations, except the philosophical teachings of the pseudoChristian world, all which we know, — Judaism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Brahmanism, Greek philosophy, — all the teachings have for their aim the arrangement of the human life and the elucidation of how each must strive to be and live better. The whole Confucianism is in the personal perfection, Judaism — in the personal fulfilment of each covenant with God, Buddhism — in the teaching of how each can save himself from the evil of life. Socrates taught personal perfection in the name of reason; the Stoics recognized rational freedom as the one basis of true life.

Man’s whole rational activity could not help but consist, and has always consisted, in the enlightenment by reason of the striving after the good. The freedom of the will, says our philosophy, is an illusion, and it is very proud of the boldness of this assertion. But the freedom of the will is not only an illusion, it is a word which has no meaning whatever. This word is invented by theologians and criminalists, and to oppose this word would be the same as fighting windmills. But reason, which enlightens our life and compels us to change our acts, is not an illusion, and this can in no way be denied. The following of reason for the purpose of obtaining the good, — in this has always consisted the teaching of all true teachers of humanity, and in this consists the teaching of Christ, and it is impossible to deny reason by means of reason.

Christ’s teaching is the teaching about the son of man, common to all men, that is, about the striving after the good, common to all men, about the common reason, which enlightens man in this striving. It is quite superfluous to prove that the son of man means the son of man. If we wish to understand by the son of man something different from what these words mean, it is necessary to prove that, in defining what he wished to say, Christ intentionally used words which had an entirely different significance. But even if, as the church wants it, the son of man means the son of God, the son of man still means man by its essence, because Christ calls all men sons of God.

Christ’s teaching about the son of man, the son of God, which forms the foundation of all the gospels, is most clearly expressed in the discourse with Nicodemus. Every man, he says, in addition to recognizing his carnal personal life, proceeding from a male father in the womb of a carnal mother, cannot help but recognize his birth from above (John iii. 5-7). What man recognizes in himself as free is that which is born of the infinite, of that which we call God (11-14). This which is born of God, this son of God in man, we must lift up in ourselves, in order that we may receive the true life (14-17). The son of man is the monogenous (of the same birth, and not the only-begotten) son of God. He who exalts in himself this son of God above everything else, who believes that life is only in this, will not be in disseverance from life. The disseverance from life is due only to this, that men do not believe in the light which is in them (18-21). (That light of which it says in the Gospel of John that in it is life, and that fife is the light of men).

Christ taught us to exalt above all else the son of man, that is the son of God and the light of men. He says, When you lift up (exalt) the son of man, you will know that I speak nothing of myself personally (John xii. 32, 44, 49). The Jews do not understand his teaching, and ask, Who is this son of man who is to be lifted up? (John xii. 34). And to this question he replies (John xii. 35), Yet a little while is the light in[2] you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. In reply to the question as to what is meant by lifting up the son of man, Christ says, To live in the light which is in men.

The son of man, according to Christ’s answer, is the light in which men must walk, while there is light in them.

Luke xi. 35: Take heed, therefore, that the light which is in thee be not darkness.

Matt. vi. 23: If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! he says, instructing all men.

Before and after Christ, men have said the same, that there is in man a divine light, which came down from heaven, and this light is reason, and that it alone is to be served, and in it alone the good is to be found. Thus spoke the teachers of the Brahmins, and the Jewish prophets, and Confucius, and Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, and all the true sages, not the composers of philosophical theories, but those men who sought the truth for their own good and for the good of all men.[3]

[2] In all the church translations there is an intentional mistranslation in this place: instead of <em>in you,</em> <em>èv</em> <em>v/Av,</em> these words are everywhere translated by <em>with you. —Author's Note.</em>

[3] Marcus Aurelius says: “Revere that which is most powerful in the world, that which makes use of everything and governs everything. Revere also what is in thee: it is like the first, because it makes use of what is in thee, and governs thy life.”
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<br>Epictetus says: “God sowed his seed not only in my father and grandfather, but also in all beings which live upon earth, especially in the rational beings, for they alone enter into relation with God through their reason, by which they are united with him.”
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<br>In the book of Confucius it says: “The law of the great science consists in developing and establishing the principle of the light of reason, which we received from heaven.” This proposition is repeated several times and serves as the foundation of the teaching of Confucius. — <em>Author's Note.</em>



Suddenly we recognize by the dogma of the redemption that we must not even speak or think of this light in man. We must think, say the believers, only of what attributes each person of the Trinity has, and of what sacraments must be performed, and what not, because the salvation of men will be accomplished, not by our efforts, but by the Trinity and the correct performance of the sacraments. We must think, say the unbelievers, of this, by what laws an infinitely small particle of matter accomplishes its motion in infinite space and infinite time; but we must not think of what man’s reason needs for its good, because the betterment of man’s condition will not come from him, but from general laws, which we shall discover.

I am convinced that in a few centuries the history of the so-called scientific activity of our boasted last centuries of the European humanity will form an inexhaustible subject of laughter and pity for the future generations. For several centuries the learned men of the small western part of the great continent lived in outright madness, imagining that to them belonged eternal, blessed life, and busied themselves with all kinds of lucubrations as to how and by what laws this life would come to them; but they themselves did nothing and never thought of how they might make their life better. And what will appear even more tragic to the future historian is this, that he will find that these men had a teacher who showed them clearly and definitely what they ought to do in order that they might live more happily, and that the words of this teacher were explained by some as meaning that he would come to arrange everything in the clouds, and by others, that these words were beautiful, but impracticable, because the life of man is not such as we want it to be, and so it is not worth while to busy ourselves with it, while man’s reason ought to be directed to the study of the laws of this Efe without any reference to the good of man.

The church says: Christ’s teaching is impracticable, because the life here is a sample of the real life; it cannot be good, — it is all in evil. The best means for passing this life consists in despising it, and living by faith, that is, by imagining a future, blessed, eternal life, but living here no matter how, and praying.

Philosophy, science, public opinion say: Christ’s teaching is impracticable, because man’s life does not depend on that light of reason with which he can enlighten life itself, but on general laws, and so it is not necessary to enlighten this life by reason and live in accordance with it, but to hve no matter how, believing firmly that according to the laws of historical, sociological, and other laws, after we shall have lived badly for a long time, our life will naturally become very good.

Men come to an estate and find there everything necessary for their life, — a house with all its furnishings, granaries full of grain, cellars, storehouses full of all provisions; in the yard there are agricultural implements, tools, harnesses, horses, cows, sheep, a complete farm outfit, — everything necessary for a life of sufficiency. Men come from all sides to this estate and begin to make use of everything they find there, each for himself, without thinking of leaving anything to those who are now with them in the house, nor to those who will come after. Each wants everything for himself. Each hastens to make use of what he can, and there begins the destruction of everything, — a struggle, a fight for the objects of possession the milch cow, the unshorn sheep, the sows heavy with young are killed for meat; they make fires with looms and wagons, fight for the milk and the grain, and spill and ruin more than they make use of. No one will eat a thing in peace, but will scowl at the stronger man who comes and takes it away from him, and a third man will take it from the second.

Exhausted and beaten, the men, starved, leave the estate. Again the master prepares everything on the estate so that men may live peacefully on it. Again the estate is a full bowl; and again passers-by stop there, and again there is fighting and jostling, and everything goes to ruin, and the men go away, cursing and reproaching their companions and the master, because he has prepared so poorly and so little. Again the good master fixes the estate in such a way that men may live on it, and again, and again, and again it is the same.

And suddenly among the new arrivals. there is a teacher, who says to the others, Brothers, we do not do right. See how many good things there are on this estate, and how well everything is arranged ! There is enough for all of us, and there will be something left for those who come after us, if only we shall live according to reason. Let us not take away from one another, but let us help each other. We shall sow and plough and raise cattle, and all will live well.

And it happened so that a few men understood what the teacher was saying, and those who understood began to do so: they stopped quarrelling and taking away from one another, and began to work. But the rest, who had either not heard the teacher’s speeches, or had heard, but did not believe them, did not do according to the words of the man, but continued to fight as before, and ruined the estate, and went away. Others came, and the same happened. Those who listened to the teacher kept repeating, Do not fight, do not ruin the master’s goods, and you will be better off. Do as the teacher told you to do.

But still there were many who did not hear, nor believe, and things went for a long time as of old. All this was natural and had to be so, as long as men did not believe what the teacher was saying. But, they say, the time came when all on the estate heard the teacher’s words, and all understood them: they did more than understand them, — they acknowledged that it was God himself who was speaking through the teacher, that the teacher himself was God, and all believed in every word of the teacher, as though it were holy. But, they say, instead of living according to the words of the teacher, it turned out that afterward not one man kept from fighting, but they started to belabour one another, and all began to say that now they knew for certain that that was proper and that it could not be otherwise.

What does this mean? Even cattle manage to eat their feed in such a way as not to waste it uselessly, and men have learned how to live better, have come to believe that God himself ordered them to live so, and live even worse, because, they say, it is impossible to live in any other way. These men imagined something else. What could these men on the estate have imagined, that, believing in the words of the teacher, they should continue their life as of old, taking away from one another, fighting, ruining the property and themselves? It is this: the teacher told them, Your life on this estate is bad; live better and your life will be good; but they imagined that the teacher condemned all life on this estate, and promised them another, a good life, not on this estate, but somewhere in another place. And they decided that this was only a hostelry, and that it was not worth while trying to live well in it, but that they must see to it how they might not lose the promised good life in the other place. Only in this way can we explain the strange conduct of those men on the estate, who believe that the teacher was God, and of those who consider him a wise man and his words just, but continue to live as of old, contrary to the advice of the teacher.

Men have heard and comprehended everything, but have failed to hear that the teacher spoke only of this, that men must find their happiness here, on the estate, on which they have met and which they imagine is a hostelry, while the real estate is somewhere else. And this has led to the remarkable reflection that the words of the teacher are very beautiful and are even the words of God, but that it is difficult to carry them out now.

If men would only stop ruining one another and waiting for some one to come and help them,— Christ in the clouds with the voice of trumpets, or the historical law, or the law of the differentiation and integration of forces! Nobody will help them if they do not help themselves. There is no need of helping them. All they have to do is not to expect anything from heaven, nor from earth, and to stop ruining themselves.

*** VIII. There Is No Doubling and No Contradiction: They Appear Only with the False Teaching

But let us suppose that Christ’s teaching gives bliss to the world; let us suppose that it is rational, and man on the basis of reason has no right to renounce it. What is one man to do amidst a world of men who do not fulfil the law of Christ? If all men suddenly agreed to fulfil Christ’s law, its execution would be possible, but one man alone cannot go against the whole world.

If I alone amidst a world of men who do not fulfil Christ’s teaching, they generally say, will fulfil everything, will give away what I have, will offer my cheek, without defending myself, and will not even agree to swearing and making war, I shall be robbed of everything, and if I do not die of hunger, they will beat me to death, and if they do not beat me to death, they will put me in prison or shoot me, and I shall without a cause ruin the happiness of my life and my life itself.

This retort is based on the same misunderstanding on which is based the objection of the impracticableness of Christ’s teaching.

Thus people generally speak, and thus thought I before <strong>I</strong> completely freed myself of the church doctrine, and before I, consequently, understood Christ’s teaching about life in its whole significance.

Christ offers his teaching about life as a salvation from that perishable life which men live who do not follow his teaching, and suddenly I say that I should be glad to follow his teaching, but that I am sorry to ruin my life. Christ teaches the salvation from a perishable life, and I pity this perishable life. Consequently, I do not consider this life at all perishable, but something real, something belonging to me and good. In this assumption of this worldly, personal life as something real and belonging to me, lies the misunderstanding which prevents people from understanding Christ’s teaching. Christ knows this delusion of people, by which they regard their personal life as something real and belonging to themselves, and shows them in <em>a</em> whole series of sermons and parables that they have no right to life, and that they have no life until they have obtained the true life, having renounced the phantom of life, of what they call their life.

In order that we may understand Christ’s teaching about the salvation of life, we must first of all understand what all the prophets have said, what Solomon said, what Buddha said, what all the sages of the world have said about the personal life of man. It is possible, according to Pascal’s utterance, not to think of this, to carry in front of us little screens which should shield from view the abyss of death, toward which we are running; but we need only think what the single personal life of man is, in order that we may be convinced that this whole life, if it is only a personal life, has no meaning whatsoever for each separate man, and that it is even an evil jest on the heart, on the reason of man, on what there is good in man. And so, in order that we may understand Christ’s teaching, we must first of all regain our senses, bethink ourselves to have the /zera- <em>voia</em> accomplished in us, — of what, preaching his doctrine, Christ’s predecessor, John, said to men who were as misled as we are. He says, First of all repent, that is, regain your senses, or else you are lost. He says, The axe is laid unto the root of the tree, to cut it down. Death and destruction are here, near each man. Do not forget this, regain your senses. And Christ, beginning his sermon, says, Bethink yourselves, or else you will all perish.

Luke xiii. 1-5: Christ is told of the destruction of the Galileans killed by Pilate. And he says, Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

If he lived at the present time in Russia, he would say, Do you think that those who were burned in the circus at Berdfchev or who perished on the Kukuev Rampart were more guilty than the rest? You will all perish in the same way, if you do not find in your life that which does not perish. The death of those who were crushed by the tower and who were burned in the circus terrifies you, but your death, just as terrible and just as inevitable, stands just as much before you, and in vain do you try to forget it. When it comes unexpectedly, it will be still more terrible.

He says (Luke xii. 54-57), When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is. And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time? Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?

By tokens you tell in advance what the weather will be, so how is it that you do not see what will happen with you? Run away from danger, guard thy life as much as thou wilt, and yet either Pilate will kill thee, or the tower crush thee, and if not Pilate and not the tower, thou wilt die in thy bed in worse agony.

Calculate in a simple way, as people do when they undertake something, when they build a tower, go to war, or build a factory. They undertake and work over that which must have a rational end.

Luke xiv. 28-31: For which of you intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?

Is it not senseless to work over that which, no matter how much thou mayest try, will never be finished? Death will always come earlier than the tower of thy worldly happiness will be finished. And if thou knowest in advance that, no matter how much thou mayest struggle with death, not thou wilt conquer death, but death will conquer thee, is it not better not to struggle with it and not to put thy soul into what will certainly perish and to seek some work which will not be destroyed by inevitable death?

Luke xii. 22-27: And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls? And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be not able to do jhat thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest? Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you. that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

No matter how much you may care for your body and your food, you cannot add one hour [4] to your life. Is it, then, not senseless to care for what you cannot do?

[4] These words are incorrectly translated: the word <em>-fjXiKÍa</em> means <em>time of life:</em> and so the whole expression means, You cannot add an hour to your life. <em>—Author’s Note.</em>

You know full well that your life will end in death, and you are concerned about securing your life by means of possessions. You must understand that this is a ridiculous deception, with which you deceive yourselves.

There can be no meaning of life, says Christ, in what we possess and what we acquire, in which we are not ourselves; it must be in something else.

He says (Luke xii. 16-21): A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: and he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

Death stands over you every moment, and so (Luke xii. 35, 36, 38-40): Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that, when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants. And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.

The parable of the virgins waiting for the bridegroom, the end of the world, and the terrible judgment, — all those places, according to the opinion of all commentators, have, in addition to the meaning of the end of the world, also the meaning of death which always, at every hour, awaits man.

Death, death, death awaits you every second. Your life is accomplished with death in view. If you work personally for yourself in the future, you know yourself that in the future there is but one thing for you, — death. This death destroys everything which you have worked for. Consequently, life cannot have any meaning in itself. If there is a rational life, it must be different, that is, such that the aim of it is not life for oneself in the future. To live rationally we must live in such a way that death cannot destroy life.

Luke x. 41 and 42: Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful.

All those endless deeds which we do for ourselves in the future are not necessary for ourselves: all that is a deception with which we deceive ourselves. Only one thing is needful.

From the day of birth the state of man is such that inevitable ruin, that is, senseless life and senseless death, awaits him, if he does not find that one thing which he needs for the true life. This one thing, which gives the true life, Christ reveals to men. He does not invent it and does not promise to give it by his divine power; he only shows men that together with that personal life, which is an unquestionable deception, there must be that which is the truth, and not a deception.

By the parable of the husbandmen of the vineyard (Matt. xxi. 33-42) Christ elucidates this source of the delusion of men, which conceals this truth from them and compels them to accept the phantom of life, their personal life, for the true life.

Men, living in the master’s well-cared garden, have come to imagine that they are the owners of this garden. And from this false representation there results a series of senseless and cruel acts of these men, which ends in their expulsion, their exclusion from life; even so we have imagined that the life of each one of us is our personal possession, and that we have the right to it and may use it as we please, without being under any obligations to any one. And for us, who have imagined this, such a series of senseless and cruel acts and misfortunes and such an exclusion from life are just as inevitable. And as it seems to the husbandmen that the fiercer they are the better they will secure themselves, — and kill the messengers and the master’s son, — even so it seems to us that the fiercer we shall be the better we shall secure ourselves.

Just as the husbandmen inevitably fare badly in that the master drives away those who are not giving to any one the fruits of the garden, even so fare people who imagine that the personal life is the real life. Death drives them out of life, putting new men in their place, not as a punishment, but because the first did not understand life. As the inhabitants of the garden either forgot, or did not know, that the garden was turned over to them all dag up, fenced in, and with a good well, and that some one had worked for them and so expected work from them: even so men who live a personal life have forgotten, or wish to forget, everything that was done for them before their birth and that is being done during the whole time of their life, and what, therefore, is expected of them: they wish to forget that all the benefits of life

which they enjoy are given to them, and so must be transferred and given back. .

Tliis correction of the view of life, this <em>perávoLa,</em> is the corner-stone of Christ’s teaching, as he himself said at the end of this parable. According to Christ’s teaching, just as the husbandmen, living in the garden which is not prepared by them, must understand and feel that they are in insolvable indebtedness to their master, so men must understand and feel that, from the day of their birth to their death, they are always in insolvable indebtedness to those who lived before them and now live and will live later, and to that which was and is and will be the beginning of everything. They must understand that by every hour of their life, during which they do not cease this life, they confirm this obligation, and that, therefore, a man who lives for himself and denies this obligation, which binds him with life and its beginning, deprives himself of life; he must understand that, living in this manner, he, though wishing to preserve life, ruins it, — precisely what Christ repeated so many times.

The true life is only the one which continues the past life and which cooperates with the good of the contemporary life and with that of the future life.

To be a participant in this life, a man must renounce his will for the purpose of fulfilling the will of the Father of life, who gave it to the son of man.

The servant, who does his own will and not that of the master, does not live eternally in the house of the master; but the son who does the will of the Father lives for ever. Christ expresses the same idea in another place (John viii. 35).

But the will of the Father of life is not the Efe of a separate individual, but of the one son of man who lives in men; and so man preserves life only when he looks upon his life as upon a pledge, a talent, given him by the Father, that he may serve the life of all, when he lives not for himself, but for the son of man.

Matt. xxv. 14-46. A master gave to each of his servants part of his estate and, without saying anything to them, left them alone. Some of the servants, though they had not heard any command from the master as to how to make use of the master’s property, understood that the property was not theirs, but the master’s, and that the property ought to be increased, and so worked for the master. And the servants who worked for the master became the participants in the master’s life, while those who did not work were deprived even of what was given to them.

