A Confession

I felt the same about the celebration of the chief holidays. To remember the Sabbath, that is to devote one day to God, was something I could understand. But the chief holiday was in commemoration of the Resurrection, the reality of which I could not picture to myself or understand. And that name of 4 Resurrection y was also given to the weekly holiday.1 And on those days the Sacrament of the Eucharist was administered, which was quite unintelligible to me. The rest of the twelve great holidays, except Christmas, commemorated miracles — the things I tried not to think about in order not to deny : the Ascension, Pentecost, Epiphany, the Feast of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin, etc. At the celebration of these holidays, feeling that importance was being attributed to the very things that to me presented a negative importance, I either devised tranquillizing explanations, or shut my eyes in order not to see what tempted me. Most of all this happened to me when taking part in the most usual Sacraments, which are considered the most important : baptism and i communion. There I encountered not incomprehensible but fully comprehensible doings : doings which seemed to me to lead into temptation, and I was in a dilemma — whether to lie, or to reject them.

Never shall I forget the painful feeling I experienced the day I received the Eucharist for the first time after many years. The service, confession, and prayers were quite intelligible and produced in me a glad conscious1 In Russia Sunday is called Resurrection-day. ness that the meaning of life was being revealed j s to me. The Communion itself I explained as j ' an act performed in remembrance of Christ, 1 and indicating a purification from sin and the 1 full acceptance of Christ’s teaching. If that ; ‘ explanation was artificial 1 did not notice its ; artificiality : so happy was I at humbling and ‘ abasing' myself before the priest — a simple, I timid country clergyman — turning all the dirt 1 out of my soul and confessing my vices, so glad 1 was I to merge in thought with the humility of the fathers who wrote the prayers of the 1 office, so glad was I of union with all who have 1 believed and now believe, that I did not notice 1 the artificiality of my explanation. But when ] I approached the altar gates, and the priest f made me say that I believed that what I was 1 about to swallow wras truly flesh and blood, ; 1 I felt a pain in my heart : it was not merely 1 a false note, it was a cruel demand made by ! some one or other who evidently had never 1 known what faith is.

I now permit myself to say that it was a 1 cruel demand, but I did not then think so : ( only it was indescribably painful to me. I was ^ no longer in the position in which I had been I in youth, when I thought all in life was clear ; 5 I had indeed come to faith because, apart from ( faith, I had found nothing, certainly nothing, I except destruction ; therefore to throw away 1 that faith was impossible, and I submitted. ] And I found in my soul a feeling which helped me to endure it. This was the feeling of self- j ' abasement and humility. I humbled myself, ' swallowed that flesh and blood without any blasphemous feelings, and with a wish to believe. But the blow had been struck and, knowing what awaited me, I could not go a second time. I continued to fulfil the rites of the Church : and still believed that the doctrine I was following contained the truth, when something happened to me which I now understand but which then seemed strange. I was listening to the conversation of an illiterate peasant, a pilgrim, about God, faith, life, and salvation, when a knowledge of faith revealed itself to me. I drew near to the people, listening to their opinions on life and faith, and I understood the truth more and more. So also was it when I read the Lives of Holy Men, which became my favourite books. Putting aside the miracles, and regarding them as fables illustrating thoughts, this reading revealed to me life’s meaning. There were the lives of Makarius the Great, the story of Buddha, there were the words of St. John Chrysostom, and there were the stories of the traveller in the well, the monk who found some gold, and of Peter the publican. There were stories of the martyrs, all announcing that death does not exclude life ; and there were the stories of ignorant, stupid men, who knew nothing of the teaching of the Church, but who yet were saved.

But as soon as I met learned believers, or {took up their books, doubt of myself, dissatisfaction, and exasperated disputation w ere roused within me, and I felt that the more I entered into the meaning of these men’s speech, the more I went astray from truth and ap- | proached an abyss. How often I envied the peasants their illiteracy and lack of learning ! Those statements in the creeds, which to me were evident absurdities, for them contained nothing false ; they could accept them and could believe in the truth — in the truth I believed in. Only to me, unhappy man, was it clear that with truth falsehood was interwoven by finest threads, and that I could not accept it in that ! form. So I lived for about three years. At first, , 1 when I was only slightly associated with truth ] as a catechumen, and was only scenting out £ what seemed to me clearest, these encounters I struck me less. When I did not understand i anything, I said, ‘It is my fault, I am sinful ’ ; s but the more I became imbued with the truths j £ I was learning, the more they became the ( basis of my life, the more oppressive and the I more painful became these encounters, and the P'i sharper became the line between what I do ; I not understand because I am not able to t understand it, and what cannot be understood 1 except by lying to oneself. a

In spite of my doubts and sufferings I still ; i clung to the Orthodox Church. But questions a of life arose which had to be decided ; and the 1 decision of these questions by the Church — contrary to the very bases of the belief by which I lived, — obliged me at last to renounce communion with Orthodoxy as impossible. These questions were : first the relation of the Orthodox Eastern Church to other Churches — to the Catholics and to the so-called sectarians. At that time, in consequence of my interest in religion, I came into touch with believers of various faiths : Catholics, Protestants, OldBelievers, Molokans,1 and others. And I met among them many men of lofty morals who were truly religious. I wished to be a brother to them. And what happened ? That teaching which promised to unite all in one faith and love — that very teaching, in the person of its best representatives, told me that these men were all living a lie ; that what gave them their power of life was a temptation of the devil ; and what we alone possess the only possible truth. And I saw that all who do not profess an identical faith with themselves are considered by the Orthodox to be heretics ; just as the Catholics and others consider the Orthodox to be heretics. And I saw that the Orthodox (though they try to hide this) regard with hostility all who do not express their faith by the same external symbols and words as themselves ; and this is naturally so : first, because the assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth, is the most cruel thing one man can say to another ; and secondly, because a man loving his children and brothers cannot 1 A sect that rejects sacraments and ritual

help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his children and brothers to a false belief. | And that hostility is increased in proportion to one’s greater knowledge of theology. And . to me, who considered that truth lay in union s by love, it became self-evident that theology was itself destroying what it ought to produce. This temptation is so obvious to us educated people who have lived in countries where j various religions are professed, and have seen the contempt, self-assurance, and invincible contradiction with which Catholics behave to the Orthodox Greeks and to the Protestants, and the Orthodox to Catholics and Protestants, and the Protestants to the two others, and ( the similar attitude of Old-Believers, Pashkovites (Russian Evangelicals), Shakers, and all religions — that the very obviousness of the : temptation at first perplexes us. One says ] to oneself : it is impossible that it is so simple j and that people do not see that if two assertions { are mutually contradictory, then neither of i them has the sole truth which faith should < possess. There is something else here, there j must be some explanation. I thought there j was, and sought that explanation, and read all ] I could on the subject, and consulted all whom ~ [ I could. And no one gave me any explanation, a except the one which causes the Sumsky Hus- i a sars to consider the Sumsky Hussars the best | ( regiment in the world, and the Yellow Uhlans ] to consider that the best regiment in the world a is the Yellow Uhlans. The ecclesiastics of all the j j different creeds, through their best representa- j 8

tives, told me nothing but that they believed themselves to have the truth, and the others to be in error, and that all they could do was to pray for them. I went to archimandrites, bishops, elders, monks of the strictest orders, and asked them ; but none of them made any attempt to explain the matter to me, except one man, who explained it all, and explained it so that I never asked any one any more about it. I said that for every unbeliever turning to belief (and all our young generation are in a position to do so) the question that presents itself first is, why is truth not in Lutheranism nor in Catholicism, but in Orthodoxy ? Educated in the high school, he cannot help knowing — what the peasants do not know —that the Protestants and Catholics equally affirm that their faith is the only true one. I Historical evidence, twisted by each religion in its own favour, is insufficient. Is it not possible, said I, to understand the teaching in a loftier way, so that from its height the differences should disappear, as they do for one who believes truly ? Can we not go further along a path like the one we are following with the OldBelievers ? They emphasize the fact that they have a differently shaped cross and different alleluias and a different procession round the altar. We reply: You believe in the Nicene Creed, in the seven sacraments, and so do we. Let us hold to that, and in other matters do as you please. We have united with them by ^placing the essentials of faith above the unessentials. Now with the Catholics, can we not

say: You believe in so and so and in so and so, which are the chief things, and as for the Filioque clause and the Pope — do as you please, j Can we not say the same to the Protestants, uniting with them in what is most important ? My interlocutor agreed with my thoughts, but told me that such concessions would bring reproach on the spiritual authorities for deserting the faith of our forefathers, and this would produce a schism ; and the vocation of the spiritual authorities is to safeguard in all its purity the Greco-Russian Orthodox faith inherited from our forefathers. And I understood it all. I am seeking a faith, the power of life ; and they are seeking the best way to fulfil in the eyes of men certain human obligations. And fulfilling these human affairs they fulfil them in a human way. However much they may talk of their pity for their erring brethren, and of addressing prayers , for them to the throne of the Almighty— to carry out human purposes violence is necessary, I , and it has always been applied, and is and will be applied. If of two religions each considers , itself true, and the other false, then desiring , to attract others to the truth, men will preach , their own doctrine. And if a false teaching is* j preached to the inexperienced sons of their , Church — which has the truth— then that Church j , cannot but burn the books and remove the man | < who is misleading its sons. What is to be done with a sectarian — burning, in the opinion of the Orthodox, with the fire of false doctrine — ' who in the most important affair of life, in |

faith, misleads the sons of the Church ? What can be done with him, except to cut off his head, or to incarcerate him ? Under the Tsar Alexis Mikhaylovich, people were burned at the stake, that is to say, the severest method of punishment of the time was applied, and in our day also, the severest method of punishment is applied — detention in solitary confinement.1 And I turned my attention to what is done in the name of religion and was horrified, and I almost entirely abjured Orthodoxy. The second relation of the Church to a question of life was with regard to war and executions. At that time Russia was at war. And Russians, in the name of Christian love, began to kill their fellow men. It was impossible not to think about this, and not to see that killing is an evil repugnant to the first principles of any faith. Yet prayers were said in the churches for the success of our arms, and the teachers of the Faith acknowledged killing to be an act resulting from the Faith. And besides the murders during the war, I saw, during the disturbances which followed the war, Church dignitaries and teachers and monks of the lesser and stricter orders who approved the killing of helpless, erring youths. And I took note of all that is done by men who profess Christianity, and I was horrified.

1 At the time this was written, capital punishment was considered to be abolished in Russia. And I ceased to doubt, and became fully convinced that not all was true in the religion I had joined. Formerly I should have said that it was all false ; but I could not say so now. The whole of the people had a certain knowledge of the truth, for otherwise they could not have lived. Moreover, that knowledge was accessible to me, for I had felt it and had lived by it. But I no longer doubted that there was also falsehood in it. And all that had previously repelled me now presented itself vividly before me. And though I saw that among the peasants there wTas a smaller admixture of the lies that repelled me than among the representatives of the Church, I still saw that in the people's belief also falsehood was mixed with the truth. But where did the truth and where did the falsehood come from ? Both the falsehood and the truth were contained in the so-called holy tradition and in the Scriptures. Both the falsehood and the truth had been handed down by what is called the Church.

