Preface of the Kingdom of God is within you. The Kingdom of God is within you by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Constance Garnett. Translators' Preface The book I have had the privilege of translating is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable studies of the social and psychological condition of the modern world which has appeared in Europe for many years, and its influence is sure to be lasting and far-reaching. Tolstoy's genius is beyond dispute. The verdict of the civilized world has pronounced him as perhaps the greatest novelist of our generation, but the philosophical and religious works of his later years have met with a somewhat indifferent reception. They have been much talked about simply because they were his work, but, as Tolstoy himself complains, they have never been seriously discussed. I hardly think that he will have to repeat the complaint in regard to the present volume. One may disagree with his views, but no one can seriously deny the originality, boldness, and depth of the social conception which he develops with such powerful logic. The novelist has shown in this book the religious fervor and spiritual insight of the prophet, yet one is pleased to recognize that the artist is not wholly lost in the thinker. The subtle intuitive perception of the psychological basis of the social position, the analysis of the frame of mind of oppressors and oppressed, and the intoxication of authority and servility, as well as the purely descriptive passages in the last chapter, these could only have come from the author of War and Peace. The book will surely give all classes of readers much to think of and must call forth much criticism. It must be refuted by those who disapprove of its teaching if they do not want it to have great influence. One cannot, of course, anticipate that English people, slow as they are to be influenced by ideas and instinctively distrustful of all that is logical, will take a leap in the dark and attempt to put Tolstoy's theory of life into practice. But one may at least be sure that his destructive criticism of the present social and political regime will become a powerful force in the work of disintegration and social reconstruction which is going on around us. Many earnest thinkers who, like Tolstoy, are struggling to find their way out of the contradictions of our social order, will hail him as their spiritual guide. The individuality of the author is felt in every line of his work, and even the most prejudiced cannot resist the fascination of his genuineness, sincerity, and profound earnestness. Whatever comes from a heart such as his, swelling with anger and pity at the sufferings of humanity, cannot fail to reach the hearts of others. No reader can put down the book without feeling himself better and more truth-loving for having read it. Many readers may be disappointed with the opening chapters of the book. Tolstoy disdains all attempt to captivate the reader. He begins by laying what he considers to be the logical foundation of his doctrines, stringing together quotations from little known theological writers, and he keeps his own incisive logic for the later part of the book. One word as to the translation. Tolstoy's style in his religious and philosophical works differs considerably from that of his novels. He no longer cares about the form of his work, and his style is often slip-shot, involved, and diffuse. It has been my aim to give a faithful reproduction of the original. Constance Garnett, January 1874 Preface. In the year 1884 I wrote a book under the title What I Believe, in which I did in fact make a sincere statement of my beliefs. In affirming my belief in Christ's teaching, I could not help explaining why I do not believe and consider as mistaken the church's doctrine, which is usually called Christianity. Among the many points in which this doctrine falls short of the doctrine of Christ, I pointed out as the principal one the absence of any commandment of non-resistance to evil by force. The perversion of Christ's teaching by the teaching of the church is more clearly apparent in this than in any other point of difference. I know, as we all do, very little of the practice and the spoken and written doctrine of former times on the subject of non-resistance to evil. I knew what had been said on the subject by the Fathers of the Church, Origen, Tertullian, and others. I knew, too, of the existence of some so-called sects of Mennonites, Hernhuters, and Quakers, who do not allow a Christian the use of weapons and do not enter military service. But I knew little of what had been done by these so-called sects towards expounding the question. My book was, as I had anticipated, suppressed by the Russian censorship. But partly owing to my literary reputation, partly because the book had excited people's curiosity, it circulated in manuscript and in lithographed copies in Russia and through translations abroad, and it evolved on one side from those who shared my convictions a series of essays with a great deal of information on the subject. On the other side, a series of criticisms on the principles laid down in my book. A great deal was made clear to me by both hostile and sympathetic criticism and also by the historical events of late years, and I was led to fresh results and conclusions which I wish now to expound. First