The life of the son of man is given to all men, and they are not told why it is given to them. Some men understand that the life is not their property, but is given to them as a gift and ought to serve the life of the son of man, and they live accordingly. Others, under the pretext that they do not understand the aim of life, do not serve life. And the men who serve life unite with the source of life, and the men who do not serve life are deprived of it. And so, from Verse 31 to Verse 46, Christ tells about what the serving of the son of man consists in and about what the reward for this service will be. The son of man, according to Christ’s expression, will say, like a king, Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom for having given me drink and meat, and having dressed me, taken me in, and consoled me, for I am one and the same in you and in these little ones, whom you pitied and treated well. You have lived, not the personal life, but the life of the son of man, and so you have the eternal life.

It is only this eternal life that Christ teaches according to all the gospels, and, however strange it may be to say so about Christ, who personally rose from the dead, and promised to raise ail from the dead. Christ not only failed to confirm the personal resurrection and immortality beyond the grave, but even to the reestablishment of the dead in the kingdom of the Messiah, which the Pharisees had founded, he ascribed a meaning which excludes the conception of a personal resurrection.

The Sadducees disputed the reestablishment of the dead.

The Pharisees acknowledged it, just as the orthodox Jews recognize it nowadays.

The reestablishment of the dead (and not the resurrection, as the word is improperly translated), according to the belief of the Jews, will take place at the coming of the time of the Messiah and the establishment of the kingdom of God upon earth. And so Christ, meeting with this belief in the temporal, spatial, and carnal resurrection, denies it, and in its place puts his teaching of the reestablishment of the eternal life in God.

When the Sadducees, who do not acknowledge the reestablishment of the dead, ask Christ, assuming that he will share the conception of the Pharisees, Whose will the wife of seven brothers be? he gives a clear and definite answer.

He says (Matt. xxii. 29-32; Mark xii. 24-27; Luke xx. 34-38), You are mistaken, for you do not understand the Scripture and the power of God. And, rejecting the conception of the Pharisees, he says, The reestablishment from the dead is not carnal and not personal. Those who arrive at the reestablishment from the dead become the sons of God and live like angels (the power of God) in heaven (that is, with God), and for them there cannot exist personal questions, such as, whose wife she is, for, in uniting with God, they cease being personalities. But as to there existing a reestablishment from the dead, he says, retorting to the Sadducees, who acknowledge only an earthly existence and nothing but a carnal earthly life, Have you not read what God has told you? In the Scripture it says that God told Moses in the burning bush, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, if God said to Moses that he was the God of Jacob, Jacob, is not dead for God, for God is the God of the living only, and not of the dead. For God all are living. And so, if there is a living God, then that man lives who has entered into communion with the eternally living God.

Christ says against the Pharisees that the reestablishment of life cannot be carnal or personal. Against the Sadducees he says that besides the personal and the temporal life there is also a life in the communion with God.

In denying the personal, carnal resurrection, Christ recognizes the reestablishment of life in that man transfers his life into God. Christ teaches the salvation from the personal life and assumes this salvation in the exaltation of the son of man and of life in God. Uniting this teaching of his with the doctrine of the Jews about the coming of the Messiah, he speaks to the Jews of the reestablishment of the son of man from the dead, meaning by this not the carnal and personal reestablishment of the dead, but the awakening of life in God. But of the carnal, personal resurrection he never spoke. As the best proof that Christ never preached the resurrection of men serve those two only passages which are adduced by the theologians in confirmation of his doctrine of the resurrection. These two passages are: Matt. xxv. 31-46 and John v. 28 and 29. The first speaks of the coming, that is, the reestablishment, the exaltation of the son of man (just as it is mentioned in Matt. x. 23), and then the greatness and power of the son of man is compared with a king. The second passage speaks of the reestablishment of the true life here upon earth, as this is expressed in the preceding 24th verse.

We need only try to grasp the meaning of Christ’s teaching about the eternal life in God, and to reestablish <strong>in our</strong> imagination the doctrine of the Jewish prophets, in order that we may understand that, if Christ wanted to preach the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, which just then began to enter into the Talmud and was a subject of dispute, he would have expressed this doctrine clearly and definitely; he, on the contrary, not only failed to do so, but even rejected it, and in all the gospels it is impossible to find a single passage which would confirm this doctrine. But the above quoted two passages signify something very different.

Of his own personal resurrection, no matter how strange this may appear to those who have not studied the gospels, Christ has never spoken anywhere. If, as the theologians teach, the foundation of the belief in Christ consists in this, that Christ rose from the dead, — the least we may expect would be that Christ, knowing that he would rise from the dead, and that in this the chief dogma of the faith in him would consist, would say so clearly and definitely at least once. But he not only did not say so clearly and definitely even once; according to the canonical gospels he not even once made any reference to it. Christ’s teaching is this, that we should exalt the son of man, that is, the essence of the life of man, — to recognize ourselves as sons of God. Christ personifies in himself the man who has recognized his filial relation to God (Matt. xvi. 13-20). He asks his disciples what men say of him, the son of man. The disciples say that some regard him as John miraculously risen from the dead, or as a prophet, and others, as Elijah who has come down from heaven. And how do you understand me? he asks. And Peter, understanding Christ as he understood himself, replies, Thou art the Messiah, the son of the living God. And Christ says, Not the flesh and blood have revealed this to thee, but our Father in heaven, that is, Thou hast comprehended this, not because thou hast believed the human interpretations, but because, recognizing thyself as the son of God, thou hast comprehended me. And, having explained to Peter that on this filial relation to God the true faith is based, Christ says to his disciples (20) that they should not henceforth say that he, Jesus, was the Messiah.

After this Christ says that, although they would torture and kill him, the son of God, having acknowledged himself to be a son of God, will none the less be reestablished . and will triumph over everything. And it is these words that are interpreted as a prediction of his resurrection.

John ii. 19-22; Matt. xii. 40; Luke xi. 30; Matt. xvi. 4, 21; Mark viii. 31; Luke ix. 22; Matt. xvii. 23; Mark ix. 31; Matt. xx. 19; Mark x. 34; Luke xviii. 33; Matt, xxvi. 32; Mark xiv. 28. These are all the fourteen places which are understood to mean that Christ predicted his resurrection. In three of these places reference is made to Jonah in the belly of the whale, and in one to the reestablishment of the temple. In the remaining ten places it says that the son of man cannot be destroyed; but nowhere is there one word in respect to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In all these passages there is not even the word <em>resurrection</em> in the original. Give to a man who does not know the theological interpretations, but who knows Greek, all these passages to translate, and never will one translate them as they are translated. In the original we have here two different words <em>àvLarrgiL</em> and <em>egeipw.</em> One of these words means <em>to raise up</em> (reestablish); the other means <em>to ivake,</em> and in the middle voice <em>to wake up, get up.</em> But neither the one nor the other can under any consideration mean <em>to raise from the dead.</em> To convince ourselves fully that these Greek words and the Hebrew <em>kum,</em> which corresponds to them, cannot mean to raise from the dead, we need only compare those passages of the Gospel where these words are used: they are used a great number of times, and not once are they translated by <em>to raise from the dead, auferstehen, rcssusciter:</em> such words do not exist either in the Greek or the Hebrew language, even as the corresponding conceptions are wanting. In order to express in Greek or in Hebrew the conception of the resurrection, a paraphrase is needed: we have to say rose, or woke, from the dead. Even so it says in Luke xvi. 31, in the parable of Lazarus, that if one rose from the dead, he would not be believed. But where the words <em>from the dead</em> are not added to <em>rise</em> and <em>wake,</em> we have not the idea of the resurrection. Speaking of himself, Christ never, not even once in all the passages which are quoted in proof of his prediction that he would rise from the dead, uses the words <em>from the dead.</em>

Our conception of the resurrection is to such a degree foreign to the ideas of Jews about life that we cannot even imagine how Christ could have spoken to the Jews of the resurrection and of the eternal, personal life which is peculiar to each man. The conception of the future personal life did not come to us from the Jewish teaching, nor from Christ’s teaching. It has entered the doctrine of the church from an entirely different source. However strange it may appear, we cannot help but say that the belief in the future personal life is a very low and gross conception, which is based on the confusion of sleep with death, and which is peculiar to all savages, and that the Jewish teaching, not to speak of the Christian teaching, stood incomparably higher than that. We are so convinced that this superstition is something very elevated that we most seriously prove the superiority of our teaching over the others by the very fact that we hold to this superstition, while others, like the Chinese and the Hindoos, do not keep it. This is proved not only by the theologians, but also by the freethinking learned historians of religion, by Tiele and Max Müller, and others; in classifying the religions, they acknowledge that those who share this superstition are higher than those who do not share it. The freethinking Schopenhauer in so many words calls the Jewish religion the most contemptible <em>(niedertrdchtigste)</em> of all religions because there is not in it an idea <em>(keine Idee)</em> of the immortality of the soul.

In reality, in the Jewish religion there was not even such a conception or word. The eternal life is in Hebrew <em>khaye-olam. Olam</em> means <em>what is infinite, imperturbable in time ;</em> it means also <em>the world, cosmos.</em> Life in general, and so much the more the eternal life, <em>khaye-olam,</em> is, according to the teaching of the Jews, peculiar to God alone. God is the God of life, God is alive. Man, accord- <sub>t</sub> ing to the conception of the Jews, is always mortal, and God alone lives always. In the Pentateuch the words <em>eternal life</em> are used twice, once in Deuteronomy, the other time in Genesis. In Deut. xxxii. 39 and 40 God says, See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever. The second time, in Gen. iii. 2 2: God says, Man has eaten of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and has become as one of us; he may stretch out his hands and take of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. These are the only two cases of the use of the words eternal life in the Pentateuch and in the whole Old Testament (with the exception of one chapter of the apocryphal Daniel) which clearly define the conception of the Jews concerning life in general and the eternal life. Life in itself is, according to the conception <>f the Jews, eternal, and such it is in God; but man is always mortal, such being his property.

Nowhere in the Old Testament is there anything said of what we are taught in sacred histories, that God breathed an immortal soul into man, or that the first man was immortal before his fall. God created man, according to the first account in Gen. i. 26, just like the animals, just like male and female, and just as he enjoined them to fructify and multiply. As it does not say of the animals that they are immortal, so it does not say so of man. In the second chapter we hear how man learned of good and evil; but concerning life it says openly that God drove man out of paradise and barred his way to the tree of life. Man did not get a chance to eat of the tree of life, did not get <em>kha/ye-olam,</em> that is, the eternal life, but remained mortal.

According to the teaching of the Jews man is precisely as he is, that is, mortal. Life is in him only as life which is preserved from generation to generation in the nation. The nation only has in itself the possibility of life. When God says, You shall live and not die, he says that of the nation. The life which God breathed into man is mortal for every individual man: but this life is continued from generation to generation, if men fulfil the covenant with God, that is, the conditions which are laid down for the purpose by God.

After expounding all the laws, and saying that these laws are not in heaven, but in their hearts, Moses says in Deut. xxx. 1 5 and 16: See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil, commanding you to love God and walk his ways, keeping his law, that you may retain life. And Verses 19 and 20: I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou may- est obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him (for he is thy life, and the length of thy days).

The chief distinction between our conception of the human life and that of the Jews consists in this, that according to our conceptions our mortal life, which passes from generation to generation, is not the real life, but a fallen life, which for some reason is temporarily corrupted; but according to the conception of the Jews, this life is real, and the highest good is given to man under the condition of fulfilling God’s will. From our standpoint the transition of this fallen life from generation to generation is a continuation of the curse. From the standpoint of the Jews it is the highest good which man can obtain, and that, too, only by fulfilling the will of God.

It is on this conception of life that Christ bases his teaching of the true, or eternal, life, which he opposes to the personal and mortal life. Search the Scriptures, Christ says to the Jews (John v. 39), for through them you think you have eternal life.

A young man asks Christ (Matt. xix. 16) how he may have eternal life. In replying to his question about the eternal life, Christ says, If thou wilt enter into life (he does not say <em>eternal life,</em> but simply <em>life)</em> keep the commandments. The same he says to the lawyer (Luke x. 28): This do, and thou shalt live, and again he says live, and not live for ever. In either case Christ defines what is to be understood by the words <em>eternal life;</em> whenever he uses these words, he tells the Jews what is several times said in their law, namely: the fulfilment of the will of God is the eternal life.

In opposition to the temporal, private, personal life Christ teaches that eternal life which God, according to Deuteronomy, promised to Israel, but with this difference that, according to the conception of the Jews, the eternal life was continued only in the chosen people of Israel, and that to obtain this life it was only necessary to keep God’s exclusive laws for the Israelites, while, according to Christ’s teaching, the eternal life is continued in the son of man, and for its preservation we must observe the laws of Christ, which express the will of God for all humanity.

Christ opposes to the personal life not the life beyond the grave, but the general life, which is united with the present, past, and future life of all humanity, — the life of the son of man.

The salvation of the personal life from death was, according to the teaching of the Jews, the fulfilment of the will of God, as expressed in the law of Moses according to his commandments. Only under these conditions did the life of the Jews not perish, but passed from generation to generation in the nation chosen by God. The salvation of the personal life from death is, according to Christ’s teaching, the same fulfilment of God’s will, as expressed in Christ’s commandments. Only under this condition, according to Christ’s teaching, does the personal life not perish, but become imperturbably eternal in the son of man. The difference is only this, that the service of the God of Moses was the service of God by one nation, while the service of the Father of Christ was the service of God by all men. The continuation of life in the generations of one nation was doubtful, because the nation itself might perish, and, also, because this continuation depended on carnal posterity. The continuation of life, according to Christ’s teaching, is transferred into the son of God, who lives according to the will of the Father.

But let us suppose that the words of Christ about the terrible judgment and the end of the w’orld, and the other words in the Gospel of John, have the meaning of promising a life beyond the grave to the souls of dead persons, it is still unquestionable that his teaching concerning the light of life, the kingdom of God, has also this other meaning, intelligible to his hearers and now to us, that the true life is only the life of the son of man according to the will of the Father. This can be admitted the more easily since the teaching concerning the true life according to the will of the Father of life includes the conception of the immortality and the life beyond the grave.

It may be more correct to assume that after this worldly life, which is lived for the fulfilment of his personal will, man will none the less receive an eternal personal life in heaven with all the possible joys; may be this is more correct, but thinking that it is so, trying to believe that for good deeds I shall be rewarded with eternal bliss, and for bad deeds with eternal torments, — thinking thus does not help me in the comprehension of Christ’s teaching; thinking thus means, on the contrary, depriving Christ’s teaching of its chief foundation.

The whole teaching of Christ consists in this, that his disciples, having comprehended the phantasmal nature of the personal life, should renounce it and transfer it into the life of all humanity, into the life of the son of man. But the teaching of the immortality of the personal life not only does not call for the renunciation of a man’s personal life, but for ever confirms this personality.

According to the conceptions of the Jews, the Chinese, the Hindoos, and all men who do not believe in the dogma of the fall of man and his redemption, life is life, such as it is. Man copulates, begets children, brings them up, grows old, and dies. His children grow up and continue his life, which is carried on without interruption from generation to generation, just as everything in the world is carried on, — stones, earth, metals, plants, animals, the luminaries, and everything in the world. Life is life, and we must make use of it in the best manner possible. It is irrational to live for oneself. And so, ever since men have existed, they have been seeking an aim for life outside themselves: they live for their babe, for their family, for the nation, for humanity, for everything which does not die with the personal life.

On the contrary, according to the teaching of our church, human life, as the highest good known to us, presents itself only as a particle of that life which is kept from us but for a little while. Our life, according to our conception, is not the life which God wanted and ought to have given us, but a corrupt, bad, fallen life, a "sample” of life, a slur on the real life, the one which we for some reason imagine God ought to have given us. According to this representation the chief problem of our life does not consist in passing the mortal life given to us in the way in which the giver of life wants it passed, not in making it eternal in the generations of men, as the Jews teach, or by uniting it with the will of the Father, as Christ taught, but in assuring ourselves that after this life the real life will begin.

Christ does not speak of this our putative life, which God ought to have given to men, but for some reason failed to give. The theory of the fall of Adam and of the eternal life in paradise and of the immortal soul breathed by God into Adam, was unknown to Christ, and he did not mention it and did not hint at its existence with even one word.

Christ speaks of life, such as it is and as it will always be; but we speak of the life which we imagine, and which has never existed: how can we help understanding Christ’s teaching?

Christ could not even have imagined such a strange conception in his disciples. He assumes that all men understand the inevitableness of the destruction of the personal life, and reveals the imperishable life. He gives the good to those who are in evil; but to those who are persuaded that they have much more than what Christ can give them, his teaching can give nothing. I will admonish a man to work, assuring him that he will receive food and raiment for it, and suddenly this man will persuade himself that he is a millionaire as it is; it is evident that he will not accept my admonition. The same takes place with Christ’s teaching. Why should I work, since I can be a rich man as it is? Why should I try to live this life in godly fashion, since I am convinced that without it I shall live a personal life for ever?

We are taught that Christ saved men by this, that he is the second person of the Trinity, that he is God and became incarnate, and that, having taken upon himself the sin of Adam and of all men, he redeemed the sin of men before the first person of the Trinity and established the church and the sacraments for our salvation. If we believe in this, we are saved and receive an eternal personal life beyond the grave. But it cannot be denied that he has saved men also by this, that, by pointing out their inevitable destruction, he, according to his words, I am the way, the life, and the truth, gave us the true way of life, in lieu of that false way of the personal life on which we travelled before.

Though men may be found who will have their doubts in the life beyond the grave and in the salvation which is based on the redemption, there can be no doubt in the salvation of men, of all together and each separately, in the indication of the inevitable destruction of the personal life and of the true way of salvation in the union of our will with the will of the Father. Let every rational man ask himself what his life and death are? And let him ascribe to this life and death any other meaning than the one which Christ has pointed out.

All theorizing on the meaning of the personal life which is not based on the renunciation of self for the purpose of serving men, humanity, the son of man, is a phantom which is dispersed at the first touch of reason. I can no longer doubt that my personal life perishes, but the life of the whole world according to the will of the Father does not perish, and only a union with it gives me the possibility of salvation. But this is so little in comparison with those exalted religious beliefs in a future life! Though it is little, it is correct.

I have lost my way in a snow-storm. One assures me, and he actually thinks so, that there they are, lights and a village; but this only seems so to him and to me, because we want it; we walked in the direction of the lights, but there were none. Another man walked over the snow; he came out on a road, and shouted to us: “Do not go anywhere, for the lights are only in your eyes; you will be lost everywhere and will perish, but here is a firm road, and I am standing on it: it will take us somewhere.” That is very little. When we believed the lights which glimmered in our inflamed eyes, the village was oh! so near, and there was a warm hut, and salvation, and rest; but now there is only a firm road. But if we listen to the first man, we shall certainly freeze to death, and if we listen to the second man, we shall certainly come out all right.

So what must I do, if I am the only one who understands Christ’s teaching and believe in it, I alone amidst those who do not understand it or fulfil it?

What shall I do? Shall I live like all the rest, or according to Christ’s teaching? I understand Christ’s teaching in its commandments, and I see that their observance gives bliss to me and to all men of the world. I understand that the keeping of these commandments is the will of that beginning of all, from which my life also comes.

I understand, besides, that no matter what I may do. I shall inevitably perish in a senseless life and death, together with all that surrounds me, if I shall not fulfil this will of the Father, and that the only possibility of salvation lies only in its execution.

