The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (reading diary .txt) đź“–
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Christ, and what is the chief consideration, justifies the
existence of priests supported at the people’s expense.
What else has Catholicism done, what else is it doing in its
prohibition of reading the Gospel, and in its demand for
unreasoning submission to Church authorities and to an infallible
Pope? Is the religion of Catholicism any other than that of the
Russian Church? There is the same external ritual, the same
relics, miracles, and wonder-working images of Notre Dame, and the
same processions; the same loftily vague discussions of
Christianity in books and sermons, and when it comes to practice,
the same supporting of the present idolatry. And is not the same
thing done in Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and every denomination of
Protestantism which has been formed into a church? There is the
same duty laid on their congregations to believe in the dogmas
expressed in the fourth century, which have lost all meaning for
men of our times, and the same duty of idolatrous worship, if not
of relics and ikons, then of the Sabbath Day and the letter of the
Bible. There is always the same activity directed to concealing
the real duties of Christianity, and to putting in their place an
external respectability and cant, as it is so well described by
the English, who are peculiarly oppressed by it. In Protestantism
this tendency is specially remarkable because it has not the
excuse of antiquity. And does not exactly the same thing show
itself even in contemporary revivalism—the revived Calvinism and
Evangelicalism, to which the Salvation Army owes its origin?
Uniform is the attitude of all the churches to the teaching of
Christ, whose name they assume for their own advantage.
The inconsistency of all church forms of religion with the
teaching of Christ is, of course, the reason why special efforts
are necessary to conceal this inconsistency from people. Truly,
the need only imagine ourselves in the position of any grown-up
man, not necessarily educated, even the simplest man of the
present day, who has picked up the ideas that are everywhere in
the air nowadays of geology, physics, chemistry, cosmography, or
history, when he, for the first time, consciously compares them
with the articles of belief instilled into him in childhood, and
maintained by the churches—that God created the world in six
days, and light before the sun; that Noah shut up all the animals
in his ark, and so on; that Jesus is also God the Son, who created
all before time was; that this God came down upon earth to atone
for Adam’s sin; that he rose again, ascended into heaven, and
sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and will come in the
clouds to judge the world, and so on. All these propositions,
elaborated by men of the fourth century, had a certain meaning for
men of that time, but for men of to-day they have no meaning
whatever. Men of the present day can repeat these words with
their lips, but believe them they cannot. For such sentences as
that God lives in heaven, that the heavens opened and a voice from
somewhere said something, that Christ rose again, and ascended
somewhere in heaven, and again will come from somewhere on the
clouds, and so on, have no meaning for us.
A man who regarded the heavens as a solid, finite vault could
believe or disbelieve that God created the heavens, that the
heavens opened, that Christ ascended into heaven, but for us all
these phrases nave no sense whatever. Men of the present can only
believe, as indeed they do, that they ought to believe in this;
but believe it they cannot, because it has no meaning for them.
Even if all these phrases ought to be interpreted in a figurative
sense and are allegories, we know that in the first place all
Churchmen are not agreed about it, but, on the contrary, the
majority stick to understanding the Holy Scripture in its literal
sense; and secondly, that these allegorical interpretations are
very varied and are not supported by any evidence.
But even if a man wants to force himself to believe in the
doctrines of the Church just as they are taught to him, the
universal diffusion of education and of the Gospel and of
communication between people of different forms of religion
presents a still more insurmountable obstacle to his doing so.
A man of the present day need only buy a Gospel for three copecks
and read through the plain words, admitting of no
misinterpretation, that Christ said to the Samaritan woman “that
the Father seeketh not worshipers at Jerusalem, nor in this
mountain nor in that, but worshipers in spirit and in truth,” or
the saying that “the Christian must not pray like the heathen, nor
for show, but secretly, that is, in his closet,” or that Christ’s
follower must call no man master or father—he need only read
these words to be thoroughly convinced that the Church pastors,
who call themselves teachers in opposition to Christ’s precept,
and dispute among themselves, constitute no kind of authority, and
that what the Churchmen teach us is not Christianity. Less even
than that is necessary. Even if a man nowadays did continue to
believe in miracles and did not read the Gospel, mere association
with people of different forms of religion and faith, which
happens so easily in these days, compels him to doubt of the truth
of his own faith. It was all very well when a man did not see men
of any other form of religion than his own; he believed that his
form of religion was the one true one. But a thinking man has
only to come into contact—as constantly happens in these days—
with people, equally good and bad, of different denominations, who
condemn each other’s beliefs, to doubt of the truth of the belief
he professes himself. In these days only a man who is absolutely
ignorant or absolutely indifferent to the vital questions with
which religion deals, can remain in the faith of the Church.
