 Preface and Introduction to What I Believe The name of Count Leo Tolstoy stands high in the annals of his country's literature as the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. His memory will be cherished, and his works will be read by later generations, long after the author is no more. But none will remember him with such devoted affection as will the privileged few who have watched his life and labours during the last seven years. During this period he has withdrawn from the world and its vanities, and has devoted himself to the study of the teachings of Christ, having become profoundly impressed with the Saviour's words concerning the duty of living a life of unselfish toil for the benefit of others. He has been endeavouring in a practical way to carry out his master's commands, and has devoted himself to ministering to his fellows. In these pages he sets forth the principles by which he is now ordering his life, and which he exhorts all men to adopt. The work has unfortunately been forbidden in Russia, but the manuscripts pass from hand to hand during their silent work of regeneration in the hearts of those who long for the coming of the kingdom of God on earth. To English readers the construction of the work may appear somewhat strange, and occasional statements may even seem startling, but though they may not be expressed in the conventional language to which the nations of England and America are accustomed, the right principles are inculcated, and it is the translator's earnest hope that Count Tolstoy's words may find an echo in the hearts of all those who believe in the regeneration of humanity through the spirit and teachings of Christ. C. Popoff Introduction I am fifty-five years old, and with the exception of the fourteen or fifteen years of my childhood I have been until recently a nihilist, in the proper signification of that term. I have not been a socialist or revolutionist, but a nihilist, in the sense of being completely without faith. Five years ago I began to believe in the doctrine of Christ, and in consequence a great change has been wrought in me. I now no longer care for the things that I had prized, and I have begun to desire things concerning which I had formerly been indifferent. Like a man who, going out on business, on his way suddenly becomes convinced of the futility of that business, and turns back, and all that stood to the right now stands to the left, and all that was to the left is now to the right. His wish to be as far from home as possible is changed to the desire of being as near home as possible. So I may say the whole aim and purpose of my life has been changed. My desires are no more what they have been. For me good and evil have changed places. The experience came through my apprehending the doctrine of Christ in an altogether different way, and seeing it in quite a new light. It is not my intention to interpret the doctrine of Christ, but simply to relate how I came to understand the simplest, clearest, and most intelligible point in that doctrine, and how, when once I had clearly grasped his meaning, it gave a new direction to all my thoughts. I have no wish to interpret the doctrine of Christ, but I should like to prevent others from interpreting it wrongly. Christian churches generally acknowledge that all men, however they may differ from each other in knowledge or mental capacity, are equal before God, and that the truth revealed to man is accessible to all. Christ himself has told us that the Father has hidden some things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to babes. All men cannot be initiated into the mysteries of dogmatic, homiletic, or patristic theologies and so on, but all can understand what Christ taught and still teaches to simple and ignorant men. The teachings of Christ were incomprehensible to me until recently, but I understand them now, and what I have found I desire to explain to others. The thief on the cross believed in Christ and was saved. Would it have harmed anybody if the thief had not died on the cross, but had come down to tell us how he believed in Christ? Like the thief on the cross, I too believed in the doctrine of Christ and found my salvation in it. This is not a far-fetched comparison. It worthily describes the condition of anguish and despair I was once in, at the thought of life and of death, and it also indicates the peace and happiness that now fill my soul. Like the thief I knew that my life was full of wickedness. I saw that the greater part of those around me were morally no better than I was. Like the thief too I knew that I was unhappy and that I suffered, and that all around me were unhappy and suffering likewise, and I saw no way out of this state of misery, but through death. Like the thief I was nailed as it were by some invisible power to this life of suffering and evil, and the same dreadful darkness of death that awaited the thief after his useless suffering and enduring of the evils of life awaited me. In all this I was like the thief, but there was this difference between us. He was dying, and I still lived. The thief could believe that his salvation would be realized beyond the grave, but I could not, because, putting aside the life beyond the grave, I had yet to live on earth. I did not, however, understand life. It seemed awful to me, until I heard the words of Christ and understood them, and then life and death no longer seemed to be evils. Instead of despair I felt the joy of possessing a life that death has no power to destroy. Can it harm anyone, if I relate now how it was that this change was effected in me? End of introduction. Chapter 1 of What I Believe This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. What I believe, by Count Leo Tolstoy. Translated from the Russian by Constantine Popov. Read by David Barnes. Chapter 1 I have endeavoured to explain the reason why I had not properly understood the doctrine of Christ, in my two works, a criticism on dogmatic theology, and a new translation and comparison of the Four Gospels with a commentary. In these works I examine all that conceals the truth from the eyes of men, and also re-translate and compare the Four Gospels verse by verse. I have been engaged for some six years upon this work. Every year, every month, I find new solutions and suggestions, and I am enabled to correct the defects that creep in through haste or impulse. My life will perhaps end before the work is complete, but I am sure that it is a much needed labour I have imposed on myself, and therefore I shall do what I can while my life lasts. This is my outward work on the theology of the Gospel, but the inner working of my soul which I wish to speak of here was not the result of a methodical investigation of doctrinal theology, or of the actual texts of the Gospel. It was a sudden removal of all that hid the true meaning of the Christian doctrine, a momentary flash of light which made everything clear to me. It was something like that which might happen to a man who, after vainly attempting, by a false plan, to build up a statue out of a confused heap of small pieces of marble, suddenly guesses at the figure they are intended to form by the shape of the largest piece, and then, on beginning to set up the statue, finds his guess confirmed by the harmonious joining in of the various pieces. I wish to tell in this work how I found the key to the doctrine of Christ, by the help of which the truth was disclosed to me so clearly and convincingly. I made the discovery in the following manner. Almost from the first years of my childhood, when I began to read the Gospel for myself, the doctrine that teaches love, humility, meekness, self-denial, and returning good for evil was the doctrine that touched me most. I always considered it as the basic teaching of Christianity, and loved it as such. But it was only after a long period of unbelief that its full meaning flashed upon me, that I understood life as our unlettered working-classes understand it, and accepted the same creed that they profess, the creed of the Greek Orthodox Church. But I soon observed that I should not find in the teaching of the Church the confirmation of my idea that love, humility, meekness, and self-denial were the essential principles of Christianity. I saw that this, which I regarded as the basis of Christianity, did not form the main point in the public teaching of the Church. At first I did not attach much importance to this. The Church, I said to myself, acknowledges, beside the doctrine of love, humility, and self-denial, a dogmatic and ritualistic doctrine. This estranges my heart. It is even repulsive to me, but there is no harm in it. While, however, submitting to the teaching of the Church, I began to see more and more clearly that this peculiarity was not as unimportant as I had at first regarded it. I was drawn away from the Church by various singularities in its dogmas, by its approval of persecution, capital punishment, and war, and also by its intolerance of all other forms of worship than its own. But my faith in the teaching of the Church was shaken still more by its indifference to what seemed to me the very basis of the teaching of Christ, and by its evident partiality for what I could not consider an essential part of that doctrine. I felt that there was something wrong, but I could not make out distinctly what it was, because