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The Kingdom of God is within you

L >> Leo Tolstoy >> The Kingdom of God is within you




The preachers of the Church clearly, do not recognize it; only not
daring to acknowledge this, they try to conceal their not
recognizing it.

So much for the fourth reply.

The fifth kind of answer, which is the subtlest, the most often
used, and the most effective, consists in avoiding answering, in
making believe that this question is one which has long ago been
decided perfectly clearly and satisfactorily, and that it is not
worth while to talk about it. This method of reply is employed by
all the more or less cultivated religious writers, that is to say,
those who feel the laws of Christ binding for themselves. Knowing
that the contradiction existing between the teaching of Christ
which we profess with our lips and the whole order of our lives
cannot be removed by words, and that touching upon it can only
make it more obvious, they, with more or less ingenuity, evade it,
pretending that the question of reconciling Christianity with the
use of force has been decided already, or does not exist at all.

[Footnote: I only know one work which differs somewhat from
this general definition, and that is not a criticism in the
precise meaning of the word, but an article treating of the
same subject and having my book in view. I mean the pamphlet
of Mr. Troizky (published at Kazan), "A Sermon for the
People." The author obviously accepts Christ's teaching in
its true meaning. He says that the prohibition of resistance
to evil by force means exactly what it does 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 non-resistance to evil, and understanding the doctrine
of non-resistance 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 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 non-resistance, and sometimes even imagining
apparently that the rule of non-resistance 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 non-resistance 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 non-resistance 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 non-resistance 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 non-resistance 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 Schlüsselburg 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 non-resistance 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 naïve 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 Vogüé 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 naïvely, 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 non-resistance 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 non-resistance to evil not
discussed; the very mention of the fact that the duty of non-
resistance 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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