The recruit tries to say something still. "It's opposed to the law of Christ." "Go along, go along; we know without your help

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

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