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

sayings, do not understand the significance, the object,

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