And whether I liked or not, I was brought to the study and investigation of these writings and traditions — which till now I had been so afraid to investigate. And I turned to the examination of that same theology which I had once rejected with such contempt as unnecessary. Formerly it seemed to me a series of unnecessary absurdities, when on all sides I was surrounded by manifestations of life which seemed to me clear and full of sense ; now I should have been i glad to throw away what would not enter a healthy head, but I had nowhere to turn to. I On this teaching religious doctrine rests, or at least with it the only knowledge of the meaning ! of life that I have found is inseparably connected. However wild it may seem to my firm old mind, it was the only hope of salvation. It had to be carefully, attentively examined in order to understand it, and not even to understand it as I understand the propositions of science : I do not seek that, nor can I seek it, knowing the peculiarity of the knowledge of faith. I shall not seek the explanation of everything. I know that the explanation of everything, like the commencement of everything, must be concealed in infinity. QBut I wish to understand in a way which will bring me to what is inevitably inexplicable. I wish to recognize anything that is inexplicable, as being so not because the demands of my reason are wrong (they are right, and apart from them I can understand nothing), but because I recognize the limits of my intellect. I wish to understand in such a way that everything that is inexplicable shall present itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable [ and not as being something I am under an arbitrary obligation to believ^

That there is truth in the teaching is to me indubitable ; but it is also certain that there is falsehood in it, and I must find what is true %nd what is false, and must disentangle the one from the other. I am setting to work upon this task. What of falsehood I have found j in the teaching, and what I have found of truth, and to what conclusions I came, will form the j following parts of this work, which if it be worth it, and if any one wants it, will probably some i day be printed somewhere. The foregoing was written by me some three j years ago, and will be printed. Now, a few idays ago, when revising it and returning to the line of thought and to the feelings I had when I was living through it all, I had i a dream. This dream expressed in condensed ( form all that I had experienced and described, j and I think therefore that, for those who have I understood me, a description of this dream 1 will refresh and elucidate, and unify what has 1 been set forth at such length in the foregoing c pages. The dream was this : — - i

I saw that I was lying on a bed. I was neither n comfortable nor uncomfortable : I was lying |k on my back. But I began to consider how, jo and on what, I was lying — a question which had o not till then occurred to me. And observing n my bed, I saw I was lying on plaited string suspenders attached to its sides : my feet were ti resting on one such suspender, my calves |w on another, and my legs felt uncomfortable. 4 I seemed to know that those suspenders were hi movable, and with a movement of my foot llo I pushed away the furthest of them at my |fr feet — it seemed to me that it would be jut more comfortable so. But I pushed it away 11 too far and wished to reach it again with my foot, and that movement caused the next suspender under my calves to slip away also, so that my legs hung in the air. I made a movement with my whole body to adjust myself, fully convinced that I could do so at once ; but the movement caused the other suspenders under me to slip and to become entangled, and I saw that matters were going quite wrong : the whole of the lower part of my body slipped and hung down, though my feet did not reach the ground. I was holding on only by the upper part of my back, and not only did it become uncomfortable but I was even frightened. And then only did I ask myself about something that had not before occurred to me. I asked myself : Where am I, and what am I lying on ? and I began to look around, and first of all to look down in the direction in which my body was hanging, and whither I felt I must soon fall. I looked down and did not believe my eyes. I was not only at a height comparable to the height of the highest towers I ir mountains, but at a height such as I could ; lever have imagined.

; I could not even make out whether I saw anyj ;hing there below, in that bottomless abyss over 5 jvhich I was hanging and whither I was being Irawn. My heart contracted, and I experienced e aorror. To look thither was terrible. If I : looked thither, I felt that I should at once slip rom the last suspender and perish. And I did *iot look. But not to look was still worse, for I bought of what would happen to me directly I fell from the last suspender. And I felt that from fear I was losing my last supports, and that '! my back was slowly slipping lower and lower. Another moment and I should drop off. And then it occurred to me that this cannot be real, j It is a dream. Wake up ! I try to arouse myself but cannot do so. What am I to do ? What am I to do ? I ask myself, and look * upwards. Above, there is also an infinite space. I look into the immensity of sky and try to forget about the immensity below, and I really do j forget it. The immensity belQw repels and < frightens me ; the immensity above attracts ( and strengthens me. I am still supported above < c the abyss by the last suspenders that have not c yet slipped from under me ; I know that I am j hanging ; but I look only upwards and my fear j passes. As happens in dreams, a voice says :

4 Notice this, this is it ! ’ And 1 look more and more into the infinite above me and feel that I am becoming calm. I remember all that has happened, and remember how it all happened ; how I moved my legs, how I hung down, how frightened I was, and how I was saved from fear j by looking upwards. And I ask myself: Well, and now am I not hanging just the same?. And I do not so much look round as experience with my whole body the point of support on which I am held. I see that I no longer hang as if about to fall, but am firmly held. I ask myself how I am held : I feel about, look round, and see that under me, under the middle of my body, there is one suspender, and that when I look upwards I lie on it in the position of securest : balance, and that it alone gave me support before. And then, as happens in dreams, I imagined the mechanism by means of which I was held ; a very natural, intelligible, and suremeans, though to one awake that mechanism has no sense. I, in my dream, was even surprised that I had not understood it sooner. It appeared that at my head there was a pillar, and the security of that slender pillar was> undoubted, though there was nothing to support it. From the pillar a loop hung very ingeniously and yet simply, and if one lay with the middle of one’s body in that loop and looked up, there could be no question of falling. This was all clear to me, and I was glad and tranquil. And lit seemed as if someone said to me : ‘ See that, you remember.’

j IUR . 3 Id o-fctodo oinJ ! I 8 yyva &B of; . ; ; A hr::. C£i$i i &<*> i • ' -i.'.-.. *31 - i V ;n yd a :g;fr . -A j ; , : io:ho. ’ !r: ;-.;i ' i v r . r/r. • sno <..> dg* ; u • A • •• ' A i . . 1 i '.'A ' r octet ')i. . id:. r-sd ; trrerlt h&'& y.rrr Ate; d •b; . V.; J7il S - io t 6VI M o; h :: e'oery id •cT bliroi oi itel I. A Key to the Gospel Teaching 107 II. The Command oe Non-Resistance . . . . 119 III. The Law oe God and the Law op Man ..... 128 IV. Misunderstanding of Christ’s V. Jesus and the Mosaic Law . 160 VI. The Five Commandments . 181 VII. Christ’s Teaching. False Doctrine. Man is a Son of VIII. The Path of Life . . . 248 IX. Faith and Works . . . 278 X. “ My Yoke is Easy ” . . 293 XI. The Dead Church . . . 332 XII. What is Faith ? 370 I lived in the world for fifty-five years, and after the first fourteen or fifteen of childhood I was for thirty-five years a nihilist in the real meaning of that word, that is to say not a Socialist or revolutionary as those words are generally understood, but a nihilist in the sense of an absence of any belief.

Five years ago I came to believe in Christ’s I teaching, and my life suddenly changed ; I ceased to desire what I had previously desired, and began to desire what I formerly did not want. What had previously seemed to me good « seemed evil, and what had seemed evil seemed I good. It happened to me as it happens to a man i who goes out on some business and on the way (suddenly decides that the business is unnecessary and returns home. All that was on his right is now on his left, and all that was on his left is now on his right ; his former wish to get as far as possible from home has changed into a wish to be as near as possible to it. The direction of my life and my desires became different, and good and evil changed places. This all occurred because I understood Christ’s teaching otherwise than as I had formerly understood it. I am not seeking to interpret Christ’s teaching, but only to tell how I understood what is simple, 103 plain, clear, intelligible, indubitable, and addressed to all men in it, and how what I under- j stood changed my soul and gave me tranquillity and happiness.

I do not wish to interpret Christ’s teaching, but should only wish to forbid artificial interpretations of it. All the Christian Churches have always ad- ' mitted that all men — unequal in their knowledge and minds, wise or foolish — are equals before God, and that God’s truth is accessible to them all. Christ even said that it was the will of God that to the foolish should be revealed what was hidden from the wise. Not all can be initiated into the deepest mysteries of dogmatics, homiletics, patristics, liturgies, hermeneutics, apologetics, etc., but all may and should understand what Christ said to all the millions of simple, unlearned people who have lived and are living. And it is just this which Christ said to all these simple people who had as yet no possibility of turning for explanations of his teaching to Paul, Clement, John Chrysostom, and others — it is just this that I want to tell to all men. The thief on the cross believed Jesus and was saved. Would it really have been evil or have harmed anyone had the thief not died on the cross but come down from it and told men how he learned to believe in Christ ?

I, like that thief on the cross, have believed Christ’s teaching and been saved. And this is no far-fetched comparison but the closest expression of the condition of spiritual despair and horror at the problem of life and death in which I lived formerly, and of the condition of peace and happiness in which I am now. I, like the thief, knew that I had lived and was living badly, and saw that the majority of people around me lived as I did. I, like the thief, knew that I was unhappy and suffering, and that around me people suffered and were unhappy, and I saw no way of escape from that position except by death. I, like the thief to the cross, was nailed by some force to that life of suffering and evil. And as, after the meaningless sufferings and evils of life, the thief awaited the terrible darkness of death, so did I await the same thing. In all this I was exactly like the thief, but the difference was that the thief was already dying, while I was still living. The thief might believe that his salvation lay there beyond the grave, but I could not be satisfied with that, because beside a life beyond the grave life still awaited me here. But I did not understand that life. It seemed to me terrible. And suddenly I heard the words of Christ and understood them, and life and death ceased to seem to me evil, and instead of despair I experienced happiness and the joy of life undisturbed by death.

I have told why I formerly did not understand Christ’s teaching, and how and why I have now understood it, in two large works : A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology and A New Translation and Harmony of the Four Gospels , with Explanations . In those works I try methodically and step by step to examine all that hides the truth from men, and verse by verse retranslate, compare, and synthesize the four Gospels. For six years this has been my work. Every year, every month, I discover fresh and fresh elucidations and confirmations of my fundamental thought, correct errors that from haste or over-eagerness have crept into my work, and add to what has been done. My life, not much of which remains, will probably end before this work is completed.1 But I am convinced that ■the work is needed, and therefore while I still have life I do what I can. Such is my prolonged external work at 1 This book was completed in January 1884, Tolstoy t jeontinued to live and work till November 1910. theology and the Gospels. But my internal } work, of which I wish to tell here, was different. It was not a methodical investigation of theology and of the texts of the Gospels, but an instantaneous discarding of all that hid the real ! c meaning of the teaching and an instantaneous | c illumination by the light of truth. It was an j I occurrence such as might befall a man who, by ~ the guidance of a wrong drawing, was vainly ‘ seeking to reconstruct something from a confused s heap of small bits of marble, if he suddenly 1 guessed from the largest piece that it was quite a j different statue from what he had supposed, and j having begun to reconstruct it, instead of the -J former incoherence of the pieces he saw a con- j firmation of his belief in every piece, which with *( all the curves of its fracture fitted into other j pieces and formed one whole. That was what " happened to me, and it is this that I wish n to relate.

I wish to relate how I found the key to the 1 understanding of Christ’s teaching, which re- j vealed to me the truth with a clearness and J assurance that excluded all doubt. This discovery was made by me thus. Since * I first read the Gospels for myself when almost c a child, what touched and affected me most of 1 all was Christ’s teaching of love, meekness, c humility, self-sacrifice, and repayment of good s for evil. Such always was for me the essence of 1 Christianity — that in it which my heart loved, ( and for the sake of which, after passing through - despair and unbelief, I accepted as true the j meaning the labouring Christian folk attribute 1 to life, and submitted myself to the faith professed by them, namely the faith of the Orthodox Church. But, having submitted to the Church, I soon noticed that I did not find in her teaching confirmation or explanation of those principles of Christianity which seemed to me most important. I noticed that that aspect of Christianity which was dear to me is not the chief thing in Church teaching. I saw that what seemed to me most important in Christ’s teaching is not so recognized by the Church ; she treats something else as most important. At first I did not attach importance to this peculiarity of Church teaching. 4 Well, what of it ? ’ thought I — 4 The Church, besides ideas of [love, humility, and self-sacrifice, admits also this dogmatic, external meaning. That is foreign to me and even repels me, but there is ( nothing harmful in it.’

But the longer I lived in submission to the , Ohurch, the more noticeable it became that . bhis characteristic of her teaching was not so j harmless as it at first seemed to me to be. The Church repelled me by the strangeness of . her dogmas and her acceptance and approval I }f persecutions, executions, and wars. The j mutual denunciation by one another of various ; congregations also repelled me. But what j shattered my trust in the Church was just her j j ndifference to what seemed to me the essence s of Christ’s teaching, and her partiality for what 3 seemed to me unessential. I, I felt that something was wrongly put, but vhat was wrong I could not at all make out. I could not make it out because the teaching of the Church not only did not deny what * ‘ seemed to me the chief thing in Christ’s teaching, but fully acknowledged it, acknowledging it somehow so that what was chief in Christ’s teaching no longer occupied the first place. I could not reproach the Church for denying what was essential, but the Church acknow - ledged the essential matter in a way that did not satisfy me ; she did not give me what I expected of her.

