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

us, where one cannot say a

word about the Holy Scriptures without the prohibition of the

censorship, for some years past there have been in all the

journals constant attacks and criticisms on the command of Christ

simply and directly stated in Matt. v. 39. The Russian advanced

critics, obviously unaware of all that has been done to elucidate

the question of nonresistance, and sometimes even imagining

apparently that the rule of nonresistance to evil had been

invented by me personally, fell foul of the very idea of it. They

opposed it and attacked it, and advancing with great heat

arguments which had long ago been analyzed and refuted from every

point of view, they demonstrated that a man ought invariably to

defend (with violence) all the injured and oppressed, and that

thus the doctrine of nonresistance to evil is an immoral

doctrine.

 

To all Russian critics the whole import of Christ’s command seemed

reducible to the fact that it would hinder them from the active

opposition to evil to which they are accustomed. So that the

principle of nonresistance to evil by force has been attacked by

two opposing camps: the conservatives, because this principle

would hinder their activity in resistance to evil as applied to

the revolutionists, in persecution and punishment of them; the

revolutionists, too, because this principle would hinder their

resistance to evil as applied to the conservatives and the

overthrowing of them. The conservatives were indignant at the

doctrine of nonresistance to evil by force hindering the

energetic destruction of the revolutionary elements, which may

ruin the national prosperity; the revolutionists were indignant at

the doctrine of nonresistance to evil by force hindering the

overthrow of the conservatives, who are ruining the national

prosperity. It is worthy of remark in this connection that the

revolutionists have attacked the principle of nonresistance to

evil by force, in spite of the fact that it is the greatest terror

and danger for every despotism. For ever since the beginning of

the world, the use of violence of every kind, from the Inquisition

to the Schl�sselburg fortress, has rested and still rests on the

opposite principle of the necessity of resisting evil by force.

 

Besides this, the Russian critics have pointed out the fact that

the application of the command of nonresistance to practical life

would turn mankind aside out of the path of civilization along

which it is moving. The path of civilization on which mankind in

Europe is moving is in their opinion the one along which all

mankind ought always to move.

 

So much for the general character of the Russian critics.

 

Foreign critics started from the same premises, but their

discussions of my book were somewhat different from those of

Russian critics, not only in being less bitter, and in showing

more culture, but even in the subject-matter.

 

In discussing my book and the Gospel teaching generally, as it is

expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, the foreign critics

maintained that such doctrine is not peculiarly Christian

(Christian doctrine is either Catholicism or Protestantism

according to their views)—the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount

is only a string of very pretty impracticable dreams DU CHARMANT

DOCTEUR, as Reran says, fit for the simple and half-savage

inhabitants of Galilee who lived eighteen hundred years ago, and

for the half-savage Russian peasants—Sutaev and Bondarev—and the

Russian mystic Tolstoy, but not at all consistent with a high

degree of European culture.

 

The foreign freethinking critics have tried in a delicate manner,

without being offensive to me, to give the impression that my

conviction that mankind could be guided by such a na�ve doctrine

as that of the Sermon on the Mount proceeds from two causes: that

such a conviction is partly due to my want of knowledge, my

ignorance of history, my ignorance of all the vain attempts to

apply the principles of the Sermon on the Mount to life, which

have been made in history and have led to nothing; and partly it

is due to my failing to appreciate the full value of the lofty

civilization to which mankind has attained at present, with its

Krupp cannons, smokeless powder, colonization of Africa, Irish

Coercion Bill, parliamentary government, journalism, strikes, and

the Eiffel Tower.

 

So wrote de Vog�� and Leroy Beaulieu and Matthew Arnold; so wrote

the American author Savage, and Ingersoll, the popular

freethinking American preacher, and many others.

 

“Christ’s teaching is no use, because it is inconsistent with our

industrial age,” says Ingersoll na�vely, expressing in this

utterance, with perfect directness and simplicity, the exact

notion of Christ’s teaching held by persons of refinement and

culture of our times. The teaching is no use for our industrial

age, precisely as though the existence of this industrial age were

a sacred fact which ought not to and could not be changed. It is

just as though drunkards when advised how they could be brought to

habits of sobriety should answer that the advice is incompatible

with their habit of taking alcohol.

 

The arguments of all the freethinking critics, Russian and foreign

alike, different as they may be in tone and manner of

presentation, all amount essentially to the same strange

misapprehension—namely, that Christ’s teaching, one of the

consequences of which is nonresistance to evil, is of no use to

us because it requires a change of our life.

 

Christ’s teaching is useless because, if it were carried into

practice, life could not go on as at present; we must add: if we

have begun by living sinfully, as we do live and are accustomed to

live. Not only is the question of nonresistance to evil not

discussed; the very mention of the fact that the duty of nonresistance enters into Christ’s teaching is regarded as

satisfactory proof of the impracticability of the whole teaching.