I will speak of the information I received on the history of the question of non-resistance to evil, then of the views of this question maintained by spiritual critics, that is, by professed believers in the Christian religion, and also by temporal ones, that is, those who do not profess the Christian religion. And lastly, I will speak of the conclusions to which I have been brought by all this in the light of the historical events of late years. El Tolstoy, Yasenaya Poliana, May 14-26, 1893. End of preface. Chapter 1 The doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force has been professed by a minority of men from the very foundation of Christianity. Of the book What I Believe, the correspondence evoked by it, Letters from Quakers, Garrison's Declaration, Aidan Baloo, His Works, His Catechism, Hauchitsky's Net of Faith, The Attitude of the World to Works Elucidating Christ's Teaching, Diamond's Book on War, Musser's Non-Resistance Asserted, Attitude of the Government in 1918 to Men Who Refused to Serve in the Army, Hell-style Attitude of Governments Generally and of Liberals to those who refused to assist in acts of state violence, and their conscious efforts to silence and suppress these manifestations of Christian non-resistance. Among the first responses some letters called forth by my book were some letters from American Quakers. In these letters expressing their sympathy with my views on the unlawfulness for a Christian of war and the use of force of any kind, the Quakers gave me details of their own so-called sect, which for more than 200 years has actually professed the teachings of Christ on non-resistance to evil by force, and does not make use of weapons in self-defense. The Quakers sent me books from which I learned how they had, years ago, established beyond a doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment. In a whole series of arguments and texts showing that war, that is, the wounding and killing of men, is inconsistent with a religion founded on peace and goodwill toward men. The Quakers maintain and prove that nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the heathen, and has hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity throughout the world, as the disregard of this command by men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war and violence to Christians. Christ's teaching, which came to be known to men, not by means of violence and the sword, they say, but by means of non-resistance to evil, gentleness, meekness, and peaceableness, can only be diffused through the world by the example of peace, harmony, and love among its followers. A Christian, according to the teaching of God himself, can act only peaceably toward all men, and therefore there can be no authority able to force the Christian to act in opposition to the teaching of God and to the principal virtue of the Christian in his relation with his neighbors. The law of state necessity, they say, can force only those to change the law of God, who, for the sake of earthly gains, try to reconcile the irreconcilable. But for a Christian who sincerely believes that following Christ's teachings will give him salvation, such considerations of state can have no force. Further acquaintance with the labors of the Quakers in their works, with Fox, Penn, and especially the works of Diamond, published in 1827, showed me not only that the impossibility of reconciling Christianity with force in war had been recognized long, long ago, but that this irreconcilability had been long ago proved so clearly and so indubitably that one could only wonder how this impossible reconciliation of Christian teaching with the use of force, which had been, and is still, preached in the churches, could have been maintained in spite of it. In addition to what I learned from the Quakers, I received about the same time, also from America, some information on the subject from a source perfectly distinct and previously unknown to me. The son of William Lloyd Garrison, the famous champion of the Emancipation of the Negroes, wrote to me that he had read my book, in which he found ideas similar to those expressed by his father in the year 1838, and that thinking it would be interesting to me to know this, he sent me a declaration or proclamation of non-resistance drawn up by his father nearly 50 years ago. This declaration came about under the following circumstances. William Lloyd Garrison took part in a discussion on the means of suppressing war in the society for the establishment of peace among men, which existed in 1838 in America. He came to the conclusion that the establishment of universal peace can only be founded on the open profession of the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by violence, Matthew verse 39, in its full significance, as understood by the Quakers, with whom Garrison happened to be unfriendly relations. Having come to this conclusion, Garrison thereupon composed and laid before the society a declaration, which was signed at the time in 1838 by many members. Declaration of Sentiments adopted by Peace Convention, Boston 1838. We, the undersigned, regarded as due to ourselves, to the cause which we love, to the country in which we live, to publish a declaration expressive of the purposes we aim to accomplish and the measures we shall adopt to carry forward the work of peaceful