I went over from nihilism to the Church only because I was conscious of the impossibility of life without faith, without a knowledge of what is good and what is evil, apart from my animal instincts. This knowledge I thought I should find in Christianity, but Christianity as it then appeared to me was only a certain frame of mind, very indefinite, from which clear and obligatory rules of conduct were not deducible, and for such rules I turned to the Church. But the Church gave me rules that did not bring me any nearer to the state of mind dear to me, but rather removed me further from it, and I could not follow her. What was necessary and dear to me was life based on the Christian truths ; the Church, however, gave me rules of life which were quite foreign to the truths I prized. The rules given by the Church about faith in dogmas, observation of the Sacraments, fasts, and prayers were to me unnecessary ; and rules based upon the Christian truths were absent. Nor was that all. The Church rules weakened and sometimes plainly destroyed that Christian frame of mind which alone gave meaning to my life. What disturbed me most of all was that all human evils — the condemnation of individuals, of whole peoples, of other religions, and the executions and wars which resulted from such condemnations — were all justified by the Church. The teaching of Christ about humility, not judging, forgiveness of injuries, self-sacrifice and love, was extolled in words, but at the same time in practice the Church approved of what was incompatible with this teaching.

Was it possible that the teaching of Christ was such that these contradictions were inevitable ? I could not believe it. Moreover, what always seemed to me surprising was that, as far as my knowledge of the Gospels went, those passages on which the definite Church dogmas were based were the most obscure ; while those from which one derived the practical teaching were the clearest and most definite. Yet the dogmas and those Christian obligations which result from them were defined by the Church in the clearest and most precise manner, while of the practical fulfilment of the teaching mention was made in the most indefinite, foggy, mystical way. Could Christ possibly Ihave wished this when delivering his teaching ? A solution of my doubts could only be found in the Gospels. So I read and re-read them. Out of them all, the Sermon on the Mount always stood out for me as something special, and I read it more often than anything else. Nowhere else did Christ speak with such authority — nowhere else does he give so many clear, intelligible moral rules directly appealing to the heart of every man. Nowhere did he speak to a larger crowd of the common people. If there were any clear, definite Christian rules, they ought to be expressed here. In these three chapters of Matthew I sought a solution of my perplexity. Often and often did I re-read the Sermon on the Mount and experienced the same feeling every time : a thrill of exaltation at the verses about turning the other cheek, surrendering one's cloak, reconciliation with all men, love of one's enemies, but also a dissatisfied feeling. The words of God addressed to all lacked clearness. A too impossible renunciation of everything was demanded, destroying all life as I understood it, and therefore it seemed to me that such renunciation could not be the obligatory condition of salvation ; but if that were not so, then there was nothing definite and clear. I read not the Sermon on the Mount alone, but all the Gospels, as well as all the theological commentaries on them. The theological explanation that the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount are indications of the perfection towards which men should strive, but that fallen man, immersed in sin, cannot by his own strength attain this perfection, and that his safety lies in faith, prayer, and the Sacraments— such explanations did not satisfy me.

I did not agree with this because it always seemed strange to me why Christ, knowing in advance that the fulfilment of his teaching was unattainable by man's individual strength, gave such clear and admirable rules relating directly to each individual man. In reading these rules it always seemed to me that they related directly to me and demanded my personal fulfilment. Reading them, I always experienced a joyous confidence that I could immediately, from that very hour, fulfil them all, and I wished and endeavoured to do this. But as soon as I experienced difficulty in doing this, I involuntarily remembered the Church's teaching that man is weak and cannot do these things by his own strength, and I weakened. They told me we must believe and pray. But I felt I had little faith, and therefore could not pray. They told me one must pray God to give faith — the very faith that gives the prayer that gives the faith that gives the prayer — and so on to infinity. But both reason and experience showed me that only my efforts to fulfil Christ's teaching could be effective. And so, after many, many vain seekings and studyings of what was written in proof and disproof of the Divinity of this teaching, and after many doubts and much suffering, I again was left alone with my heart and the mysterious book. I could not give it the meaning others gave it, could not find any other meaning for it, and could not reject it. And only after disbelieving equally all the explanations of the learned critics and all the explanations of the learned theologians, and

after rejecting them all (in accord with Christ's words, 4 Except ye turn and become as little * children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven'), I suddenly understood what I had not formerly understood. I understood it not as a result of some artificial, recondite transposition, harmonization, or reinterpretation ; on the contrary, everything revealed J itself to me because I forgot all the interpretations. The passage which served me as key to the whole was Matt. v. 38, 39 : 4 Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth : But I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil.' And suddenly, for the first time, I understood this verse simply and directly. I understood that Christ says just what he says, and what immediately happened was not that something new revealed itself, but that everything that obscured the truth fell away, and the truth arose before me in its full meaning. 4 Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth : But I sa}^ unto you, Resist not him that is evil.' These words suddenly appeared to me as something quite new, as if I had never read them before. Previously when reading that passage I had always, by some strange blindness, omitted the words, 4 But I say unto you , Resist not him that is evil,’ just as if those words had not been there, or as if they had no definite meaning.

Subsequently, in my talks with many and many Christians familiar with the Gospels, I often had occasion to note the same blindness as to those words. No one remembered them ; and often when speaking about that passage Christians referred to the Gospels to verify the fact that the words were really there. In the same way I had missed those words and had begun understanding the passage only from the words which follow, £ But whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also . . / and so forth ; and these words always appeared to me as a demand to endure sufferings and deprivations that are unnatural to man. The words touched me, and I felt that it would be admirable to act up to them; but I also felt that I should never be strong enough to fulfil them merely in order to suffer. I said to myself , ‘ Very well, I will turn the other cheek, and I shall be again struck. I will give what is demanded and everything will be taken from me. I shall have no life — but life was given me, so why should I be deprived of it ? It cannot be that Christ demands it/ That was what I formerly said to myself, imagining that in these words Christ extolled sufferings and deprivations, and extolling them, spoke with exaggeration and therefore inexactly and obscurely. But now, when I had understood the words about not resisting him that is evil, it became plain to me that Christ was not exaggerating nor demanding any suffering for the sake of suffering, but was only, very definitely and clearly, saying what he said. He says : ‘ Do not resist him that is evil, and while doing this know in advance that you may

meet people who, having struck you on one cheek and not met with resistance, will strike you on the other, and having taken away your coat will take your cloak also ; who, having availed themselves of your work, will oblige you to do more work, and will not repay what they borrow . . . should this be so, continue nevertheless to abstain from resisting the evil man. Continue, in spite of all this, to do good to those who will beat you and insult you/ And when I understood these words as they are said, at once all that was obscure became clear, and what had seemed exaggerated became quite exact. I understood for the first time that the centre of gravity of the whole thought lies in the words, 4 Resist not him that is evil/ and that what follows is only an explanation of that first proposition. I understood that Christ does not command us to present the cheek and to give up the cloak in order to suffer, but commands us not to resist him that is evil, and adds that this may involve having to suffer. It is just like a father sending his son off on a distant voyage, who does not order the son not to sleep at night and not to eat enough, and to be drenched and to freeze, but says to him, 4 Go your road/and if you have to be drenched and to freeze, continue your journey nevertheless/ Christ does not say, 6 Offer your cloak and suffer/ but he says, 4 Resist not him that is evil, and no matter what befalls you do not resist him/ These words, 4 Resist not evil/ or 4 Resist not him that is evil/ understood in their direct meaning,

were for me truly a key opening everything else, and it became surprising to me that I could so radically have misunderstood the clear and definite words : ‘ It was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth : But I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil, and no matter what he does to you, suffer and surrender, but resist him not.’ What can be clearer, more intelligible, and more indubitable than that ? And I only needed to understand these words simply and directly as they were said and at once Christ’s whole teaching, not only in the Sermon on the Mount but in the whole of the Gospels, everything that had been confused, became intelligible ; what had been contradictory became harmonious, and, above all, what had appeared superfluous became essential. All merged into one whole, and one thing indubitably confirmed another like the pieces of a broken statue I when they are replaced in their true position. In this Sermon and in the whole of the Gospels everything confirmed the same teaching of non-resistance to evil. In this Sermon, as everywhere else, Christ never represents his disciples— that is to say, the people who fulfil the law of non-resistance to evil — otherwise than as turning the cheek to the smiter, giving up the cloak, persecuted, beaten, and destitute. Everywhere Christ repeatedly says that only he can be his disciple who takes up his cross and abandons everything ; that is to say, only he who is ready to endure all consequences that result from the fulfilment of the law of

non-resistance to evil. To his disciples Christ says : ‘ Be beggars ; be ready without resisting 4 > evil to accept persecution, suffering, and death.’ He himself prepares for suffering and death j without resisting evil, and sends Peter away because he complains of this. He himself dies forbidding resistance to evil, and without deviating from his teaching. All his first 4 disciples fulfilled this commandment of nonresistance, and passed their lives in poverty and persecutions, never returning evil for evil. So Christ says what he says. It is possible to affirm that it is very difficult always to obey this rule. It is possible not to agree with the statement that every man will be happy if he obeys this rule. It may be said that it is stupid, as unbelievers say that Christ was a dreamer and an idealist who enunciated impracticable rules which his disciples followed from stupidity. But it is quite impossible not to admit that Christ said very clearly and definitely just what he meant to say, namely that according to his teaching man should not resist evil, and that therefore whoever accepts his teaching must not resist evil. And yet neither believers nor unbelievers understand this simple, clear meaning of Christ’s words.

When I understood that the words 4 resist not him that is evil ’ meant 4 resist not him that is evil/ my former conception of the meaning of Christ’s teaching was suddenly changed, and I was horrified, not at the fact that I had not understood it, but at the strange way in which I had understood the teaching up to that time. I knew, we all know, that the meaning of Christ’s teaching is in love to men. To say 4 turn your cheek, love your enemies 5 is to express the essence of Christianity. I knew this from childhood. But why did I not understand these simple words simply, but sought in them some allegorical meaning ? 4 Resist not him that is evil ’ means 4 never resist him that is evil,’ that is, never do violence, never do an act that cannot but be contrary to love, and if they then insult you, bear the insult and still do not inflict violence on any one else. He said it so clearly and simply that it is impossible to say it more clearly. How was it that I, believing or trying to believe that he who said it was God, declared that to fulfil this by my own strength was impossible ? The Master says to me, 4 Go and chop wood/ and I reply, 4 1 cannot do that by my own

strength.’ Replying so, I say one of two things, either that I do not believe what the Master says, or that I do not wish to do what he commands. Of the commandment of God which he gave us to perform, and of which he said, 4 Whoso doeth this and teacheth men so shall be called great,’ etc., of which he said that only those who do it shall receive life ; the command which he himself fulfilled and which he expressed so clearly and simply that there can be no doubt about its meaning. It was of this command that I who had never even tried to fulfil it said, £ It is impossible to perform it by my own strength ; I need supernatural aid.’ God came down on earth to give salvation to men. That salvation consists in this. The Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, suffered for people and redeemed their sins before his Father, and gave men the Church in which is preserved the grace which is administered to believers. But besides all this that same Son of God also gave people a teaching and an example of life for their salvation. How was it that I said that the rules of life expressed by him simply and clearly for all men were so difficult of accomplishment as to be even impossible without miraculous aid ? He not only did not say that, but he said,

‘ Do it. He that does not do it will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ And he never said that the performance was difficult. On the contrary he said, £ My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ John the Evangelist said, ‘ His law is not hard.’ How was it that I said that what God had told us to do, that act the performance of which he had so exactly defined and of which he had said that to do it was easy, that which he himself performed as a man and which was performed by his first followers— how was it that I said that to do it was so difficult as to be even impossible without miraculous aid ? If a man applied the whole : strength of his mind to destroy some law that I had been given, what more effective for the destruction of such a law could that man say than that the law itself was impracticable, and that the intention of the lawgiver himself concerning his law was that it was impracticable and that to fulfil it needed miraculous aid? And that is just what I thought concerning the law of non-resistance to evil ; and I began to remember how this strange thought entered my head — that the law of Christ was divine f but that its fulfilment was impossible— and reconsidering my past I understood that that thought was never conveyed to me in its complete nakedness (it would have repelled me), but that I, without noticing it, had sucked it in with my mother’s milk from my very first childhood, and the whole of my subsequent life * had only confirmed in me this strange delusion.

From childhood I was taught that Christ was God and that his teaching was divine, but at the same time 1 was taught to respect those institutions which secured by violence my safety from evil men. I was taught to respect | these institutions by the priests. I was taught to resist the evil man, and it was inculcated that it is degrading and shameful to submit to the evil man and to endure him. They * 1 taught me to judge and to execute ; afterwards ! they taught me to go to war — that is to say to resist the evil man by murder, and the army j of which I was a member was called the * Christ- | loving Army/ and its activities were sanctified by the blessings of the Church. Moreover, A * from childhood and until I was a man I was taught to respect what directly contradicted ! the law of Christ; to resist an injurer, to revenge myself by violence for a personal, family, or national insult. All this was not merely not condemned, but it was instilled into me that all this was excellent and not contrary to the law of Christ.