 

Meanwhile one would have thought it was necessary to point out at

least some kind of solution of the following question, since it is

at the root of almost everything that interests us.

 

The question amounts to this: In what way are we to decide men’s

disputes, when some men consider evil what others consider good,

and VICE VERSA? And to reply that that is evil which I think

evil, in spite of the fact that my opponent thinks it good, is not

a solution of the difficulty. There can only be two solutions:

either to find a real unquestionable criterion of what is evil or

not to resist evil by force.

 

The first course has been tried ever since the beginning of

historical times, and, as we all know, it has not hitherto led to

any successful results.

 

The second solution—not forcibly to resist what we consider evil

until we have found a universal criterion—that is the solution

given by Christ.

 

We may consider the answer given by Christ unsatisfactory; we may

replace it by another and better, by finding a criterion by which

evil could be defined for all men unanimously and simultaneously;

we may simply, like savage nations, not recognize the existence of

the question. But we cannot treat the question as the learned

critics of Christianity do. They pretend either that no such

question exists at all or that the question is solved by granting

to certain persons or assemblies of persons the right to define

evil and to resist it by force. But we know all the while that

granting such a right to certain persons does not decide the

question (still less so when the are ourselves the certain

persons), since there are always people who do not recognize this

right in the authorized persons or assemblies.

 

But this assumption, that what seems evil to us is really evil,

shows a complete misunderstanding of the question, and lies at the

root of the argument of freethinking critics about the Christian

religion. In this way, then, the discussions of my book on the

part of Churchmen and freethinking critics alike showed me that

the majority of men simply do not understand either Christ’s

teaching or the questions which Christ’s teaching solves.

 

CHAPTER III.

 

CHRISTIANITY MISUNDERSTOOD BY BELIEVERS.

 

Meaning of Christian Doctrine, Understood by a Minority, has

Become Completely Incomprehensible for the Majority of Men—

Reason of this to be Found in Misinterpretation of Christianity

and Mistaken Conviction of Believers and Unbelievers Alike that

they Understand it—The Meaning of Christianity Obscured for

Believers by the Church—The First Appearance of Christ’s

Teaching—Its Essence and Difference from Heathen Religions—

Christianity not Fully Comprehended at the Beginning, Became

More and More Clear to those who Accepted it from its

Correspondence with Truth—Simultaneously with this Arose the

Claim to Possession of the Authentic Meaning of the Doctrine

Based on the Miraculous Nature of its Transmission—Assembly of

Disciples as Described in the Acts—The Authoritative Claim to

the Sole Possession of the True Meaning of Christ’s Teaching

Supported by Miraculous Evidence has Led by Logical Development

to the Creeds of the Churches—A Church Could Not be Founded by

Christ—Definitions of a Church According to the Catechisms—

The Churches have Always been Several in Number and Hostile to

One Another—What is Heresy—The Work of G. Arnold on Heresies—

Heresies the Manifestations of Progress in the Churches—

Churches Cause Dissension among Men, and are Always Hostile to

Christianity—Account of the Work Done by the Russian Church—

Matt. xxiii. 23—The Sermon on the Mount or the Creed—The

Orthodox Church Conceals from the People the True Meaning of

Christianity—The Same Thing is Done by the Other Churches—All

the External Conditions of Modern Life are such as to Destroy

the Doctrine of the Church, and therefore the Churches use

Every Effort to Support their Doctrines.

 

Thus the information I received, after my book came out, went to

show that the Christian doctrine, in its direct and simple sense,

was understood, and had always been understood, by a minority of

men, while the critics, ecclesiastical and freethinking alike,

denied the possibility of taking Christ’s teaching in its direct

sense. All this convinced me that while on one hand the true

understanding of this doctrine had never been lost to a minority,

but had been established more and more clearly, on the other hand

the meaning of it had been more and more obscured for the

majority. So that at last such a depth of obscurity has been

reached that men do not take in their direct sense even the

simplest precepts, expressed in the simplest words, in the Gospel.

 

Christ’s teaching is not generally understood in its true, simple,

and direct sense even in these days, when the light of the Gospel

has penetrated even to the darkest recesses of human

consciousness; when, in the words of Christ, that which was spoken

in the ear is proclaimed from the housetops; and when the Gospel

is influencing every side of human life—domestic, economic,

civic, legislative, and international. This lack of true

understanding of Christ’s words at such a time would be

inexplicable, if there were not causes to account for it.

 

One of these causes is the fact that believers and unbelievers

alike are firmly persuaded that they have understood Christ’s

teaching a long time, and that they understand it so fully,

indubitably, and conclusively that it can have no other

significance than the one they attribute to it. And the reason of

this conviction is that the false interpretation and consequent

misapprehension of the Gospel is an error of such long standing.

Even the strongest current of water cannot add a drop to a cup

which is already full.

 

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the

simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if

he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of

doubt, what is laid before him.

 

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