the Church did not deny what seemed to me the main point in the doctrine of Christ, though it failed to give it its proper position and influence. I only passed from nihilism to the Church because I felt the impossibility of living without faith, without a knowledge of what is good and evil, resting on something more than my animal instinct. I hoped to find this something in Christianity, but Christianity, as it appeared to me then, was only a certain disposition of mind, and a very vague one. I turned to the Church for obligatory precepts of life, but the Church gave me only such as did not draw me nearer to the Christian state of mind I longed for, but rather alienated me from it. I turned away from the Church, for the precepts that were given to me by the Church concerning belief in dogmas, observance of the sacraments, fast days and prayers I did not care, and precepts really founded on the teachings of Christ were wanting. Moreover, the precepts of the Church weakened, and sometimes even destroyed, that Christian state of mind that alone seemed to me to be the true aim of life. What perplexed me most of all was that all the evil things that men do, such as condemning private individuals, whole nations or other religions, and the inevitable results of these condemnations, executions and wars, were justified by the Church. I saw that the doctrine of Christ, which teaches us humility, tolerance, forgiveness, self-denial and love, was extolled by the Church, but at the same time she sanctioned what was incompatible with such teachings. Could the doctrine of Christ be so weak and inconsistent? That I could not believe. Besides, it had always perplexed me to find that the texts upon which the Church has grounded her dogmas are of an obscure character, whereas those that teach us how to live are the most simple and clear. While the Church specifies the dogmas and the duties derived from them in the most forcible manner, the practice of the doctrine is urged only in obscure, dim and mystical expressions. Is it possible that this was what Christ desired for his teaching? I could only find the solution of my doubts in the perusal of the Gospels, and I read them over and over again. Of all the Gospels the Sermon on the Mount was the portion that impressed me most, and I studied it more often than any other part. Nowhere else does Christ speak with such solemnity. Nowhere else does he give us so many clear and intelligible moral precepts, which commend themselves to every one. If there are any clear and definite precepts of Christianity, they must have been expressed in this Sermon, and therefore in those three chapters of St Matthew's Gospel I sought the solution of my doubts. Many and many a time I read over the Sermon, and every time I felt the same emotion on reading the texts about turning my cheek to the one who strikes me, giving up my cloak to him who takes my coat, being at peace with all men, and loving my enemies, and yet there remained in me the same feeling of dissatisfaction. The words of God were not as yet clear to me. They seemed to enjoin an impossible self-denial that annulled life itself, and therefore it seemed to me that such self-denial could not be the requirement on which man's salvation depended. But then, if that were not the express condition of salvation, there was nothing fixed and clear. I not only read the Sermon on the Mount but the rest of the Gospels and various commentaries on them. Our theological explanations tell us that in the teachings of the Sermon of the Mount an indication is given of the perfection after which man must strive, that man, being full of sin, cannot attain this perfection by his own unaided strength, and that the salvation of man lies in faith, prayer, and the gifts of the grace of God. But these explanations did not satisfy me. Why should Christ have given to us such clear and good precepts, applicable to us all, if he knew beforehand that the keeping of them was impossible by man in his own unaided strength? On reading over these precepts it always seemed that they applied to me, and that I was morally bound to obey them. I even felt convinced that I could immediately and from that very hour do all that they enjoined. I wished and tried to do so. But as soon as any difficulty arose in the way of my keeping them, I involuntarily remembered the teaching of the church that man is weak and can do no good thing by himself, and then I became weak. I had been told that it was necessary to believe and to pray. But I felt that my faith was weak and that I could not pray. I had been told that it was necessary to pray for faith, for that faith without which prayer is of no avail. I was told that faith comes through prayer and that prayer comes through faith, which, to say the least, was certainly bewildering. Such statements commended themselves neither to reason nor experience. After much useless study of the works that have been written in proof of the divinity or non-divinity of this doctrine, and after many doubts and much suffering, I was left alone with the mysterious book in which the doctrine of Christ is taught. I could not interpret it as others did. I could not abdure the book, and yet I could not find a new and satisfying interpretation. It was only after losing all faith in the explanations of learned theology and criticism, and after laying them all aside in obedience to the words of Christ, Mark 10.15, that I began to understand what had until then seemed incomprehensible to me. It was not by deep thought or by skillfully comparing or commenting on the texts of the Gospel that I came to understand the doctrine. On the contrary, all grew clear to me for the very reason that I had ceased to rest on mere interpretations. The text that gave me the key to the truth was the 39th verse of the fifth chapter of St. Matthew. You have heard that it has been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you, do not resist evil. The simple meaning of these words suddenly flashed full upon me. I accepted the fact that Christ meant exactly what he said, and then, though I had found nothing new, all that had hitherto obscured the truth cleared away, and the truth itself arose before me in all its solemn importance. I had often read the passage, but these words had never until now arrested my attention. I say to you, do not resist evil. In my conversation since with many Christian people who know the Gospels well, I have observed the same indifference to the force of this text that I had felt. Nobody especially remembered the words, and while conversing with persons upon the text I have known them to take up the New Testament in order to assure themselves that the words were really there. The words, whoever shall strike you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also, had always presented themselves to me as requiring endurance and self-mastery, such as human nature is hardly capable of. They touched me. I felt that to act thus would be to attain moral perfection, but I felt too that I should never be able to obey them if they entailed nothing but suffering. I said to myself, well, I will turn my cheek. I will let myself be struck again. I will give up my coat. They shall take my awe. They shall even take away my life. Yet life is given to me. Why should I thus lose it? This cannot be what Christ requires of us. Then I said to myself, perhaps in these words Christ only purposes to extol suffering and self-denial, and in doing so he speaks exaggeratingly, and his expressions are therefore to be regarded as illustrations rather than precise requirements. But as soon as I comprehended the meaning of the words, do not resist evil, it became clear to me that Christ does not exaggerate, that he does not require suffering for the mere sake of suffering, and that he only expresses clearly and definitely what he means. He says, do not resist evil, and if you do not resist evil you may meet with some who, having struck you on one cheek and meeting with no resistance, will strike you on the other. After having taken away your coat will take away your cloak also. Having profited by your work will oblige you to work on, will take and will never give back. Nevertheless, I say to you, do not resist evil, still do good to those who even strike and abuse you. Now I understood that the whole force of the teaching lay in the words, do not resist evil, and that the entire context was but an application of that great precept. I saw that Christ does not require us to turn the other cheek and to give away our cloak in order to make us suffer, but he teaches us not to resist evil, and warns us that doing so may involve personal suffering. Does a father, on seeing his son set out on a long journey, tell him to pass sleepless nights, to eat little, to get wet through or to freeze? Will he not rather say to him, go, and if on the road you are cold or hungry, do not be discouraged, but go on? Christ does not say, let a man strike your cheek and suffer, but he says, do not resist evil. Whatever men may do to you, do not resist evil. These words, do not resist evil, or the wicked man, thus apprehended, were the clue that made all clear to me, and I was surprised that I could have hitherto treated them in such a different way. Christ meant to say, whatever men may do to you, bear, suffer, and submit, but never resist evil. What could