It I do like all men, I certainly counteract the good of all men, certainly do what is contrary to the will of the Father of life, certainly deprive myself of the only possibility of improving my desperate condition. In doing what Christ teaches me I continue to do what men have done for me: I cooperate with the good of all men who live now and who will live after me, and I do what he who has produced me wants me to do, and what alone can save me.

The circus in Berdichev is on fire; all crowd and choke each other, pressing against the door which opens inward. A saviour appears, saying: “Step aside from the door: Go back ! The more you crowd, the less hope of salvation you have. Turn back, and you will find an exit and salvation.” Whether many or I alone heard it, what difference does it make? But having heard it and believing it, I can do nothing but go back and call out loud in the name of the saviour. They will, perhaps, choke me to death, or kill me; but my salvation still lies in going where there is the only exit. I cannot help but go there. The saviour must indeed be a saviour, that is, he must indeed save. And the salvation of Christ is indeed a salvation. He made his appearance and spoke, and humanity is saved.

The circus has been on fire for an hour, and we have to be in a hurry, and men may fail to be saved. But the world has been burning for eighteen hundred years, ever since Christ said, I have brought the fire down upon earth, and how my soul pines until it burns up, — and it will burn until men will be saved. Are there not men, and does it not burn, in order that men may have the bliss of salvation?

Having comprehended this, I understood and believed that Jesus was not only the Messiah, Christ, but also indeed the saviour of the world.

I know that there is no other way out for me, or for all those who with me are tormented in this life. I know that for all, and for me with them, there is no other salvation than by keeping the commandments of Christ, which give to all humanity a good which is most accessible to my understanding.

I am not terrified by the reflection that I may have more unpleasantnesses, or shall die earlier, by fulfilling Christ’s teaching. This may be terrible to him who does not see how senseless and pernicious his own personal single life is, and who thinks that he will not die. But I know that my life for a personal lonely life is the greatest foolishness, and that after this foolish life 1 shall certainly die as foolishly. And so I cannot be terrified at all. I shall die like all men, even like those who do not fulfil the teaching: but my life and death will have a meaning for me and for all men. My life and my death will serve the salvation and the life of all men, and it is this that Christ taught.

*** IX. The Birth of the True Life in Man

If all men were to fulfil Christ’s teaching, there would be the kingdom of God upon earth: if I alone fulfil it, I shall do the best for all and for myself. Without the fulfilment of Christ’s teaching there is no salvation.

But where shall I take faith to fulfil it, always to follow it, and never to renounce it? I believe, 0 Lord, help my unbelief.

The disciples asked Christ to confirm faith in them. I want to do good, and I do evil, says Paul the Apostle.

It is hard to be saved, — so people generally speak and think.

A man is drowning, and he asks to be saved. A rope is thrown out to him, and he may save himself by it; but the drowning man says, Confirm the faith in me that the rope will save me. I believe, says the man, that the rope will save me, but help my unbelief.

What does this mean? If a man does not grasp that which saves him, it means only that the man has not comprehended his situation.

How can a Christian, who professes the divinity of Christ and of his teaching, no matter how he may understand it, say that he wants to believe, and cannot? God himself, coming down upon earth, said, Eternal torments, fire, eternal outer darkness await you, and your salvation is in my teaching and its fulfilment. Such a Christian cannot help but believe in the salvation offered him, and fulfil it, saying, Help my unbelief.

In order that a man may be able to say so, he must not only refrain from believing in his destruction, but must also believe that he will not perish.

Children jump from a ship into the water. The current, their dry clothes, and their feeble motions still bear them up, and they do not understand their ruin. A rope is thrown out to them from the fleeing ship. They are told that they will certainly drown, and the people on the ship implore them (parables of the woman who found a farthing, of the shepherd who found the sheep gone astray, of the prodigal son, speak of the same); but the children do not believe them. They fail to believe, not in the rope, but in their destruction. Just such frivolous children, as they are, convince them that they would have a pleasant swim, even if the ship got away from them. The children do not believe that soon their clothes will be soaked through, their arms get tired of swimming, and they will strangle and drown and go to the bottom. They do not believe in this, and for this reason alone do not believe in the rope of salvation.

Just as the children who fell down from the ship are convinced that they will not perish, and so do not take hold of the rope, so people who profess the immortality of the soul are convinced that they will not perish, and so do not fulfil the teaching of Christ the God. They do not believe in what one cannot fail to believe, only because they believe in what one cannot believe.

And so they call out to some one, Confirm in us our faith that we shall not perish.

But that cannot be done. In order that they may have faith in this, that they will not perish, they must cease doing what destroys them, and must begin to do what saves them: they must take hold of the rope of salvation. They do not wish to do so, but want to convince themselves that they will not perish, despite the fact that their companions are perishing one after the other in their sight. This desire to assure themselves of what does not exist they call faith. Naturally they have always too little faith and want to have more.

When I comprehended Christ’s teaching, I understood also that that which these people called faith was not faith, and that it was that same false faith that James the Apostle rejected in his epistle. (This epistle was for a long time not accepted by the church, and when it was accepted, it was subjected to some distortions: certain words were thrown out and others transposed or wrongly translated. I leave the accepted translation, correcting a few inexactnesses according to Tischendorf’s text.)

James ii. 14-24, 26. What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man thinks he hath faith, and have not works? Faith cannot save him. If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? Ye see then how that by works a man becomes righteous and not by faith only. For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

James says that the only sign of faith is works which result from it, and that, therefore, faith from which works do not result is only words with which one can no more become righteous and save oneself, than one can feed on them. And so faith from which works do not result is not faith: it is only a desire to believe in something; it is only a faulty affirmation in words that I believe in that in which I do not believe.

Faith, according to this definition, is that which cooperates with works, and work is that which makes faith perfect, that is, which makes faith to be faith.

The Jews say to Christ (John vi. 30): What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee? what dost thou work?

The same he was told when he was on the cross (Mark xv. 32): Let him descend from the cross, that we may see and believe.

Matt, xxvii. 42. He saved others: himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.

To such a demand for the increasing of their faith Christ replies only that their wish is vain, and that it is impossible to make them believe in what they do not believe. He says (Luke xxii. 67), If I tell you, ye will not believe. John x. 25-26: I told you, and ye believed not; but ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you.

The Jews ask the same that the church Christians ask, something that will make them in an external way believe in Christ’s teaching. And he replies to them that this is impossible, and explains to them why it is impossible. He says that they cannot believe, because they are not of his sheep, that is, do not follow the way of life which he showed his sheep. He explains (John v. 44) wherein the difference is between his sheep and others, why some believe, and others not, and on what faith is based. How can ye believe, he says, when you receive ód£a,[5] the teaching, from one another, but seek not the teaching that cometh from God only?

[5] As in many other places. <em>ód£a.</em> is quite incorrectly translated by the word <em>honour</em> or <em>glory; ód£a,</em> from Ôo/céw, means <em>conception, judgment, teaching. —Author’s Note.</em>

To believe, says Christ, we must seek the teaching which is from God only. He that speaketh of himself seeketh his personal teaching <em>(^av</em> <em>ttjv thav)</em>: but he that seeketh his teaching that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him (John vii. 18).

The teaching concerning life (ód£a) is the foundation of faith. All acts result from faith: but all faiths result from the meaning <em>a)</em> which we ascribe to life. There can be an endless number of acts, and so there can be a very large number of faiths; but there can be but two teachings concerning life (8d£a): one of them rejects, the other accepts Christ. One teaching, the one which Christ denies, consists in this, that the personal life is something actually existing and belonging to man. It is the teaching to which the majority of men have adhered, and from which result all the various beliefs of men and all their acts. The other teaching is the one which all the prophets and Christ preached, namely, that our personal life receives a meaning only in the execution of God’s will.

If a man has that that his personality is more important than anything, he will think that his personal good is the most important and desirable thing in life, and, according to whether he will assume his good to be in the acquisition of property, or in reputation, or glory, or the gratification of his lust, and so forth, he will have a faith corresponding to this view, and all his acts will be in conformity with it.

If man has another <em>8o'£a,</em> if he understands life in such a way that its meaning is only in the execution of God’s will, as Abraham understood it and Christ taught, then, according to what he will put the will of God in, he will have a faith in conformity with this view, and all his acts will always harmonize with it.

This is the reason why believers in the good of the personal life cannot believe in Christ’s teaching. All their attempts at believing this will ever remain vain. In order that they may believe, they must change their view of life. So long as they have not changed it, their works will always coincide with their faith, and not with their wishes and words.

The desire to believe in Christ’s teaching, expressed by those who asked him for signs, and by our believers, does not coincide, and cannot coincide, with their lives, no matter how much they may try. They may pray to Christ the God, go to communion, do works of philanthropy, build churches, convert others, — they do all that, — but they cannot do the works of Christ, because these spring from faith, which is based on an entirely different doctrine (8ofa) than the one which they profess. They cannot sacrifice their only son, as Abraham did, who did not even stop to think whether he should sacrifice his son or not to God, to that God who alone gave a meaning and the good to his life. Even so Christ and his disciples could not help but sacrifice their lives to others, because in this alone did the meaning and the good of their lives he. From this lack of comprehension of the essence of faith springs that strange wish of people, which is, that they may believe that it is better to live according to the teaching of Christ, whereas with all the powers of their soul they wish, in harmony with their faith in the good of the personal lives, to live contrary to this teaching.

The foundation of faith is the meaning of life, from which flows the valuation of what is important and good in life, and of what is not important and bad. The valuation of all the phenomena of life is faith. And as now people, having faith which is based on their teaching, are positively unable to harmonize it with the faith which springs from Christ’s teaching, even so his disciples were unable to do so. This perplexity is several times sharply and clearly expressed in the Gospel. Christ’s disciples several times begged him to confirm their faith in what he said: Matt. xx. 20-28 and Mark x. 35-45. According to either gospel, after the words which are terrible for every believer in the personal life, who assumes the good to lie in the riches of the world, and after the words that the rich man will not enter into the kingdom of God, and after the words, which are still more terrible for those who believe in nothing but the personal life, about this, that he who will not give up everything and his life for the sake of Christ’s teaching will not be saved, Peter asks, What shall we have for having followed thee, and given up everything? Then, according to Mark, James and John themselves, and according to Matthew their mother, ask him to grant them that they may sit on both sides of him when he shall be in his glory. They ask him to confirm their faith by a promise of a reward.

To Peter’s question Jesus replies with a parable about the labourers of the vineyard who are hired at different times (Matt. xx. 1-16); but in reply to James’s request he says, Ye know not what ye ask, that is, you ask for the impossible. The teaching is in the renunciation of the personal life, and you ask for personal glory, personal reward. You can drink the same cup (pass your life) that I drink, but no one can make you sit on the right and on the left of me, that is, equal with me. And then Christ says, Only in the worldly life do the strong of the world enjoy and acclaim the glory and power of the personal life; but you, my disciples, must know that the meaning of human life is not in personal happiness, but in serving all, in the humiliation in the sight of all. Man does not live to be ministered unto, but to minister and lay down his personal life, as a ransom for all. Tn reply to the demand of the disciples, which showed him their entire lack of comprehension of his teaching, Christ does not command them to believe, that is. to change that valuation of the goods and evils of life, which results from their teaching (he knows that this is impossible), but explains to them that meaning of life on which faith is based, that is, the true valuation of what is good and what bad, what important and what not.

In reply to Peter’s question (Mark x. 28), What shall we get for our sacrifices? Christ tells the parable of the labourers who w-'re hired at different times and yet received the same reward. Christ explains to Peter his wrong comprehension of the teaching, on which depends the absence of his faith. Christ says, Only in the personal and senseless life do people esteem and treasure the reward for work in proportion with the work. The faith in the reward for the work in proportion with the work springs from the teaching about the personal life. This faith is based on the assumption of certain rights which we are supposed to have to something; but man has no rights to anything, and he can have none; he has only obligations in return for the good which is given him, and so he cannot measure himself with any one. Even if he gives his whole life, he is unable to give back that which is given him, and so the master cannot be unjust to him. But if a man proclaims his rights to his life and asserts <sub>t</sub> them in respect to the beginning of everything which has given him life, he only shows by this that he does not understand the meaning of life.

Having received their happiness, men demand something more. These men were standing without work in the market-place, and were unhappy, — they did not live. The master took them and gave them the highest happiness of life, — work. They accepted the master’s kindness, and then remained dissatisfied. They are dissatisfied because they lack a clear comprehension of their situation. They came to their work with their false teaching as to their having a right to their life and their labour, and that, therefore, their labour ought to be rewarded. They do not understand that this labour is the highest good which is given them and for which they must only try to return a similar good, and cannot demand any reward.

And so people who have the same perverse opinion of life that these labourers have cannot possess the correct and true faith.

The parable of the master and the labourer who came from the field, which is told in reply to the direct request of the disciples that he confirm and increase their faith, more clearly defines the foundation of that faith which Christ teaches.

(Luke xvii. 3-10). In reply to Christ’s words that we must forgive our brother not once but seventy times seven times, the disciples, frightened at the difficulty of executing this rule, say, Yes, but it is necessary to believe in order to execute this: so confirm and increase our faith. As before they asked what they would get for it, so now they ask the same that all so-called Christians ask: I want to believe, but I cannot; confirm our faith that the rope of salvation will save us. Some say, Grant us that we should believe, — precisely what the Jews said to him when they demanded miracles of him. Make it possible for us, by means of miracles and promises of rewards, to believe in our salvation.

The disciples speak as we speak, It would be nice, if we, living that lonely, peculiar life which we are living, could be made to believe also this, that if we shall fulfil God’s teaching, it will be better for us. We all utter this demand, which is contrary to the whole meaning of Christ’s teaching, and wonder why we cannot believe.

And to this radical misconception, which existed then even as it exists now, he answers with a parable, in which he shows what the true faith is. Faith cannot result from a trust in what he may say; faith results only from the consciousness of one’s position. Faith is based only on the rational consciousness of what it is better to do when one finds oneself in a certain position. He shows that it is not possible to rouse this faitli in other people by the promise of rewards and by the threat of punish-

ment; that this would be a very weak trust, which would be destroyed with the first temptation; that the faith which moves mountains, which no one can shake, is based on the consciousness of the inevitable ruin and on that one salvation which is possible in this situation.

In order that we may have faith, we do not need any promise of rewards. It must be understood that the only salvation from the inevitable destruction of life is that which in the will of the master is the common life. Every one who has come to understand this will not seek a confirmation, but will be saved without any admonitions.

In reply to the request of the disciples to confirm them in their faith, Christ says, When the master comes with the servant from the field, he does not tell him to sit down to eat, but orders him to put away the cattle and serve him, and then only does the labourer sit down at the table and eat his dinner. The labourer does all this and does not consider himself offended, and he does not boast and ask thanks or a reward, but knows that it has to be so, and that he is only doing what is necessary, and that it is a necessary condition of his service and at the same time the true good of his life. Even so you, says Christ, when you do everything which you are commanded, must consider that you have done only what you ought to do. He who will understand his relation to the master, will understand that only by submitting to the will of the master is he able to have life, and will know in what his good lies, and will have faith for which there will be nothing impossible. It is this faith that Christ teaches. Faith, according to Christ’s teaching, is based on the rational cognition of the meaning of one’s life.

The foundation of faith, according to Christ’s teaching, is the light.

John i. 9-12: That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.

John iii. 19—21: And this is the condemnation,[6] that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. For him who understands Christ’s teaching there can be no question about confirming his faith. Faith, according to Christ’s teaching, is based on the light, on truth. Christ nowhere appeals to people to believe in him; he only appeals to them to believe in the truth.

He says to the Jews (John viii. 40), But now you seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God. (46) Which of you convinces me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? John xviii. 37: To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth hear- eth my voice. John xiv. 6: He saith, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

In another place of the same chapter (16 and 17) he says: The Father shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever: even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

He says that his whole teaching, he himself, is the truth.

[6] Kpiais does not mean <em>condemnation,</em> but <em>division. —Author's Note.</em>

Christ’s teaching is the teaching of the truth, and so Christ’s faith is not trust in anything, as referring to Jesus, but the knowledge of the truth. It is impossible to assure one of Christ’s teaching,— it is impossible to bribe one to fulfil it. He who understands Christ’s teaching will have faith in him, because his teaching is the truth. He who knows the truth which is necessary for his good cannot help but believe in it, and so a man who understands that he is actually drowning cannot help but take hold of the rope of salvation. The question as to how one should do in order that one may be able to believe is a question which only expresses the lack of conception of the teaching of Jesus Christ.

*** X. Reason Is That Law Cognized by Man, by Which His Life Is to Be Accomplished

We say that it is hard, to live according to Christ’s teaching. How can it help being hard since we ourselves with all our life cautiously conceal from ourselves our situation, and carefully confirm in ourselves the confidence in this, that our situation is not what it is, but something quite different? And this confidence, by calling it faith, we exalt to something sacred, and with all possible means — with force, with acting upon the feelings, with threats, with flattery, with deceit — entice men to this false trust. In this demand of a trust in what is impossible and irrational we reach a point where the very irrationality of that which we demand shall be trusted is taken by us as a sign of its truth. A man was found who, being a Christian, said, <em>Credo quia absurdum,</em> and all the other Christians repeat this with raptures, assuming that insipidity is the best means for teaching the truth to men. Lately, in a conversation with me, a learned and clever man said to me that the Christian teaching as a moral teaching about life was not important. “All this,” he said to me, <em>r</em> will be found with the Stoics, with the Brahmins, in the Talmud. The essence of the Christian teaching is not in this, but in the theosophical teaching which is expressed in the dogmas.” That is, not that is of any value to the Christian teaching which is eternal and universally human, which is needed for life and is rational, but that is important and precious in Christianity which is entirely incomprehensible and, therefore, unnecessary, and that in the name of which millions of men have been killed.

We have formed for ourselves a false representation of our life and of that of the world, and this is based on nothing but our malice and personal lusts; and the faith in this false representation, which is externally connected with the teaching of Christ, we consider most necessary and important for life. If it were not for this trust in the lie, which men have maintained through the ages, the lie of our conception of life and the truth of Christ’s teaching would have been made manifest long ago.

It is terrible to say so (it so seems to me at times), but, if the teaching of Christ with the ecclesiastical teaching which has grown up on it did not exist at all, those who are now called Christians would be much nearer to the teaching of Christ, that is, to the rational teaching about the good of life, than they are now. The moral teachings of the prophets of all humanity would not be concealed from them. They would have their little prophets of truth, whom they would believe. But as it is, the whole truth is revealed, and this truth has appeared so terrible to those whose deeds are evil, that they have transformed it into a he, and men have lost confidence in the truth. In our European society, Christ’s declaration that he came into the world to bear witness of the truth, and that, therefore, every one who is of the truth hears him, has long ago been met with Pilate’s words, What is the truth? These words, which express such a sad and deep irony against one Boman, we have taken as the truth and have made them our faith. All in our society live, not only without the truth, not only without any desire to know it, but even with the firm assurance that of all vain occupations the vainest is the seeking of the truth that determines human life.

The teaching about life — what with all the nations previous to our European society was always regarded as most important, what Christ declared to be the one thing needed — is the only one to be excluded from our life and from all human activity. This is the business of the institution which is called the church, and no one, not even those who form this institution, has believed in it for a long time.

