Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1908
Source: From RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
‘The Church’s perversion of Christianity has distanced us from the realization of the Kingdom of God; but, Christian truth, like fire on dry wood, has consumed its outer layer and burst forth. Everyone can see the significance of Christianity, and its influence is already stronger than the deceit which conceals it.’
‘I can see a new religion, based on trust in man, appealing to untouched depths within us, believing that we can love good without any recompense, and that the divine principle exists in man.’ (Solter)
‘What we need, what the people need and the age demands, in order to find a way out of the murk of egoism, doubt and negation in which it is immersed, is a faith in which our souls can cease to wander in pursuit of personal ends and can move forwards in unison, recognizing one source, one law, one end. Any strong belief that springs up from the ruins of the old, worn-out religions will modify the existing order, since all strong beliefs invariably accompany any offshoot of human activity.
In different formulas and different degrees, mankind repeats the words of the Lord’s prayer: “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven”.’ (Mazzini)
‘It is impossible to weigh or measure the evil that results from false belief. Religion is the establishment of a relationship between man and God and the universe, and the definition of man’s purpose that results from it. What would man’s life be like if this relationship and resulting definition were false?’
‘It is not sufficient to discard the false faith, that is the false relationship to the universe. It is still necessary to establish a new one.’
The tragedy of the situation of the people of the Christian world consists in the fact that, owing to an unavoidable misunderstanding, the Christian nations adopted as their own a religious teaching which in its true meaning most clearly negated and destroyed the whole social structure of life by which they were living and without which they could not imagine life.
In this lies both the tragedy of the situation and the great, exclusive blessing of the Christian nations.
In the distorted manner in which the Christian teaching was presented to the pagan peoples it appeared to them simply as a slight modification of their crude conceptions of divinity, presenting a much higher conception of man’s purpose and the moral demands made of him. However, the real significance of the teaching was concealed from them by complex dogmas and attractive, hypnotic rituals to such an extent that they did not even suspect it. And yet, the true significance of this teaching was not only clearly expressed in the Gospel texts, accepted by the Church as divine revelations and inseparably connected with the Church’s distorted teaching; but this meaning was so natural and akin to the spirit of mankind that despite being buried under false and distorted dogmas, those who were more sensitive to the truth began, with increasing frequency, to adopt the teaching in its true meaning and to perceive, with ever greater clarity, the contradictions between the existing order of the world and the true Christian teachings.
This contradiction was recognized in the Middle Ages, and even in ancient times, by the Fathers of the Church: Tatian, Clement, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactancius and others. In modern times it has become still clearer and has been expressed in the large number of sects who rejected political structures that contradicted Christianity with their invariable accompaniment of violence, as well as in all the various humanistic teachings that do not even call themselves Christian, for example: Socialism, Communism, Anarchism, – ideas that are spreading very rapidly at the moment and which are really nothing other than partial manifestations of Christian consciousness in its true sense, denying violence.
The fact that the world’s Christian nations adopted, in a hidden, perverted form, a teaching which in its real meaning must inevitably destroy the order of life in which they live and from which they do not wish to part is the cause of the suffering of the peoples of Christendom. Their great blessing was that, having adopted Christianity in its distorted form, which nevertheless included a truth concealed from them, they are now brought to the inevitable necessity of accepting the Christian teaching in its true, rather than distorted, meaning; this true meaning has become increasingly clear to them and is now quite apparent, and it is this alone that can save people from the wretched situation in which they find themselves.