be clearer, more intelligible, and more indubitable than this? As soon as I understood the exact meaning of these simple words, all that had appeared confused to me in the doctrine of Christ grew intelligible. What had seemed contradictory now became consistent. And what I had deemed superfluous became indispensable, all united in one hole, one part fitting into and supporting the other, like the pieces of a broken statue, put together again in their proper places. This doctrine of non-resistance is commended again and again in the Gospels. In the Sermon on the Mount Christ represents his followers, i.e. those who follow this law of non-resistance, as liable to be persecuted, stoned, and reduced to beggary. Elsewhere he tells us that the disciple who does not take up his cross, who is not willing to renounce all, cannot be his follower. And he thus describes the man who is ready to bear the consequences that may result from the practice of the doctrine of non-resistance. Christ says to his disciples, Be poor, be ready to bear persecution, suffering, and even death without resisting evil. He prepared for suffering and death himself without resisting evil. He reproved Peter, who grieved over him because he proposed to yield in this way. And he died, forbidding others to resist evil, remaining true to his own doctrine and his own example. All his first disciples obeyed the same law of the non-resistance of evil, and passed their lives in disability and persecution. We may bring forward, as an objection, the difficulty of always obeying such a law. We may even say, as unbelievers do, that it is a foolish doctrine, that Christ was a dreamer, an idealist who gave precepts that are impossible to follow. But whatever our objections may be, we cannot deny that Christ expresses his meaning most clearly and distinctly. And his meaning is that man must not resist evil. He who fully accepts his teaching cannot resist evil. End of chapter 1 CHAPTER 2 OF WHAT I BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE by Count Leo Tolstoy translated from the Russian by Constantine Popov read by David Barnes CHAPTER 2 When I at last clearly comprehended that the words do not resist evil, do really mean that we are never to resist evil, my former ideas concerning the teaching of Christ underwent a complete change. I wondered, not so much at my eyes being opened to the truth at last, but at the strange darkness that had until then enveloped my understanding. I knew, we all know, that the foundation requirement of the Christian doctrine is love toward all men. Isn't all Christianity, summed up in the words, love your enemies? I had known that from my earliest childhood. How was it, then, that I had not hitherto taken in these words in all their simplicity, but rather had sought for some allegorical meaning in them? Do not resist evil means never to resist evil, that is, never offer violence to any one. If a man reviles you, do not revile him in return, suffer, but do no violence. While believing, or at least endeavouring to believe, that he who gave us this commandment was God, how did I come to say that I could not obey it in my own strength? If my master were to say to me, go and cut wood, and I were to answer that I could not do it in my own strength, would it not show that either I had no faith in my master's words, or that I did not choose to obey him? God has given to us a commandment that he requires us to obey. He says that only those who keep his commandments shall enter life eternal. He fulfilled his commandment himself, as offering us his example. And how could I then say that, though I never really tried to fulfill it, this injunction was one that it was impossible for a man to keep in his own strength, and without supernatural aid? God became man for the securing of our salvation. Salvation lies in the fact that the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, suffered for us men, redeemed us from sin, and gave us the church through which the grace of God is transmitted to all believers. Moreover, God the Son has left us this doctrine or teaching, and his own example to show us the way of salvation. And yet I said that the rule of life given to us by Christ was not only a hard one, but also an impossible one, apart from supernatural aid. Christ does not consider it as such. On the contrary, he says definitely that we are to fulfill his commandments, and that he who does not shall not enter the kingdom of God. He does not say that it is hard to keep this law. He says on the contrary, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. St. John the Evangelist says his commandments are not grievous. How was it, I said, that the express and positive commandment of God which he himself speaks of as being easy, the commandment which he himself obeyed as a man, and which his first followers also fulfilled, was too hard for me, and even impossible for me, without supernatural aid? If a man were to set all the faculties of his mind to the annulling of a given law, what more forcible argument could he use for its suppression than that it was an impracticable law, and that the legislator's own opinion of it was that it could not be kept without supernatural aid? And yet this was exactly what I had thought about the commandment not to resist evil. I tried to remember when and how the strange idea had first come into my mind that the doctrine of Christ was divine in authority but impossible in practice. On reviewing my past life I discovered that this idea had never been transmitted to me in all its nakedness, for then it would have repelled me, but that I had imperceptibly imbibed it from my earliest childhood, and that the associations of my life had confirmed the strange error. I was taught from my childhood that Christ is God, and that his teaching is divine and authoritative. While, on the other hand, I was also told to respect those institutions that, by means of violence, secured my safety from evil, I was taught to honour those institutions as being sacred. I was taught to resist evil, and it was instilled into me that it was humiliating and dishonourable to submit to evil and to suffer from it, and that it was praiseworthy to resist evil. I was taught to condemn and to execute. I was taught to make war, that is, to resist evil by murder. The army, a member of which I was, was called a Christ-loving army, and the church consecrated its mission. I was taught to resist an offender by violence, and to avenge a private insult or one against my native land by violence. All this was never regarded as wrong, but, on the contrary, I was told that it was perfectly right, and in no way contrary to Christ's doctrine. All surrounding interests, such as the peace and safety of my family, my property and myself, were based on the law that was rejected by Christ, on the law of a tooth for a tooth. Ecclesiastical teachers told me that the doctrine of Christ was divine, but that its observance was impossible on account of the weakness of human nature, and that the grace of God alone could enable us to keep this law. Secular teachers told me, and the whole order of life proved, that the teaching of Christ was impracticable and ideal, and that we must, in fact, live contrary to his doctrine. I imbibed such a notion of the practical impossibility of following the divine doctrine, gradually and almost imperceptibly. I was so accustomed to it, it coincided so well with all my animal feelings, that I had never observed the contradiction in which I lived. I did not see that it was impossible to admit the Godhead of Christ, the basis of whose teaching is non-resistance of evil, and at the same time to work consciously and calmly for the institutions of property, courts of law, kingdoms, the army, and so on. It could not be consistent for us to regulate our lives contrary to the doctrine of Christ, and then pray to the same Christ that we might be enabled to keep his commandments, to forgive, and not to resist evil. It did not then occur to me, as it does now, that it would be much simpler to regulate our lives according to the doctrine of Christ, and then, if courts of law, executions, and war were found to be indispensable necessary for our welfare, we might pray to have them too. And I understood from where my error arose. It arose from my professing Christ in words, and denying him indeed. The precept, not to resist evil, is one that contains the whole substance of Christ's doctrine, if we consider it not only as a saying, but also as a law we are bound to obey. It is like a latch-key that will open any door, but only if it is well inserted into the lock. To consider this rule of life as a precept that cannot be obeyed without supernatural aid is to annihilate the whole doctrine of Christ completely. How can a doctrine, the fundamental law of which is cast aside as impracticable, be considered practicable in any of its details? This is what was done with Christ's doctrine, when we were taught that it was possible to be a Christian without fulfilling his law not to resist evil. A few days ago I was reading the fifth chapter of St. Matthew to a Hebrew rabbi. That is in the Bible. That is in the Talmud too, he said at almost each saying, pointing out to me in the Bible and the Talmud passages very much like those in the Sermon on the Mount. But when I came to the verse that says, do not resist