universal reformation. We do not acknowledge allegiance to any human government. We recognize but one king and law giver, one judge and ruler of mankind. Our country is the world. Our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity only as we love all other lands. The interests and rights of American citizens are not dearer to us than those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism to revenge any national insult or injury. We conceive that a nation has no right to defend itself against foreign enemies or to punish its invaders and no individual possesses that right in his own case and the unit cannot be of greater importance than the aggregate. The country's thronging from abroad with intent to commit rapine and destroy life may not be resisted by the people or the magistracy then ought no resistance to be offered to domestic troublers of the public peace or of private security. The dogma that all the governments of the world are approvingly ordained by God and that the powers that be in the United States, in Russia, in Turkey are in accordance with his will is no less absurd than empires. It makes the impartial author of our existence unequal and tyrannical. It cannot be affirmed that the powers that be in any nation are actuated by the spirit or guided by the example of Christ in the treatment of enemies. Therefore they cannot be agreeable to the will of God and therefore they're overthrown by a spiritual regeneration of their subjects is inevitable. We regard as un-Christian and unlawful not only all wars whether offensive or defensive but all preparations for war, every naval ship, every arsenal, every fortification we regard as un-Christian and unlawful. The existence of any kind of standing army, all military chieftains, all monuments commemorative of victory over a fallen foe, all trophies won in battle, all celebrations in honor of military exploits, all appropriations for the defense by arms. We regard as un-Christian and unlawful every edict of government requiring of its subjects military service. Hence we deem it unlawful to bear arms and we cannot hold any office which imposes on its incumbent the obligation to compel men to do right on pain of imprisonment or death. We therefore voluntarily exclude ourselves from every legislative and judicial body and repudiate all human politics, worldly honors, and stations of authority. If we cannot occupy a seat in legislature or on the bench, neither can we elect others to act as our substitutes in any such capacity. It follows that we cannot sue any man at law to force him to return anything he may have wrongly taken from us. If he has seized our coat, we shall surrender him our cloak also rather than subject him to punishment. We believe that the penal code of the Old Covenant, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, has been abrogated by Jesus Christ and under that new covenant the forgiveness instead of the punishment of enemies has been enjoined on all his disciples in all cases whatsoever. To extort money from enemies, cast them into prison, exile or execute them is obviously not to forgive but to take retribution. The history of mankind is crowded with evidences proving that physical coercion is not adapted to moral regeneration and that sinful dispositions of men can be subdued only by love, that evil can be exterminated only by good, that it is not safe to rely upon the strength of an arm to preserve us from harm, that there is great security in being gentle, long-suffering and abundant in mercy, that it is only the meek who shall inherit the earth, for those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Hence as a measure of sound policy, of safety to property, life and liberty, of public quietude and private enjoyment as well as on the ground of allegiance to him who is king of kings and lord of lords, we cordially adopt the non-resistance principle being confident that it provides for all possible consequences is armed with omnipotent power and must ultimately triumph over every assailing force. We advocate no Jacobinical doctrines. The spirit of Jacobinism is the spirit of retaliation, violence and murder. It neither fears God nor regards man. We would be filled with the spirit of Christ. If we abide evil by our fundamental principle of not opposing evil by evil, we cannot participate in sedition, treason or violence. We shall submit to every ordinance and every requirement of government, except such as our contrary to the commands of the gospel, and in no case resist the operation of law except by meekly submitting to the penalty of disobedience. But while we shall adhere to the doctrine of non-resistance and passive submission to enemies, we purpose in a moral and spiritual sense to assail iniquity in high places and in low places, to apply our principles to all existing evil, political, legal and ecclesiastical institutions, and to hasten the time when the kingdoms of this world will have become the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. It appears to us a self-evident truth that whatever the gospel is designed to destroy at any period of the world, being contrary to it, ought now to be abandoned. Again, the time is predicted when swords shall be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, and men shall not learn the art of war anymore. It follows that all who