The Kingdom of God Is Within You - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (best non fiction books of all time txt) 📗

understanding the true teaching of

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