The one window for the light, toward which the eyes of all thinking and suffering people are directed, is screened. To the question, What am I? what shall I do? can I not alleviate my life in accordance with the teaching of that God who, as you say, came to save us? I am told: Execute the injunctions of the authorities, and believe in the church. But why do we live so wretchedly in this world? asks a despairing voice: What is all this evil for? Is it possible I cannot avoid participating with my body in this evil? The answer is, No, your desire to pass your life well and to help others to do so is pride. There is one thing you can do, and that is, to save yourself, your soul, for the future life. But if you do not wish to take part in the evil of the world, go out of it. This way is open to all, says the teaching of the church, but know that, in choosing this path, you must no longer take part in the life of the world, but must stop living and slowly kill yourself. There are but two ways, our teachers tell us, and those are, to believe and obey us and the authorities, and to participate in the evil which we have instituted, or to go out of the world and into a monastery, to watch and to fast; or to let your flesh rot on a pillar, to bend and unbend your body and do nothing for men; or to acknowledge Christ’s teaching impracticable and so to acknowledge the lawlessness of life as sanctified by religion; or to renounce life, which is tantamount to a slow suicide.

No matter how remarkable to a man who understands the teaching of Christ appears the error which assumes that Christ’s teaching is very good for men, but impracticable, — the error which assumes that a man who wishes to fulfil Christ’s teaching with works, and not with words, must go out of the world, seems more remarkable still.

The delusion that it is better for a man to retire from the world than to subject himself to the temptations of the world is an old error which has been long known to the Jews, but which is entirely foreign, not only to the spirit of Christianity, but even to Judaism. Against this delusion the story of the prophet Jonah, which Christ liked so much and adduced so often, was written long before his time. The thought of this story is the same from beginning to end: Jonah the prophet wants himself to be just and removes himself from the corrupt people. But God shows him that he is a prophet and is wanted for nothing else than that he should announce his knowledge of the truth to people who have gone astray, and so must not run away from these erring people, but must live in communion with them. Jonah has contempt for the corrupt Ninevites and runs away from them; but, no matter how much Jonah runs away from his vocation, God brings him back to the Ninevites by means of the whale, and what God wishes is accomplished, that is, the Ninevites receive through Jonah God’s -teaching, and their life is improved. But Jonah is by no means glad to be the tool of God’s will: he is annoyed, he is jealous of God in respect to the Ninevites, — he would like to be the only rational and good man. He retires to the wilderness, laments his fate, and murmurs against God. Then a gourd grows out in one night, to defend him against the sun, and the following night a worm devours this gourd. Jonah rebukes God more than ever, because his precious gourd has perished. Then God says to him, Thou art sorry for the gourd, which thou callest thy own, and which grew up in one night and disappeared in one night, and am I not sorry for the great multitude that perished, that multitude that live like animals, and are unable to discern between their right hand and their left hand? Thy knowledge of the truth was wanted even for this, that thou mightest transmit it to those who did not have it.

Christ knew this story and frequently quoted it, but, in addition to this, it tells in the gospels how, after the visit of John the Baptist, who retired to the wilderness, Christ, before the beginning of his preaching, was subjected to the same temptation, and how he was led by the devil (deception) into the wilderness in order to be tempted, and how he vanquished this deception and returned to Galilee in the strength of his spirit, and how, no longer contemning corrupt people, he after that passed his life among publicans, Pharisees, and sinners, teaching them the truth.[7]

[7] Luke iv. 1, 2: Christ is led by the deception into the wilderness, in order that he may be tempted there. Matt. iv. 3, 4: The deception says to Christ that he is not the Son of God, if he cannot make bread out of stones. Christ says, I can live without bread, —I live by what is breathed into me by God. Then the deception says, If thou livest by what is breathed into thee by God, throw thyself down from a height; thou wilt kill the flesh, but the spirit which is breathed into thee by God will not die. Christ answers, My life in the flesh is the will of God. To kill the flesh is to go against the will of God. to tempt God. Matt. iv. 8-11: Then the deception says, If that is so serve the flesh, like all men, and the flesh will reward thee. Christ answers, I am powerless over the flesh, —my life is in the spirit; but I cannot destroy the flesh, because the spirit was put into me by the will of God, and so, living in the flesh, I can serve only my Father, God. And Christ goes from the wilderness back to the world. — <em>Author’s Note.</em>

According to the church teaching Christ the God-man has given us an example of life. All his known life Christ passes in the whirlpool of life, — with publicans, with harlots, in Jerusalem, with the Pharisees. The chief commandments of Christ are the love of one’s neighbour and the preaching of his teaching to others. Both demand a constant communion with the world. Suddenly the conclusion is drawn from this, that, according to Christ’s teaching, it is necessary to go away from all men, not to have anything to do with any one, and to stand on a pillar. To follow Christ’s example, it turns out that we have to do the very opposite of what he taught and did.

Christ’s teaching, according to the church interpretations, presents itself, both to laymen and to the monastic orders, not as a teaching about life, — how it is to be made better for ourselves and for others, — but as a teaching of what worldly people are to believe in, in order that, living badly, they may none the less save themselves in the next world; and to the monastic orders, as to how they can make life worse than what it is.

But Christ does not teach this.

Christ teaches the truth, and if an abstract truth is a truth, it will be true even in reality. If the life in God is the one true life, blissful in itself, it is true and blissful here upon earth under all possible accidents of life. If the life here on earth did not confirm Christ’s teaching about life, this teaching would be untrue.

Christ does not call people away from what is good to what is worse, but, on the contrary, to something better from what is bad. He is sorry for people, who represent themselves to him as lost sheep that are perishing without a shepherd, and promises them a shepherd and good pasturage. He says that his disciples will be persecuted for his teaching and must suffer and bear the persecutions of the world with firmness. But he does not say that, following his teaching, they will suffer more than if they followed the teaching of the world; on the contrary, he says that those who will follow the teaching of the world will be unhappy, while those who will follow his teaching will be blessed.

Christ does not teach salvation through faith, nor asceticism, that is, the deception of the imagination, nor selfimposed sufferings in this life; but he teaches that kind of a life which, in addition to the salvation from the destruction of the personal life, would offer even here, in this world, less suffering and more pleasure than in the case of the personal life.

In disclosing his teaching, Christ says to men that, by fulfilling his teaching even among those who do not fulfil it, they wúll not be more unfortunate thereby than they were before, but, on the contrary, happier than those who will not fulfil this. Christ says that there is a safe worldly calculation why they should not trouble themselves about the life of the world.

Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee. And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundred-fold now in this time, he uses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the wrnrld to come, eternal life. Matt. xix. 27-29; Mark x. 28-30: Luke xviii. 28-30.

It is true, Christ mentions the fact that those who will obey him will be subjected to persecutions by those who will not obey him; but he does not say that the disciples will lose anything by it. On the contrary, he says that his disciples will have here, in this world, more joys than those who are not his disciples.

There can be no doubt as to Christ’s saying and thinking this, both on account of the lucidity of his words and the meaning of the whole teaching, and also from the way he lived and from the way his disciples lived. But is it the truth?

In analyzing the abstract question as to whose position will be better, that of Christ’s disciples or that of the disciples of the world, it is impossible to overlook the fact that the position of Christ’s disciples must be better, because Christ’s disciples, doing good to all men, will not provoke enmity in men. Christ’s disciples, doing no one any evil, may be persecuted by evil men only; but the disciples of the world must be persecuted by all, since the law of life of the disciples of the world is a law of struggle, that is, I persecution of one another. The accidents of suffering are indeed the same for both, but with this difference, that Christ’s disciples will be prepared for them, while the disciples of the world will employ all the forces of their souls in order to avoid them, and that Christ’s disciples, suffering, will think that their sufferings are needed for the world, while the disciples of the world, suffering, will not know what they are suffering for. Considering the matter in the abstract, the condition of Christ’s disciples must be more advantageous than the condition of the disciples of the world. But is this so in practice?

In order to verify this, let each man recall all the difficult minutes of his life, all the bodily and spiritual sufferings which he has endured and still endures, and let him ask himself in the name of what he is enduring all these misfortunes, whether in the name of the world, or in that of Christ. Let each sincere man try and recall his whole past life, and he will see that not once did he suffer from the execution of Christ’s teaching, but that the majority of the misfortunes of his life have been due to this, that, in opposition to his bent, he has followed the compulsory teaching of the world.

In my life, which is exceptionally happy 'from the worldly point of view, I can think of enough sufferings borne by me in the name of the teachings of the world to suffice for a good martyr in the name of Christ. All the most oppressive minutes of my life, beginning with student sprees and debauches and ending with duels, war, and that malaise and those unnatural and agonizing conditions of life, in which I now live, — all this is a torment in the name of the teaching of the world.

Yes, I am speaking only of my life, which is exceptionally happy from a worldly point of view. And how many martyrs there are who have suffered for the teaching of the world in a manner which I am not even able to present to myself!

We do not see all the difficulty and all the peril of the fulfilment of the teaching of the world simply because we think that everything we suffer for it is necessary.

We have convinced ourselves that all those misfortunes which we inflict upon ourselves are necessary conditions of our life, and so we cannot understand that Christ is teaching us precisely how we are to free ourselves from our misfortunes and live peacefully.

To be able to consider the question as to what life is happier, we must at least mentally renounce this false conception and without any preconceived notion look at ourselves and all about us.

Walk through a large crowd of people, especially in the city, and scan those emaciated, troubled, sickly faces, and then recall your own life and those men’s lives the details of which you happen to have found out; recall all those violent deaths, all those suicides, w’hich have come to your ears, and ask yourself in the name of what all these sufferings, deaths, and despairs, that lead people to commit suicide, take place. You will see, no matter how strange it may seem to you at first, that nine-tenths of the sufferings of men are borne by them in the name of the teaching of the world, that all these sufferings are unnecessary and avoidable, that the majority of men are the martyrs of the teaching of the world.

The other day, which was a rainy autumnal Sunday, I crossed the market-place of the Sukharev Tower in a horsecar. For the distance of half a verst the car had to push aside a solid mass of people, who immediately came together again behind us. From morning until evening these thousands of people, of whom the majority are hungry and in tatters, crowd here in the mud, cursing, cheating, and despising one another. The same takes place in all the market-places of Moscow. The evening is passed by these people in inns and restaurants, and the night in their dens and corners. Sunday is their best day of the week. On Monday they will again go about their hateful work in their infected dens.

Consider the lives of all these men, the condition which they have left in order to choose the one in which they have placed themselves; consider that unceasing labour which these people — these men and these women — do wilfully, and you will see that they are true martyrs.

All these people have left their homes, their fathers, brothers, frequently wives and children, have renounced everything, even life itself, and have come to town in order to obtain that which according to the teaching of the world is considered necessary for each of them. All of these, not to speak of those tens of thousands of unfortunate men who have lost everything and live on tripes and vodka in their doss-houses, — all, from the factory hand, cab-drivers, sewing-girls, prostitutes, to the rich merchant and the minister, and their wives,-— live a most oppressive and unnatural life and yet have not acquired what for them is necessary according to the teaching of the world.

Hunt among these people, and find, from a beggar to a rich man, one who has enough, with what he earns, for everything which he considers necessary according to the teaching of the world, and you will see that you will not find one in a thousand. Every one of them struggles with all his might to gain what he does not need, but what is demanded of him according to the teaching of the w’orld and the absence of which forms his misfortune. The moment he earns what he needs, a second and a third thing will be demanded of him, and thus proceeds this endless Sisyphean labour, which ruins the lives of men.

Take the scale of incomes of people, from those who spend three hundred roubles to those who spend fifty thousand roubles a year, and you will rarely find a man who is not worn out and exhausted from working to earn four hundred roubles, when he has three hundred roubles.

and five hundred roubles, when he has four hundred roubles, and so on; and there is not one who, having five hundred roubles, would of his free will go back to the condition of him who has only four hundred roubles. If there are such examples, a man makes this change, not in order to make his life easier, but in order to collect money and put it away. They all want to burden their lives, which are heavy as it is, and to give their souls completely to the teaching of the world. To-day a man earns a coat and a pair of overshoes, to-morrow a watch with a chain, the next day an apartment with a sofa and a lamp, then carpets for the drawing-room and velvet dresses, then a house, fast horses, pictures in gold frames, then he grows sick from the work above his strength, and dies. Another continues the same work and also gives his life to that Moloch, and he, too, dies, not knowing himself why he did all this. .

But, perhaps, this life itself, during which a man does all this, is happy in itself. Measure this life by what men have called happiness, and you will see that this life is dreadfully unfortunate. Indeed, what are the chief conditions of the earthly happiness, which no one would dispute?

One of the first universally acknowledged conditions of happiness is that life in which there is no violation of men’s connection with Nature, that is, a life under the open sky, in the light of the sun, in the fresh air: a communion with the soil, with plants, and with animals. Men have at all times considered the deprivation of this as a great misfortune. Those who are locked up in prisons feel this deprivation most keenly.

Now, let us look at the fives of people who live according to the teaching of the world: the more success they have obtained according to the teaching of the world, the more are they deprived of this condition of happiness; the higher the worldly happiness is which they have obtained, the less do they see the sunlight, fields and forests, wild and domestic animals. Many of them — nearly all the women — live to an old age, without having seen the sun rise and the morning more than once or twice in their lifetime and without ever having seen fields and forests otherwise than from a carriage or car window, and not only without ever having sowed or planted anything, or fed and reared cows, horses, chickens, but without having even a conception as to how animals are born, grow up, and live. These people see only stuffs, stones, wood, which are worked by human labour, and that, too, not in the sunlight, but under an artificial illumination; they hear only the sounds of machines, carriages, guns, musical instruments; they smell perfumes and tobacco smoke; under their feet and hands are nothing but stuffs, stones, and wood; on account of the weakness of their stomachs they generally eat what is not fresh, and what stinks. Their migrations from place to place do not save them from this deprivation. They travel in closed boxes. In the country and abroad, whither they journey, they have the same stuffs and the same wood under their feet, the same curtains which conceal from them the sunlight, the same lackeys, coachmen, janitors, who do not permit them to commune with the soil, the plants, and the animals. No matter where they may be, they are like prisoners, deprived of this condition of happiness. As prisoners take delight in the grass which sprouts in the prison yard, or in a spider, in a mouse, so these people now and then take delight in sickly house-plants, a parrot, a little dog, a monkey, whom, however, somebody else looks after.

Another unquestionable condition of happiness is work, in the first place, favourite and free work, in the second, physical work, which gives appetite and sound, soothing sleep. Again, the greater the happiness, as they understand it, which people have obtained according to the teaching of the world, the more they are deprived of this second condition of happiness. All the fortunate people of the world — dignitaries and rich people — are either, like prisoners, entirely deprived of work and unsuccessfully struggle against diseases which are the result of an absence of physical labour, and still more unsuccessfully against ennui which assails them (I say unsuccessfully, because work is a joy only when it is absolutely necessary, whereas nothing is necessary to them), or work at some hateful work, as is the case with bankers, prosecuting attorneys, governors, ministers, and their wives, who fix up drawing-rooms, china, and dresses for themselves and their children. (I say hateful, because I have never yet met one among them who praised his work and did it with the same pleasure with which a janitor cleans the snow away in front of a house.) All these happy people are either deprived of work, or are made to do work they do not like, that is, they find themselves in the condition in which criminals at hard labour are.

A third unquestionable condition of happiness is the family. And here again, this happiness is the less accessible to them the more they advance in worldly success. The majority are adulterers and consciously renounce the domestic joys, submitting to their inconveniences alone. If they are not adulterers, children are not a joy to them, but an impediment, and they of their own free will deprive themselves of them, trying in every way possible, sometimes by most painful means, to make their cohabitation sterile. And if they have children, they are deprived of the pleasure of communing with them. According to their laws, they must give them in charge of others, for the most part entire strangers, at first foreigners, and then state educators, so that a family causes them nothing but sorrow, — the children become just as unfortunate, from their childhood, as their parents are, and the children have but one wish toward them, and that is, that they may die soon and leave them an inheritance.[8] They are not locked up in a prison; but the consequences to their life in relation to the family is more tormenting than the deprivation of family, to which prisoners are subjected.

[8] Very strange is the justification of life which one frequently hears from parents. “I need nothing,” says a parent, “life is a burden to me, but, as I love my children I do this for their sake.” That is, I know indubitably from experience that our life is unhappy, and so — I educate my children in such a way that they may be just as unhappy as I am. And so, loving them, I inoculate them with the physical and moral infection of the cities, give them into the hands of strangers, who have only a selfish purpose in education, and carefully ruin my children physically and morally. This reflection is to serve as a justification of the insensate life of the parents themselves I <em>— Author’s Note.</em>

A fourth condition of happiness is a free and amicable communion with all the various men of the world. Here, again, the higher the level which people have reached in the world, the more they are deprived of this chief condition of happiness. The higher, the narrower that circle of men is with whom communion is possible, the lower is the mental and moral development of those few men who form the magic circle, from which there is no way out. For a peasant and his wife social intercourse is open with the whole world, and if one million of people do not want to have anything to do with him, he still has eighty millions of men working like him, from Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan, with whom he enters at once into close, brotherly relations, without waiting for an introduction or a visit. For an official and his wife there are hundreds like him, but his superiors do not admit him, and his inferiors are cut off from him. For a worldly rich man and his wife there are dozens of worldly families. Everything else is cut off from them. For a minister and a nabob and their families there exists a dozen such families as they are.

For emperors and kings the circle becomes narrower still. Is not this an imprisonment, where the incarcerated person has social intercourse with but two or three fellow prisoners?

Finally, a fifth condition of happiness is health and painless death. Here again the higher men stand on the social ladder, the more they are deprived of this condition of happiness. Take an average rich man and his wife and an average peasant and his wife, in spite of all the starvation and the labour beyond their strength, which the peasant people endure not through their fault, but through the cruelty of men, and compare them. You will see that the lower the men and women stand, the healthier they are, and the higher, the more sickly they are.

Pass in review all those rich men and their wives whom you have known, and you will find that the majority of them are sick. Among them a healthy man, who is not undergoing some cure all the time, or periodically in the summer, is as much an exception as a sick person among the labouring classes. All these fortunate people, without exception, begin with onanism, which in their existence has become a natural condition of development: they all become toothless and gray and bald-headed in those years when a working person enters into full power. Nearly all of them are a prey to nervous, stomachic, or sexual diseases from gluttony, drunkenness, debauch, and doctoring, and those who do not die young pass half their life in undergoing some cures, in having morphine injected into them, or as puffed-up cripples who are incapable of living on their means, but can exist only as parasites, or as those ants whom their slaves feed. Pass their manner of dying in review: one committed suicide, another rotted away from syphilis, a third died as an old man from a tonic, a fourth died young from flagellation to which he subjected himself for the sake of excitation; one was eaten up alive by lice or by worms, another drank himself or ate himself to death, still another was killed by morphine, or from an artificial abortion. One after the other they perish in the name of the teaching of the world. And the crowds pack after them, and, like martyrs, they seek sufferings and ruin.

One life after another is thrown under the chariot of this god: the chariot passes along, lacerating these lives, and new, ever new, victims throw themselves under it with groans, and sighs, and curses !

The execution of Christ’s teaching is difficult. Christ says, Let those who want to follow leave house, fields, and brothers, and follow me, the God, and they will receive a hundred times more houses, fields, and brothers, and, besides, the eternal life. And nobody follows him. But in the teaching of the world it says: Abandon house, field, and brothers, leave the village for the rotten city, live all your life as a naked bath-house attendant, lathering other people’s backs in the hot steam; or as a huckster, all your life counting other people’s money in a basement; or as a prosecuting attorney, passing all your life in court and over papers, busy making worse the fate of unfortunates; or as a minister, all your life in a hurry to sign useless documents; or as a general, all your life killing people, — live this monstrous life, which always ends in agonizing death, and you will receive nothing in this world, and you will have no eternal life. And all go after them. Christ said, Take thy cross, and follow me, that is, humbly bear the fate which has befallen thee, and obey me, the God; and no one follows him. But the first useless man in epaulettes, wdio is no good except to commit murder, need only take it into his head to say, Take, not the cross, but the knapsack and the gun, and follow me to all kinds of suffering and eternal death,— and all follow him.