manufacture, sell or wield these deadly weapons do thus array themselves against the peaceful dominion of the Son of God on earth. Having thus stated our principles, we proceed to specify the measures we propose to adopt in carrying our object into effect. We expect to prevail through the foolishness of preaching. We shall endeavor to promulgate our views among all persons to whatever nation, sect or greater society they may belong. Hence, we shall organize public lectures, circulate tracts and publications, form societies and petition every governing body. It will be our leading object to devise ways and means for affecting a radical change in the views, feelings and practices of society respecting the sinfulness of war and the treatment of enemies. In entering upon the great work before us, we are not unmindful that in its prosecution we may be called to test our sincerity even as in a fiery ordeal. It may subject us to insult, outrage, suffering, yea even death itself. We anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation and calamity. Two malts may arise against us. The proud and phariseical, the ambitious and tyrannical, principalities and powers may combine to crush us. So they treated the Messiah whose example we are humbly striving to imitate. We shall not be afraid of their terror. Our confidence is in the Lord Almighty and not in man. Having withdrawn from human protection, what can sustain us but that faith that overcomes the world? We shall not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try us, but rejoice in as much as we are partakers of Christ's sufferings. Wherefore, we commit the keeping of our souls to God. For everyone that forsakes houses or brethren or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for Christ's sake shall receive a hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting life. Firmly relying upon the certain and universal triumph of the sentiments contained in this declaration, however formidable may be the opposition arrayed against them, we hereby affix our signatures to it commending it to the reason and conscious of mankind and resolving in the strength of the Lord God to calmly and meekly abide the issue. Immediately after this declaration, a society for non-resistance was founded by Garrison and a journal called The Non-Resistant, in which the doctrine of non-resistance was advocated in its full significance and in all its consequences as it had been expounded in the declaration. Further information as to the ultimate destiny of the society and the journal I gained from the excellent biography of W. L. Garrison, the work of his son. The society and the journal did not exist for long. The greater number of Garrison's fellow workers in the movement for the liberation of the slaves, fearing that the too radical program of the journal, The Non-Resistant, might keep people away from the practical work of Negro emancipation, gave up the profession of the principle of non-resistance as it had been expressed in the declaration, and both society and journal ceased to exist. This declaration of Garrison's gave so powerful and eloquent an expression of a confession of faith of such importance to men that one would have thought it must have produced a strong impression on people and have become known throughout the world in the subject of discussion on every side, but nothing of the kind occurred. Not only was it unknown in Europe, even the Americans who have such a high opinion of Garrison hardly knew of the declaration. Another champion of non-resistance has been overlooked in the same way. The American Aiden Ballou, who lately died after spending fifty years in preaching this doctrine. Lord God, to calmly and meekly abide the doctrine. How great the ignorance is of everything relating to the question of non-resistance may be seen from the fact that Garrison, the son, who has written an excellent biography of his father in four great volumes in answer to my inquiry whether there are existing now societies for non-resistance and adherence to the doctrine, told me that as far as he knew that society had broken up and that there were no adherence to that doctrine while at the very time when he was writing to me there was living in Hopedale in Massachusetts Aiden Ballou who had taken part in the labors of Garrison the father and had devoted fifty years of his life to advocating both orally and in print the doctrine of non-resistance. Later on I received a letter from Wilson, a pupil and colleague of Ballou's and entered into correspondence with Ballou himself. I wrote to Ballou and he answered me and sent me his works. Here is a summary of some extracts from them. Jesus Christ is my Lord and Teacher, says Ballou in one of his essays exposing the inconsistency of Christians who allowed a right of self-defense and of warfare. I have promised leaving all else to follow good and through evil to death itself, but I am a citizen of the Democratic Republic of the United States and in allegiance to it I have sworn to defend the Constitution of my country if need be with my life. Christ requires of me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me. The Constitution of the United States requires of me to do unto two millions of slaves. At that time there were slaves. Now one might substitute, now one might venture to substitute the word laborers. The