All my circumstances, my tranquillity, the safety of myself and my family and my property were all based on the law repudiated by Christ, i on the law of a tooth for a tooth. The doctors of the Church taught that Christ’s teaching -Was divine, but its performance impossible on account of human frailty, and only Christ’s blessing can assist its performance. The worldly teachers and the whole construction of our life plainly admitted the impracticability j and fantastic nature of Christ’s teaching, and by words and deeds taught what was opposed to it. The admission of the impracticability of God’s teaching had gradually to such a ! degree impregnated me and had become so familiar, and it coincided to such a degree | with my desires, that I had never before noticed j the contradiction with which I was faced. I did not see that it is impossible at one and the same time to confess Christ as God, the basis of whose teaching is non-resistance to him that is evil, and consciously and calmly to work for the establishment of property, law-courts, government, and military forces, to establish a life contrary to the teaching of Christ, and to !' pray to that same Christ that the law of nonresistance to him that is evil and of forgiveness should be fulfilled among us. That which is so clear had not yet occurred to me : that it would be much simpler to arrange and organize life according to the law of Christ and then to pray that there should be law-courts, executions, and wars if they are so necessary for our welfare.1

1 Many philosophies are logically sound and irrefutable once one grants them the premises from which they start. The chandelier is often solid and brilliant, the only question is whether the hook which attaches it to the ceiling is sufficiently firm to support it. So it is with Tolstoy’s philosophy of Christian anarchy. Once accept his thesis that Jesus, by saying ‘resist not him that is evil,’ intended to forbid any use of physical force to prevent any one from doing whatever evil he likes, and that he was divinely and absolutely right in laying down that principle, and there is no logical escape from the ultimate conclusion that any Government using force, all compulsory law, all , police, and all protection of life or property is immoral. It is therefore important to examine the context, intention, and scope of the passage referred to, and to ask whether, had Jesus wished to give it the extension and application Tolstoy gives it, he would not have done so explicitly, not leaving such tremendous conclusions to be deduced from such brief remarks. ‘ Sweet reasonableness ’ would hardly have been predicated of Christ’s teaching had he allowed his repudiation of ‘ an eye for an eye ’ to carry him to such an extreme in the contrary direction.

And I understood how my mistake had arisen. It had arisen from obedience to Christ in words f ' and denial of him in deeds. The command of non-resistance to him that is evil is one that makes a complete whole of all 1 the teaching, but this only if it is not a mere saying, but an obligatory rule — a law to be fulfilled. It is really a key which opens everything, but only when it is pushed into the lock. The treatment of this statement as a mere saying impossible of fulfilment without supernatural aid is the destruction of the whole teaching, and whatbutan impossibility can any teaching appear t to men from which the unifying, fundamental ,thesis has been removed ? To an unbeliever it even appears simply stupid and cannot appear otherwise. To put an engine in position, to heat the boiler, to set it in motion, but not to attach the connecting belt, was what was done with the teaching of Christ when people began to teach that you can be a Christian without fulfilling the law of non-resistance to him that is evil. I was recently reading the Fifth Chapter of Matthew with a Jewish Rabbi. At almost every sentence the Rabbi said, ‘ That is in the Jewish Canon. That is in the Talmud/ and he pointed out to me in the Old Testament and the Talmud dicta very similar to the dicta of the Sermon on the Mount. But when we came to the verse about non-resistance to him that is evil he did not say, ‘ And that is in the Talmud/ but only ironically asked me : j

‘ Do the Christians fulfil that ? Do they turn the other cheek ? *■ I had no reply, especially as I knew that at that very time Christians were not only not turning the other cheek, but were striking cheeks the Jews had turned. But I was interested to know whether there was anything similar in the Old Testament or in the Talmud, and I asked him about this. He replied : c No , it is not there . But tell me whether the Christians fulfil this law/ By this question he showed me that the presence of this rule in the Christian law, which not only is not performed by any one, but which Christians 3 themselves admit to be impracticable, is an admission of the irrationality and superfluity of the Christian law. And I had no reply to give him. Now having understood the meaning of this teaching, I see clearly the strange internal I contradiction with which I was faced. Having admitted Christ to be God and his law to be divine, and having at the same time arranged my life in contradiction to the teaching, what was left me but to admit that the teaching was impracticable ? In words I admitted the teaching of Christ to be holy, in practice I professed a quite unchristian teaching and admitted and submitted to unchristian institutions which surrounded me on all sides.

The whole of the Old Testament says that the misfortunes of the Jewish people were the effect of their believing in false gods and not in the true God. Samuel, in his First Book, chapters viii. and xii., told the people that to all their former disobedience they had added a new one. Instead of God who had been their King * 1 * * they had chosen a man-king, whom they thought would save them. Do not believe in 4 vain things/ says Samuel to the people (xii. 21). It cannot help you or save you because it is 4 vain ? — empty. That you may not perish together with your king, cling to the one God. And it was faith in that 4 vain thing/ in empty idols, that hid the truth from me. On the path to it, hiding its light from me, stood those 4 vain things ' which I had not strength to reject. I was walking the other day towards the Borovitski Gates of the Moscow Kremlin. At the gates sat an old crippled beggar, wrapped round the ears with some rag. I took out my purse to give him something.1 Just then, coming down from the Kremlin, ran a manly, ruddy young fellow, a grenadier in his regimental sheepskin coat. The beggar, on seeing the soldier, jumped up in dismay, and ran limping down towards the Alexandrov Gardens. The grenadier started to catch him, but, without overtaking him, stopped and began abusing the

1 Tolstoy always gave away small change to beggars he met, in accord with the usual practice of religious folk in a country which had no State poor-relief organization, and also in accord with the injunction ‘ Give to him that asketh of thee ! ’ He sometimes admitted that his gift might do harm and that the man might go and drink it ; but he argued that the goodwill on the giver’s part indicated by the gift was more important than the possible ill effects to the recipient. beggar for not obeying the prohibition to sit at the gateway. I awaited the grenadier at the gate. When he came up to me I asked him if he could read. ‘ I can, what about it ? * ‘ Have you read the Gospels \ 9 ‘I have/ 1 And have you read, “ For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat” ? * And X quoted that passage. He knew it and listened to it, and I saw that he was uneasy. Two passers-by stopped to listen. It was plain that the grenadier was hurt to feel that he, fulfilling his duty excellently and driving beggars away from the place they had to be driven from, suddenly appeared to be in the wrong. He was agitated, and was evidently seeking a rejoinder. Suddenly in his clever black eyes a light gleamed, and he turned sideways to me as though to walk away. ‘ And have you read the Military Code ? A asked he. I said I had not read it.

* ‘ Then don't talk/ said the grenadier, tossing his head triumphantly, and adjusting his coat he proceeded confidently to his post. This was the only man I ever met in all my life who quite logically decided the eternal question with which our social state, being what it is, faced me and faces every man who calls himself a Christian.

THE LAW OF GOD AND THE LAW OF MAN It is wrongly said that the Christian teaching relates only , to personal salvation and not to public, political questions. That is merely audacious and barefaced assertion, which is most obviously false and collapses as soon as it is seriously considered. Very well, I will not resist the evil doer, I will turn my cheek as a private individual, say I to myself ; but if an enemy comes, or the people are oppressed, and I am called on to take part in the struggle against the evil men, and to go and kill them, then it is imperative for me to decide wherein lies the service of God, and wherein the service of ‘ the vain thing/ Am I to go to the war or j not ? I am a peasant, and am chosen to serve as a village elder, a judge, or a juryman, and I am told to take an oath, to judge and to inflict punishment. What am I to do ? Again I have to choose between the law of God and the law of man. Or I am a monk, living in a monastery, and some peasants have taken our hay and I am sent to participate in the struggle against | the evil men, and to take legal proceedings i against the peasants. Again I have to choose. No one can escape from the question. I speak j 128

not merely of our class, whose activity consists almost entirely in resisting evil men : in the army, in the courts of justice, or in civil offices —there is not a single private person, however humble, who has not to choose between serving God by obeying His command, or serving the 4 vain thing' — state institutions. My private life is interwoven with the general life of the state, which demands of me an unchristian activity directly contrary to the law of Christ. Nov/ with universal military service and the liability of all to serve on a jury, this dilemma is sharply presented to us all in a very striking manner. Every man must take the weapons I of murder — a sword and a bayonet, and must either kill, or at least load the rifle and sharpen the sword, that is prepare to kill. Every citizen must appear at the law-courts and participate in trial and punishment, that is to say must repudiate Christ's law about not resisting Ihim that is evil, and must do it not merely in words but in deeds. The grenadier's question — The Gospel or the military code 1 The law of God or man's law % — now presents itself to humanity as it did in the days of Samuel. It presented itself to Christ himself, and to his disciples. It stands before those who now wish to be Christians in deed, and it stood before me.

The law of Christ, and his teachings of love, humility, and self-repudiation had previously always touched my heart and attracted me. But from all sides, both in history and around me at the present day and in my own life, I saw a contrary law, repugnant to my heart and conscience and reason, but harmonizing with t my animal instincts. I felt if I accepted the law of Christ I should be isolated and it would go ill with me, I should be one of the persecuted and suffering, as Christ predicted. While if I accepted man's law, every one would approve ; of it, and I should be at peace, secure, and have t at my service all manner of theological subtleties to set my conscience at rest. I should laugh and be merry as Christ said. I felt this, and therefore did not penetrate into the meaning of Christ's law, but tried to understand it so that it should not prevent my living my accustomed animal life. But to understand it so was impossible, and therefore I did not understand it at all. In this non-comprehension I reached a state of perplexity which now astonishes me, and as an example of that perplexity I will give my former understanding of the words, 4 Judge not, that ye be not judged' (Matt. vii. 1), 1

c Judge not and ye shall not be judged : con- I demn not, and ye shall not be condemned ' (Luke vi. 37). The institution of law-courts in which I took part, and which defended the s safety of my property, appeared to me so $ indubitably sacred and accordant with the 1 law of God that it never occurred to me that i' these sayings could mean anything but that one must not speak ill of one's neighbour. It never entered my head that in those words Christ could have spoken of the law-courts, of the Zemstvo, of the Criminal Court, of the I District Courts and magistrates, and of all the Senates and departments. Only when I understood the words about not resisting him that is evil in the direct sense, only then did the question occur to me of Christ’s attitude to all those courts and departments. And seeing that he must have disapproved of them, I asked myself : Does it not mean that one must not merely refrain from condemning one’s neighbour verbally, but must not judge him in the courts — must not condemn one’s neighbour by means of our law-courts ? In Luke vi. 37-49, these words are spoken immediately after the teaching of non-resistance to evil and of returning good for evil. Following the words, ‘ Be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful,5 come the words, ‘ Judge i not, and ye shall not be judged : condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned.5 Does not this mean that besides not blaming one’s neighbour one must not set up law-courts, nor judge one’s neighbour in them ? said I. And I only had to formulate that question, and my heart and my common sense at once replied affirmatively.

I know how this understanding of the words startles one at first. It startled me too. To show how far I was from such an understanding of the words I will confess to a shameful stupid* ity. When I had already become a believer, and read the Gospels as a divine book, I used, as a joke, to say to my friends, on meeting any of them who were public prosecutors or judges : ‘ And you go on judging, though it is written, “ Judge not that ye be not judged.55 5 So sure was I that those words could mean nothing more than a prohibition of evil-speaking, , ( that I did not understand the terrible mockery of holy things my words contained. I had gone so far that, being convinced that these plain words did not mean what they do mean, I used them jokingly in their true sense. I will recount in detail how all my doubts — j whether these words could be understood except ‘ as meaning that Christ totally forbids the human institution of any law-court, and that he could mean nothing else by those words — were destroyed. The first thing that struck me, when I understood the law of non-resistance to the evil man in its direct meaning, was that man’s courts of law are not in accord with it, but are ! directly opposed to it and to the meaning of ' the whole teaching, and that Christ therefore, s if he thought of the law-courts, must have ’ condemned them.