They leave their families, parents, wives, children, dress themselves in fools’ clothes, subject themselves to the power of the first man they meet, who is higher in rank, and, hungry, cold, and worn out from exhausting marches, follow him somewhere like a herd of oxen going to the slaughter-house; but they are not oxen, — they are men. They cannot help but know that they are driven to a slaughter-house; with the unsolved question,”What for?” and with despair in their hearts they march, dying from cold and hunger and infectious diseases, until they are placed under bullets and shells and are commanded to kill strangers. They kill and are killed, and none of those who kill know why or for what. The Turks roast them alive over a fire, flay them, and pull out their entrails. And to-morrow some one will whistle again, and again they will all go to meet terrible sufferings, and death, and obvious evil. And nobody finds this hard. Not only those who suffer, but even fathers and mothers do not find this hard. They go so far as to advise their children to do it. It seems to them not only that this is necessary and cannot be otherwise, but even that it is good and moral.

It would be easy to believe that the execution of Christ’s teaching is hard and terrible and painful, if the execution of the teaching of the world were very easy and harmless and agreeable. But the teaching of the world is much harder, much more dangerous and painful of execution than Christ’s teaching.

At one time, they say, there existed martyrs of Christ, but they were the exception: with us they are counted to the number of 380,000, — both voluntary and involuntary martyrs, — for the period of eighteen hundred years. Count up the martyrs of the world, and for each martyr of Christ you will find one thousand martyrs of the teaching of the world, whose sufferings were one hundred times more terrible. For the present century alone they figure thirty millions of men killed in wars.

All these are martyrs of the teaching of the world, who needed, not to follow Christ’s teaching, but only to refuse to follow the teaching of the world, and they would have been freed from suffering and death.

A man need but do what he wants to, — refuse to go to war, — and he will be sent to dig ditches, and will not be tortured to death at Sevastopol or Plevna. A man need but refuse to believe in the teaching of the world, that it is necessary to put on galoshes and a chain and to have a useless drawing-room, and that it is necessary to do all those foolish things which the teaching of the world demands of him, and he will not know that tantalizing labour, and those sufferings and eternal cares and work without rest and without aim; he will not be deprived of communion with Nature, of his favourite work, of his family, of his health, and will not senselessly die an agonizing death.

We need not be martyrs in the name of Christ,— Christ does not teach this. He teaches us to stop tormenting ourselves in the name of the false teaching of the world.

Christ’s teaching has a deep metaphysical meaning; Christ’s teaching has a universally human meaning; Christ’s teaching has a very simple, clear, practical meaning for the life of each individual man. This meaning may be expressed as follows: Christ teaches people not to do anything foolish. In this consists the very simple, universally accessible meaning of Christ’s teaching.

Christ says, Be not angry, consider no one beneath thee, — for it is foolish. If thou shalt be angry, and offend people, it will be worse for thee. Again Christ says, Do not run after women, but come together with one woman, — for that will be better for thee. Again he says, Make no promises to any one about anything, or else they will compel thee to do foolish and criminal things. Again he says, Do not repay evil with evil, or else the evil will come back to thee as a greater evil than before, like the poised beam above the honey, which kills the bear. And again he says, Do not regard people as strangers, simply because they live in another country and speak another language. If thou shalt consider them enemies, and they shall consider thee an enemy, it will only be worse for thee. And so, do none of these foolish things, and thou wilt be better off.

“Yes,” people reply to this, “but the world is so constructed that it is more painful to oppose this order than to Eve in accordance with it. If a man should decline to do military service, he would be put into prison and perhaps be shot. If a man were not to secure his life by obtaining what is necessary for him and for his family, he and his family would starve.”

Thus people speak, trying to defend the structure of the world, but they themselves do not think in this manner. They speak so only because they cannot deny the justice of the teaching of Christ, whom they profess to believe, and they have to justify themselves in some way for not fulfilling this teaching. But they do not think so, and have never thought so. They believe in the teaching of the vrorld, and only use the excuse which the church has taught them, that in fulfilling Christ’s teaching it is necessary to suffer much, and so they never even try to carry out Christ’s teaching. We see endless sufferings which people endure in the name of the teaching of the world, but we never see in our time any sufferings for the sake of Christ’s teaching. Thirty millions have perished in wars for the sake of the teaching of the world; thousands of millions have perished in an agonizing life in the name of the teaching of the world; but no millions, not even thousands, nor dozens, nor even one man is known to me, who died or lived an agonizing life, starving and freezing, for the sake of Christ’s teaching. This is only a ridiculous excuse, which proves to what degree Christ’s teaching is unknown to us. Not only do we fail to share it, but we have never taken it seriously. The church has troubled itself to explain to us Christ’s teaching in such a way that it presents itself, not as a teaching of life, but as a scarecrow.

Christ calls men to the spring of water, which is here, near them. People are tormented by thirst: they eat mud and drink the blood of one another, but the teachers have told them that they will perish, if they go to the spring to which Christ is calling them. And the people believe them, and are tormented, and die of thirst within two steps of the water, without daring to approach them. But we need only believe Christ, that he brought the good down upon earth, that he gives us, who are thirsty, a spring of living water; we need only come to him, in order that we may see how tricky the deception of the church is and how senseless our sufferings are, while salvation is so near. We need only accept Christ’s teaching in a straight and simple manner, in order that we may see clearly the terrible deception in which we all live.

Generation after generation we labour to provide for our life by means of violence and of property security. The happiness of our life presents itself to us as consisting of the greatest possible power and the largest amount of possessions. We are so used to this that Christ’s teaching, which says that man’s happiness cannot depend on power and possessions and that a rich man cannot be happy, presents itself to us as a demand for a sacrifice in the name of future benefits. But it does not even occur to Christ to demand sacrifices of us; on the contrary, he teaches us not to do what is worse, but to do what is best for us here, in this life. Christ, who loves men, teaches them to refrain from securing their lives by means of violence and of property, even as men, loving their neighbours, teach them to refrain from fighting and getting drunk. He says that, living without offering resistance to others and without possessions, men will be happier, and this he confirms by his example of life. He says that a man who lives according to his teaching must be prepared to die any moment at the hands of those who offer violence, and from cold and hunger, and cannot count on one hour of his life. And this seems to us to be a terrible demand for some sacrifices; but it is only a confirmation of those conditions under which every man lives inevitably at all times. A disciple of Christ must any minute be prepared for sufferings and death. Is not a disciple of the world in the same state?

We are so used to our deception that everything we do for the supposed security of our life — our armies, our fortresses, our supplies, our garments, our cures, all our property, our money — seems to us to be something real, which seriously secures our life. We forget what is obvious to every one, what happened to him who took it into his head to build granaries in order to secure himself for a long time: he died that very night. Everything we do to make our life secure is precisely what the ostrich does, when it stops to hide its head, in order that it may not see how it is being killed. We do worse than an ostrich: in order doubtfully to provide for a doubtful life in the doubtful future, we certainly ruin our certain life in the certain present.

The deception consists in the fallacious conviction that our life can be made secure by our struggle with other people. We are so accustomed to this deception of this supposed security of our life and of our property that we do not notice what we are losing for the sake of it. And we are losing everything, — our whole life. Our whole life is swallowed by the care of making our life secure and of preparing for it, so that nothing of life is left.

We need but for a moment renounce our habit and look at life from one side, in order that we may see that everything we do for the supposed security of our life we do not at all do in order to make our life secure, but only in order to forget, while we are busy with it, that life is never secure and cannot be made secure. And we not only deceive ourselves and lose our present life for an imaginary one, but in this striving after security we most frequently lose precisely what we want to make secure. The French armed themselves in the year 1870 in order to make their life secure, and caused the destruction of hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen; the same thing is done by all nations that arm themselves. A rich man makes his life secure by the possession of money, but this same money attracts the robber, who kills him. A suspicious man secures his life by means of a cure, and this very cure kills him slowly, or, if it does not kill him, it certainly deprives him of life, as it did that sick man who had failed to live for thirty-eight years, waiting for the angel at the pool.

Christ’s teaching about this, that it is impossible to make life secure, but that one must be ready to die at any moment, is unquestionably better than the teaching of the world about the necessity of making life secure; it is better by this, that the inevitableness of death and the insecurity of life remain the same with either the teaching of the world or that of Christ, but that life itself, according to Christ’s teaching, is no longer entirely absorbed without any residue in the idle occupation of an imaginary attempt at securing it: it becomes free, and can be devoted to its one proper aim, — its own good and the good of others.

A disciple of Christ will be poor. Yes, that is, he will always make use of all that good which God has given him. He will not ruin his life. We have expressed by the word “poverty” what is happiness, but the matter itself has not changed from it. When we say he will be poor, we mean that he will not be in the city, but in the country; he will not sleep at home, but will work in the woods and in the fields, and will see the sunlight, the earth, the sky, the animals; he will not trouble himself with the thought as to what he will eat in order to whet his appetite, and what to do to pass an hour, but will be hungry three times a day; he will not toss on soft pillows and wonder how he may save himself from insomnia, but will sleep; he will have children and will live with them; he will live in free communion with all people, and, above all else, will do nothing he does not like; he will not be afraid of what will become of him. He will be sick, and suffer, and die like all men (better than the rich, if we are to judge from the way the poor suffer and die), but he will live more happily. To be poor, to be a mendicant, to be a vagrant (tttw^o? means a vagrant), is precisely what Christ taught, without which it is impossible to enter the kingdom of God, without which it is impossible to be happy here upon earth.

“But no one will feed you, and you will starve,” people reply to this. To the retort that, living according to Christ’s teaching, a man will starve, Christ replied with one short utterance (which is interpreted as a justification of the idleness of the clergy) (Matt. x. 10, Luke x. 7).

He said, Take no scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give: for the labourer is worthy of his hire.

The labourer is worthy afmç êart, — word for word it means, he can and shall have his meat. This is a very brief utterance, but for him who understands it as Christ understood it there can no longer be any discussion as to this, that a man who has no property will starve. To understand this word in its actual significance, it is necessary first to reject the idea about man’s bliss consisting in idleness, which, in consequence of the dogma of redemption, has become so natural to us. It is necessary to reestablish that conception, which is characteristic of all uncorrupted people, that it is not idleness, but labour, that forms a necessary condition of man’s happiness; that man cannot help but work; that it is hard and tiresome not to work, just as it is hard and tiresome for an ant, a horse, and any animal. It is necessary to forget our wild superstition that the condition of a man who has an inexhaustible dollar, that is, a government position, or the right to some land, or bonds with coupons, which make it possible for him to do nothing, is a natural, happy condition. We must reconstruct in our conception that view of labour which is held by all uncorrupted people, and which was held by Christ, when he said that the labourer was worthy of his meat. Christ could not imagine any people who would look upon work as a curse, and so he could not imagine a man who did not work, or did not want to work. He always takes it for granted that his disciple works. And so he says: If a man works, his labour supports him; and if another man takes this work to himself, he will support the labourer, even because he makes use of the labourer’s work. Consequently the labourer will always have his meat. He will have no property, but there can be no question as to his support. The difference between Christ’s teaching and that of our world as relating to work consists in this, that, according to the world’s teaching, work is man’s especial desert, in which he vies with others, and assumes that he has a right to a proportionately better support, the greater his work is; while, according to Christ’s teaching, work, labour, is a necessary condition of man’s life, and the support is its inevitable consequence. Work produces food, food produces work, — such is the eternal circle: one is a result and a cause of the other. No matter how evil a master may be, he will feed the labourer, even as he feeds the horse which works for him; he will feed the labourer in such a way that he can do as much work as possible, that is, he will contribute to that which forms man’s good.

The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. According to Christ’s teaching every individual man will - have the best life, independently of what the world is, if he understands his calling, which is not to demand any work from others, but to devote his own life to work for others, to lay down his life, a ransom for many. A man who acts in this manner, says Christ, is worthy of meat, that is, he cannot help but receive it. With the words, “Man does not live to be worked for, but to work for others,” Christ establishes that foundation which unquestionably secures man’s material existence; and with the words, “The workman is worthy of his meat,” Christ removes that usual objection to the possibility of fulfilling his teaching, which consists in this, that a man who fulfils Christ’s teaching, amidst those who do not fulfil it, will perish of hunger and cold. Christ shows that a man secures his sustenance, not by taking it away from others, but by becoming useful and necessary to others. The more necessary he is to others, the more will his existence be made secure.

With the present order of things, people who do not fulfil Christ’s laws, but work for their neighbour, though they have no possessions, do not starve. How, then, can one object to Christ’s teaching, saying that those who fulfil his teaching, that is, who work for their neighbour, will starve? A man cannot starve so long as the rich have bread. In Russia there are millions of people, at any given moment of time, who live without any possessions, supporting themselves by their work alone.

Among the Gentiles a Christian will be as secure as among Christians. He works for others, consequently he is needed by them, and they will feed him. Even a dog that is needed is fed and taken care of; how, then, will they not feed and guard a man who is needed by all men?

But a sick man, a man with a family, with children, is not wanted, — he cannot work, — and they will stop feeding him, those will say who are bound to prove the justice of the beastly life. This they will say, this they say now, and they do not see that they themselves who say this would like to act thus, but are unable to do so, and act quite differently. These very people, who do not acknowledge the applicability of Christ’s teaching, none the less fulfil it. They all the time feed a sheep, an ox, a dog, which gets sick. They even do not kill an old horse, but give it work to do according to its strength; they feed their family, the lambs, the young pigs, the puppies, in expectation of profit from them; how, then, will they refuse to feed a useful man, when he gets sick, and how will they fail to find appropriate work for the old and the young, and how will they refuse to support people who will be able later on to do some work for them?

Not only will they do so, but they are doing so even now. Nine-tenths of men, the masses, are fed by onetenth, by the rich and the strong, as though the masses > were beasts of burden. And, no matter how dark the delusion in which this one-tenth lives, no matter how much it despises the remaining nine-tenths of people, this one-tenth of the mighty never takes the necessary sustenance away from the nine-tenths, however much they may wish to do so. The rich leave to the poor as much as is necessary for them to multiply and work for the rich. Of late this one-tenth has been working consciously for the purpose of feeding regularly the nine-tenths, that is, in order to get as much work out of them as possible, and to have them multiply and rear new workmen. Even the ants attend to the increase and rearing of their milch- cows, so how can men help doing the same, — attending to the increase of those who work for them? Workmen are needed, and those who make use of the work will always see to it that these workmen should not decrease in numbers.

The objection to the practicability of Christ’s teaching, which is, that if I do not earn anything for myself and do not retain what I earn, no one will feed my family, is just, but only in respect to idle, useless, and, therefore, harmful people, such as are the majority of our rich classes. No one will bring up the idle, unless it be senseless parents, because idle people are of no use to any one, not even to themselves; but even the worst of people will feed and rear working people. Calves are brought up, but a man is a more useful working animal than an ox, and so he has always been valued in the slave market.

This is the reason why the children will never be left without any cares.

Man does not live to have others work for him, but himself to work for others. He who will work will be fed.

These are truths that are confirmed by the life of the whole world.

Wherever man has worked he has always and everywhere received his sustenance, just as a horse receives its feed. The worker has received such a sustenance unwillingly, against his will, for the worker has wished but for this, — to be freed from work, to earn as much as possible, and to sit down on the shoulders of him who is now sitting on bis. Such an unwilling worker, an envious and poor labourer, was not left without his sustenance, and has been even happier than the one who has not worked and has lived on the labours of other men. How much more happy will the wmrkman according to Christ’s teaching be, if his aim shall consist in doing as much w'ork as possible and in receiving as little as possible for it! And how much more happy still will his situation be, when around him there will be a few, and perhaps many, like him, who will serve him!

Christ’s teaching about work and its fruits is expressed in the narrative of the feeding of five and seven thousand persons with two fishes and five loaves. . Humanity will have the highest accessible good on earth, when men will not try to swallow and use up everything for themselves, but will do as Christ taught them at the shore of the sea.

It was necessary to feed thousands of people. One of Christ’s disciples told him that he had seen several fishes in the possession of one man; the disciples had also several loaves of bread. Jesus knew that not all the people, who had come from a distance, had brought food with them. (That many had provisions is proved by the fact that all four gospels say that at the end of the feast there were gathered twelve baskets. If none but the boy had had anything, there could not have been twelve baskets in the field.) If Christ had not done what he did, that is, the miracle of feeding thousands with five loaves, there would have happened what is now taking place in the world. Those who had provisions would have eaten up everything, even with an effort, that nothing might be left. The stingy might have carried home anything that was left. Those who had nothing would have remained hungry, and would have looked with malicious envy at those who were eating; some of them might, indeed, have taken away some food by force from those who were provident, and there would have ensued quarrels and fights, and some would have gone home satiated, while others would have been hungry and angry: there would have taken place what happens in our life.

But Christ knew what he wanted to do (as it says in the Gospel); he taught all to sit round about him, and taught his disciples to offer to others what they had, and to tell the others to do likewise. And then it happened that, when all those who had provisions did what Christ’s disciples had done, that is, offered their own food to others, all ate with moderation, and when they went around in the circle, even those who had had nothing at first got something to eat. And all were fed, and much bread was left, so much of it that twelve baskets of it were collected.

Christ teaches men that they must consciously act in this manner in their lives, for such is the law of man and of all humanity. Work is a necessary condition of man’s life, and work gives the good to man; consequently the detention from other men of the fruits of one’s own or of another’s labour interferes with the good of man. The giving up of one’s labours to another contributes to the good of man.

“If men do not take away from one another, they will starve,” we say. It seems that the very opposite ought to be said: if men take things from one another, there will be people who will starve, as is actually the case.

Every man, no matter how he may live, — whether in accordance with Christ’s teaching or with that of the world, — lives only by the work of other men. Other men have guarded him and given him food and drink, and guard and feed him now; but, according to the world’s teaching, a man compels others by force and threats to coutinue to feed him and his family. According to Christ’s teaching, a man is just as much taken care of and given food and drink by others; but, in order that other people may continue to guard and feed him, he does not compel any one to do so; he tries himself to serve others and to be useful to all, and thus becomes necessary for all. The people of this world will always desire to stop feeding a useless man who compels them by force to feed him, and with the first opportunity not only stop feeding him, but also kill him as a useless man. But all men, no matter how mean they may be, will carefully feed aud guard him who is working for them.

Which, then, is more correct, moi>? sensible, and more joyful? To live according to the teaching of the world, or according to that of Christ?

*** XI. The False Direction of Knowledge

Christ’s teaching establishes God’s kingdom upon earth. It is not true that the carrying out of this teaching is difficult: it is not only nbt difficult, but is even inevitable for a man who has become acquainted with it. This teaching gives the one possible salvation from the inevitably imminent danger of the perdition of the personal life. Finally, the fulfilment of this teaching not only does not invite to sufferings and deprivations in this life, but also frees us from nine-tenths of the sufferings which we endure in the name of the teaching of the world.

