The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (reading diary .txt) 📖
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world in his net of faith, but the greater fishes broke the net
and escaped out of it, and all the rest have slipped through
the holes made by the greater fishes, so that the net has
remained quite empty. The greater fishes who broke the net are
the rulers, emperors, popes, kings, who have not renounced
power, and instead of true Christianity have put on what is
simply a mask of it.”
Helchitsky teaches precisely what has been and is taught in these
days by the non-resistant Mennonites and Quakers, and in former
tunes by the Bogomilites, Paulicians, and many others. He teaches
that Christianity, expecting from its adherents gentleness,
meekness, peaceableness, forgiveness of injuries, turning the
other cheek when one is struck, and love for enemies, is
inconsistent with the use of force, which is an indispensable
condition of authority.
The Christian, according to Helchitsky’s reasoning, not only
cannot be a ruler or a soldier; he cannot take any part in
government nor in trade, or even be a landowner; he can only be an
artisan or a husbandman.
This book is one of the few works attacking official Christianity
which has escaped being burned. All such so-called heretical
works were burned at the stake, together with their authors, so
that there are few ancient works exposing the errors of official
Christianity. The book has a special interest for this reason
alone. But apart from its interest from every point of view, it
is one of the most remarkable products of thought for its depth of
aim, for the astounding strength and beauty of the national
language in which it is written, and for its antiquity. And yet
for more than four centuries it has remained unprinted, and is
still unknown, except to a few learned specialists.
One would have thought that all such works, whether of the
Quakers, of Garrison, of Ballou, or of Helchitsky, asserting and
proving as they do, on the principles of the Gospel, that our
modern world takes a false view of Christ’s teaching, would have
awakened interest, excitement, talk, and discussion among
spiritual teachers and their flocks alike.
Works of this kind, dealing with the very essence of Christian
doctrine, ought, one would have thought, to have been examined and
accepted as true, or refuted and rejected. But nothing of the
kind has occurred, and the same fate has been repeated with all
those works. Men of the most diverse views, believers, and, what
is surprising, unbelieving liberals also, as though by agreement,
all preserve the same persistent silence about them, and all that
has been done by people to explain the true meaning of Christ’s
doctrine remains either ignored or forgotten.
But it is still more astonishing that two other books, of
which I heard on the appearance of my book, should be so little
known, I mean Dymond’s book “On War,” published for the first time
in London in 1824, and Daniel Musser’s book on “Nonresistance,”
written in 1864. It is particularly astonishing that these books
should be unknown, because, apart from their intrinsic merits,
both books treat not so much of the theory as of the practical
application of the theory to life, of the attitude of Christianity
to military service, which is especially important and interesting
now in these clays of universal conscription.
People will ask, perhaps: How ought a subject to behave who
believes that war is inconsistent with his religion while the
government demands from him that he should enter military service?
This question is, I think, a most vital one, and the answer to it
is specially important in these days of universal conscription.
All—or at least the great majority of the people—are Christians,
and all men are called upon for military service. How ought a
man, as a Christian, to meet this demand? This is the gist of
Dymond’s answer:
“His duty is humbly but steadfastly to refuse to serve.”
There are some people, who, without any definite reasoning about
it, conclude straightway that the responsibility of government
measures rests entirely on those who resolve on them, or that the
governments and sovereigns decide the question of what is good or
bad for their subjects, and the duty of the subjects is merely to
obey. I think that arguments of this kind only obscure men’s
conscience. I cannot take part in the councils of government, and
therefore I am not responsible for its misdeeds.. Indeed, but we
are responsible for our own misdeeds. And the misdeeds of our
rulers become our own, if we, knowing that they are misdeeds,
assist in carrying, them out. Those who suppose that they are
bound to obey the government, and that the responsibility for the
misdeeds they commit is transferred from them to their rulers,
deceive themselves. They say: “We give our acts up to the will
of others, and our acts cannot be good or bad; there is no merit
in what is good nor responsibility for what is evil in our
actions, since they are not done of our own will.”
It is remarkable that the very same thing is said in the
instructions to soldiers which they make them learn—that is, that
the officer is alone responsible for the consequences of his
command. But this is not right. A man cannot get rid of the
responsibility, for his own actions. And that is clear from the
following example. If your officer commands you to kill your
neighbor’s child, to kill your father or your mother, would you
obey? If you would not obey, the whole argument falls to the
ground, for if you can disobey the governors in one case, where do
you draw the line up to which you can obey them? There is no line
other than that laid down by Christianity, and that line is both
reasonable and practicable.