What deceptions and what strenuous efforts the churches must
employ to continue, in spite of all these tendencies subversive of
the faith, to build churches, to perform masses, to preach, to
teach, to convert, and, most of all, to receive for it all immense
emoluments, as do all these priests, pastors, incumbents,
superintendents, abbots, archdeacons, bishops, and archbishops.
They need special supernatural efforts. And the churches do, with
ever-increasing intensity and zeal, make such efforts. With us in
Russia, besides other means, they employ, simple brute force, as
there the temporal power is willing to obey the Church. Men who
refuse an external assent to the faith, and say so openly, are
either directly punished or deprived of their rights; men who
strictly keep the external forms of religion are rewarded and
given privileges.
That is how the Orthodox clergy proceed; but indeed all churches
without exception avail themselves of every means for the purpose
—one of the most important of which is what is now called
hypnotism.
Every art, from architecture to poetry, is brought into
requisition to work its effect on men’s souls and to reduce them
to a state of stupefaction, and this effect is constantly
produced. This use of hypnotizing influence on men to bring them
to a state of stupefaction is especially apparent in the
proceedings of the Salvation Army, who employ new practices to
which we are unaccustomed: trumpets, drums, songs, flags,
costumes, marching, dancing, tears, and dramatic performances.
But this only displeases us because these are new practices. Were
not the old practices in churches essentially the same, with their
special lighting, gold, splendor, candles, choirs, organ, bells,
vestments, intoning, etc.?
But however powerful this hypnotic influence may be, it is not the
chief nor the most pernicious activity of the
Church. The chief and most pernicious work of the Church is that
which is directed to the deception of children—these very
children of whom Christ said: “Woe to him that offendeth one of
these little ones.” From the very first awakening of the
consciousness of the child they begin to deceive him, to instill
into him with the utmost solemnity what they do not themselves
believe in, and they continue to instill it into him till the
deception has by habit grown into the child’s nature. They
studiously deceive the child on the most important subject in
life, and when the deception has so grown into his life that it
would be difficult to uproot it, then they reveal to him the whole
world of science and reality, which cannot by any means be
reconciled with the beliefs that have been instilled into him,
leaving it to him to find his way as best he can out of these
contradictions.
If one set oneself the task of trying to confuse a man so that he
could not think clearly nor free himself from the perplexity of
two opposing theories of life which had been instilled into him
from childhood, one could not invent any means more effectual than
the treatment of every young man educated in our so-called
Christian society.
It is terrible to think what the churches do to men. But
if one imagines oneself in the position of the men who constitute
the Church, we see they could not act differently. The churches
are placed in a dilemma: the Sermon on the Mount or the Nicene
Creed—the one excludes the other. If a man sincerely believes in
the Sermon on the Mount, the Nicene Creed must inevitably lose all
meaning and significance for him, and the Church and its
representatives together with it. If a man believes in the Nicene
Creed, that is, in the Church, that is, in those who call
themselves its representatives, the Sermon on the Mount becomes
superfluous for him. And therefore the churches cannot but make
every possible effort to obscure the meaning of the Sermon on the
Mount, and to attract men to themselves. It is only due to the
intense zeal of the churches in this direction that the influence
of the churches has lasted hitherto.
Let the Church stop its work of hypnotizing the masses, and
deceiving children even for the briefest interval of time, and men
would begin to understand Christ’s teaching. But this
understanding will be the end of the churches and all their
influence. And therefore the churches will not for an instant
relax their zeal in the business of hypnotizing grown-up people
and deceiving children. This, then, is the work of the churches:
to instill a false interpretation of Christ’s teaching into men,
and to prevent a true interpretation of it for the majority of so-called believers.
CHAPTER IV.
CHRISTIANITY MISUNDERSTOOD BY MEN OF SCIENCE.
Attitude of Men of Science to Religions in General—What Religion
is, and What is its Significance for the Life of Humanity—
Three Conceptions of Life—Christian Religion the Expression of
the Divine Conception of Life—Misinterpretation of
Christianity by Men of Science, who Study it in its External
Manifestations Due to their Criticising it from Standpoint of
Social Conception of Life—Opinion, Resulting from this
Misinterpretation, that Christ’s Moral Teaching is Exaggerated
and Cannot be put into Practice—Expression of Divine
Conception of Life in the Gospel—False Ideas of Men of Science
on Christianity Proceed from their Conviction that they have an
Infallible Method of Criticism—From which come Two
Misconceptions in Regard to Christian Doctrine—First
Misconception, that the Teaching Cannot be put into Practice,
Due to the Christian Religion Directing Life in a Way Different
from that of the Social Theory of Life—Christianity holds up
Ideal, does not lay down Rules—To the Animal Force of Man
Christ Adds the Consciousness of a Divine Force—Christianity
Seems to Destroy Possibility of Life only when the Ideal held
up is Mistaken for
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