When I understood this, I asked myself: Why have .1 not fulfilled this teaching, which gives me what is good, salvation and joy, but have fulfilled something quite different, — that which has made me unhappy? There could be but one answer: I did not know the truth, — it was concealed from me.

When the meaning of Christ’s teaching was for the first time revealed to me, I did not think that the elucidation of this meaning would ever bring me to the negation of the church teaching. It only seemed to me that the church had not yet reached those deductions which result from Christ’s teaching, but I did not think in the least that the newly revealed meaning of Christ’s teaching and its deductions would bring discord between me and the church teaching. I was afraid of it, and so, during my investigations, I not only avoided finding any fault with the church doctrine, but, on the contrary, intentionally shut my eyes to those propositions which seemed obscure and strange to me, but did not contradict that which T regarded as the essence of the Christian teaching.

But the farther 1 went in the study of the Gospel, the more clearly was there revealed to me the meaning of Christ’s teaching and the more inevitable became for me the choice between Christ’s teaching, which was rational, clear, and in harmony with my conscience, and which gave me salvation, and the diametrically opposite teaching, which was not in harmony with my reason and my conscience, and which gave me nothing but the consciousness of my perdition together with all the others. I could not help but reject one after another the tenets of the church. I did this unwillingly, with a struggle, with a desire to soften as much as possible my dissension with the church, to keep from separating from it, from being deprived of the most joyous support in faith, — of my communion with many. But when I finished my work, I saw that, no matter liow much I tried to retain as much of the church doctrine as possible, nothing was left of it. Not only was there nothing left, but I convinced myself that nothing could be left.

Just as I was finishing my work the following incident occurred: my young son told me that between two of our servants, uneducated men who could scarcely read, there was going on a dispute in regard to an article in a religious book, in which it said that it was not sinful to kill criminals or to kill in a war. I did not believe it was possible for such a thing to be printed, and so asked for the book. The book under dispute is called “Expository Prayer-book, Third Edition, Eightieth Thousand. Moscow, 1879.” On p. 163 of this book it says:

“What is the sixth commandment of God? — Thou shalt not kill. — What does God forbid by this commandment? — He forbids killing, that is, depriving a man of life. — Is it sinful legally to put to death a criminal and to kill an enemy in war? — It is not. A criminal is deprived of life in order to put a stop to the great evil which he is doing: the enemy is killed in war, because in a war we fight for our emperor and our country.” To these words is limited the explanation of why the commandment of God is put aside. I did not believe my eyes.

The disputants asked for my opinion in the matter of their dispute. I told the one who acknowledged the justice of what was printed, that the explanation was not correct.

“But how do they print incorrectly against the law?” he asked me.

I could not answer him. I kept the book and glanced it through. The book contains: (1) thirty-one prayers with instructions as to genuflexions and the putting together of fingers; (2) an exposition of the Symbol of Faith; (3) unexplained extracts from the fifth chapter of Matthew, which for some reason are called commandments for the attainment of blessedness; (4) the ten commandments of Moses with explanations, which for the most part make them void, and (5) troparia for holidays.

As I have said, I tried not only to avoid judging the ecclesiastic faith, but also to see it from its best side, and so did not hunt for its weak sides; though I well knew its academic literature, I was absolutely unacquainted with its didactic literature. The prayer-book, which was disseminated in such an enormous number of copies as late as 1879, and which called forth the doubts of the simplest kind of men, startled me.

I could not believe that the purely pagan contents of the prayer-book, which had nothing Christian in it, could be a doctrine which the church consciously disseminated among the masses. In order to verify it, I bought all the books published by the Synod, or “under its auspices,” which contained brief expositions of the church’s faith for children and for the masses and read them all.

Their contents were almost new to me. When I had studied religion, these books had not yet existed. So far as I remember, there did not exist the commandments of the beatitudes, nor the doctrine that it was not sinful to kill. It does not exist in any of the old Russian Catechisms. It is not to be found in the Catechism of Peter Mogfla, nor in those of Platon, nor in that of Byelyakov, nor in the short Catholic Catechisms. This innovation was made by Filarét, who also composed a Catechism for the military profession. The Expository Catechism is based on it. The basal book is the “Extensive Christian Catechism of the Orthodox Church for the Use of All Orthodox Christians,” published by order of his Imperial Majesty.

The book is divided into three parts: on faith, on hope, and on charity. In the first there is an analysis of the Nicene Symbol of Faith. In the second there is an analysis of the Lord’s Prayer and of the eight verses of the fifth chapter of Matthew, which form the introduction to the sermon on the mount and which for some reason are called the commandments for the attainment of blessedness. (These two parts treat of the dogmas of the church, of prayers and sacraments, but there is no teaching about life.) In the third part there is an exposition of the duties of a Christian. In this part, which is entitled “On Charity,” there is an exposition of the ten commandments of Moses, and not of the commandments of Christ. The commandments of Moses seem to be expounded merely in order to teach people not to fulfil them and to act in a contrary manner. After each commandment there is a provisory clause which destroys the commandment.

In reference to the first commandment, which enjoins us to worship the one God, the Catechism teaches us to worship angels and saints, not to speak of the Mother of God and the three persons of God (Explan. Cat. pp. 107108). In reference to the second commandment,— about making no idols, — the Catechism teaches us to worship the icons (p. 108). In reference to the third commandment, — about swearing in vain, — the Catechism teaches men to swear at every command of the <em>legal</em> power (p. iii). In reference to the fourth commandment, — about keeping the Sabbath, — the Catechism teaches us to celebrate the Sunday, and not the Sabbath, and thirteen great and a multitude of minor holidays, and to fast at all fasts, Wednesdays, and Fridays (pp. 112-115). In reference to the fifth commandment, — about honouring father and mother, — the Catechism teaches us “to honour the emperor, the country, the spiritual pastors, <em>who command in various relations” (sic);</em> and about the honouring of the commanders there are three pages with a list of all kinds of commanders: “commanders in schools, civil commanders, judges, military commanders, masters <em>(sic)</em> in relation to those who serve them and whom they own” <em>(sic)</em> (pp. 116-119) I am quoting from the Catechism of the year 1864. Twenty years have passed since the abolition of servitude, and no one has taken the trouble even of casting out this phrase which, on the occasion of God’s commandment to honour our parents, was introduced into the Catechism for the purpose of supporting and justifying slavery.

In reference to the sixth commandment, thou shalt not kill, — men are taught from the very first lines to kill others.

“Q. What is forbidden in the sixth commandment?

“A. The killing of our neighbour in any manner whatsoever.

“Q. Is every kill'a murder against the law?

“A. It is not illegal murder, when the killing is done <em>as a duty,</em> such as: (1) when a criminal is <em>put to death</em> according to legal process; (2) when an enemy is killed <em>in a war</em> waged for the emperor and the country.” (The italics are in the original.) And further on:

“Q. What cases may be referred to illegal murder?

“A. . . . when one <em>conceals or frees</em> a murderer.”

And this is printed and forcibly impressed in hundreds of thousands of copies and under the threat of punishment upon all Russians in the form of a Christian doctrine. The whole Russian nation is taught this. This is taught to all innocent angel-children, whom Christ asks not to have driven away from him, because theirs is the kingdom of God, — those children whom we must resemble in order that we may enter into the kingdom of God, whom we must resemble in order that we may not know it,— those children of whom Christ, defending them, said, Woe unto him that offendeth one of these little ones. And it is these children that are taught by force that this is the one sacred law of God.

These are not proclamations that are secretly distributed at the peril of hard labour, but such that a failure to agree with them is punished by hard labour. As I am writing these words I feel a creeping sensation, because I permit myself to say that it is impossible to change the chief commandment of God, which is written down in all laws and in all hearts, with meaningless words, such as <em>as a duty, for the emperor and the country,</em> and that people ought not to be taught this.

Yes, there has happened what Christ warned people against, when he said (Luke xi. 33-36 and Matt. vi. 23): If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

The light that is in us has become darkness, and the darkness in which we live has become terrible. .

Woe unto you, said Christ, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye are the more guilty. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him worse than he was. Woe unto you, ye blind guides !

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and assume that if ye had lived in the days when the prophets were killed, you would not have been partakers with them in their blood. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are like them that killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure which was begun by those that are like you. And I will send you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your assemblies and persecute from city to city: that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from Abel.

All blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.

This sounds as though it had been written but yesterday against those men who now no longer compass sea and land, blaspheming against the Holy Ghost and guiding people to a faith which makes them worse, but outright force them to receive this faith and persecute and ruin all those prophets and righteous men who try to destroy their deception.

I became convinced that the church doctrine, even though it has called itself Christian, is that same darkness against which Christ fought and commanded his disciples to fight.

Christ’s teaching, like every religious teaching, contains two sides: (1) the teaching about the life of men,— how each individually and all together have to live, — the ethical teaching, and (2) an explanation why men must live in this and not that way, — the metaphysical teaching. One is the consequence and at the same time the cause of the other. A man must live thus because such is his destination, or, the destination of man is such, and so he must live accordingly. These two sides of every teaching are to be found in all the religions of the world. Such is the religion of the Brahmins, of Confucius, of Buddha, of Moses, and such also is Christ’s religion. It teaches life, how to live, and explains why you must live in this manner and not otherwise.

But what has happened with all the teachings, with Brahmanism, Judaism, Buddhism, has also happened with Christ’s teaching. Men depart from the teaching about life, and among the number of men there appear such as undertake to justify this departure. These men, who, according to Christ’s expression, seat themselves in Moses’ seat, explain the metaphysical side of the teaching in such a way that the ethical demands of the teaching become non-obligatory and give way to external worship, to rites. This phenomenon is common to all religions, but never, it seems to me, has this phenomenon been expressed with such lucidity as in Christianity. It found here such a lucid expression, because Christ’s teaching is the most exalted teaching; and it is most exalted, because the metaphysics and the ethics of Christ’s teaching are to such a degree inseparably connected and defined by one another that it is impossible to separate one from the other, without depriving the whole teaching of its meaning and also because Christ’s teaching is in itself a protestantism, that is, a negation not only of the ritual precepts of Judaism, but also of every external worship; and so this rupture could not help but completely pervert the teaching and deprive it of every sense. And so it happened.

The rupture between the teaching about life and the explanation of life began with the preaching of Paul, who did not know the ethical teaching which is expressed in the Gospel of Matthew, and who preached a metaphysico- cabalistic theory, which was foreign to Christ; it was fully accomplished in the time of Constantine, when it was found possible to clothe the whole pagan structure of life, without changing it, in Christian garments and then pronounce it Christian.

From the time of Constantine, a pagan of the pagans, whom the church for all his crimes and vices counts among the number of the saints, there begin the councils, and the centre of gravity of Christianity is transferred entirely to the metaphysical side of the teaching. This metaphysical teaching, with its concomitant rites, departs more and more from its fundamental meaning and arrives at what it has arrived at now, at a teaching which explains the mysteries of the heavenly life, which are most inaccessible to the human understanding, and offers the most complicated divine rites, but gives no religious teaching whatever about the earthly life.

All religions, except the Christianity of the churches, demand of those who confess them not only certain rites, but also the execution' of certain good acts and the refraining from evil acts. Judaism demands circumcision, the observance of the Saturday, of almsgiving, of the year of the jubilee, and many other things. Mohammedanism demands circumcision, daily fivefold prayers, a tithe for the poor, worshipping before the grave of the prophet, and many other things. The same is true of all other religions. Whether these demands be good or bad, they are demands for acts. Pseudo-Christianity is the only one which demands nothing. There is nothing which a Christian is obliged to do, and nothing from which he is obliged to abstain, unless we consider fasts and prayers, which the church itself regards as not of an obligatory nature. All a pseudo-Christian has to do is to attend to the sacraments; but the sacraments are not performed by the believer himself, but by some one else. A pseudo-Chris- tian is not obliged to do anything, nor to abstain from anything, in order that he may be saved, for the church performs over him everything necessary: he will be baptized and anointed with chrism, and will receive his communion and extreme unction, and give his confession, even though it be a dumb confession, and will be prayed for, — and he is saved. Since the days of Constantine, the Christian church has demanded no acts from its members; it even never asserted any demands for abstaining from anything. The Christian church has recognized and sanctified everything there was in the pagan world. It has recognized and sanctified divorce, and slavery, and courts, and all those powers which existed before, and wars, and capital punishment, and at baptism has demanded only a verbal renunciation of evil, and that only in the beginning; later, when they began to baptize children, they stopped asking even for that.

The church, which in words recognized Christ’s teaching, in life directly denied it.

Instead of guiding the world in its life, the church, to please the world, so interpreted Christ’s metaphysical teaching that from it there resulted no demands for life, and thus it did not keep people from living as they had lived. The church made a concession to the world, and, having made this concession to the world, it followed it. The world did everything which it wished, leaving it to the church to keep up with it as best it could in its explanations of the meaning of life. The world arranged its life, which in everything ran counter to Christ’s teaching, and the church invented allegories to prove that men, though living contrary to Christ’s law, in reality were living in harmony with it; and thus it ended by this, that the world began to live a life which was worse than the pagan life, and the church began not only to justify this Efe, but also to assert that Christ’s teaching consisted in nothing but this.

But there came a time when the light of Christ’s true teaching, as it was in the gospels, despite the fact that the church, feeling its unrighteousness, tried to conceal it (by forbidding translations of the Bible), — there came a time when this light through the so-called sectarians, even through the free-thinkers of the world, penetrated among the people, and the incorrectness of the church doctrine became manifest to men, and they began to change their former life, which the church justified, on the basis of this teaching of Christ, which came down to us in spite of the church.

Thus men, in spite of the church, have abolished slavery, which the church had justified, and religious inquisitions, and the power of emperors and popes, which the church sanctifies, and have now begun the next abolition in order, that of property and of states. The church has never asserted itself, and even now cannot assert itself, because the abolition of these injustices of life has taken place on the basis of that very Christian teaching which the church has preached, though trying to pervert it.

The teaching about the life of men has been emancipated from the church, and has established itself independently of it.

The church still possesses the explanations, but the explanations of what? A metaphysical explanation of a teaching has a meaning only when that teaching of life exists which it explains; but the church no longer possesses any explanation of life. It has only an explanation of that life which it once established, and which no longer exists. If the church still has some explanations of that life which existed before, such as the explanations of the Catechism that it is permissible to kill in the exercise of a duty, no one now believes in it. All the church has left now is temples, icons, gold stuffs, and words.

The church has carried the light of the Christian teaching about life through eighteen centuries and, wishing to conceal it in its garments, has burned herself in its flame. The world with its structure, which was sanctified by the church, has rejected the church in the name of those foundations of Christianity which the church has brought through in spite of itself, and is getting along without it. The fact is accomplished, and it is impossible to conceal it. Everything which lives and does not flabbily rankle, not living, but being only in everybody’s way, everything which lives in our European world has defected from the church and from all churches and lives its own life independently of the church. Let not people say that this is so in the rotten Western Europe; our Russia, with its millions of rationalistic Christians, both educated and uneducated, who have rejected the church doctrine, shows conclusively that, in the sense of the defection from the church, it is, thank God, more rotten than Europe.

Everything which is alive is independent of the church.

The power of the state is based on tradition, on science, on popular election, on rude force, on anything you please but the church.

Wars and the relations of states among themselves are established on the principle of nationality, equilibrium, on anything you please but the principles of the church.

The institutions of the state directly ignore the church; the idea that the church can be the foundation of the court, of property, is only ridiculous in our time.

Science not only does not cooperate w’ith the church doctrine, but even involuntarily, without wishing it, is in its development always inimical to the church.

Art, which formerly served the church alone, has now departed from it.

Not only has all life been emancipating itself from the church, but this life has no other relation to the church than that of contempt, so long as the church does not meddle with the affairs of life, and nothing but hatred, the moment the church endeavours to remind it of its former rights. If the form which we call the church still exists, it is so because people are afraid of breaking the vessel which once held such precious contents; only in this way it is possible to explain the present existence of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and various Protestant churches.

All the churches, the Catholic, the Orthodox, and the Protestant, resemble guards who carefully guard a prisoner who has long ago left the prison and is walking among the guards and even fighting with them. Everything the world now lives by, socialism, communism, politico-economic questions, utilitarianism, the freedom and equality of men and classes of women, all the moral concepts of men, the sanctity of labour, the sanctity of reason, the sciences, the arts, everything which moves the world and appears inimical to the church, — all those parts of the teaching which, without knowing it, the church has brought down together with Christ’s teaching, which is concealed by it.

In our time the life of the world proceeds in its own way, quite independently of the teaching of the church. This teaching has remained so far behind that the men of the world no longer hear the voices of the teachers of the church. Indeed, there is nothing to hear, because the church gives explanations only of that structure of fife which the world has outgrown, or which no longer exists at all, or which is irrevocably being destroyed.

People were out in a boat and rowing it, while the steersman was at the helm. The people entrusted themselves to the steersman, and he guided them well; but there came a time when another steersman took his place, and he did not steer the boat. The boat moved fast and with ease. At first they did not notice that the new steersman did not steer, and they were glad that the boat moved so easily. But later, when they convinced themselves that the new steersman was not needed they began to laugh at him, and drove him away.

All this would be nothing, but the trouble is that, under the influence of their annoyance with the useless steersman, people have forgotten that it is impossible to know whither one is sailing, if there is no steersman. The same thing has happened with Christian society. The church does not steer, and it is easy to sail, and we have sailed a distance away, and all the successes of science, of which our nineteenth century is so proud, are simply this, that we are sailing without a helm. We are sailing, without knowing whither. We are living, and forming this our life, and absolutely fail to know for what purpose. But it is impossible to sail and row, without knowing whither, and it is impossible to live and form our life, without knowing for what purpose.

If people did nothing themselves, but were by an external force placed in that position in which they are, they would be able to answer the question as to why we are in this position in a very rational manner, by saying: We do not know, but we got into this position, and we are in it. But men create their own position for themselves, for others, and especially for their children, and so you cannot help but answer such questions as: why you collect millions of soldiers and join them yourselves, in order to kill and mutilate one another; why you have wasted enormous human forces, which are expressed in billions, in building up useless and harmful cities; why you establish your toy courts and send men whom you consider criminal from France to Cayenne, from Russia to Siberia, from England to Australia, when you yourselves know that this is senseless; why you abandon your favourite farming occupation, and labour in factories and plants which you dislike; why you educate your children that they may continue this life of which you do not approve; why you do all this. If all these were pleasant occupations, of which you were fond, you would still have to say why you were doing this or that; but when these are terribly difficult occupations, and you do them with an effort and with murmuring, you cannot help wondering why you are doing it all. We either must stop doing all this, or we must answer why we are doing it. Men have never lived without an answer to this question, and they cannot live without it. And men have always had an answer for it.

A Jew lived as he did, that is, he waged war, put people to death, built a temple, arranged all his life this way or that, because all this was prescribed in the law, which, in his conviction, came down from God himself. The same is true of a Hindoo, a Chinaman; the same was the case with a Roman, and is now the case with a Mohammedan; the same was true of a Christian a hundred years ago; the same is true now of the ignorant mass of Christians. To these questions an ignorant Christian now answers as follows: The military, the wars, the courts, the executions, all that exists according to God’s law as transmitted to us by the church. The presentworld is a fallen world. All the evil that exists exists by the will of God, as a punishment for the sins of the world, and so we cannot mend this evil. All we can do is to save our souls by faith, sacraments, prayers, and submission to the will of God as transmitted to us through the church. But the church teaches us that every Christian must without opposition obey the kings, the anointed of the Lord, and the chiefs appointed by them, forcibly defend his own property and that of others, wage war, put to death, and suffer punishments by the will of the powers which are appointed by God.

