The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (reading diary .txt) 📖

mean; and the same

with the prohibition of swearing. He does not, as others do,

deny the meaning of Christ’s teaching, but unfortunately he

does not draw from this admission the inevitable deductions

which present themselves spontaneously in our life when we

understand Christ’s teaching in that way. If we must not

oppose evil by force, nor swear, everyone naturally asks,

“How, then, about military service? and the oath of

obedience?” To this question the author gives no reply; but

it must be answered. And if he cannot answer, then he would

do better no to speak on the subject at all, as such silence

leads to error.

 

The majority of religious critics of my book use this fifth method

of replying to it. I could quote dozens of such critics, in all of

whom, without exception, we find the same thing repeated:

everything is discussed except what constitutes the principal

subject of the book. As a characteristic example of such

criticisms, I will quote the article of a well-known and ingenious

English writer and preacher—Farrar—who, like many learned

theologians, is a great master of the art of circuitously evading

a question. The article was published in an American journal, the

FORUM, in October, 1888.

 

After conscientiously explaining in brief the contents of my book,

Farrar says:

 

“Tolstoy came to the conclusion that a coarse deceit had been

palmed upon the world when these words ‘Resist not evil,’ were

held by civil society to be compatible with war, courts of

justice, capital punishment, divorce, oaths, national

prejudice, and, indeed, with most of the institutions of civil

and social life. He now believes that the kingdom of God would

come if all men kept these five commandments of Christ, viz.:

1. Live in peace with all men. 2. Be pure. 3. Take no oaths.

4. Resist not evil. 5. Renounce national distinctions.

 

“Tolstoy,” he says, “rejects the inspiration of the Old

Testament; hence he rejects the chief doctrines of the Church—

that of the Atonement by blood, the Trinity, the descent of the

Holy Ghost on the Apostles, and his transmission through the

priesthood.” And he recognizes only the words and commands of

Christ. “But is this interpretation of Christ a true one?” he

says. “Are all men bound to act as Tolstoy teaches—i. e., to

carry out these five commandments of Christ?”

 

You expect, then, that in answer to this essential question, which

is the only one that could induce a man to write an article about

the book, he will say either that this interpretation of Christ’s

teaching is true and we ought to follow it, or he will say that

such an interpretation is untrue, will show why, and will give

some other correct interpretation of those words which I interpret

incorrectly. But nothing of this kind is done. Farrar only

expresses his “belief” that,

 

“although actuated by the noblest sincerity, Count Tolstoy has

been misled by partial and one-sided interpretations of the

meaning of the Gospel and the mind and will of Christ.” What

this error consists in is not made clear; it is only said:

“To enter into the proof of this is impossible in this article,

for I have already exceeded the space at my command.”

 

And he concludes in a tranquil spirit:

 

“Meanwhile, the reader who feels troubled lest it should be his

duty also to forsake all the conditions of his life and to take

up the position and work of a common laborer, may rest for the

present on the principle, SECURUS JUDICAT ORBIS TERRARUM. With

few and rare exceptions,” he continues, “the whole of

Christendom, from the days of the Apostles down to our own, has

come to the firm conclusion that it was the object of Christ to

lay down great eternal principles, but not to disturb the bases

and revolutionize the institutions of all human society, which

themselves rest on divine sanctions as well as on inevitable

conditions. Were it my object to prove how untenable is the

doctrine of communism, based by Count Tolstoy upon the divine

paradoxes [sic], which can be interpreted only on historical

principles in accordance with the whole method of the teaching

of Jesus, it would require an ampler canvas than I have here at

my disposal.”

 

What a pity he has not an “ampler canvas at his disposal”! And

what a strange thing it is that for all these last fifteen

centuries no one has had a “canvas ample enough” to prove that

Christ, whom we profess to believe in, says something utterly

unlike what he does say! Still, they could prove it if they

wanted to. But it is not worth while to prove what everyone

knows; it is enough to say “SECURUS JUDICAT ORBIS TERRARUM.”

 

And of this kind, without exception, are all the criticisms

of educated believers, who must, as such, understand the

danger of their position. The sole escape from it for them

lies in their hope that they may be able, by using the

authority of the Church, of antiquity, and of their sacred

office, to overawe the reader and draw him away from the

idea of reading the Gospel for himself and thinking out the

question in his own mind for himself. And in this they are

successful; for, indeed, how could the notion occur to any

one that all that has been repeated from century to century

with such earnestness and solemnity by all those archdeacons,

bishops, archbishops, holy synods, and popes, is all of it a base

lie and a calumny foisted upon Christ by them for the sake of

keeping safe the money they must have to live luxuriously on the

necks of other men? And it is a lie and a calumny so transparent

that the only way of keeping it up consists in overawing people by

their earnestness, their conscientiousness. It is just what has

taken place of late years at recruiting sessions; at a table

before the zertzal—the symbol of the Tzars authority—in the seat

of honor under the life-size portrait of the Tzar, sit dignified

old officials, wearing decorations, conversing freely and easily,

writing notes, summoning men before them, and giving orders.