Christ says : 4 Resist not him that is evil.’ j : The purpose of the courts is to resist the evil j J man. Christ tells us to return good for evil, j ] The courts repay evil for evil.1 Christ tells j ( 1 Tolstoy here, and subsequently, begs the question j f whether it may not benefit a man to be forcibly restrained t * from pursuing an evil course. Confusion arises from j 1 the simultaneous discussion of the actual words attri- j t buted to Jesus and the general question of what j | really is true and sensible about man’s relation to his j fellow men. Tolstoy argued, in another place, that I . Christ’s word should only be accepted as authorita- 1 tive because they are true and reasonable. After that it is arguing in a circle to say that they are true and j reasonable because uttered by Christ. us not to distinguish good people from bad. The courts are entirely concerned in making the distinction. Christ says, forgive all men. Forgive not once, not seven times, but endlessly. Love your enemies and do good to them that hate you. The courts do not forgive, but punish. They deal out not good but evil to those they call the enemies of society. So it appeared evident that Christ must have condemned the courts. But, thought I, perhaps Christ had nothing to do with the law-courts and was not thinking of them. But I saw that this could not be : from the day of his birth and until his death Christ came in conflict with the courts of Herod, of the Sanhedrin, and of the high priests. And I noticed that Christ often spoke directly of the courts as of an evil. He warned his disciples that they would be judged ; and he told them how to bear themselves in the courts. Of himself he said that he would be condemned ; and he himself set an example of how one should treat man’s courts of law. Therefore Christ thought of these human courts, which condemned him and his disciples and which have condemned and are condemning millions of people. Christ saw this evil and plainly indicated it. At the execution of the sentence of the court on the woman taken in adultery he plainly repudiated the court and showed that man must not judge, because he is himself guilty. And he expressed that iame thought several times, saying that with iirt in one’s own eye one cannot see the dirt a another’s eye and that the blind must not

lead the blind. He even explains what results ( from such a blunder. The pupil becomes like i his master. But perhaps having said this about the judge- j ment on the woman taken in adultery and having put forth parables about the foundations of the house, referring to the general weakness of mankind, he nevertheless does 1 not forbid appeals to human courts of law for the purpose of obtaining protection from evil men. But I saw that this is quite inadmissible. In the Sermon on the Mount, addressing everybody, he says : ‘ And if any man will sue ‘ thee at law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.’ Therefore he forbids any one to go to law. But perhaps Christ speaks only of each man’s personal relation to the courts, and does not condemn the process of law itself, but allows in Christian society oh* people who judge others in institutions established for that purpose ? But neither can this be supposed. Christ, in the prayer he gave, bids all men without exception to forgive others that they may be forgiven their own sins. And he repeats the thought often. Therefore, every man when he prays and before bringing his gift to the altar should forgive every one. How can a man, who by the faith he professes must always forgive all men, judge and condemn any one in the law-courts ? It follows that, according to Christ’s teaching, there can be no such things as Christian courts which i inflict punishment. a

But perhaps the context shows that in this passage Christ, ’when he says, 4 Judge not, that ye be not judged/ was not thinking of human courts of justice ? But this again is not so ; on the contrary, it is clear from the context that when he said, 4 Judge not/ Christ was speaking precisely of the institution of lawcourts. In Matthew and Luke, before saying, 4 Judge not/ he says : Resist not him that is evil, endure evil, do good to all men. And before that, in Matthew, he repeats the words of the Hebrew criminal code, 4 An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ And after this reference to the criminal law, he says : But ye shall not do so ; resist not him that is evil ; and then i he adds, 4 Judge not.’ Therefore Christ speaks precisely of human criminal law, and repudiates it by the words, 4 Judge not.’ Moreover, in Luke, he not only says, 4 Judge | not,’ but 4 Judge not . . . and condemn not.’ That word 4 condemn,’ wdiich has so similar a meaning, was not added for nothing. The addition can have had only one aim — to elucidate the sense in which the word 4 judge ’ is used.

If he had meant to say, do not judge your neigJibour , he would have added that word 4 neighbour,’ but he adds the word which is translated 4 do not condemn,’ and then adds, 4 that ye be not condemned ; forgive all men and you will be forgiven.’ But perhaps, all the same, Christ was not thinking of the law-courts when he said this, and I may be attributing my own thought to liis words which had a different meaning. So I asked myself how Christ’s first disciples, the Apostles, regarded man’s law-courts. Did they acknowledge them, or approve of them ? In chap. iv. 11, the Apostle James says : £ Speak not evil one of another, brethren, for he that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth 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. One only is the law-giver, and judge, even he who is able to save or to destroy : Who art thou that judgeth another ? ’ The word translated ‘ speak evil of ’ is KaraXaXeo). Without referring to the dictionary one can see that this word must mean indict. And so it does, as any one may convince himself by a reference to the dictionary. It is translated, “ Who speaks evil of his brother, speaks evil of the law.’ One involuntarily asks, Why ? However much I may speak evil of my brother, I do not speak evil of the law ; but if I indict and bring my brother before the court of law, I evidently thereby condemn the law of Christ : that is to say, I consider the law of Christ insufficient and indict and condemn his law. Then it is clear that I do not fulfil his law, but constitute myself its judge. The judge, says Christ, is he who can save. But how shall I, who am not able to save, be a judge, and inflict punishments ?

The whole passage speaks of human law- courts and repudiates them. The whole of the Epistle is full of that thought. In the Epistle of James (ii. 1-13) it is said : (1) [‘ My brethren, let the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ be held without respect of persons.] (2) Por if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in fine clothing, and there come in also a poor man in vile clothing ; (3) And ye have regard to him that weareth the fine 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 themselves drag you before the judgement seats ? 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 i thy neighbour as thyself (Lev. xix. 18), ye do well. (9) But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convicted of the law as transgressors. (10) Por whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. (11) Por he who 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. Jxxii. 22 ; Lev. xviii. 17-25). (12) So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the f* law of liberty. (13) For he shall have judgement without mercy that hath showed no mercy ; < and mercy rejoiceth against judgement.’ The last words have often been translated : 4 Mercy is proclaimed in the courts/ and were so translated to imply that there may be Christian courts of law, but that they must be merciful. James exhorts the brethren not to make distinctions between people. If you make distinctions, you oL€KpiOr]T€, are divided in your minds, like the judges with evil intentions in the courts. You have judged the poor to be worse. But on the contrary it is the rich man who is worse. He both oppresses you and drags you before the courts. If you live according to the law of love of your neighbour, according to the law of charity (which, in distinction from the other law^, James calls the c law of the Lord ’), you do well. But if you regard persons, and make distinctions between man and man, you are offenders against the law of mercy. And, having probably in mind the example of the woman taken in adultery whom they brought before Christ that she might be stoned, or the sin of adultery in general, James says that he who exe- j cutes the adulterers will be guilty of murder and | will infringe the external law. For the same , external law forbids both adultery and murder. ; He says : 4 Behave like men who are judged by the r law of liberty . For there is no mercy for him who has no mercy, and therefore mercy destroys j the courts' a.

How could that be said more clearly and ^ ! definitely ? All discrimination between people t is forbidden, every judgement that this man is good and that man evil, directly indicates that the human courts are undoubtedly bad, and proves that the court itself is criminal, as it executes people for offences, and therefore itself infringes God’s law of charity. I read the Epistles of St. Paul, who himself suffered from the courts, and in the very first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans I found a reprimand which he addresses to the Romans for their various sins and errors, and among the rest for their courts (v. 32) : 4 Who knowing j the judgement 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.’ Chap. ii. 1 : 4 Therefore thou art without excuse , 0 man , whosoever thou art , who judgest ; for wherein thou judgest another , thou condemnest thyself ; for thou that judgest dost 1 practise the same things . (2) And we are sure that the judgement 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 judgement 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 ? ’ The Apostle Paul says that they, knowing (the righteous law of God, themselves do wrong and teach others to do the same, and therefore the man who judges cannot be justified. Such is the attitude to the law-courts^which I found in the Epistles of the Apostles ; and in c their lives as we all know man’s courts appeared an evil and a temptation which had to be endured with firmness and with submission to the will of God. By reconstructing in one’s imagination the position of the first Christians among the J heathen, one can easily understand tha,t the Christians, who were persecuted in man’s lawcourts, could not prohibit law-courts. Only incidentally could they allude to that evil, condemning its foundations, as they did. I consulted the Fathers of the Church of the ? first centuries, and saw that they always define the difference between their teaching and that of all others by the fact that they never put compulsion on any one in any way and never went to law with any one (see Athenagoras and Origen), did not execute, but only endured, the j torments to which they were condemned by man’s courts. All the martyrs, by their deeds, made the same profession. I saw that all the i Christians, till the time of Constantine, re- ( garded the law-courts not otherwise than as an , ( evil which had to be patiently endured, and j that the thought could never enter the head of any Christian of those days that Christians ( could take part in prosecutions. I saw that j the words of Christ, e Judge not that ye be not j • judged ,’ were understood by his first disciples | • as I now understand them in their direct mean- j j ing : ‘ Do not prosecute in the courts, and do not participate in them.’ i

Everything indubitably confirmed my conviction that the words 4 Judge not and condemn not 5 mean, do not judge in the courts ; yet the explanation that it means, do not malign your neighbour, is so generally accepted, and so boldly and confidently do the courts flourish in all Christian countries, supported even by the Church, that I long doubted the correctness of my interpretation. If everybody could explain the matter in this way and organize Christian courts, then probably they had some ground for so doing, and there is something I do not understand, said I to myself. There must be grounds on which the words are understood to mean 4 to malign,5 and there must be grounds for instill tuting Christian courts. And 1 1 examined the explanations of the ecclesiastical theologians. In all these interpretations, from the fifth century onward, I i found that the words were taken in the sense of condemnation of one’s neighbour, that is, maligning. And as the words are taken only to mean condemning one’s neighbour in words, the question arises — how can one refrain from condemning ? Evil must be condemned ! Therefore all the interpretations revolve round the 4 question, what one may and what one may not condemn. It is said (St. Chrysostom and Theophilus) that for the servants of the Church it must not be understood as a prohibition to judge, for the Apostles themselves judged. It is said that probably Christ referred to the Jews 1 who condemned their neighbours for small sins and themselves committed great ones.

But nowhere is a word said of the institution of courts of law and of the relation in which the courts stand to this condemnation of judging. Does Christ forbid them, or allow them ? To that particular question no reply is given, as though it were quite obvious that as soon as a Christian occupied a judge’s seat, he might not merely condemn his neighbour, but have him executed. I consulted the Greek, the Catholic, and the Protestant writers, and the writers of the Tubingen school and of the historical school. All of them, even the most free -thinking, understood those words as a condemnation of evil-speaking. But why the words, contrary to the whole teaching of Christ, are understood so narrowly that the courts are not included in the prohibition of judging ; why it is supposed that Christ, forbidding as an evil deed a condemnation of one’s neighbour that involuntarily slips from one’s tongue, does not consider as evil and does not forbid a similar condemnation uttered deliberately and associated with the infliction of violence on the person condemned is not explained, nor is there the slightest hint that it is possible for £ condemnation ’ to mean the judging which takes place in the law-court and from which millions of people suffer. More than that, in dealing with these words, £ Judge not and condemn not,’ reference to that most cruel habit of legal condemnation is carefully avoided, and even fenced off. The theologian-interpreters remark that Christian law-courts must

exist and do not conflict with the law of Christ. Noticing this, I began to doubt the good faith of these interpretations, and referred to the translation of the words 4 judge 5 and 4 condemn ’ — the very matter with which I ought to have begun. In the original these words are Kplvu and KaraStKa The incorrect translation of the word KOTaStKa^o) in the Epistle of James, where it is translated by the words 4 speak evil of/ confirmed my suspicion of the incorrectness of the translations. I looked how the words Kpivw and KaraSiKa fco are translated in the Gospels in different languages, and I saw that the word which in the Vulgate is translated condemnare , is translated in a similar way in French, while in Slavonic it is 4 condemn/ and Luther translates it Verdammen, to curse. The contrast of these translations strength- employed in both the Gospels, mean, and also the word KarahiKa^, used by Luke the Evangelist, who, in the opinion of the experts, wrote rather good Greek ? How would a man translate those words who knew nothing of the Gospel teaching and the existing interpretations of it, but had before him merely thatsaying ?