evil, he did not say that is also in the Talmud, but only asked me with a smile, do Christians keep this law? Do they turn the other cheek to be struck? I was silent. What answer could I give when I knew that Christians in our days, far from turning the other cheek when struck, never let an opportunity escape of striking a Hebrew on both cheeks? I was greatly interested to know if there was any law like this in the Talmud, and I inquired. He answered, No, there is nothing like it. But pray tell me, do Christians ever keep this law? His question showed me clearly that the existence of a precept in the law of Christ, which is not only left unobserved, but of which the fulfilment is considered impossible, is superfluous and irrational. Now that I comprehend the true meaning of the doctrine, I see clearly the strange state of contradiction within my own self that I had permitted to arise. I was confessing Christ as God and his teaching as divine, and at the same time I was ordering my life contrary to his teaching. What was left for me to do but to acknowledge the teaching as an impracticable one? In word, I acknowledged the teaching of Christ as sacred, but I did not carry out that teaching indeed, for I admitted and respected the un-Christian institutions that surrounded me. Throughout the Old Testament we find it said that the misfortunes of the Israelites arose from their believing in false gods and not in the true God. In the eighth and twelfth chapters of the First Book of Samuel the prophet accuses the people of having chosen instead of God who was their king, a human king who, according to their opinion, was to save them. Do not believe in toga, vain things, says Samuel to the people. 1 Samuel 12 21. They will not help you and will not save you, for they are toga, vain. In order not to perish with your king, believe in God alone. My faith in these toga, in these empty idols, hid the truth from my eyes. In my way to him, these toga, which I did not have the strength to renounce, stood before me, obscuring his light. One day, as I was passing through Borovitzky Gate, I saw a crippled old beggar with his head bound up in a ragged cloth and sitting in a corner. I had just taken out my purse to bestow a trifle upon him, when a bald, ruddy-faced young grenadier in a government fur coat came running down the Kremlin's slope. On seeing the soldier, the beggar sprang up with a look of terror and ran limping down toward the Alexander Garden. The grenadier pursued him, but, not succeeding in overtaking him, stopped short and began to abuse the poor fellow for having dared to sit down near the entrance gate in defiance of orders. I waited until the grenadier came up to where I stood, and then I asked if he could read. Yes, what of that was the answer. Have you ever read the Gospel? I have. Do you know these words? He who feeds the hungry? I repeated the text to him. He listened attentively. Two passes by stopped. It was evidently disagreeable to the grenadier that, while conscientiously discharging his duty by driving people away from the entrance gate, as he was ordered to do, he unexpectedly found himself in the wrong. He looked puzzled and seemed to be searching for some excuse. Suddenly his dark eyes brightened up with a look of intelligence, and moving away as if about to return to his post, he asked, Have you read the military code? I told him that I had not. Well, then, do not talk of what you do not understand, he said, with a triumphant shake of his head. And muffling himself up in his overcoat, he went back to his post. He was the only man I have met in all my life, who strictly, logically solved the problem of our social institutions, which had stood before me, and still stands before each who calls himself a Christian. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of What I Believe This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. What I Believe by Count Leo Tolstoy, translated from the Russian by Constantine Popov, read by David Barnes. Chapter 3 To affirm that the Christian doctrine refers only to personal salvation, and has no bearing upon state affairs, is a great terror. To say so is but to assert an audacious, groundless, most evident untruth, which a moment's serious reflection suffices to destroy. Well, I say to myself, I will not resist evil. As a private man, I will let myself be struck. But what am I to do if an enemy invades my native land, or other nations oppress it? I am called upon to take part in a struggle against evil, to go and kill. The question immediately arises, which will be serving God, and which will be serving Toga? To go or not to go? Suppose I am a peasant. I am chosen as the senior member of my village, as judge, as jury man. I am bound to take an oath to judge and to punish. Fellow creature, what am I to do? I have a gain to choose between the law of God and the law of man. Or let us say I am a monk and live in a monastery. The neighbouring peasants have taken possession of the hay we had moaned for our own use. I am sent to take part in a struggle against evil, to prosecute these men. I have a gain to choose between the laws of God and the laws of man. None of us can evade the demand for such a decision. To say nothing of the class of society that I belong to, military men, judges, administrators, whose whole lives are passed in resisting evil, there is not a single private individual, be he ever so insignificant, who has not had to choose between serving God by fulfilling his commandments, or serving the Toga in the government institutions of his country. Our private lives are interwoven with the organization of the state, and the latter requires on Christian duties of us, contrary to the commandments of Christ. At the present time, the military service, which is obligatory on all, and the participation of each as jury men in the courts of law, place this dilemma with striking clarity before all. Each man is called upon to take up an instrument of murder, a gun, a sword, even if he does not kill a fellow creature. He loads the gun and sharpens the sword, that is, he is ready to commit murder. Each citizen is called upon to enter the courts of law, to take part in judging and punishing his fellow creature. That is, each must renounce the doctrine of Christ that teaches us not to resist evil. The Grenadiers question, the Gospel or the military code, the law of God or the law of man. It still stands before us all, as it did in the time of Samuel. It stood before Christ and his disciples. It now stands before all those who wish to be Christians. It stood before me. The doctrine of Christ, which teaches love, humility, and self-denial, had always attracted me. But I found a contrary law, both in the history of the past and in the present organization of our lives, a law repugnant to my heart, my conscience, and my reason, but one that flattered my animal instincts. I knew that if I accepted the doctrine of Christ I should be forsaken, miserable, persecuted, and sorrowing, as Christ tells us his followers will be. I knew that if I accepted that law of man I should have the approbation of my fellow men, I should be at peace and in safety. All possible sophisms would be at hand to quiet my conscience, and I should laugh and be merry, as Christ says. I felt this, and therefore I avoided a closer examination of the law of Christ, and tried to comprehend it in a way that should not prevent my still leading my animal life. But finding that impossible I desisted from all attempts at comprehension. This led me into a state of mental obscurity, which now seems surprising to me. For instance, let me recall my former interpretation of the words, Do not judge, and you shall not be judged, Matthew 7.1. Do not judge, and you shall not be judged, Do not condemn, and you shall not be condemned, Luke 6.37. The court of law of which I was a member, and which guarded my property and my personal safety, seemed to me so unquestionably sacred that it never came into my mind that the words Do not condemn could have any higher meaning than that we are not to speak evil of our fellow men. The idea never occurred to me that these words could have any reference to courts of law, district courts, criminal courts, assizes, courts of peace, et cetera. When I at last took in the real meaning of the words Do not resist evil, the question arose in my mind, What would Christ's opinion be of all these courts of law? And seeing clearly that he would reject them, I asked myself, Do these words mean that we are not only never to speak evil of our brethren, but that we are not to condemn them to punishment by our human institutions of justice? In the Gospel of St. Luke, chapter 6, verses 37 to 39, these words come immediately after the commandment not to resist evil, and to return good for evil. After the words, Be merciful, even as your father in heaven is merciful, we read, Do not judge, and you shall not be judged. Do not condemn, and you shall not be condemned. Doesn't it mean that we are not only never to condemn our brother in word, that is, to speak evil of him, but that we are not to institute courts of law for the condemnation of a fellow creature to punishment, I said to myself, and no sooner did this question arise than both my heart and my reason answered in the affirmative. I know now how greatly this way of understanding the words surprises