The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (reading diary .txt) đź“–
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or the reason of their utterance, do not understand even the
question to which they form the answer. Yet, without even taking
the pains to enter into their meaning, they refuse, if unfavorably
disposed, to recognize any reasonableness in his doctrines; or if
they want to treat them indulgently, they condescend, from the
height of their superiority, to correct them, on the supposition
that Christ meant to express precisely their own ideas, but did
not succeed in doing so. They behave to his teaching much as
self-assertive people talk to those whom they consider beneath
them, often supplying their companions’ words: “Yes, you mean to
say this and that.” This correction is always with the aim of
reducing the teaching of the higher, divine conception of life to
the level of the lower, state conception of life.
They usually say that the moral teaching of Christianity is very
fine, but overexaggerated; that to make it quite right we must
reject all in it that is superfluous and unnecessary to our manner
of life. “And the doctrine that asks too much, and requires what
cannot he performed, is worse than that which requires of men what
is possible and consistent with their powers,” these learned
interpreters of Christianity maintain, repeating what was long ago
asserted, and could not but be asserted, by those who crucified
the Teacher because they did not understand him—the Jews.
It seems that in the judgment of the learned men of our
time the Hebrew law—a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for
an eye—is a law of just retaliation, known to mankind five
thousand years before the law of holiness which Christ
taught in its place.
It seems that all that has been done by those men who understood
Christ’s teaching literally and lived in accordance with such an
understanding of it, all that has been said and done by all true
Christians, by all the Christian saints, all that is now reforming
the world in the shape of socialism and communism—is simply
exaggeration, not worth talking about.
After eighteen hundred years of education in Christianity the
civilized world, as represented by its most advanced thinkers,
holds the conviction that the Christian religion is a religion of
dogmas; that its teaching in relation to life is unreasonable, and
is an exaggeration, subversive of the real lawful obligations of
morality consistent with the nature of man; and that very doctrine
of retribution which Christ rejected, and in place of which he put
his teaching, is more practically useful for us.
To learned men the doctrine of nonresistance to evil by force is
exaggerated and even irrational. Christianity is much better
without it, they think, not observing closely what Christianity,
as represented by them, amounts to.
They do not see that to say that the doctrine of nonresistance to
evil is an exaggeration in Christ’s teaching is just like saying
that the statement of the equality of the radii of a circle is an
exaggeration in the definition of a circle. And those who speak
thus are acting precisely like a man who, having no idea of what a
circle is, should declare that this requirement, that every point
of the circumference should be an equal distance from the center,
is exaggerated. To advocate the rejection of Christ’s command of
nonresistance to evil, or its adaptation to the needs of life,
implies a misunderstanding of the teaching of Christ.
And those who do so certainly do not understand it. They do not
understand that this teaching is the institution of a new theory
of life, corresponding to the new conditions on which men have
entered now for eighteen hundred years, and also the definition of
the new conduct of life which results from it. They do not
believe that Christ meant to say what he said; or he seems to them
to have said what he said in the Sermon on the Mount and in other
places accidentally, or through his lack of intelligence or of
cultivation.
[Footnote: Here, for example, is a characteristic
view of that kind from the American journal the ARENA
(October, 1890): “New Basis of Church Life.” Treating
of the significance of the Sermon on the Mount and
nonresistance to evil in particular, the author,
being under no necessity, like the Churchmen, to
hide its significance, says:
“Christ in fact preached complete communism and
anarchy; but one must learn to regard Christ always
in his historical and psychological significance.
Like every advocate of the love of humanity, Christ
went to the furthest extreme in his teaching. Every
step forward toward the moral perfection of humanity
is always guided by men who see nothing but their
vocation. Christ, in no disparaging sense be it
said, had the typical temperament of such a reformer.
And therefore we must remember that his precepts
cannot be understood literally as a complete
philosophy of life. We ought to analyze his words
with respect for them, but in the spirit of criticism,
accepting what is true,” etc.
Christ would have been happy to say what he ought, but
he was not able to express himself as exactly and
clearly as we can in the spirit of criticism, and
therefore let us correct him. All that he said about
meekness, sacrifice, lowliness, not caring for the
morrow, was said by accident, through lack of knowing
how to express himself scientifically.]