I consulted the general dictionary and found that the word /cpiVw has many different meanings, and among them very commonly the meaning of sentencing in the law-court, | even executing, but that it never has the < ‘ meaning of evil-speaking. I consulted the New Testament dictionary and found that the word is often used in the New Testament in the sense of to sentence in court. It is sometimes used in the sense of differentiation, but never in the sense of evil-speaking. And 4 so I see that the word Kpcv w may be translated variously, but that a translation which makes it mean 6 speak evil 5 is the most far-fetched and unexpected of all. Then I inquired about the word KaraStKa£w coupled to KpCvix), the word of many meanings i — evidently on purpose to define the sense in which the writer was using that word. In the general dictionary I found that the word never has any other meaning than to condemn in court to punishment or execution. I looked in the New Testament dictionary, and found that the word is used in the Epistle of James v. 6, 4 Ye have condemned and killed the just ’ ; the word ‘ condemned - is this same word Karaou<d£a}, used in reference to Christ, who was condemned, j And in no other way is this word ever used in the j whole of the New Testament , or in any Greek dialect. I

What does this all mean ? What absurdity have I arrived at ? I, and every one in our society, if we have ever considered the fate of mankind, have been horrified at the sufferings and the evil introduced into man’s life by man’s criminal law — an evil both for the judged and for those who judge : from the executions of i j Genghiz Khan to the executions of the French Revolution and those of our day. No one with a heart can have escaped an impression of horror and doubt in goodness at even hearing, not to say seeing, the execution 1 of men by other men : the floggings to death with rods,2 guillotines, and scaffolds. In the Gospels, each word of which we consider holy, it is directly and clearly said : You have had a criminal law — 4 An eye for an eye/ — • but I give you a new law, 4 Resist not him that is evil.’ Obey this law, all of you : do not inflict evil for evil, but do good always and to all men, forgive all men. Further, it is clearly said : 4 Do not go to law / And, that doubt about the meaning of the words may be impossible, it is added, 4 Do not condemn to punishment in the courts’

My heart says clearly and distinctly : do not execute. Science says, do not execute ; the more you execute the more evil will there be * Reason says, do not execute, evil cannot be cut off by evil. The word of God, in which I believe, says the same. And I, reading the whole teaching, and reading the words : 4 Judge not that ye be not judged , condemn not that ye be not condemned , forgive and ye shall be forgiven / admit that this is the word of God, say that it means that I must not go about talking scandal 1 See Confession , p. 14. 2 A method of punishment frequently practised in I the army under Nicholas I. The sentence was so many thousand strokes, and the prisoner had to run the gauntlet between ranks of soldiers, the result often being death from collapse. and maligning people, and continue to consider j the law-court to be a Christian institution, and 4 to consider myself both a judge1 and a Christian. And I was horrified at the grossness of the deception in which I was involved, 1 Tolstoy was an Arbiter of the Peace for about a year in 1862, after the emancipation of the serfs, his duties being to adjust differences between the landed proprietors and the newly emancipated serfs.

I now understand what Christ meant when he uttered the words : 4 It was said to you : an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you : resist not him that is evil, but bear with him.’ Christ said : It has been instilled into you, and you are accustomed to think that it is good and reasonable to resist evil by force and to tear out an eye for an eye, to institute criminal courts, police, an army, and to defend yourselves from foes ; but I say, Do not use violence, do not take part in violence, a do no harm to any one,1 not even to those whom you call ‘ enemies.’ I now understand that Christ, in the position he takes up of non-resistance to the evil man, is speaking not only of what will result directly for each man from non-resistance to him that 1 Tolstoy intended no sophistry, but there is uncon- Iscious sophistry in the suggestion that the purpose of the Criminal Courts is to injure certain people. He leaves unnoticed the benefit those Courts confer by making it plain what we must not do to one another. One of the greatest benefits conferred by law is that it supplies a degree of definiteness to human relations, which renders co-operation possible even among |j people whose opinions differ. It diminishes the amount of strife and friction that would otherwise exist.

is evil but, in contradiction to the principle under which mankind lived in his time, under ° the law of Moses and under the Roman law, and now lives under various legal codes, he sets up the principle of non-resistance to the evil man, which principle according to his teaching should be the basis of man’s social life, and should free mankind from an evil they < inflict on themselves. He says : You think that your laws correct evil — they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil — by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction. For thousands of years you have tried your principle ; now try my contrary one.’ « I have recently spoken to people of most divergent opinions about this law of Christ’s — non-resistance to the evil man. It did occur, though rarely, that I met some who agreed with me. But, strange to say, two kinds of people never, even in principle, tolerated a straightforward understanding of the law, but always warmly defended the justice of resistance to the evil-doer. These are people who belong to the two extreme poles : patriotic Conservative Christians, who consider their Church to be the only true one, and Revolutionary Atheists. Neither these nor those wish to abandon the right to resist by violence what they consider evil. And the wisest and most learned of them are quite unwilling to see the simple and obvious truth that if one 1 admits that one man may use violence to oppose what he considers evil, another may do the same to resist what he, in turn, considers evil.

A correspondence lately passed through my i hands between an Orthodox Slavophil and a Christian-Revolutionary, which was instructive in this respect. The one advocated the violence of war on behalf of our oppressed brotherSlavs ; the other, a revolutionary violence on behalf of our oppressed brethren, the Russian peasants. Both demanded violence, and both relied on the teaching of Christ. People in general understand Christ’s teaching in very various ways, but not in the direct, simple meaning which inevitably flows from We have arranged our whole life on the very foundations he denies. We do not wish to understand his teaching in its simple, direct meaning, and we assure ourselves and others either that we do not acknowledge his teaching or that it is unsuited to us. The so-called believers believe that Christ is God, the Second * Person of the Trinity, who descended to earth to show us how to live, and they arrange most elaborate ceremonies necessary for the administration of the sacraments, for erecting churches, for sending out missionaries, for ordaining priests, for the direction of their 3 flocks, for amending the creeds, but one little thing they forget — namely, to do what he told us to do. The unbelievers try to arrange their lives in all sorts of ways, only not according

I to the law of Christ, having decided in advance that that law will not do. But no one wishes ; to try doing as he bids us. Moreover, before even trying to do it, both the believers and the non-believers decide in advance that it is impossible. He says simply and clearly : the law of resistance by violence to him that is evil, which you have made the basis of your lives, is false and unnatural ; and he gives another basis — non-resistance — which in his opinion can alone deliver mankind from evil. He says : You think your laws of violence correct evil ; they only increase it. You have tried for thousands of years to destroy evil by evil, but instead of destroying it you have increased it. Do what I do, and you will know whether it is true. He not only says this but in his whole life, and by his death, he carries out his teaching of non-resistance to the evil man. Believers hear all this, they read it in their churches, they say the words are divine and that he who spoke them was God, but they say : It is all very well, but it is impossible with our arrangement of life — it would upset the whole way of life to which we are accustomed and which we like. Therefore we believe all this only as being an ideal towards which humanity must strive — an ideal to be attained by prayer and by faith in the sacraments and the redemption, and in the resurrection from the dead. Others, the unbelievers, the free-thinking investigators of Christ's teaching — Strauss, Renan, and others — who follow the historic method, having thoroughly imbibed the Church's explanation that Christ's teaching has no direct reference to life but is a visionary doctrine consoling to feeble-minded people, say

most seriously that Christ's teaching was only fit to be preached to the savage inhabitants of 1 the wilds of Galilee ; but that for us, with our culture, it appears merely a sweet dream — ‘ du charmant docteur,' as Renan says. In their opinion Christ could not rise high enough to understand all the wisdom of our civilization and culture. Had he stood on the height of education on which these learned people stand he would not have talked such charming rubbish about the birds of the air, about turning one's cheek, and about not being troubled for to morrow. These learned historians judge of Christianity by the Christianity they see in our society. The Christianity of our society I and day regards our present life as true and sacred, with its organizations, prisons, solitary confinements, Ciros,1 factories, newspapers, brothels and parliaments, and from the teaching of Christ it selects only what does not infringe that life.2 But, as Christ's teaching is the negation of all that life, nothing is accepted of it except mere words. The learned historians see 1 The translator finds himself in a difficulty when he has to devise an equivalent for the most improper type of Moscow restaurant.

2 This passage is an excellent example of Tolstoy’s power of sarcasm. The scorn he pours both on those who wish Christianity to be a mere epicurean consolation, and on those who, while criticizing Christianity, see it through the eyes of the others, is effective ; but one should note how, urged by his moral and intellectual indignation against these people, he slips in a juxtaposition of brothels and parliaments, which is the first word of an argument later pushed to farreaching and very questionable conclusions. this, and, as they are under no necessity to hideJt, as it is hidden by the pseudo-believers, < > this version of Christ’s teaching deprived of all substance is subjected to profound criticism and very rightly repudiated. The deduction is clear that there never was anything in Christianity except dreamy ideals. It would seem as though, before judging Christ’s teaching, one should understand what it consists of, and to decide whether his teaching is reasonable or not one should first of ail admit that he said what he said ; but that is just what is not done either by the Church or by the freethinking expositors. And we know very well why they do not do it.

We know very well that Christ’s teaching always included and includes the denial of all those human illusions, those 4 vain things,’ empty idols, which we, by calling them Church, State, culture, science, art and civilization, thinkwe can separate from the ranks of delusions. But it is just against them that Christ speaks, without excluding any 4 empty idols.’ Not Christ only, but all the Hebrew prophets, John the Baptist, and all the world’s true sages, have spoken of that same State, culture, and civilization, as an evil, ruinous to mankind. Suppose a builder says to a man, ‘ Your house is bad, it must be entirely rebuilt,’ and then gives details as to what beams should be cut, and how it should be done and where they should be stored. The man does not listen to the words about the house being bad and being rebuilt, but with a pretence of respect listens to the builder's further instructions and arrangements in the house. Obviously, all the advice given by the builder will appear inapplicable, and any disrespectful person will say plainly that his advice is stupid. This is what happens with regard to Christ's teaching. Not finding a better comparison, I made use of the above. And then I remembered that Christ, when preaching his doctrine, used that same comparison. He said : I will destroy your temple and in three days will build a new one. For that he was crucified ; and it is for that very thing that his teaching is now crucified.

The least one can demand of people who judge any doctrine is that they should judge of it in the sense in which the teacher himself understood it. And he understood his teaching not as a distant ideal for humanity, obedience to which is impossible, nor as a mystical poetic fantasy wherewith he captivated the simpleminded inhabitants of Galilee. He understood his teaching as a real thing, and a thing which would save mankind. And he did not dream on the cross, but died for his teaching, and many others are dying and will yet die. Of such a teaching one cannot say that it is a dream ! Every true doctrine is a dream to those in error. We have come to this, that there are many people (of whom I was one) who say that 0 this teaching is visionary because it is not s natural to man. It is not in accord, they say, 5 with man's nature to turn the other cheek when one cheek is struck ; it is not natural to give what is one's own to another ; it is unnatural ^ ! to work for others instead of for oneself. It is natural to man, they say, to defend his safety, and the safety of his family and his property : in other words, it is natural for man j to struggle for his own existence. The learned jurists prove scientifically that man's most i sacred duty is to defend his rights, that is — to struggle.