everyone at first. I was surprised, too. To show how far I formerly was from the true interpretation of these words, I may hear mention of foolish saying of mine, of which I am now heartily ashamed. Even after having become a believer, and having recognized the divinity of the gospel, I used to say jokingly, on meeting with a friend who was an attorney or a judge, so you go on judging, and yet isn't it said, Do not judge, and you shall not be judged? I was so firmly convinced that these words had no other meaning than that we were not to speak ill of one another, that I did not see the blasphemy of my own words. So sure was I that the words were not to be taken in a literal sense, that I used them jokingly in their true application. I shall give a circumstantial account of the way in which all my doubts as to the real sense of these words were dispersed, and how it became evident to me that Christ forbids all human institutions of justice, and that he could mean nothing else. The first point that struck me when I understood the commandment, Do not resist evil, in its true meaning, was that human courts were not only contrary to this commandment, but in direct opposition to the whole doctrine of Christ, and that therefore he must certainly have forbidden them. Christ says, Do not resist evil. The sole object of courts of law is to resist evil. Christ enjoins us to return good for evil. Courts of law return evil for evil. Christ says, Make no distinction between the just and the unjust. Courts of law do nothing else. Christ says, Forgive all, forgive not once, not seven times, but forgive without end. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Courts of law do not forgive, but they punish. They do not do good, but evil to those whom they call the enemies of society. So the true sense of the doctrine is that Christ forbids all courts of law. This cannot be the case, I said to myself. Christ had nothing to do with human courts of law, and never considered them. But I soon saw that this opposition was impossible. From the day of his birth Christ had to submit to the jurisdiction of Herod, the Sanhedrin, and the High Priests. Indeed we find that Christ speaks more than once of tribunals as being an evil. He tells his disciples that they will have to be cited before the tribunals, and teaches them how they are to behave in courts of law. He says that he himself will be condemned, and sets us all an example of the way in which we are to treat the laws of man. There can be no doubt that Christ meant the human courts of law, which were to condemn him and his disciples, which have always condemned and still continue to condemn millions of men. Christ must have seen this evil, for he distinctly points it out. In the case of the adulterous, he positively rejects human justice, and proves that, on account of each man's own sinful nature, he has no right to judge another. We find the same doctrine repeated several times, as when he says, for instance, that the one who has a beam in his own eye cannot see the moat in his neighbor's eye, and that the blind cannot lead the blind. But perhaps, I said to myself, this applies only to the judgment of the adulterous, and the parable of the moat is only intended to show us the frailty of human nature in general. Christ does not intend to forbid our having recourse to human justice for our protection against evil men. But I saw that this would not hold true, either. In the Sermon on the Mount, addressed to all men, Christ says, and if any one sues you at the law for your coat, let him have your cloak also. Therefore he forbids our going to law. But perhaps this applies only to the relations between private individuals and public courts of law. Perhaps Christ does not deny justice itself, and admits in Christian societies the existence of persons chosen for the purpose of administering justice. I see that this hypothesis is likewise inadmissible. In his prayer Christ enjoins all men, without exception, to forgive as they hope to be forgiven. We find the same precept repeated many times. Each man must forgive his brother when he prays, and before bringing his gift. How then can a man judge and condemn another, when, according to the faith he professes, he is bound to forgive? Thus I see that, according to the doctrine of Christ, a judge who condemns his fellow creature to death is no Christian. But perhaps the connection between the words, do not judge, do not condemn, and those that follow, proves that they do not refer to human courts of law. This is likewise false. On the contrary, the connection between these words and those that follow proves clearly that the words, do not judge, are directed precisely against the institutions of courts of law. According to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the texts, do not judge, do not condemn, are preceded by the words, do not resist evil, suffer evil, do good to all. In the Gospel, according to Matthew, the words of the Hebrew criminal law are repeated, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and after citing the criminal law, Christ says, but you are not to act thus, do not resist evil. Then he goes on to say, do not judge. So Christ's words refer precisely to our human criminal law, and by the words, do not judge, he clearly rejects it. Besides this, we find in St. Luke that he not only says, do not judge, but also adds, and do not condemn. The latter word, almost synonymous with the former, must have been added with some purpose, and it could have been with no other than that of showing clearly the sense in which the first word is to be taken. Had he wished to say, do not judge your neighbour, that is, do not speak evil of him, he would have said so, but he says plainly, do not condemn, and then adds, and you shall not be condemned, forgive, and you shall be forgiven. But perhaps Christ's words do not apply to courts of law at all, and I give them an interpretation of my own that is foreign to them. I tried to discover how the first followers of Christ, his disciples, considered human courts of law, and whether they approved of them. In Chapter 4, Verses 11 and 12, the disciple James says, do not speak evil of one another, brethren, he who speaks evil of his brother, and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law, and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is one law-giver who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another? The word that is translated as do not speak evil is the word Catala Leo. Even without consulting the dictionary, it is evident to all that this word can mean nothing but to accuse. This is the only true meaning of the word, as anyone confined by consulting the dictionary. The translation of the passage in question is as follows. He who speaks evil of his brother, speaks evil of the law. And the question involuntarily arises, how so? In speaking evil of my brother, I do not speak evil of the law of man. No, but if I accuse and sit in judgment over my brother, I evidently condemn the doctrine of Christ. That is, I look upon the doctrine of Christ as insufficient, and thus judge and condemn the law of God. It clearly follows that I do not fulfil this law, but I myself become a judge. A judge, Christ says, is he who can save. Then how can I, being unable to save, be a judge and punish? The whole text speaks of human judgment and rejects it. The whole of this epistle is penetrated with the same idea. In the same epistle of James, chapter 2 verses 1 to 13, he says, My brethren, do not have the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, together with the respect of persons. For if there comes into your assembly a man with a gold ring in fine clothes, and there comes in also a poor man in shabby clothes, and you have respect for him who wears the fine clothing, and if you say to him, sit here in a good place, and say to the poor man, stand there, or sit here under my footstool, are you not then being partial, and have you not become judges with evil thoughts? Harken, my beloved brethren, hasn't God chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have despised the poor. Don't rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seat. Don't they blaspheme that worthy name by which you are called? If you fulfil the royal law according to Scripture, you shall love your neighbour as yourself. Leviticus, nineteen, eighteen, you do well. But if you have respect to persons, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he who said, do not commit adultery, also said, do not kill. Now if you commit no adultery, yet if you kill, you have become a transgressor of the law. Deuteronomy twenty-two, twenty-two, Leviticus twenty-eight, seventeen to twenty-five. So speak and act as those who shall be judged by the law of liberty. For he who has shown no mercy shall have judgment without mercy. Mercy triumphs over the law. The last words mercy triumphs over the law have often been translated as mercy is extolled in judgment, and are cited as meaning that the existence of human judgment may be admitted, provided that it is merciful. James exhorts his brethren to make no difference between men. If you make any difference, then you, dear crinity, become partial, and are like judges with evil thoughts. You judge the beggar as being less worthy than the rich man. On the contrary, the rich man is the less worthy