And therefore we consider it the duty of every man who thinks war
inconsistent with Christianity, meekly but firmly to refuse to
serve in the army. And let those whose lot it is to act thus,
remember that the fulfillment of a great duty rests with them.
The destiny of humanity in the world depends, so far as it depends
on men at all, on their fidelity to their religion. Let them
confess their conviction, and stand up for it, and not in words
alone, but in sufferings too, if need be. If you believe that
Christ forbade murder, pay no heed to the arguments nor to the
commands of those who call on you to bear a hand in it. By such a
steadfast refusal to make use of force, you call down on
yourselves the blessing promised to those “who hear these sayings
and do them,” and the time will come when the world will recognize
you as having aided in the reformation of mankind.
Musser’s book is called “Nonresistance Asserted,” or “Kingdom of
Christ and Kingdoms of this World Separated.” This book is
devoted to the same question, and was written when the American
Government was exacting military service from its citizens at the
time of the Civil War. And it has, too, a value for all time,
dealing with the question how, in such circumstances, people
should and can refuse to eater military service. Here is the tenor
of the author’s introductory remarks:
“It is well known that there are many persons in the United
States who refuse to fight on grounds of conscience. They are
called the ‘defenseless,’ or ‘non-resistant’ Christians. These
Christians refuse to defend their country, to bear arms, or at
the call of government to make war on its enemies. Till lately
this religious scruple seemed a valid excuse to the government,
and those who urged it were let off service. But at the
beginning of our Civil War public opinion was agitated on this
subject. It was natural that persons who considered it their
duty to bear all the hardships and dangers of war in defense of
their country should feel resentment against those persons who
had for long shared with them the advantages of the protection
of government, and who now in time of need and danger would not
share in bearing the labors and dangers of its defense. It was
even natural that they should declare the attitude of such men
monstrous, irrational, and suspicious.”
A host of orators and writers, our author tells us, arose to
oppose this attitude, and tried to prove the sinfulness of nonresistance, both from Scripture and on common-sense grounds. And
this was perfectly natural, and in many cases the authors were
right—right, that is, in regard to persons who did not renounce
the benefits they received from the government and tried to avoid
the hardships of military service, but not right in regard to the
principle of nonresistance itself. Above all, our author proves
the binding nature of the rule of nonresistance for a Christian,
pointing out that this command is perfectly clear, and is enjoined
upon every Christian by Christ without possibility of
misinterpretation. “Bethink yourselves whether it is righteous to
obey man more than God,” said Peter and John. And this is
precisely what ought to be the attitude to every man who wishes to
be Christian to the claim on him for military service, when Christ
has said, “Resist not evil by force.” As for the question of the
principle itself, the author regards that as decided. As to the
second question, whether people have the right to refuse to serve
in the army who have not refused the benefits conferred by a
government resting on force, the author considers it in detail,
and arrives at the conclusion that a Christian following the law
of Christ, since he does not go to war, ought not either to take
advantage of any institutions of government, courts of law, or
elections, and that in his private concerns he must not have
recourse to the authorities, the police, or the law. Further on
in the book he treats of the relation of the Old Testament to the
New, the value of government for those who are Christians, and
makes some observations on the doctrine of nonresistance and the
attacks made on it. The author concludes his book by saying:
“Christians do not need government, and therefore they cannot
either obey it in what is contrary to Christ’s teaching nor, still
less, take part in it.” Christ took his disciples out of the
world, he says. They do not expect worldly blessings and worldly
happiness, but they expect eternal life. The Spirit in whom they
live makes them contented and happy in every position. If the
world tolerates them, they are always happy. If the world will
not leave them in peace, they will go elsewhere, since they are
pilgrims on the earth and they have no fixed place of habitation.
They believe that “the dead may bury their dead.” One thing only
is needful for them, “to follow their Master.”
Even putting aside the question as to the principle laid down in
these two books as to the Christian’s duty in his attitude to war,
one cannot help perceiving the practical importance and the urgent
need of deciding the question.
There are people, hundreds of thousands of Quakers, Mennonites,
all our Douhobortsi, Molokani, and others who do not belong to any
definite sect, who consider that the use of force—and,
consequently, military service—is inconsistent with Christianity.
Consequently there are every year among us in Russia some men
called upon for military service who refuse to serve on the ground
of their religious convictions. Does the government let them off
then? No. Does it compel them to go, and in case of disobedience
punish them? No. This was how the government treated them in
1818. Here is an extract from the diary of Nicholas Myravyov of
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