Matt. vi. 25-34: “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for
your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for
your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat,
and the body than rainment? Behold the fouls of the air; for they
sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your
heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit onto his stature?
And why take ye thought for rainment? Consider the lilies of the
field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet
I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the
field, which to-day is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall
he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take
no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink?
or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things
do the Gentiles seek), for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye
have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of
God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added
unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the
morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof.” Luke xii. 33-34: “Sell that ye
have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a
treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief
approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is,
there will your heart be also.” Sell all thou hast and follow me;
and he who will not leave father, or mother, or children, or
brothers, or fields, or house, he cannot be my disciple. Deny
thyself, take up thy cross each day and follow me. My meat is to
do the will of him that sent me, and to perform his works. Not my
will, but thine be done; not what I will, but as thou wilt. Life
is to do not one’s will, but the will of God.
All these principles appear to men who regard them from the
standpoint of a lower conception of life as the expression of an
impulsive enthusiasm, having no direct application to life. These
principles, however, follow from the Christian theory of life,
just as logically as the principles of paying a part of one’s
private gains to the commonwealth and of sacrificing one’s life in
defense of one’s country follow from the state theory of life.
As the man of the stale conception of life said to the savage:
Reflect, bethink yourself! The life of your individuality cannot
be true life, because that life is pitiful and passing. But the
life of a society and succession of individuals, family, clan,
tribe, or state, goes on living, and therefore a man must
sacrifice his own individuality for the life of the family or the
state. In exactly the same way the Christian doctrine says to the
man of the social, state conception of life, Repent ye—[GREEK
WORD]-i. e., bethink yourself, or you will be ruined. Understand
that this casual, personal life which now comes into being and tomorrow is no more can have no permanence, that no external means,
no construction of it can give it consecutiveness and permanence.
Take thought and understand that the life you are living is not
real life—the life of the family, of society, of the state will
not save you from annihilation. The true, the rational life is
only possible for man according to the measure in which he can
participate, not in the family or the state, but in the source of
life—the Father; according to the measure in which he can merge
his life in the life of the Father. Such is undoubtedly the
Christian conception of life, visible in every utterance of the
Gospel.
[TRANSCRIBIST’S NOTE: The GREEK WORD above used Greek letters,
spelled: mu-epsilon-tau-alpha-nu-omicron-zeta-epsilon-tau-epsilon]
One may not share this view of life, one may reject it, one may
show its inaccuracy and its erroneousness, but we cannot judge of
the Christian teaching without mastering this view of life. Still
less can one criticise a subject on a higher plane from a lower
point of view. From the basement one cannot judge of the effect
of the spire. But this is just what the learned critics of the
day try to do. For they share the erroneous idea of the orthodox
believers that they are in possession of certain infallible means
for investigating a subject. They fancy if they apply their so-called scientific methods of criticism, there can be no doubt of
their conclusion being correct.
This testing the subject by the fancied infallible method of
science is the principal obstacle to understanding the Christian
religion for unbelievers, for so-called educated people. From
this follow all the mistakes made by scientific men about the
Christian religion, and especially two strange misconceptions
which, more than everything else, hinder them from a correct
understanding of it. One of these misconceptions is that the
Christian moral teaching cannot be carried out, and that therefore
it has either no force at all—that is, it should not be accepted
as the rule of conduct—or it must be transformed, adapted to the
limits within which its fulfillment is possible in our society.
Another misconception is that the Christian doctrine of love of
God, and therefore of his service, is an obscure, mystic
principle, which gives no definite object for love, and should
therefore be replaced by the more exact and comprehensible
principles of love for men and the service of humanity.
The first misconception in regard to the impossibility of
following the principle is the result of men of the state
conception of life unconsciously taking that conception as the
standard by which the Christian religion directs men, and taking
the Christian principle of perfection as the rule by which that
life is to be ordered; they think and say that to follow Christ’s
teaching is impossible, because the complete fulfillment of all
that is required by this teaching would put an end to life. “If a
man were to carry out all that Christ teaches, he would destroy
his own life; and if
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