one. It is he who oppresses you and draws you before the judgment seat. If you live according to the law of love and mercy, which James calls the royal law, to distinguish it from the other, you do well. But if you have respect of persons and make a distinction between rich and poor, you are transgressors of the law of mercy. James, bearing in mind the case of the adulteress who was brought before Christ to be stoned, or perhaps speaking of adultery in general, says that he who punishes an adulteress with death is guilty of murder and transgresses the eternal law, because the same eternal law that forbids adultery also forbids murder. He says, and act like men who are judged by the law of liberty, because there is no mercy for him who is himself without mercy, and therefore mercy destroys judgment. Can anything be more clear and definite? Every distinction between men is forbidden, every judgment by which we consider the one as good and the other as bad. Human justice is distinctly pointed out as being evil. It is clearly shown that judgment sins by punishing for crime, and that all judgment is annihilated by the law of God, mercy. I read the epistle of Paul, the apostle, who had himself suffered from courts of law, and in his first chapter to the Romans he warns them against their vices and errors, and speaks against their courts of law. Romans 1.32. Who, knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in those who do them? Romans 2.1.4. Therefore you are without excuse, you who judge, for when you judge another you condemn yourself, for you who judge do the same things, but we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who commit such things? And do you think that when you judge those who do such things, and do the same things yourself, that you shall escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? The apostle Paul says, while fully aware of the last judgment of God, men act unjustly themselves, and they teach others to do the same. Therefore the man who judges another cannot be justified. Such is the opinion I find in the epistles of the apostles in reference to courts of law. We all know that during the whole course of their lives human courts of law could never have been considered by them as anything but evil. A trial that was to be endured with firmness and submission to the will of God. On reviewing the position of the early Christians amidst the heathens we clearly perceive that men who were themselves persecuted by human courts of law could never have dared openly to forbid them. They could only occasionally allude to them as an evil, the basis of which they could not admit. I examine the writings of the earliest teachers of Christianity and find that they all consider the precept never to use force, never to condemn or execute, as the one that distinguishes their doctrine from all others, Athenagaris, Oregon. They only submit to the tortures inflicted upon them by human justice. The martyrs all confessed the same, not only in word, but also in deed. I find that all true Christians from the disciples up to the time of Constantine regarded courts of law as evils that had to be endured with patience, and the possibility of a Christians taking any part in judging another never occurred to any one of them. All this convinced me that the words do not judge and do not condemn apply to courts of law, and yet these words are so generally understood as meaning only speak no evil of your neighbour, that courts of law flourish so boldly and with such assurance in all Christian states and are openly upheld by the church. It was some time before I could feel quite convinced that my interpretation was the right one. If all have until now interpreted the words as referring to evil speaking, and have consequently instituted these courts of law, they must have some good grounds for acting thus, I said to myself, and I must be in the wrong. And I turned to the commentaries of the church. In all of them from the fifth century to the present day I found that these words are considered as signifying to condemn in word, that is, to speak evil of our neighbour. Now if these words are understood as meaning nothing else, doesn't the question immediately arise how can we help judging others? We must condemn or blame what is evil. Thus the point on which all comments turn is what may we condemn and what may we not condemn. We are told that these words cannot be considered as forbidding the servants of the church to judge, that the apostles themselves judged, Chrysostom and Theophilactus. We are told that these words of Christ probably applied to the Hebrews who often used to accuse their neighbours of trifling sins while committing greater ones themselves. But nowhere is there a word said about our human institutions of courts of law, or of the reference that this precept not to judge might have to them. Does Christ forbid them or does he approve of them? This question, which arises so naturally in our minds, is left unanswered, as if there could not be the slightest doubt that when once a Christian has taken his seat in the judgment hall he has a right not only to judge his neighbour, but also even to condemn him to death. I consulted the Greek, Catholic and Protestant theologians, as well as the works of the Tubingen School, and found that even the most liberal interpreters considered these words as meaning not to speak evil of. Not one of them solves the question why so narrow an interpretation is given, and why they are not considered as prohibiting the institutions of courts of law, or why Christ, while forbidding our speaking evil of a fellow creature, which each of us may often do inadvertently, does not consider as wrong and does not forbid the same condemnation when given consciously and accompanied by violence against the condemned man, that the word condemn may apply to judiciary condemnation from which millions suffer is not even hinted at, nor is this all. By means of these very words, do not judge and do not condemn, the form of judiciary condemnation is set altogether apart and fenced round. Our theological interpretations say that the existence of courts of law in Christian states is necessary, and is not contrary to the law of Christ. This made me doubt the sincerity of these interpretations, and I applied myself to a closer examination of the translation of the words judge and condemn, which is a thing I ought to have begun with. In the original these words are crino and cattadicadzo, the incorrect rendering of the word catelaleo in the Epistle of James, which is translated as do not speak evil, confirmed my doubts of the correctness of the translation. I consulted the translation of the words crino and cattadicadzo in the Gospels in various languages, and I found that the word to condemn is translated in the vulgar and in French by the word condemnnare, in Slavonic a suždac, by Luther ferdamen, to dam, to doom. The different renderings of these words increased my doubts, and I asked myself what the Greek word crino, used in both the above-mentioned Gospels, could really mean, and what was the true signification of the word cattadicadzo, which is used by Luke, the evangelists, who wrote, according to the opinion of all Able scholars, in good Greek. If a man who knew nothing about the Gospel and the interpretations given to it were to have this saying placed before him, how would he translate it? I consulted the common dictionary, and I found that the word crino has many different meanings, and among others is very often used in the sense of condemning by judgment, executing, but never in that of evil speaking. I consulted the glossary of the New Testament, and I found that this word is often used there in the sense of condemning by judgment. It is sometimes used as meaning to choose, but never as to speak evil of. And so I saw that the word crino may be rendered in several ways, but that a translation that renders it as speaking evil of is the furthest from the original. I looked for the word cattadicadzo and added to it the word crino, which has several meanings, for the purpose of explaining the sense in which the writer himself takes the first word. I looked in the common dictionary for the word cattadicadzo, and I found that this word never had any other meaning than to condemn by judgment or to execute. I consulted the glossary of the New Testament, and I found that this word is used in the New Testament four times, and every time in the sense of condemn, execute. I consulted the context, and I found that this word is used in the Epistle of James, chapter five, verse six, in which it is said, You have condemned and killed the just. The word condemned is the same word, cattadicadzo, which is used in reference to Christ, who was condemned to death. And in no other way, and in no other meaning, is this word used either in the whole New Testament or in any Greek dialect. What can this mean? What state of idiocy have I fallen into? All of us, when reflecting on the destiny of man, have been struck with terror at the sufferings and evils that our human criminal laws have brought into our lives. Evils both for those who judge and for those who are judged, from the executions of Chinggis Han in the second half of the twelfth century, and the revolutions to those of the present day. No man of feeling has escaped the impression of horror and