The impression I gained of a desire to conceal, to hush up, what I had tried to express in my book, led me to judge the book itself afresh.

of Christ's Teaching.

The impression I gained of a desire to conceal, to hush up, what I

had tried to express in my book, led me to judge the book itself

afresh.

On its appearance it had, as I had anticipated, been forbidden,

and ought therefore by law to have been burnt.  But, at the same

time, it was discussed among officials, and circulated in a great

number of manuscript and lithograph copies, and in translations

printed abroad.

And very quickly after the book, criticisms, both religious and

secular in character, made their appearance, and these the

government tolerated, and even encouraged.  So that the refutation

of a book which no one was supposed to know anything about was

even chosen as the subject for theological dissertations in the

academies.

The criticisms of my book, Russian and foreign alike, fall under

two general divisions--the religious criticisms of men who regard

themselves as believers, and secular criticisms, that is, those of

freethinkers.

I will begin with the first class.  In my book I made it an

accusation against the teachers of the Church that their teaching

is opposed to Christ's commands clearly and definitely expressed

in the Sermon on the Mount, and opposed in especial to his command

in regard to resistance to evil, and that in this way they deprive

Christ's teaching of all value.  The Church authorities accept the

teaching of the Sermon on the Mount on non-resistance to evil by

force as divine revelation; and therefore one would have thought

that if they felt called upon to write about my book at all, they

would have found it inevitable before everything else to reply to

the principal point of my charge against them, and to say plainly,

do they or do they not admit the teaching of the Sermon on the

Mount and the commandment of non-resistance to evil as binding on

a Christian.  And they were bound to answer this question, not

after the usual fashion (i. e., "that although on the one side one

cannot absolutely deny, yet on the other side one cannot main

fully assent, all the more seeing that," etc., etc.).  No; they

should have answered the question as plainly as it was put

in my book--Did Christ really demand from his disciples

that they should carry out what he taught them in the Sermon on

the Mount?  And can a Christian, then, or can he not, always

remaining a Christian, go to law or make any use of the law, or

seek his own protection in the law?  And can the Christian, or can

he not, remaining a Christian, take part in the administration of

government, using compulsion against his neighbors?  And--the most

important question hanging over the heads of all of us in these

days of universal military service--can the Christian, or can he

not, remaining a Christian, against Christ's direct prohibition,

promise obedience in future actions directly opposed to his

teaching?  And can he, by taking his share of service in the army,

prepare himself to murder men, and even actually murder them?

These questions were put plainly and directly, and seemed to

require a plain and direct answer; but in all the criticisms of my

book there was no such plain and direct answer.  No; my book

received precisely the same treatment as all the attacks upon the

teachers of the Church for their defection from the Law of Christ

of which history from the days of Constantine is full.

A very great deal was said in connection with my book of my having

incorrectly interpreted this and other passages of the Gospel, of

my being in error in not recognizing the Trinity, the redemption,

and the immortality of the soul.  A very great deal was said, but

not a word about the one thing which for every Christian is the

most essential question in life--how to reconcile the duty of

forgiveness, meekness, patience, and love for all, neighbors and

enemies alike, which is so clearly expressed in the words of our

teacher, and in the heart of each of us--how to reconcile this

duty with the obligation of using force in war upon men of our own

or a foreign people.

All that are worth calling answers to this question can be brought

under the following five heads.  I have tried to bring together in

this connection all I could, not only from the criticisms on my

book, but from what has been written in past times on this theme.

The first and crudest form of reply consists in the bold assertion

that the use of force is not opposed by the teaching of Christ;

that it is permitted, and even enjoined, on the Christian by the

Old and New Testaments.

Assertions of this kind proceed, for the most part, from men who

have attained the highest ranks in the governing or ecclesiastical

hierarchy, and who are consequently perfectly assured that no one

will dare to contradict their assertion, and that if anyone does

contradict it they will hear nothing of the contradiction.  These

men have, for the most part, through the intoxication of power, so

lost the right idea of what that Christianity is in the name of

which they hold their position that what is Christian in

Christianity presents itself to them as heresy, while everything

in the Old and New Testaments which can be distorted into an

antichristian and heathen meaning they regard as the foundation of

Christianity.  In support of their assertion that Christianity is

not opposed to the use of force, these men usually, with the

greatest audacity, bring together all the most obscure passages

from the Old and New Testaments, interpreting them in the most

unchristian way--the punishment of Ananias and Sapphira, of Simon

the Sorcerer, etc.  They quote all those sayings of Christ's which

can possibly be interpreted as justification of cruelty: the

expulsion from the Temple; "It shall be more tolerable for the

land of Sodom than for this city," etc., etc.  According to these

people's notions, a Christian government is not in the least bound

to be guided by the spirit of peace, forgiveness of injuries, and

love for enemies.

To refute such an assertion is useless, because the very

people who make this assertion refute themselves, or, rather,

renounce Christ, inventing a Christianity and a Christ of their

own in the place of him in whose name the Church itself exists, as

well as their office in it.  If all men were to learn that the

Church professes to believe in a Christ of punishment and warfare,

not of forgiveness, no one would believe in the Church and it

could not prove to anyone what it is trying to prove.

The second, somewhat less gross, form of argument consists in

declaring that, though Christ did indeed preach that we should

turn the left cheek, and give the cloak also, and this is the

highest moral duty, yet that there are wicked men in the world,

and if these wicked men mere not restrained by force, the whole

world and all good men would come to ruin through them.  This

argument I found for the first time in John Chrysostom, and I slow

how he is mistaken in my book "What I believe."

This argument is ill grounded, because if we allow ourselves to

regard any men as intrinsically wicked men, then in the first

place we annul, by so doing, the whole idea of the Christian

teaching, according to which we are all equals and brothers, as

sons of one father in heaven.  Secondly, it is ill founded,

because even if to use force against wicked men had been permitted

by God, since it is impossible to find a perfect and unfailing

distinction by which one could positively know the wicked from the

good, so it would come to all individual men and societies of men

mutually regarding each other as wicked men, as is the case now.

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