No matter whether these explanations are good or bad, — to a believing Christian, as to a Jew, a Buddhist, a Mohammedan, they explained all the peculiarities of life, and a man did not renounce reason when he lived accord- mg to the law which he took to be divine. But now the time has come when only the most ignorant believe in these things, and the number of such men is diminishing with every day and hour. There is no possibility of arresting this motion. All men irrepressibly follow those who are walking in front, and all will arrive where the men of the front are standing. Now the men of the front are standing over an abyss: they are in a terrible condition, — they create their own lives and prepare life for all those who follow them, and find themselves in complete ignorance of why they are doing that which they are doing. Not one cultured leader is now able to give an answer to the direct question: “Why do you live the life you live? Why are you doing all you do?” I have tried to ask hundreds of people, and never have received any direct answer. Instead of a direct answer to a personal question as to why one lives and does so and so, I have always received an answer, not to my question, but to one which I had not put.

A believing Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, when asked why he lives as he does, that is, contrary to that teaching of Christ which he professes, will always avoid a direct answer and will begin to talk of the lamentable condition of unbelief of our present generation, of bad men who cause this unbelief, and of the significance and the future of the true church. But he does not answer why he himself does not do what his faith commands him to do. Instead of an answer about himself he talks of the general condition of humanity and of the church, as though his own life had no meaning for him and he were occupied only with the salvation of the whole of humanity and with what he calls the church.

A philosopher, no matter to what school he may belong, — whether he be an idealist, spiritualist, pessimist, positivist, — when asked why he lives as he does, that is, out of harmony with his philosophical teaching, will, instead of answering this question, talk of the progress of humanity, of that historic law of this progress which he has found and by which humanity strives after the good. But he will never give a direct answer to the question why he himself does not do in his life what he considers rational. A philosopher, like a believer, does not seem to be occupied with his own personal life, but only with the observation of the universal laws of humanity.

The average man, the vast majority of half-believing, half-unbelieving cultured men, of those who always, without exception, complain of their life and of the whole structure of our life, and foresee the ruin of everything, when asked why he lives this life which he condemns, and does nothing to improve it, will, instead of giving a direct answer, always begin to talk, not of himself, but of some general topic, — of justice, of commerce, of the state, of civilization. If he is a policeman or a prosecuting attorney, he will say, “How will the affairs of the government proceed, if, to improve my life, I shall stop taking part in it?” “And how about commerce?” he will say if he is a business man. “How about civilization, if I shall not take part in it, in order to improve my life?” He will always say so, as though the problem of his life did not consist in doing that good toward which he always strives, but in serving his country, or commerce, or civilization. The average man answers precisely like the believer or philosopher. In place of a personal question he puts a general one, and all three put it because they have no answer whatever to the personal question of life, because they have absolutely no real teaching about life, and they feel ashamed.

He feels ashamed, because he feels himself in the humiliating position of a man who has no teaching about life, whereas no man has ever lived, or ever can live, without it. Only in our Christian world the teaching about life and the explanations why life should be such and no other, that is, religion, have given place to the mere explanation as to why life ought to be such as it has been before, and religion has come to mean something which no one wants; but life itself has become independent of every teaching, that is, without any definition.

More than this: as is always the case, science has acknowledged precisely this accidental, monstrous condition of our society to be the law of all humanity. Savants, Tiele, Spencer, and others, most seriously treat of religion, understanding by it the metaphysical doctrines of the beginning of everything, without suspecting that they are not speaking of religion as a whole, but only of parts of it.

This has led to the remarkable phenomenon that in our day we see clever and learned men who are most naively convinced that they are free from all religion, merely because they do not acknowledge the metaphysical explanations of the beginning of everything, which at one time served somebody as an explanation of life. It does not occur to them that they must live somehow and that they do live somehow, and that that, on the basis of which they live one way, and not another, is religion. These people are convinced that they have very exalted convictions and no religion. But, no matter what their conversations may be, they have faith, so long as they do some rational acts, because all rational acts are determined by faith. Now the acts of these men are determined by the faith that they must always do only what they are commanded to do. The religion of men who do not acknowledge religion is a religion of submission to everything which the vast majority does, that is, more briefly, the religion of obedience to the existing power.

It is possible to live according to the teaching of the world, that is, an animal life, without acknowledging anything higher and more obligatory than the prescriptions of the existing power. But he who lives in this manner cannot affirm that he lives rationally. Before affirming that we live rationally we must answer the question as to what teaching about life we consider rational. We unfortunate people not only have no such teaching, but we have even lost the consciousness of the necessity of any rational teaching of life.

Ask the people of our time, both believers and unbelievers, what teaching they follow in life. They will have to confess that they follow the one teaching, the laws which are written by the officials of the Second Division or the legislative assemblies, and which are put in execution by the police. This is the only teaching which our European people acknowledge. They know that this teaching is not from heaven, not from the prophets, and not from wise men; they constantly condemn the decrees of these officials or legislative assemblies, but none the less acknowledge this teaching and obey its executors, the police, and obey them without opposition in its most terrible demands. The officials or assemblies write a law that every young man must be prepared to insult, suffer death, and kill others, and all fathers and mothers who have reared sons hasten to obey such a law, which was written but yesterday by a venal official and which to-morrow may be abolished.

The conception of a law as unquestionably rational and from the inner consciousness obligatory for all is to such a degree lost in our society, that the existence of a law, as held by the Jewish nation, which determines all their life, of a law which is obligatory, not from compulsion, but from the inner consciousness of each, is considered an exclusive property of the Jewish nation alone. The fact that the Jews obeyed only what in the depth of their souls they regarded as an indisputable truth which was received directly from God, that is, what was in conformity with their conscience, is considered a peculiarity of the Jews. But they consider that condition normal and proper for an educated man, which demands his obedience to what is admittedly written by despised men and is carried into execution by a policeman with a pistol, although each of them, or at least the majority of these men, considers it irregular, that is, contrary to his conscience.

I have looked in vain in our civilized world for some clearly expressed bases of life. There are none. There does not even exist the consciousness of their being necessary. There exists, on the contrary, a strange conviction that they are useless; that religion is nothing but a series of words about the future life, about God, and a series of rites, which, in the opinion of some, are very useful for the salvation of the soul and, in the opinion of others, quite useless; that life goes on of itself, and that no bases and no rules are wanted for it: all that is necessary is to do what one is commanded to do. Of that which forms the essence of faith, that is, the teaching of life and the explanation of its meaning, — the first is considered of no importance and not belonging to faith, and the second, that is, the explanation of a former life, or the discussions and divinations about the historical progress of life, is considered most important and serious. In everything which forms man’s life, — how to live, whether one should go out to kill people, or not, whether to go and judge people, or not, whether to educate children in one way rather than in another, — men of our world unflinchingly entrust themselves to other men, who, like themselves, do not know why they live or why they cause others to live thus and not thus.

And such a life men regard as rational, and they are not ashamed of it!

The discord between the explanation of faith, which is called religion, and faith itself, which is called the social, political life, has now reached its highest degree, and the whole civilized majority of men are left for life with nothing but the faith in the policeman and the gendarme.

This state would be terrible, if it were absolutely such. But, fortunately, there are men in our day, the best men of our day, who are not satisfied with such a faith, and who have their own faith as to how men ought to live.

These people are considered very harmful, dangerous, and, above all, unbelieving, and yet these are the only believers of our time, not merely believers in general, but more particularly believers in Christ’s teaching, if not in the whole teaching, at least in a small part of it.

These men frequently do not know Christ’s teaching at all and do not understand it, and frequently, like their enemies, do not accept the chief basis of Christ’s faith, the non-resistance to evil, and often even hate Christ; but their whole faith as to what life ought to be is based on Christ’s teaching. No matter how these men may be persecuted, no matter how much they may be maligned, they are the only men who do not submit without a murmur to everything that is demanded of them, and so they are the only men of our time who do not live an animal, but a rational life, — the only true believers.

The thread which unites the world with the church that gave a meaning to the world became weaker and weaker in proportion as the contents, the sap of life, infiltrated more and more into the world. Now that the sap is all infiltrated, the connecting thread has become a mere impediment.

It is the mysterious process of birth, and it takes place in our full sight. At one and the same time the last tie with the church is broken, and the independent process of life is established.

The teaching of the church, with its dogmas, its councils, its hierarchy, is indisputably connected with Christ’s teaching. This connection is as manifest as the connection of the new-born foetus with the mother’s womb. But, as the umbilical cord and the placenta after birth become useless pieces of flesh, which, out of respect for what was contained in them, must carefully be buried in the ground, so the church has become a useless, obsolete organ, which, out of respect for what it once was, ought to be put out of sight. The moment respiration and the circulation of the blood are established, the connection, which before was a source of nutrition, has become an impediment, and senseless are the efforts to retain this connection and to compel the child that has come out into the world to receive its nutriment through the umbilical cord, and not through the mouth and lungs.

But the liberation of the babe from the mother’s womb is not yet life. The babe’s life depends on the establishment of a new connection of nutrition with the mother. The same thing must happen with our Christian world. Christ’s teaching has carried our world and has given it birth. The church — one of the organs of Christ’s teaching— has done its work, and is now useless, and an impediment. The world cannot be guided by the church, but the liberation of the world from the church is not yet life. Its life will ensue when it shall recognize its impotence and shall feel the necessity for a new way of nutrition. It is this that must take place in our Christian world; it has to start crying from the consciousness of its helplessness, and only the consciousness of its helplessness, the consciousness of the impossibility of the former nutrition and of the impossibility of any other nutrition than the mother’s milk, will bring it to the mother’s breast, which is swollen with milk.

With our externally so self-confident, bold, determined, and in the depth of its consciousness so frightened and confused, European world there is taking place the same that happens with a new-born babe: it tosses about, stretches, cries, pushes, as though it were angry, and cannot understand what it should do. It feels that the source of its former nutrition has gone dry, but does not yet know where to look for a new one.

A newly born lamb rolls its eyes and turns its ears, and shakes its tail, and jumps about, and kicks. From its determined movements we judge that it knows everything, but the poor little animal knows nothing. All this determination and energy is the fruit of the mother’s fluids, the transmission of which has just come to an end and can no longer be renewed. It is in a blessed and at the same time desperate state. It is full of freshness and vigour; but it will perish if it does not take hold of its mother’s teats.

The same thing is happening in our European world. See what complicated, what apparently rational, what energetic life is boiling in the European world. It is as though all men knew everything they do and why they do it all. See with what determination, with what youthful strength, the men of our world do all which they do. The arts, the sciences, the industry, the social and the political activities, — everything is full of life. But all this is alive only because but lately it fed on the mother’s fluids through the umbilical cord. There was the church which transmitted the rational teaching of Christ to the life of the world. Every phenomenon of the world was fed and strengthened by it. But the church has done its work, and has dried up. All the organs of the world are alive; the source of its former nutrition is stopped, and they have not yet found a new one; they are looking for it everywhere except with the mother, from whom they have just been liberated. Like a lamb, they are still making use of their former nutriment, but they have not yet reached a point where they can understand that this food is in the mother alone, but that it can be transmitted to them only in a different way from what it was before.

The work which the world has now to do is to understand that the process of the former unconscious nutrition has been outlived and that a new, conscious process of nutrition is wanted.

This new process consists in consciously accepting those truths of the Christian teaching which formerly were infiltrated in humanity through the organ of the church and by which even now humanity lives. Men must again raise up the light by which they lived, but which has been concealed from them, and place it high before themselves and before others, and consciously live by this light.

Christ’s teaching, as a religion which defines life and gives an explanation of the life of men, stands now as it stood before men eighteen hundred years ago. But formerly the world possessed the explanations of the church, which, while shielding the teaching from it, none the less seemed sufficient for its old life, whereas now the time has come when the church has revived, and the world has no explanations for its new life and cannot help but feel its helplessness, and so cannot help but receive Christ’s teaching.

Christ teaches above everything else that men must believe in the light, while the light is in them. Christ teaches men to place this light of reason higher than anything else and to live in accordance with it, without doing what they themselves regard as senseless. If you consider it irrational to go out to kill the Turks or the Germans, — do not go; if you consider it irrational forcibly to deprive poor people of the result of their labour, in order to don a silk hat, or lace yourself in a corset, or fix up a drawing- room, which only embarrasses you, — do not do it; if you consider it irrational to imprison those who are corrupted by idleness and harmful company, that is, to put them where the company is most harmful and the idleness most complete, — do not do it; if you consider it irrational to live in the infected air of the cities, when it is possible for you to live in the open, do not do it; if you consider it irrational to teach the children first of all and more than anything else the grammars of the dead languages, do not do it. Do not do what our European world is doing now: living and not considering life rational, working and not considering the works rational, not believing in one’s own reason, not living in accordance with it.

Christ’s teaching is the light. The light shineth, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. It is impossible not to receive the light when it shines. It is impossible to dispute with it, impossible not to agree with it. It is impossible not to agree with Christ’s teaching, because it comprehends all errors, in which men live, and does not come in contact with them, but penetrates them all like the ether, of which the physicists speak. Christ’s teaching is equally inevitable for every man of our world, no matter what his position may be. Christ’s teaching cannot fail to be accepted by men, not because it is impossible to deny that metaphysical explanation which it gives (everything can be denied), but because it alone gives those rules of life without which humanity has not lived and cannot live, and not one man has lived or can live, if he wants to live like a man, that is, a rational life.

The force of Christ’s teaching is not in its explanation of the meaning of life, but in what results from it, — in the teaching about life. Christ’s metaphysical teaching is not new. It is still the same teaching of humanity which is written in the hearts of men, and which all the true sages of the world have professed. But the force of Christ’s teaching is in the application of this metaphysical teaching to life.

The metaphysical foundation of the ancient teaching of the Jews and of Christ is one and the same, — the love of God and of our neighbour. But, for the application of this teaching to life according to Moses, as the Jews understood it, there was demanded the fulfilment of 613 commandments, which often are senseless and cruel, and all of which are based on the authority of the Scripture.

Christ’s teaching about life, which results from the same metaphysical basis, is expressed in five commandments, which are rational and good, and bear in themselves their meaning and their justification, and comprehend the whole life of men.

Christ’s teaching cannot help but be accepted by all believing Jews, Buddhists, Mohammedans, and others, who may have any doubts as to the truth of their own law; still less can it be rejected by those people of our Christian world who now have no moral law whatever.

Christ’s teaching has no quarrel with the men of our world about their conception of the world; it agrees with them in advance and, including their conception in itself, gives them what they lack, what they need, and what they are looking for: it gives them the path of life, and at that not a new one, but one they have long known and which is familiar to them.

You are a believing Christian of some sect or creed. You believe in the creation of the world, in the Trinity, in the fall and redemption of man, in the sacraments, in prayers, and in the church. Christ’s teaching not only does not quarrel with you, but even fully agrees with your world conception; it only gives you what you lack. While preserving your present faith, you feel that the life óf the world and your own life are full of evil, and you do not know how to avoid it. Christ’s teaching (which is obligatory for you, because it is the teaching of your God) gives you simple, practicable rules of life, which will free you and other people from the evil which torments you. Believe in the resurrection, in Paradise, in hell, in the Pope, in the church, in the sacraments, in redemption; pray, as your faith demands of you, go to communion, sing psalms, — all that does not hinder you from fulfilling what was revealed by Christ for your good: be not angry, commit no debauch, do not swear, do not defend yourself by force, wage no war.

It may be that you will not fulfil some one of these rules, and will be carried away, and you will break one of these, even as you now, in moments of infatuation, break the rules of your faith, the rules of civil law, or the laws of decency. Even so you will, perhaps, in moments of infatuation depart from Christ’s rules; but in calm minutes you must not do what you are doing now, — do not arrange life in such a way that it is hard not to be angry, not to commit debauch, not to swear, not to defend yourself, not to wage war, but in such a way that it will be hard to do this. You cannot help but acknowledge this, because God has ordered you to do so.

You are an unbelieving philosopher of some school or other. You say that everything in the world takes place according to a law which you have discovered. Christ’s teaching does not quarrel with you and recognizes in full the law which you have discovered. But despite this law of yours, according to which the good which you wish and have prepared for humanity will come to pass in a thousand years, there is also your personal life, which you can live either in conformity with reason, or contrary to it; but for your personal life you now have no rules but those which are written by men you do not respect and which are executed by policemen. Christ’s teaching gives you rules which certainly agree with your law, because your law of altruism or of the one will is nothing but another paraphrase of the same teaching of Christ.

You are an average man, half believing, half not believing, who have no time to reflect on the meaning of human life, and you have no definite world conception: you do everything which everybody else does, Christ’s teaching does not quarrel with you. It says: very well, you are not able to reflect, or to believe in the truth of the teaching which is imparted to you: it is easier for you to do precisely as everybody else does; but, no matter how modest you may be, you none the less feel in yourself that inward judge who at times approves of your deeds, which are in harmony with everybody, and at times does not approve of them. No matter how modest your lot may be, you have to reflect, and to ask yourself whether you should act like everybody else, or in your own way. Precisely in such cases, that is, when the necessity arises for you to solve such a question, Christ’s rules will stand out before you in all their force. These rules will certainly give you an answer to your question, because they comprehend your whole life, and they will answer you in conformity with your reason and your conscience. If you are nearer to faith than to unbelief, you, by acting in this manner, will act according to God’s will; if you are nearer to free thought, you, by acting in this manner, act according to the most sensible rules that exist in the world, of which you will convince yourself, because Christ’s rules bear in themselves their meaning and their justification.

Christ said (John xii. 31), Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

Again he said (John xvi. 33), These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Indeed, the world, that is, the evil of the world, is vanquished.

If there still exists a world of evil, it exists only as something dead, it lives only by inertia: it no longer has the foundations of life. It does not exist for him who believes in Christ’s commandments. It is vanquished in the rational consciousness of the son of man. A train at full speed, though with steam shut off, will continue running forward in a straight direction, but all the rational work has for some time been going on for the opposite direction.

For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith (1 John v. 4).

The faith which is overcoming the world is the faith in Christ’s teaching.

*** XII. The Cause of the False Knowledge Is the False Perspective In which Objects Present Themselves

<strong>I</strong> believe in Christ’s teaching, and my faith consists in the following:

I believe that my good is possible on earth only when all people will fulfil Christ’s teaching.

I believe that the fulfilment of this teaching is possible, easy, and joyful.

I believe that even so long as the teaching is not being fulfilled, and I am one among all the unbelievers, I still can do nothing for the salvation of my life from inevitable perdition but fulfil this teaching, even as he can do nothing else who in a burning house has found a door of salvation.

I believe that my fife according to the teaching of the world has been agonizing, and that only the life according to Christ’s teaching gives me the good which the Father of life has intended for me.

I believe that this teaching gives the good to the whole of humanity, saves me from inevitable perdition, and gives me here the greatest good, and so I cannot help but fulfil it.

The law was given by Moses, but the good and truth tnrough Jesus Christ (John i. 17). Christ’s teaching is the good and truth. Formerly, when I did not know the truth, I did not know even the good. Taking the evil to be the good, I fell into this evil and doubted the legality of my striving after the good; but now I understand and believe that the good after which I strive is the will of the Father and the most legitimate essence of my life.