Here, wearing a cross on his breast, near them, is prosperous-looking old Priest in a silken cassock, with long gray hair

flowing on to his cope; before a lectern who wears the golden

cross and has a Gospel bound in gold.

 

They summon Iran Petroff. A young man comes in, wretchedly,

shabbily dressed, and in terror, the muscles of his face working,

his eyes bright and restless; and in a broken voice, hardly above

a whisper, he says: “I—by Christ’s law—as a Christian—I

cannot.” “What is he muttering?” asks the president, frowning

impatiently and raising his eyes from his book to listen. “Speak

louder,” the colonel with shining epaulets shouts to him. “I—I as

a Christian—” And at last it appears that the young man refuses

to serve in the army because he is a Christian. “Don’t talk

nonsense. Stand to be measured. Doctor, may I trouble you to

measure him. He is all right?” “Yes.” “Reverend father,

administer the oath to him.”

 

No one is the least disturbed by what the poor scared young man is

muttering. They do not even pay attention to it. “They all mutter

something, but we’ve no time to listen to it, we have to enroll so

many.”

 

The recruit tries to say something still. “It’s opposed to the

law of Christ.” “Go along, go along; we know without your help

what is opposed to the law and what’s not; and you soothe his

mind, reverend father, soothe him. Next: Vassily Nikitin.” And

they lead the trembling youth away. And it does not strike anyone

—the guards, or Vassily Nikitin, whom they are bringing in, or

any of the spectators of this scene—that these inarticulate words

of the young man, at once suppressed by the authorities, contain

the truth, and that the loud, solemnly uttered sentences of the

calm, self-confident official and the priest are a lie and a

deception.

 

Such is the impression produced not only by Farrar’s article, but

by all those solemn sermons, articles, and books which make their

appearance from all sides directly there is anywhere a glimpse of

truth exposing a predominant falsehood. At once begins the series

of long, clever, ingenious, and solemn speeches and writings,

which deal with questions nearly related to the subject, but

skillfully avoid touching the subject itself.

 

That is the essence of the fifth and most effective means of

getting out of the contradictions in which Church Christianity has

placed itself, by professing its faith in Christ’s teaching in

words, while it denies it in its life, and teaches

people to do the same.

 

Those who justify themselves by the first method, directly,

crudely asserting that Christ sanctioned violence, wars, and

murder, repudiate Christ’s doctrine directly; those who find their

defense in the second, the third, or the fourth method are

confused and can easily be convicted of error; but this last

class, who do not argue, who do not condescend to argue about it,

but take shelter behind their own grandeur, and make a show of all

this having been decided by them or at least by someone long ago,

and no longer offering a possibility of doubt to anyone—they seem

safe from attack, and will be beyond attack till men come to

realize that they are under the narcotic influence exerted on them

by governments and churches, and are no longer affected by it.

 

Such was the attitude of the spiritual critics—i. e., those

professing faith in Christ—to my book. And their attitude could

not have been different. They are bound to take up this attitude

by the contradictory position in which they find themselves

between belief in the divinity of their Master and disbelief in

his clearest utterances, and they want to escape from this

contradiction. So that one cannot expect from them free

discussion of the very essence of the question—that is, of the

change in men’s life which must result from applying Christ’s

teaching to the existing order of the world. Such free discussion

I only expected from worldly, freethinking critics who are not

bound to Christ’s teaching in any way, and can therefore take an

independent view of it. I had anticipated that freethinking

writers would look at Christ, not merely, like the Churchmen, as

the founder of a religion of personal salvation, but, to express

it in their language, as a reformer who laid down new principles

of life and destroyed the old, and whose reforms are not yet

complete, but are still in progress even now.

 

Such a view of Christ and his teaching follows from my book. But

to my astonishment, out of the great number of critics of my book

there was not one, either Russian or foreign, who treated the

subject from the side from which it was approached in the book—

that is, who criticised Christ’s doctrines as philosophical,

moral, and social principles, to use their scientific expressions.

This was not done in a single criticism. The freethinking Russian

critics taking my book as though its whole contents could be

reduced to nonresistance to evil, and understanding the doctrine

of nonresistance to evil itself (no doubt for greater convenience

in refuting it) as though it would prohibit every kind of conflict

with evil, fell vehemently upon this doctrine, and for some years

past have been very successfully proving that Christ’s teaching is

mistaken in so far as it forbids resistance to evil. Their

refutations of this hypothetical doctrine of Christ were all the

more successful since they knew beforehand that their arguments

could not be contested or corrected, for the censorship, not

having passed the book, did not pass articles in its defense.

 

It is a remarkable thing that among