But it is sufficient to free oneself for a moment from the thought that the order which exists and has been arranged by men is the best and is sacrosanct, for the objection that Christ's i teaching is not accordant with man's nature to turn against the objector. Who will deny that to murder or torture, I will not say a man, but to torture a dog or kill a hen or calf is contrary and distressing to man's nature •? (I know people who live by tilling the land, and who have given up eating meat merely because they had themselves to kill their own animals.) Yet the whole structure of our lives is such that each man's personal advantage is only obtained by inflicting suffering on others, j which is contrary to human nature. The whole order of our life, the whole complex mechanism of our institutions, designed for the infliction of violence, witness to the extent to which violence is contrary to human nature. Not a single judge would decide to strangle with j a rope the man he condemns to death from j the bench. Not a single magistrate would f make up his mind himself to take a peasant I s

from his weeping family and shut him up in prison. None of our generals or soldiers, were it not for discipline, oaths of allegiance, and declarations of war, would, I will not say kill hundreds of Turks and Germans, and destroy their villages, but would even decide to wound a single man. All this is only done thanks to I a very complex state and social machinery the purpose of which is so to distribute the responsibility for the evil deeds that are done that no one should feel the unnaturalness of those deeds. Some men write the laws ; others f 1 apply them ; a third set drill men and habituate them to discipline, that is to say, to senseless and implicit obedience ; a fourth set — the people who are disciplined — commit all sorts of deeds of violence, even killing people, without knowing why or wherefore. But a man need only, even for a moment, free himself mentally I from this net of worldly organization in which he is involved to understand what is really unnatural to him. As soon as we cease to affirm that the customary evil we employ is an immutable divine truth it becomes obvious which of the two is natural and accordant to man : violence,

* or the law of Christ. Is it to know that my tranquillity and safety and that of my family, and all my pleasures, are purchased by the destitution, corruption, and misery of millions ; by hangings every year, by hundreds of thouj sands of suffering prisoners, by millions torn | from their homes and stupefied by discipline — soldiers, policemen, and gendarmes who, armed with pistols against hungry people, safeguard my amusements ; to purchase every sweet 1 morsel I put into my mouth or into the mouths of my children, with the sufferings to humanity that are unavoidable for the procuring of these morsels ? Or to know that, be the morsel what it may, it is mine only when no one else needs it and when no one has to suffer on account of it ? 1 It is only necessary once to understand that this is so, and that every pleasure of mine, every moment of tranquillity under our organization of life, is purchased by the deprivations and sufferings of thousands who are restrained by violence ; one need but once understand that fact, to understand what is natural to man's entire nature — that is to say, not merely to his animal nature, but to his reasonable and animal nature. One need but understand the law of Christ in its full meaning, with all its consequences, in order to understand that Christ's teaching is not contrary to man's nature, but that it really consists in rejecting what is unnatural to man's nature, namely,

1 This passage, which occurs here incidentally, forms the keynote of some of Tolstoy’s later economic treatises. He says, and means, that no one has a right to keep anything any one else wishes to take. A man who wishes to get needful work efficiently done and requires accustomed tools for the purpose, will not find himself able to agree with the thesis. One consideration clashes with another, and in the experience of life we have to deal with comparative values more often than with absolute and abstract principles. the visionary human doctrine of resistance to evil which now makes life unhappy. Christ's doctrine of non-resistance to him that is evil is a dream ! But that the life of men, in whose souls pity and love for one another is implanted, has been passed, and is now being passed, by some in organizing executions at the stake, knouts, and breakings on the wheel, lashes, the splitting of nostrils, tortures, handcuffs, penal servitude, gallows, shootings, solitary confinements, prisons for women and children, in arranging the slaughter of tens of thousands in wars, in organizing periodic revolutions and Pugachev1 revolts, and the life of others in carrying out all these horrors, and the life of a third set in evading these sufferings and avenging themselves for them — is this not a dreadful dream ?

One has but to understand Christ's teaching to understand that the world, not that which God gave for man’s delight, but the world men have devised for their own destruction, is a dream, and a very wild and terrible dream — the raving of a maniac from which one need but awake in order never to return to that terrible nightmare. God descended to earth ; the Son of God — one of the Persons of the Trinity — became flesh and redeemed Adam’s sin ; this God, we were taught to think, must have said something secret, mystical, difficult to understand, and only to be understood by the aid of faith and 1 Pugachev was the Cossack leader of a very serious peasant revolt in the time of Catherine II. the sacraments ; and suddenly it appears that the word of God is so simple, so clear, so reason- <4 able. God says simply : Do not do evil to one j another — and there will be no evil. Is it possible that God’s revelation is so simple ? Can it be that God only said that ? It seems to us that we all knew that : it is so simple.

Elijah, the prophet, fleeing from men, hid in | a cave, and it was revealed to him that God would appear to him at the entrance to the cave. A storm arose that broke the trees. Elijah thought this was God, and looked ; but God was not there. Then came thunder ; the thunder and lightning were terrible. Elijah went out to look whether God was not there ; but God was not there either. Then there came an earthquake ; fire arose from the earth, the rocks were rent, and the mountains quaked. Elijah looked, i but God was still not there. Then a light, quiet ( breeze arose, bringing the refreshing scent of ( the fields. Elijah looked — and God was there ! Such, too, are these simple words of God : 4 Resist not him that is evil.’ They are very simple, but in them is expressed the law of God and man, one and eternal. The law is to such an extent eternal that if there is in history a movement forward towards the elimination of evil, it is thanks only to those men who have so understood Christ’s teaching, j and have endured evil and not resisted it by j violence. Progress towards the welfare of man- j kind is made not by the persecutors but by the persecuted. ,i-A.s fire does not extinguish fire, sol j evil cannot extinguish evil. Only goodness,

meeting evil and not infected by it, conquers h evil. That this is so is in man’s spiritual world an immutable law comparable to the law of Galileo, but even more immutable , clearer and more complete. People may deviate from it and hide it from others, but nevertheless the progress of humanity towards what is good can only be accomplished by that path. Every step forward is made solely in the path of nonresistance to evil. And in the face of all possible temptations and threats, the disciples of Christ may with more assurance than Galileo, declare : ‘ And yet, not by violence, but by goodness alone can you destroy evil.’ If that advance I is slow, this is thanks solely to the fact that the clearness, simplicity, reasonableness, inevitability and necessity of Christ’s teaching is hidden from the majority of men in the most cunning and dangerous way, hidden under a different doctrine falsely called his.

Everything confirmed the fact that the meaning of Christ’s teaching that had disclosed itself to me was true. But it was long before I could accustom myself to the strange idea that | after Christ’s law had been professed by millions * of people for 1800 years, and after thousands of men had devoted their lives to the study of that law, it had now been my fate to rediscover it as a novelty. But, strange as it might be, such was the case ; Christ’s teaching of non-resistance to evil arose before me as a total novelty of which I had not had the slightest conception. And I asked myself : How could this come about ? I must have had some false conception of the meaning of the teaching to cause me so to misunderstand it. And such a false conception really existed. When approaching the Gospel doctrine, I was ' not in the position of one who, never having . : heard anything of Christ’s teaching, suddenly hears it for the first time ; but X already possessed a whole ready-made theory of how I j > ought to understand it. Christ did not appear j to me as a prophet who was revealing a divine '] law ; but as one who completed and explained s 160

a divine law already known to me and indubitable. I already possessed a complete, definite, and very complex teaching about God, the creation of the world and of man, and about His commandments given to man through Moses. In the Gospels I encountered the words, 4 Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth ; but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil.’ The words, £ an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth/ were the law of Moses. The words, ‘ Resist not evil, or him that is evil/ were the new law, which repealed the first. Had I approached Christ’s teaching without that theological theory imbibed with my mother’s milk, I should have understood the simple meaning of his words. I should have understood that Christ denies the old law, and gives a new law of his own. But it had been instilled into me that Christ did not deny the law of Moses, but on the contrary confirmed it all to the last jot and tittle and completed it. Verses 17 and 18 of Matt, v., in which this is affirmed, had always, when I read the Gospels, struck me as obscure, and had evoked doubts. From what I then knew of the Old Testament, especially the last books of Moses, in which such minute, meaningless, and often cruel, rules are laid down, each preceded by the words : 6 And the Lord said unto Moses/ it seemed to me strange that Christ could confirm the whole of that law, and incomprehensible why he did so. But I then left the question undecided : I accepted unverified the interpretation instilled

into me from childhood, that both these laws are productions of the Holy Ghost, that they agree, and that Christ confirms the law of Moses, supplements it, and completes it. How that completion was effected, how the contradictions are solved which strike one’s eye in the Gospels themselves, both in these verses and in the words, ‘ But I say unto you,’ I never clearly explained to myself. But now, having recognized the simple and direct meaning of Christ’s teaching, I understood that these two laws are contradictory, and that there can be no talk of their agreement, or of completing the one by the other, but that we must accept one or the other, and that the common explanation of verses 17 and 18 in Matt. v. (which had formerly struck me by their obscurity) must be incorrect. And on re-reading those verses (the ones which had always seemed to me so obscure) I was amazed by the simple and clear meaning in them, which suddenly revealed itself to me. That meaning revealed itself to me not because I devised or transposed anything, but simply because I rejected the artificial interpretation which has been attached to that passage. Christ says (Matt. v. 17-19) : ‘ Think not that I came to destroy the law or the teaching of the prophets ; I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law till all things be accomplished.’

And verse 20 adds : ‘ Except your righteous- ness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribesand Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ Christ says : I have not come to destroy the eternal law, for the fulfilment of which youi Scriptures and prophecies were written, but I have come to teach you to fulfil the eternal law ; and I speak not of that law of yours which your scribes and Pharisees call the Law of God, but of that eternal law which is less changeable than the heavens and the earth. I express the thought in fresh words merely to tear the meaning away from the customary false interpretation. Were it not for that false interpretation it would be impossible to express this thought better or more exactly than it is expressed in those verses. The interpretation that Christ does not deny the law is based on the fact that to the word 4 law 5 in this passage — thanks to the comparison made with the iota (jot) of the written law — is attributed the meaning of the 4 written law 1 instead of the 4 eternal law ’ — though this is quite gratuitous, and in contradiction to themeaning of the words. But Christ is not speaking of the written law. If he had spoken of the written law he would have used the customary expression, the law and the prophets, as he always does when speaking of the written law. But he employs a different expression : the law or the prophets. If he were speaking of the written law he would also in the next verse, which supplies a continuation of the thought, have used the words ‘ the law and the prophets,’"

and not the word 4 the law ’ without addition, as actually stands in that verse. More than that, *j however, Christ uses the same expression in the Gospel of Luke in a connection which makes its meaning indubitable. In Luke xvi. 15, 16 Christ says to the Pharisees who assumed righteousness in the written law : 4 Ye are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men ; but God < knoweth your hearts : for that which is exalted ; among men is an abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John : from that time the Gospel of the Kingdom of God is preached, and every one entereth into it [by his own efforts].’ 1 And then in the following verse, 17, he says : 4 But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one tittle of the law to fail/ By the words, 4 the law and the prophets were until John/ Christ repeals the written law. By the words, 4 It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail/ he confirms the eternal law. In the first words he says, 4 the law and the prophets’ — that is to say the written law ; in the second he says simply 4 the law / therefore the law eternal. \ Consequently it is clear that here the eternal law is contrasted with the written law,2 and

1 Where Tolstoy’s translation diverges in meaning 1 from our Revised and Authorized Versions, his words i U are enclosed in square brackets. 2 More than that, as though to prevent any possible doubt as to which law he is speaking of, he immediately, in this connexion, gives an example — a very striking j c example — of a contradiction of the law of Moses with ^ the eternal law of which no atom can fail • giving ]/ that just the same contrast is made in the context in Matthew, where the eternal law is defined by the words, the law or the prophets. The history of verses 17 and 18 in their variations is remarkable. In most of the texts there is only the word ‘ law * without the addition of ‘ prophets/ In these versions there can be no suggestion that it means the written law. In other copies, in Tischendorf s, and in the canonical version, there is the addition of 4 prophets/ not with the conjunction 'and/ but with the conjunction ‘ or ' — the law or the prophets — which also excludes the meaning of the written law and gives the meaning of the eternal law.

In some of the texts not accepted by the Church the addition of ‘ prophets ' with the conjunction ‘ and/ and not ‘ or/ finds place — and in these same versions, when the word 4 law 9 is repeated ‘ and the prophets ' is also repeated. So that the meaning of the whole utterance in these versions is given as though Christ spoke only of the written law. These variations supply the history of the interpretation of that passage. The only clear rendering of the passage is that Christ here, as in Luke, is speaking of the eternal law. But among the copyists of the Gospel manuscripts were some who wished to assert the obligatori- the sharpest contradiction to the Mosaic law that occurs in the Gospels, he says (Luke xvi. 18) : ‘ Every one that putteth away his wife and marrieth another, committeth adultery.’ That is to say that, whereas in the written law divorce is allowed, in the eternal law it is a sin. — L. T. ness of the written law of Moses, and these ! scribes added to the word 4 law 9 the additional jk words 4 and the prophets/ and changed the j meaning.

Other Christians, who did not acknowledge the books of Moses, either excluded the addition or changed the word 4 and/ kg l, to the word 4 or/ fj. And with this word 4 or ' the passage entered into the canonical version. But despite the clearness and certainty of the meaning of the text in that form in which it had entered the canon, the canonical interpreters continued to interpret it in the spirit that had prompted the alternative which had not been I accepted in the text. The passage was submitted to innumerable explanations which were the further removed from its plain meaning in proportion as the interpreter agreed less j with the real, direct, simple meaning of Christ's teaching ; and most of the interpreters retain the apocryphal sense — the very one rejected by the text. Fully to convince oneself that in these verses Christ is speaking only of the eternal law, it | is worth while to examine the meaning of the word which served the pseudo -interpreters as an excuse. In Russian the word zakon (law), in Greek vofics, and in Hebrew torah , all have two main meanings : one is the law itself (that which is right) without reference to its expression ; the other conception is that of the written j expression of what certain people consider to i be the law. These two different meanings exist in all languages.