Christ told me, Live for the good, but do not believe those traps, those temptations <em>(atcav^a\ov),</em> which, enticing you by the semblance of the good, deprive you of the good and inveigle you into evil. Your good is your union with all men, the evil is a violation of the union with the son of man. Do not deprive yourself of the good which is given you.

Christ has shown me that the union with the son of man, the love of men among themselves, is not, as I used to think, an aim toward which men must strive, but that this union, this love of men among themselves, is their natural condition, the one in which, according to his words, children are born, and the one in which all men live until this condition is impaired by deceit, error, and offences.

But Christ has not only shown me this: he has clearly, without the possibility of an error, counted out to me in his commandments all the offences, without an exception, which have deprived me of this natural condition of unity, love, and the good, and which have inveigled me into evil. Christ’s commandments give me a means for saving myself from the temptations which have deprived me of my good, an 1 so I cannot help but believe in these commandments.

The good of life was given to me, and I myself ruined it. Christ by his commandments has shown me those temptations by which I am ruining my good, and so I cannot do that which ruins my good. In this, and in this alone, does my faith consist.

Christ has shown me that the first offence which ruins my good is my enmity with men, my anger at them. I cannot help believing it, and so can no longer consciously be inimical toward other people; I can no longer, as I used to do, be glad of my anger, pride myself on it, fan and justify it by acknowledging myself to be important and clever, and other people insignificant, lost, and senseless; I can no longer, at the first suggestion of my submitting to anger, fail to acknowledge myself guilty and

try to make peace with those who are inimical toward me.

But this is not enough. If now I know that my anger is an unnatural, harmful, morbid condition for me, I also know what offence has brought me to it. This offence consisted in this, that I separated myself from other people, recognizing but a few of them as my equals, and all others as insignificant, not men <em>(patca),</em> or stupid and uneducated (senseless). Now I see that this separating myself from other men and recognizing others as “raca” and senseless has been the chief cause of my enmity with men. As I recall my former life, I now see that I never permitted my hostile feeling to be fanned against those men whom I considered above myself, and that I never offended them; but, on the other hand, the slightest disagreeable action of a man whom I considered below me provoked my anger at him and my indignation, and the higher I considered myself above such a man, the more easily did I offend him; at times a mere imagined baseness of a man’s position provoked my desire to offend him. Now I understand that only he will stand higher than other men who will humble himself before others, who will be a servant of all men. Now I understand why that which is high before men is an abomination before God, and why it is woe to the rich and the glorified, and why the poor and the humble are blessed.

Only now do I understand it and believe in it, and my faith has changed my whole valuation of what is good and high, bad and low in life. Everything which heretofore had appeared good and high to me, — honours, glory, culture, riches, the complexity and refinement of life, of the appointments, the food, the apparel, the external ways, — all this became low and bad for me, and the peasant existence, the ingloriousness, poverty, coarseness, simplicity of the surroundings, of the food, the apparel, and ways, — all this became good and high for me. And so, although even now, when I know this, I may in moments of forgetfulness abandon myself to anger and offend my brother, I can no longer in my calm mood serve this offence, which, raising me above other men, deprived me of my true good, — of union and love, — even as a man cannot lay a trap for himself, if he fell into it before and came very near perishing through it. Now I can no longer cooperate with what externally raises me above other men, and separates me from them; I cannot, as I used to do before, in my own case, nor in that of any other person, acknowledge any distinctions, ranks, and honours, except the name and dignity of man; I cannot seek glory and praise; I cannot seek any knowledge which would separate me from the rest; I cannot help but try to free myself from my wealth, which separates me from men; I cannot help but in my life, in its circumstance, in food, in apparel, in external ways, look for everything which unites me with the majority of men, and does not separate me from them.

Christ has shown me that another offence which ruins my good is the lust of fornication, that is the lust for another woman than the one with whom I came together. I cannot help but believe this, and so I cannot, as I used to do before, acknowledge the lust of fornication as a natural and exalted quality of man; I cannot justify it to myself by my love of beauty, by infatuation, or by defects in my wife; even at the first suggestion of submitting to the lust of fornication I cannot help but acknowledge myself in a morbid and unnatural condition, and search for every means which could liberate me from this evil.

Now that I know that the lust of fornication is an evil for me, I know also the offence which formerly used to lead me into it, and so I can no longer serve it. I know now that the chief cause of the offence does not lie in the fact that men cannot abstain from fornication, but in the fact that the majority oi men and of women have been abandoned by those with whom they have come together at first. Now 1 know that every abandonment of a man or a woman after the) have come together for the first time is that very divorce which is forbidden by Christ, because husbands and wives who are abandoned by their mates bring all debauch into the world.

Recalling what it was that led me to commit fornication, I now see that, besides that savage education, which caused the lust of fornication to be fanned in me physically and mentally, and caused me to justify it with all the cunning of reason, the chief offence which caught me consisted in my abandoning the woman with whom I had come together for the first time, and in the condition of the abandoned women, who surrounded me on all sides. Now I see that the chief force of the offence was not in my lust, but in the ungratified state of my lust and of the lust of those abandoned women who surrounded me on all sides. Now I understand Christ’s words. In the beginning God created woman and man so that the two should be one, and therefore man cannot and must not sever what God has united. Now I understand that monogamy is a natural law of humanity, which cannot be violated. Now I fully appreciate the words about this, that he who is divorced from his wife, that is, from the woman with whom he came together for the first time, in order to take up another, causes her to commit debauch, and introduces against himself a new evil into the world.

I believe in this, and this faith changes all my former valuation of what is good and high, bad and low in life. What formerly used to appear to me as very good, — the refined and elegant life, the passionate and poetic love, which is extolled by all poets and artists, — all this appeared bad and disgusting to me. On the contrary, what appeared to me as good was this, — a coarse, scant life of labour, which moderates lust; what appeared to roe exalted and important was not so much the human institution of marriage, which imposed the external stamp of legality on a certain union of a man and a woman, as the union of any man with any woman, which, having once been accomplished, can no longer be violated without violating the will of God. If I even now, in a minute of forgetfulness, can fall a prey to the lust of fornication, I, knowing the offence which has led me into this evil, can no longer serve it, as I did before.

I cannot wish and seek that physical idleness and fat living which fanned in me inordinate lust; I cannot seek those amusements which fanned the amatory lust in me, such as novels, verses, music, theatres, balls, which formerly appeared to me not only harmless, but even as amusements of a very high order; I cannot abandon my wife, knowing that the abandonment of her is the first trap for me, for her, and for others; I cannot contribute to the idle and fat living of other men, and cannot take part in and arrange those lustful amusements — novels, theatres, operas, balls, and so forth — which serve as a trap for me and for other people; I cannot encourage the celibate life of those who are ripe for marriage; I cannot take part in the separation of husband and wife; I cannot make any distinctions between cohabitations which are called marriages and those which are not called so; I cannot help but regard as holy and obligatory that marital union in which a man happens to be.

Christ has revealed to me that a third offence which is ruining my good is the offence of swearing. I cannot help but believe this, and so I can no longer, as I used to do, promise a person anything under oath, and I can no longer, as I used to do, justify myself in my oath by saying that there is nothing bad in it for people; that all men do so; that it is necessary for the state; that I or others will fare worse if we decline to comply with this demand.

<strong>Now I</strong> know that this is an evil for me and for men, and I cannot do it.

This is not all; now I know also the offence which inveigled me into this evil, and I can no longer serve it. I know that the offence consists in this, that the deception is sanctified in the name of God. Now the deception consists in this, that men promise in advance that they will obey the command of a man or of a set of men, though a man can never obey any one but God. Now I know that the most terrible evil of the world, so far as its consequences are concerned, — murder in wars, incarcerations, capital punishments, tortures of men, — is committed only thanks to this offence in the name of which the responsibility is taken away from the people who commit the wrong. As I now recall many an evil which used to cause my condemnation and dislike of people, I now see that it was all called forth by an oath, by the recognition of the necessity of submitting oneself to the will of other people. Now I understand the meaning of the words, Everything which is above the simple affirmation or denial, above “yes” and “no,” every promise given in advance, is an evil. -

Understanding this, I believe that the oath ruins my good and the good of other men; and my faith changes the valuation of what is good and bad, high and low. Everything which heretofore has seemed good and high, — the obligation of loyalty to a government, which is confirmed by an oath, the extortion of this oath from men, and all acts which are contrary to conscience and are performed in the name of this oath, — all this now appears bad and low to me. And so I can no longer recede from Christ’s commandment, which forbids swearing; I can no longer swear to another, nor cause others to swear, nor in any way be instrumental in this, that men should swear or cause others to swear, and should consider the oath important and necessary, or even not harmful, as many think.

Christ has revealed to me that a fourth offence which deprives me of my good is the resistance to evil by offering violence to other people. I cannot help but believe that this is an evil for me and for other people, and so I cannot consciously do it, and I cannot, as I used to do before, justify this evil by saying that it is necessary for my defence and for the defence of other people, for the defence of my property and for that of other people; at the first suggestion that I am offering violence I can no longer help renouncing and stopping it.

But I not only know this, I now know also the offence which has brought me to this evil. Now I know that this offence consists in the delusion that my life can be made secure by defending myself and my property against other people. Now I know that a great part of mens’ evil is due to this, that, instead of giving their labour to others, they not only do not give it, but even deprive themselves of all labour and forcibly take away the labour of others. As I now recall all the evil which I did to myself and to others, and all the evil which others did, I see that a great part of the evil is due to this, that we considered it possible by means of defence to secure and improve our life. Now I understand also these words, Man is not born to be worked for, but to work for others, and the meaning of the words, The workman is worthy of his meat. Now I believe that my good and the good of others is possible only when each will work, not for himself, but for another, and not only will not keep his labour from another, but will give it to every one who needs it.

This faith changed my valuation of what is good and high, bad and low. Everything which heretofore had seemed to me good and high, — wealth, property of every kind, honour, the consciousness of one’s own dignity, rights, — everything now became bad and low; and everything which had seemed to me to be bad and low, — working for others, poverty, humiliation, renunciation of all property and of all rights, — became good and high in my eyes. If in a moment of forgetfulness I can still be carried away to exercise force in order to defend myself and others, or my property and that of others, I can no longer calmly and conscientiously serve that offence which ruins me and others, —I cannot acquire possessions; I cannot exercise any violence against any man whatsoever, unless it be a child, and in his case only in order to save him from an imminent evil; I cannot take part in any activity of power, which has for its aim the protection of men and of tiieir property by the exercise of violence; I cannot be a judge, or a participant in any court, or a chief, or a participant in any official capacity; nor can I contribute to this, that others should take part in courts and offices.

Christ has revealed to me that a fifth offence which deprives me of my good is the division which we make between our own nation and another. I cannot help but believe in this, and so, if in a minute of forgetfulness there may arise in me a hostile feeling toward a man of another nation, I cannot help, in a calm moment, but recognize this sentiment as false; I cannot justify myself, as I used to do before, by recognizing the superiority of my nation over another, and by the delusions, cruelty, or barbarism of another nation; at the first reminder of it I cannot help but try to be more friendly to a man of another nation than to a countryman of mine.

But I not only know now that my separation from other nations is an evil which ruins my good, I know also the offence which has led me into this evil, and I can no longer, as I used to before, serve it calmly and consciously. I know that this offence consists in the delusion that my good is connected only with the good of my nation and not with the good of the whole world. Now I know that my union with other men cannot be impaired by a bor- der line and by governmental decisions as to my belonging to this nation or to that. Now I know that all men are everywhere equal and brothers.

As I now recall the evil which I did, experienced, and saw in consequence of the enmity of nations, it is clear to me that the cause of everything was the gross deception called patriotism and love of country. As I recall my education, I now see that the feeling of enmity with other nations, the feeling of separation from them, never existed in me, and that all these evil sentiments were artificially inoculated in me by a senseless education. I now understand the meaning of the words, Do good to your enemies; do to them what you would do to your own people. You are all the children of one Father, and be like your Father, that is, make no division between your nation and another, — be alike to all. Now I understand that the good is possible for me only when I recognize the union with all men of the world without any exception.

I believe in this, and this faith has changed my whole valuation of what is good and bad, high and low. What before presented itself to me as good and high, — the love of country, of my nation, of my government, the serving of them to the disadvantage of the good of other people, the military exploits of men, — all this appeared disgusting and miserable to me. Everything which had seemed bad and disgraceful, — renunciation of one’s own country, cosmopolitanism, — now, on the contrary, seemed good and high to me. If now, in a minute of forgetfulness, I may cooperate more with a Russian than with a foreigner, and wish success to the Russian empire or nation, I can no longer, in a calm minute, serve the offence which ruins me and other people. I cannot acknowledge any countries or nations, I cannot participate in any disputes between nations and countries, neither by my writings, nor, indeed, by serving any country. I cannot take part in all those affairs which are based on the distinction of countries,— neither <em>in</em> custom-houses and collections of taxes, nor in the preparation of projectiles or ordnance, nor in any activity of arming, nor in military service, nor, indeed, in any war itself with other nations, — and I cannot contribute to this, that men should do so.

I understand wherein my good consists, I believe in it, and so I cannot do what unquestionably deprives me of my good.

But I not only believe in this, that I must live so, — I believe that if I-live so my life will receive the only possible rational, joyous meaning which is not destroyed by death.

I believe that the rational life — my light — is given me for no other purpose than that I may shine before men, not with words, but with good deeds, in order that men may glorify the Father (Matt. v. 16). I believe that my life and my knowledge of the truth is the talent given me to work on, and that this talent is the fire which is a fire only when it burns. I believe that I am Nineveh in relation to other Jonahs, from whom I have learned the truth, and that I am also Jonah in relation to other Nine- vites, to whom I must transmit the truth. I believe that the only meaning of my life consists in living in the light which is within me, and in not putting it under a bushel, but holding it high before all men, so that all men may see it. And this faith gives me new strength in the execution of Christ’s teaching, and destroys all those obstacles which formerly stood before me.

What formerly vitiated in me the truth and practicableness of Christ’s teaching, what repelled me from it, — the possibility of deprivations, sufferings, and death at the hands of people who did not know Christ’s teaching, — now confirmed for me the truth of the teaching and led me to it.

Christ said, When you raise up the son of man, you will all of you be attracted to me, and I felt that I was irrepressibly attracted to him. He also said, The truth will free you, and 1 felt myself absolutely free.

An enemy will come to make war, or simply bad people will attack me, I used to think, and if I shall not defend myself, they will rob us, and will disgrace, torture, and kill me and my neighbours, and that seemed terrible to me; but now everything which formerly used to trouble me appeared to me joyful and confirmed the truth. Now I know that the enemies and so-called malefactors and robbers are all men, just such sons of man as I am; that they love the good and hate the evil just like me, and that like me they seek salvation and will find it only in Christ’s teaching. Every evil which they will do me will be an evil for themselves as well, and so they must do me good. But if the truth is not known to them and they do evil, considering it good, then I know the truth for the very purpose that I may show it to those who do not know it; but I cannot show it to them otherwise than by renouncing participation in the evil, and by confessing the truth through deeds.

The enemies will come, — Germans, Turks, savages, — and if we shall not fight, they will kill us all. That is not true. If there existed a society of Christians who did no wrong to any one, and who gave the whole surplus of their labour to other people, no enemies, — neither Germans, nor Turks, nor savages, — would kill or torture such people. They would take everything which these would give them anyway, since they know no distinction between a Russian, a German, a Turk, and a savage. But if Christians find themselves amidst a non-Christian society, which defends itself by means of war, there appears here for the Christian the possibility of aiding the men who do not know the truth. A Christian knows the truth for the very reason that he may bear witness to it before those who do not know it; but he cannot bear witness to it in any other way than by acts, and his acts consist in renouncing war and doing good to people, without- the distinction between so-called enemies and his own people.

But it is not the enemies, but evil men from among his neighbours, who will attack the Christian’s family, and if he does not defend himself, they will rob, torture, and kill him and his family. That again is not true. If all the members of the family are Christians, and so put all their lives in the service of others, there will not be found a man so senseless as to deprive of sustenance or kill the people who serve him. Mikhikho-Maklay settled among the most beastly of savages, as they say, and the savages not only did not kill him, but loved him and submitted to him for no other reason than that he was not afraid of them, asked nothing of them, and did them good. But if a Christian lives among a non-Christian family and relatives, who defend themselves and their property by the exercise of force, and the Christian is called to take part in this defence, this call is for him a call for the exercise of his life’s work. A Christian knows the truth for the very purpose that he may show it to others and most of all to his nearest friends who are connected with him by ties of family relationship and of friendship; and a Christian' cannot show the truth otherwise than by avoiding to fall into the error into which others have fallen, by avoiding to side either with the attackers or with the defenders, and giving everything to others and showing by his life that he needs nothing but the execution of God’s will, and that he fears nothing but the departure from it.

But the government cannot permit a member of society to decline to recognize the foundations of the political order and to refuse to execute the obligations of all citizens. The government will ask a Christian to take an oath, to participate in the court and in military service, and for a refusal will subject him to punishment, exile, incarceration, and even capital punishment. Again, this demand of the government will be for the Christian nothing but a call for him to execute his life’s work. For a Christian the demand of the government is a demand of men who do not know the truth, and so a Christian, who knows it, cannot help but bear witness to it before men, who do not know it. The violence, imprisonment, capital punishment, to which a Christian is subject in consequence of it, give him the possibility of bearing witness, not in words, but in deeds. All violence, — war, rapine, executions, — is caused, not by the irrational forces of Nature, but by men who err and are deprived of the knowledge of the truth. And so, the more wrong these men do to a Christian, the farther are they removed from the truth, the unhappier they are, and the more do they need the knowledge of the truth. Now a Christian cannot transmit the knowledge of the truth to others in any other way than by refraining from that error in which men are when they do evil to him, and by paying good for evil. In this alone does all the work of a Christian’s life and its whole meaning consist, and this is not destroyed by death.

Men who are united with one another through deception form, as it were, a solid mass. The solidarity of this mass is the evil of the world. All rational activity of humanity is directed to the destruction of this cohesive force of deceit.

All revolutions are attempts at a violent cleavage of this mass. People imagine that if they can break up this mass, it will no longer be a mass, and so they strike at it; but in their attempt to break it, they only forge it more solidly; the cohesion of the particles will not be destroyed so long as the internal force is not communicated to the particles of the mass, causing them to be separated from it.

The force of the cohesion of men is the lie, the deception. The force which liberates each particle of the human cohesion is truth. Truth is not communicated to people except by works of truth.

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Nothing but works of truth, by introducing the light into the consciousness of each man, destroy the cohesion of the deceit, tear men one after another away from the mass which is connected through the cohesion of deceit.

This work has been going on for eighteen hundred years.

Ever since Christ’s commandments were placed before humanity, this work has been, and it will not end till all be fulfilled, as Christ says (Matt. v. 18).

The church, which was formed from those who wanted to unite men by affirming with oaths that they were in the truth, has long been dead. But the church which is formed of men, not by promises, nor by anointment, but by deeds of truth and of the good united into one, has always lived and will always live. This church, as before, so even now, is formed, not of men who exclaim, Lord, Lord! and do unrighteousness (Matt. vii. 21, 22), but of men who hear these words and do them.

The men of this church know that their life is good when they do not violate the union with the son of man, and that this good is violated only by the non-observance of Christ’s commandments, and so the men of this church cannot help but do these commandments and teach others to do them.

Whether there be few such men, or many, this is the church, which no one can overcome and which all men will join.

Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom (Luke xii. 32).

<strong>Moscow,</strong> <em>January 22, 1884-</em>