doubt concerning good produced by the recital, if not by the sight, of men executing their fellow men by rods, the guillotine, or the gallows. In the Gospels, every word of which we esteem sacred, it is said clearly and distinctly, you have the criminal law, a tooth for a tooth, and I give you a new one, do not resist the evil man. Fulfill this commandment all of you, do not return evil for evil, always do good to all, forgive all. And farther on we read, do not judge. Then, in order to render all doubt impossible as to the meaning of his words, Christ adds, do not condemn to punishment by courts of law. My heart says clearly and distinctly, do not execute. Science says, do not execute, the more you execute, the more evil there will be. Reason says, do not execute, you cannot put a stop to evil, by evil. The word of God which I believe in says the same. I used to read the whole doctrine. I read these words, do not judge, and you shall not be judged, do not condemn, and you shall not be condemned, forgive, and you shall be forgiven. I acknowledged that these were God's words, and I thought they meant that we are not to gossip or slander, and I continued to consider courts of law as Christian institutions and myself as a judge and a Christian. I was shocked at the grossness of the error I was indulging. End of chapter 3. Chapter 4 of What I Believe This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. What I Believe by Count Leo Tolstoy translated from the Russian by Konstantin Popov, read by David Barnes. Chapter 4 Now I understood what Christ meant when he said, you have heard that it has been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and I say to you, do not resist evil. Christ means you have been taught to consider it right and rational to protect yourselves against evil by violence, to pluck out an eye for an eye, to institute courts of law for the punishment of criminals, and to have a police and an army to defend you against the attacks of an enemy. But I say to you, do no violence to any man, take no part in violence, never do evil to any man, not even to those whom you call your enemies. I now understood that in this doctrine of non-resistance, Christ not only tells us what the natural result of following his doctrine will be, but by placing this same doctrine in opposition to the Mosaic law, the Roman law, and the various codes of the present time, he clearly shows us that it ought to be the basis of our social existence and should deliver us from the evil we have brought on ourselves. He says, you think to amend evil by your laws, but they only aggravate it. There is one way by which you can put a stop to evil. It is by indiscriminatingly returning good for evil. You have tried the other law for thousands of years, now try mine, which is the very reverse. Strange to say, I have had frequent opportunities lately of conversing with men of diverse opinions on this doctrine of non-resistance. I have met with some who agreed with me, though these have been few. But there are two orders of men who always refuse to admit, even in principle, a direct understanding of this doctrine, and warmly uphold the justice of resisting evil. They are men belonging to two extreme poles, our Christian conservative Patriots, who consider their church as the true Orthodox one, and our revolutionary atheists. Neither the former nor the latter will give up their right to resist by violence what they consider as evil. Even their severest, most learned men close their eyes to the simple self-evident truth, that if we admit the right of one man to resist what he considers as evil by violence, we cannot refuse another the right to resist by violence what he in his turn may consider as evil. A short time ago I met with a correspondence particularly instructive as bearing on this very point. It was carried on between an Orthodox Slavophile and a Christian Revolutionist. The former excused the violence of war in the name of his oppressed Slavonian brethren, and the latter vindicated the violence of the revolution in the name of his oppressed brethren, the Russian peasants. Both admit the necessity for violence, and both ground their reasoning on the doctrine of Christ. Each of us gives the doctrine of Christ an interpretation of his own, but it is never the direct and simple one that flows out of his words. We have grounded the conduct of our lives on a principle that he rejects. We do not choose to understand his teaching in its simple and direct sense. Those who call themselves believers believe that Christ God, the second person of the Trinity, made himself man in order to set as an example how to live, and they strictly fulfil the most complicated duties such as preparing for the sacraments, building churches, sending out missionaries, naming pastors for parochial administration, etc. They forget only one trifling circumstance to do as he tells them. Unbelievers, on the other hand, try to regulate their lives somehow or other, but not in accordance with the law of Christ, feeling convinced beforehand that it is worthless. Nobody ever tries to fulfil his teaching. Nor is that all. Instead of making any effort to follow his commandments, both believers and unbelievers decide beforehand that to do so is impossible. Christ says that the law of resistance by violence, which you have made the basis of your lives, is unnatural and wrong, and he gives us instead the law of non-resistance, which he tells us can alone deliver us from evil. He says, you think to eradicate evil by your human laws of violence. They only increase it. During thousands and thousands of years you have tried to annihilate evil by evil, and you have not annihilated it. You have but increased it. Follow the teaching I give you by word and deed, and you will prove its practical power. Not only does he speak thus, but he also remains true to his own doctrine not to resist evil in his life and in his death. Believers take all this in with their ears, and here it read in churches calling it the word of God. They call him God, and then they say, his doctrine is sublime, but the organization of our lives renders its observance impossible. It would change the whole course of our lives to which we are so used and with which we are so satisfied. Therefore we believe in this doctrine only as an ideal that mankind must strive after. An ideal that is to be attained by prayer, by believing in the sacraments, in redemption and in the resurrection of the dead. Others, unbelievers, the free interpreters of Christ's doctrine, the historians of religion, Strauss, Renaud and others, adopting the interpretation of the church that this doctrine has no direct application to life and is only an ideal teaching that can only serve to console the weak-minded, say, very seriously, that the doctrine of Christ was all very well for the savage population of the deserts of Galilee, but that we, with our civilization, can only consider it as a lovely reverie du charmant docteur, as Renaud calls him. According to their opinion, Christ could not attain the height of understanding all the wisdom of our civilization and refinement if he had stood on the same scale of civilization as these learned men, he would not have uttered those pretty trifles about the birds of the air, about letting one's cheek be struck and about taking no care for tomorrow. Learned historians judge Christianity according to what they see in our Christian society. Now the Christian society of our times considers our life as a good and holy one, and its institutions of solitary imprisonment, of fortresses, sweatshops, journals, brothels and parliaments, while it only borrows from the doctrine of Christ what is not against these habits of life. And as Christ's teaching is in direct opposition to all this, nothing is taken from that teaching but its mere words. The learned historians see this and not having the same interest in concealing the fact as the so-called believers have, they subject this for their meaningless doctrine of Christ to a profound analysis, argue against it, and prove on good grounds that Christianity never was anything but the dream of an idealist. And yet it seems to me that before pronouncing an opinion upon the doctrine of Christ we ought clearly to understand what it is. And in order to decide whether his teaching is rational or not it is necessary first of all to believe that he meant exactly what he said. This is just what neither the interpreters of the church nor free thinkers do, and the reason why is not hard to see. We know very well that the teaching of Christ as we have received it embraces all the errors into which humanity has fallen, all the toga, empty idols, the existence of which we try to justify by calling them church, government, culture, science, arts and civilization, thinking thus to exclude them from the rank of errors. But Christ warns us against them all without excluding any toga. Not only Christ's words, but those of all Hebrew prophets of John the Baptist and of all the truly wise men who have ever lived have referred to this same church, this same government, culture, civilization, etc., calling them evils and the causes of man's perdition. For instance, suppose an architect were to say to the owner of a house your house is in a bad state, it must be wholly rebuilt and were then to go on giving all the necessary details