In Greek, in the Epistles of Paul, this distinc- \ tion is sometimes marked by the use of the article. Without an article, Paul uses this word chiefly in the meaning of the ‘ written law/ but with the article in the meaning of the e eternal law of God/ Among the ancient Hebrews, in the prophets, as Isaiah, the word ‘ law/ torah , is always used in the meaning of the one eternal revelation and teaching of God independent of verbal expression. And this same word ‘ law/ torah , in Ezra for the first time, and in the latest period in Talmudic times, began to be used to mean the five written books of Moses, over which the general title of Torah was inscribed, as we use the word Bible, but with this difference, that we have a word to distinguish the conception of the Bible from that of the law of God, while in Hebrew one and the same word was used for both conceptions. And therefore Christ, using the word £ law/ torah , employs it now to confirm it, when he uses it, in the meaning given it by Isaiah and the other prophets, of the law of God which is eternal, and now to reject it when he means by it the five books of the law. But for the sake of distinction when (rejecting it) he uses this word in the meaning of the written law, he always adds the words ‘ and the prophets/ or prefixes the word ‘ your ' to the word ‘ law/ When he says, ‘ Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them, for this is the law and the prophets/ he is speaking of the written law. He says that

the whole of the written law can be compressed into this one expression of the eternal law, and < by these words he annuls the written law. When he says (Luke xvi. 16), ‘ The law and j the prophets were until John/ he is speaking of the written law, and by these words denies its authority. When he says (John vii. 19), ‘ Did not Moses give you the law , and yet none of you doeth the law ? ’ or (John viii. 17), 'In your law it is written/ or (John xv. 25), ‘ The word that is written in their law/ he is speaking of the written law : the law he denied, the law which condemned him to death. (John xix. 7) ‘ The Jews answered Pilate, We have a law, and by that law he ought to die.’ Evidently that law of the Jews, on the basis of which they executed him, is not the law Christ taught. But when Christ says, ‘ I came not to destroy the law, but to teach you to fulfil it, for nothing can change I in the law, but all must be fulfilled/ he is speaking not of the written law but of the divine eternal law, and is confirming it.

But let us suppose that all these are merely formal proofs ; let us suppose that I have carefully selected contexts and variations and have ! carefully hidden everything opposed to my interpretation ; let us suppose that the Church's interpretation is very clear and convincing, and j that Christ really did not infringe the law of Moses but left it in full strength. Suppose that to be so. But then, what did Christ teach ? According to the Church's explanations he j taught that he, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God the Father, came to the earth and by his death redeemed Adam's sin. But every one who has read the Gospels knows that in them Christ says nothing, or speaks very vaguely, about that. But assuming that we do not know how to read, and that the above assertions really are made there : at any rate, Christ's indication that he is the Second Person of the Trinity and redeems the sins of humanity occupies the smallest and most obscure portion of the Gospels. What, then, does all the rest of Christ's teaching consist of ? It is impossible to deny, and Christians have always acknowledged, that the chief content of Christ's message is the teaching of life : how men should live with one another.

Having admitted that Christ taught a new way of life, one has to picture to oneself some definite kind of people among whom he taught. Let us imagine to ourselves Russians, or Englishmen, or Chinese, or Indians, or even savages on an island, and we shall see that every people always has its rules of life, its law of life, and that therefore if a teacher teaches a new law of life he thereby destroys the former law : without destroying it he cannot teach, I So it would be in England, in China, and among ourselves. The teacher will inevitably destroy our laws, which we consider precious and almost holy ; but among us it might occur that the preacher, teaching us a new way of life, will only destroy our civil law, our State law, or our customs, but will not touch the laws we consider divine — though it is hard to imagine this. But among the Jewish people who then had only one code of law — entirely divine and embracing the whole of life to its minutest details — among such a people what could a preacher teach who declared in advance that the whole law of the people among whom he was preaching w^as valid ? But let us say that this, too, is not a proof. Let those who interpret the words of Christ to mean that he confirmed the whole law of Moses explain this to themselves : Who it was that, throughout his active career, Christ exposed ? Against whom did he revolt, calling them Pharisees, lawyers, and scribes ? Who was it that rejected Christ's teaching ? Whose High Priest had him crucified ? If Christ acknowledged the law of Moses, where were those true adherents of that law who approved of him for doing so ? Can it be that there was not one such ?

The Pharisees, we are told, were a sect. The Jews do not say so ! They say : The Pharisees were the faithful adherents of the law. But let us grant that they were a sect. The Sadducees were also a sect. Where, then, were the people who were not a sect, but true believers ? In the Gospel of John they all — Christ's enemies — are called simply the J ews. And they did not agree with Christ's teaching and were opposed to him simply because they were Jews. But in the Gospels not only the Pharisees and Sadducees are represented as Christ's enemies : among his enemies the lawyers are also mentioned, the very men who conserved the law of Moses ; the Scribes, the very men who read the law ; the Elders, the very ones who were always considered the representatives of national wisdom. Christ said : 4 1 came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance * — to a change of life, fjLeravoia. Where and who, then, were these righteous ? Was Nicodemus the only one ? But even Nicodemus is represented to us as a kindly but erring man. We are so accustomed to the very strange explanation that the Pharisees and some wicked Jews crucified Christ, that the simple question never enters our heads : Where were those who were not Pharisees and not wicked, but real Jews who kept the law ? One has only to put that question and it all becomes plain. Christ — whether he was God or man — brought his teaching into the world among a people who kept a law which regulated the whole of their lives and was called the law of God. What relation could Christ have to that law ?

Every prophet — every teacher of a faith, revealing the law of God to men — inevitably encounters among men something people believe to be the law of God, and so he cannot I avoid making use of the word law in a double sense ; for it means what people falsely consider to be the law of God, 4 your law,5 and it also means the true, eternal law of God. But besides being unable to avoid a double use of I that word, the preacher usually does not wish to avoid it, but intentionally unites the two meanings : indicating that the law, which, taken in its entirety is false, and which is professed by those whom he is addressing, * does contain certain eternal truths. And every preacher will take those laws which are fundamentally true as the basis of his sermon. That is what Christ did among the Jews, 1 among whom both laws were called by the one word tor ah. Christ, in reference to the law of ■■ Moses — and to a yet greater extent in reference to the prophets, especially Isaiah, whose words he constantly quoted — acknowledged that in the Hebrew law and prophets there are eternal and divine truths coincident with the eternal law, and these — such as the saying, 4 Love God and thy neighbour ’ — he takes as the basis of his teaching. Christ often expresses this thought. (Luke x. 26) He says, 4 What is written in the law ? how readest thou ? ’ In the law also there are eternal truths to be found, if you only know how to read it. And he points out more than once that the commandment in their law relating to the love of God and of one’s neighbour is a commandment of the eternal law. In Matt. xiii. 52, Christ, after all the parables by which he explained ! 1 to his Apostles the meaning of his teaching, finally, as referring to all that had preceded, said : 4 Therefore every scribe [that is every literate person, who has learned the truth] is e like unto a householder, which bringeth forth n out of his treasure [indiscriminately, both T together] things new and old.’ j j

St. Irenaeus, and following him the whole y Church, understood these words in that way ; but quite arbitrarily, and to the infringement of the meaning of the whole speech, attached to them also the implication that all that was old was sacred. The plain meaning is that he who seeks what is good takes not only what is new but what is old, and that it must not be rejected simply because it is old. By these words Christ says that he does not deny those things in the old law which are eternal. But when he is spoken to of the whole law or its forms, he says that one must not pour new wine into old bottles. Christ could not confirm the whole law, but neither could he reject the whole law and the prophets — that law in which is said, ‘ Love thy neighbour as thyself/ and those prophets whose words he often used to express his own thoughts. And lo and behold, instead of this simple, clear understanding of these words, which as they were spoken and in the way they confirm the whole of Christ’s teaching are very simple, a misty explanation is substituted introducing a contradiction where none existed, and thereby ! destroying the meaning of the teaching and I reducing it to verbiage, and practically re- : establishing the teaching of Moses in all its savage cruelty.

According to all the Church’s interpretations, especially since the fifth century, Christ did not infringe the written law, but confirmed it. But how did he confirm it ? How can the law of Christ be united with the law of Moses ? To that no reply is given. In the interpretations a play of words is made use of, and it is said that Christ fulfilled the law of Moses in that in him the prophecies were fulfilled, and that Christ, through us, by man’s faith in him, fulfils the law. The only question essential to every believer (as to how to unite two eontradictory laws governing human life) is left without even an attempt to meet it. And the contradiction between the verse in which it is said that Christ does not destroy the law and the verses which say, 6 Ye have heard that it was said . . . but I say unto you . . . and again between the whole spirit of the teaching of Moses and that of Christ, remains in full force. Any one interested in this question should look at the Church’s interpretations of this passage, from St. John Chrysostom to our times. Only by reading these long dissertations will he be clearly convinced that here no solution of the contradiction is offered, but that a contradiction is artificially introduced where none existed.

The impossible attempts to unite the ununiteable clearly indicated that this union is not the result of a mistake, but has a clear and definite aim — it was needed. And it is even obvious why it was needed. This is what St. John Chrysostom says, replying to those who rejected the Mosaic law {Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew . Part 1. Homily xvi. Pusey's Library of the Fathers, pp. 236-7) 4 In the next place, they criticize the Law in the Old Covenant* which bids us put out an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and straightway they insult and say : “ Why, how can he be good who speaks so ? ” What then do we say in answer to this ? That it is the highest kind of philanthropy. For He made this law, not that we might strike out one another’s eyes, but that fear of suffering by others might restrain us from doing any such thing to them. As therefore He threatened the Ninevites with overthrow, not that He might destroy them (for had that been His will, He ought to have been silent), but that He might by fear make them better, and so quiet His wrath : so also hath He appointed a punishment for those who wantonly assail the eyes of others, that if good principles dispose them not to refrain from such cruelty, fear may restrain them from injuring their neighbour’s sight.

‘ And if this be cruelty, it is cruelty also for the murderer to be restrained, and the adulterer checked. But these are the sayings of senseless men, and of those that are mad to the extreme of madness. For I, so far from saying that this comes of cruelty, should say, that the contrary to this would be unlawful, according to men’s reckoning. And whereas thou sayest, “Because He commanded to pluck out an eye for an. eye, therefore He is cruel ” ; I say that if He had not given this commandment then He would have seemed, in the judgement of most men, to be that which thou sayest He is.’ St. John Chrysostom definitely accepts the law of a tooth for a tooth as divine, and what opposes the taking of a tooth for a tooth (that is to say, Christ’s teaching of non-resistance) as unlawful (pp. 237-8). 'For let us suppose that this law has been done away/ says St. John Chrysostom, 4 and that no one feared the punishment ensuing thereupon, but that licence had been given to all the wicked to follow their own dispositions in all security, to adulterers, and to murderers, to perjured persons and to parricides ; would not all things have been turned upside down ? Would not cities, market-places and houses, sea and land, and the whole world, have been filled with unnumbered pollutions and murders ? Every one sees it. For when there are laws, and fear, and threats, our evil dispositions are hardly checked ; were even this security taken away, what is there to prevent men’s choosing vice ? and what degree of mischief would not then come revelling upon the whole of human life ? The rather, since cruelty lies not only in allowing the bad to do what they will, but in another thing too quite as much ; to overlook, and leave uncared for, him who hath done no wrong, but who is without cause or reason suffering ill. For tell me : were any one to gather together wicked men from all quarters, and arm them with swrords, and bid them go about the whole city, and massacre all that came in their way, could there be anything more like a wild beast than he % And what if some other should bind, and confine with the utmost strictness, those whom that man had armed, and should snatch from out those lawless hands them

who were on the point of being butchered, could anything be greater humanity than this ? ’ St. John Chrysostom does not say by what standard one would be guided in determining ! who are evil. What if he were himself evil, and imprisoned the good ? 1 ‘ Now then, I bid thee transfer these examples to the Law likewise, for He that commands to pluck out an eye for an eye , hath laid the fear as a kind of strong chain upon the souls of the bad, and so resembles him, who detains those assassins in prison ; whereas he who appoints no punishment for them, doth all but arm them by such security, and acts the part of that other, who was putting the swords in their | hands, and letting them loose over the whole city.’ If St. John Chrysostom acknowledged the law of Christ, he should explain who will pluck out the eyes and the teeth and cast others into prison. If he who forbids us to do so, that is to say if God Himself, plucked them out, there would be no contradiction, but it is men who have to do it ; and these men the ! Son of God has commanded that it should not be done. God said, pluck out teeth, and His