about the kind of beams that would be required, how they were to be cut and where placed. If the owner were to turn a deaf ear to the architect's words about the ruinous condition of the house and the necessity for its being rebuilt and were only to listen with a feigned interest to the secondary details concerning the proposed repairs, the architect's counsels would evidently appear but so much useless talk, and if the owner happened to feel no great respect for the builder he would call his advice foolish. This is exactly what occurs with the teaching of Christ. I use this similarly for want of a better one, and I remember that Christ, while preaching his doctrine, used one very like it, he said, I will destroy your temple, and within three days I will build up another. He was crucified for these words. His doctrine is crucified for the same reason, up to the present time. The least that can be required of those who judge another man's teaching is that they should take the teacher's words in the exact sense in which he uses them. Christ does not consider his teaching as some high ideal of what mankind should be but cannot attain to, nor does he consider it as a chimerical, poetical fantasy fit only to captivate the simple-minded inhabitants of Galilee. He considers his teaching as work, a work that is to save mankind. His suffering on the cross was no dream. He groaned in agony and died for his teaching, and how many people have died and will still die in the same cause. Such teaching cannot be called a dream. Every doctrine of truth is a dream for those who are in error. We have come to such a state of error that there are many among us who say, as I did myself formally, that this doctrine of Christ is chimerical because it is incompatible with the nature of man. It is incompatible with the nature of man, they say, to turn the other cheek when he has been struck. It is incompatible with the nature of man to give up his property to another, to work not for himself but for others. It is natural to man, they say, to protect himself, his own safety, that of his family and his property. In other words, it is the nature of man to struggle for life. Learned lawyers prove scientifically that the most sacred duty of a man is to protect his rights, that is, to struggle. We need only for one moment to cast aside the idea that the present organization of our lives, as established by man, is the best and most sacred, and then the argument that the teaching of Christ is incompatible with human nature immediately turns against the arguer. Who will deny that it is repugnant and harrowing to a man's feelings to torture or kill not only a man but also even a dog, a hen, or a calf? I have known men living by agricultural labor who have ceased entirely to eat meat only because they had to kill their own cattle. And yet our lives are so organized that for one individual to obtain any advantage in life another must suffer, which is against human nature. The whole organization of our lives, the complicated mechanism of our institutions, whose sole object is violence, are but proofs of the degree to which violence is repugnant to human nature. No judge will ever undertake to strangle with his own hands the man whom he has condemned to death. No magistrate will himself drag a peasant from his weeping family in order to shut him up in prison. Not a single general, not a single soldier, would kill hundreds of Turks or Germans and devastate their villages. No, not one of them would consent to wound a single man, were it not in war and in obedience to discipline and the oath of allegiance. Cruelty is only exercised thanks to our complicated social machinery when it can be so divided among a number that none shall bear the sole responsibility or recognize how unnatural all cruelty is. Some make laws, others apply them, others again drill their fellow creatures into habits of discipline, that is of senseless passive obedience, and these same disciplined men in their turn do violence to others, killing without knowing why or wherefore. But let a man even for a moment shake off in thought the net of worldly institutions that so ensnares him and he will see what is really incompatible with his nature. If once we cease to affirm that the evil we are so used to and profit by is an immutable divine truth, we may see clearly which is the more natural to man, violence or the law of Christ, which is better to know that the comfort and safety of my family and myself, all my joys and pleasures are obtained at the price of the misery, depravity and suffering of millions by yearly executions, by hundreds of thousands of suffering prisoners and by millions of soldiers, policemen and sergeants torn from their homes and half-stupified by military discipline who protect my idle pleasures by keeping starving men at a distance with their loaded pistols. To know that every dainty morsel I put into my mouth or give my children is obtained at the price of suffering, which is inevitable in order to obtain those dainty's. Or to know that my fare is my own, that nobody suffers for the want of it and that nobody has suffered in procuring it for me. It is sufficient to comprehend once and for all that in our present organization of life every joy and every moment of peace is bought at the cost of the privations and offerings of thousands who are only restrained by violence in order to see clearly what is natural to man, that is, not only to the animal nature of man but to the rational nature as well. It is sufficient to understand the doctrine of Christ in all its high significance and with all the consequences it entails to see that it is not inconsistent with human nature but that on the contrary his whole doctrine throws aside what is inconsistent with human nature the delusive human teaching of resistance of evil which is the chief cause of all human misery. The doctrine of Christ which teaches us not to resist evil is a dream but the sight of men in whose breasts love and pity are innate spending their lives in burning their brethren at the stake scorching them breaking them on the wheel lashing, slitting their nostrils putting them to the rack keeping them fettered sending them to the galleys or the gallows shooting them condemning to solitary confinement imprisoning women and children organizing the slaughter of tens of thousands by war bringing about periodical revolutions and rebellions the sight of others passively fulfilling these atrocities the sight of others again writhing under these tortures or avenging them this is no dream when once we clearly understand the teaching of Christ we see that it is not the world given by God to man for his happiness that is a dream but the world such as men have made it for their own destruction that is a wild, terrifying dream the delirium of a madman a dream from which it is enough to awake once never to return to it God came down from heaven the Son of God the second person of the Holy Trinity and became man to redeem us from the punishment entailed by the sin of Adam we think that this God must speak in some mysterious, mystical way difficult to be understood indeed that his word can only be understood through faith and God's grace and yet God's words are so simple and so clear he says do no evil to each other and there will be no evil is it possible that the revelation of God is so simple? can this be all? all this is so familiar to us the prophet Elijah having fled from the haunts of men and concealed himself in a rock had it revealed to him that he should see God at the entrance of the cavern a tempest arose the trees were rent asunder Elijah thought God was there and looked but God was not there the earth quaked fire issued out of it the rock was split in two and the mountains fell Elijah looked but God was not there then all grew still and calm and a light breeze wafted the fragrance of the freshened fields towards him Elijah looked and God was there it is thus with the simple words of God do not resist evil they are very simple but they contain in themselves the soul and eternal law of God and man this law is eternal and if in history we find any progress made towards the annihilation of evil it is due to those who truly understood the doctrine of Christ who suffered evil without resisting by violence the progression of mankind toward good is brought about by martyrdom not by tyranny fire cannot extinguish fire no more than evil can extirpate evil good meeting with evil and remaining untainted by it can alone conquer evil there is a law in the heart of each man that is as immutable as the law of Galileo still more immutable men may turn aside from it or conceal it from others nevertheless it is the only path that leads to true happiness each step that has brought us nearer to this great end was taken in the name of the doctrine of Christ do not resist evil it is with greater confidence even than Galileo that the follower of Christ can say in defiance of all the temptations around him and the threats held out to him it is not by violence but by doing good that you will eradicate evil and if the progress is made slowly it is only because the clarity, simplicity and rationality of the teaching of Christ and its inevitable absolute necessity are concealed from the eyes of men in the most crafty and dangerous manner concealed under a spurious teaching falsely called his