very opposite of what I would they should do unto me. That is to help to keep them in their present condition of slavery. And in spite of this I continue to elect or be elected. I propose to vote. I am even ready to be appointed to any office under government that will not hinder me from being a Christian. I shall still profess Christianity and shall find it no difficulty in carrying out my covenant with Christ and with the government. Jesus Christ forbids me to resist evil doers and to take from them an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth, bloodshed for bloodshed, and life for life. My government demands from me quite the opposite and bases a system of self-defense on gallows, musket, and sword to be used against its foreign and domestic foes. And the land is filled accordingly with gibbets, prisons, arsenals, ships of war, and soldiers. In the maintenance and use of these expensive appliances for murder we can very suitably exercise to the full the virtues of forgiveness to those who injure us, love toward our enemies, blessings to those who curse us, and doing good to those who hate us. For this we have a succession of Christian priests to pray for us and beseech the blessing of heaven on the holy work of slaughter. I see all this, i.e. the contradiction between profession and practice, and I continue to profess religion and take part in government, and pride myself on being at the same time a devout Christian and a devoted servant of the government. I do not want to agree with these senseless notions of non-resistance. I cannot renounce my authority and leave only immoral men in control of the government. The Constitution says that the government has the right to declare war, and I assent to this and support it and swear that I will support it. And I do not, for that, cease to be a Christian. War, too, is a Christian duty. Is it not a Christian duty to kill hundreds of thousands of one's fellow men, to outrage women, to raise and burn towns, and to practice every possible cruelty? It is time to dismiss all these false sentimentalities. It is the truest means of forgiving injuries and loving enemies. If we only do it in the spirit of love, nothing can be more Christian than such murder. In another pamphlet entitled How Many Men Are Necessary to Change a Crime into a Virtue, he says, One man may not kill.  If two, ten, a hundred men do so, they, too, are murderers. But a government, or a nation, may kill as many men as it chooses, and that will not be murder, but a great and noble action. Only gather the people together on a large scale, and a battle of ten thousand men becomes an innocent action. But precisely how many people must there be to make it so? That is the question. One man cannot plunder and pillage, but a whole nation can, but precisely how many are needed to make it permissible? Why is it that one man, ten, a hundred, may not break the law of God but a greater number may? And here is a version of Baloo's catechism composed for his flock. Catechisms of Non-Resistance Q. Wince is the word non-resistance derived. A. From the command, resist not evil. Matthew, verse 39. Q. What does this word express? A. It expresses a lofty Christian virtue enjoined on us by Christ. Q. Aught the word non-resistance to be taken in its whitest sense, that is to say, as intending that we should not offer any resistance of any kind to evil? A. No, it ought to be taken in the exact sense of our Saviour's teachings, that is, not repaying evil for evil. We ought to oppose evil by every righteous means in our power, but not by evil. Q. What is there to show that Christ enjoined non-resistance in that sense? A. It is shown by the words he uttered at the same time. Q. He said, Ye have heard, it was said of old, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but I say unto you, resist not evil. But if one smites thee on the right cheek, turn him the other also. And if one will go to law with thee, to take thy coat from thee, give him thy cloak also. Q. Of whom was he speaking in the words, Ye have heard, it was said of old. A. Of the patriarchs and the prophets, contained in the Old Testament, which the Hebrews ordinarily call the law and the prophets. Q. What utterances did Christ refer to in the words, it was said of old? A. The utterances of Noah, Moses, and the other prophets, in which they admit the right of doing bodily harm to those who inflict harm, so as to punish and prevent evil deeds. Q. Quote such utterances. A. Whoso shedeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Genesis 9.6. He that smighteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. Exodus 21, 12, and 23 to 25. He that killeth any man, shall surely be put to death. And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbors, as he hath done, so shall it be done unto him. Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Leviticus 24, 17, 19, 20. Then the judges shall make diligent inquisition, and behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother, then shall he do unto him, as he had thought, to have done unto his brother, and thine eye shall not pity. But life shall go on for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. Deuteronomy 29, 18, 21. Noah, Moses, and the prophets, taught that he who kills, maims, or injures his neighbor does evil. To resist such evil, and to prevent it, the evildoer must be punished with death, or maiming, or some physical injury. Wrong must be opposed by wrong, murder by murder, injury by injury, evil by evil. Thus taught Noah, Moses, and the prophets, but Christ rejects all this. I say unto you, is written in the Gospel, resist not evil. Do not oppose injury with injury, but rather bear repeated injury from the evildoer. What was permitted is forbidden. When we understand what kind of resistance they taught, we know exactly what resistance Christ forbade. Q. Then the ancients allowed the resistance of injury by injury? A. Yes, but Jesus forbids it. The Christian has in no case the right to put to death his neighbor, who has done him evil, or to do him injury in return. Q. May he kill or maim in self-defense? A. No. Q. May he go with a complaint to the judge that he who has wronged him may be punished? A. No. What he does through others, he is in reality doing himself. Q. Can he fight in conflict with foreign enemies or disturbors of the peace? A. Certainly not. He cannot take part in war or in preparations for war. He cannot make use of a deadly weapon. He cannot oppose injury to injury, whether he is alone or with others, either in person or through other people. Q. Can he voluntarily vote or furnish soldiers for the government? A. He can do nothing of that kind if he wishes to be faithful to Christ's law. Q. Can he voluntarily give money to aid a government resting on military force, capital punishment, and violence in general? A. No, unless the money is destined for some special object right in itself and good both in aim and means. Q. Can he pay taxes to such a government? A. No. He ought not voluntarily to pay taxes, but he ought not to resist the collecting of taxes. A tax is levied by the government and is exacted independently of the will of the subject. It is impossible to resist it without having recourse to violence of some kind. Since the Christian cannot employ violence, he is obliged to offer his property at once to the loss by violence inflicted on it by the authorities. Q. Can a Christian give a vote at elections or take part in a government or law business? A. No. Participation in election, government or law business is participation in government by force. Q. Wherein lies the chief significance of the doctrine of non-resistance? A. In the fact that it alone allows of the possibility of eradicating evil from one's own heart and also from one's neighbors. This doctrine forbids doing that whereby evil has endured for ages and multiplied in the world. He who attacks another and injures him kindles in the other a feeling of hatred, the root of every evil. To injure another because he has injured us, even with the aim of overcoming evil, is doubling the harm for him and for oneself. It is begetting, or at least setting free and enticing, that evil spirit which we should wish to drive out. Satan can never be driven out by Satan. Error can never be corrected by error. An evil cannot be vanquished by evil. True non-resistance is the only real resistance to evil. It is crushing the serpent's head. It destroys and in the end extirpates the evil feeling. Q. But if that is the true meaning of the rule of non-resistance, can it always put into practice? A. It can be put into practice like every virtue enjoined by the law of God. A virtue cannot be practiced in all circumstances without self-sacrifice, privation, suffering, and in extreme cases loss of life itself. But he who esteems life more than fulfilling the will of God is already dead to the only true life. Trying to save his life, he loses it. Besides, generally speaking, where non-resistance costs the sacrifice of a single life or of some material welfare, resistance costs a thousand such sacrifices. Non-resistance is salvation. Resistance is ruin. It is incomparably less dangerous to act justly than unjustly, to submit to injuries than to resist them with violence. It is less dangerous even in one's relations to the present life if all men refused to resist evil by evil. Our world would be happy. Q. But so long as only a few act thus, what will happen to them? A. If only one man acted thus and all the rest agreed to crucify him, would it not be nobler for him to die in the glory of non-resisting love? Trying for his enemies than to live to where the crown of Caesar stand with the blood of the slain? However, one man or a thousand men, firmly resolved not to oppose evil by evil, are far more free from danger by violence than those who resort to violence, whether among civilized or savage neighbors. The robber, the murderer, and the cheat will leave them in peace sooner than those who oppose them with arms, and those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword, but those who seek after peace and behave kindly and harmlessly, forgiving and forgetting injuries, for the most part enjoy peace, or if they die, they die blessed. Q. In this way, if we all kept the ordinance of non-resistance, there would obviously be no evil nor crime. If the majority acted thus, they would establish the rule of love and goodwill even over evildoers, never opposing evil with evil, and never resorting to force. If there were a moderately large minority of such men, they would exercise such a salutary moral influence on society that every cruel punishment would be abolished, and violence and feud would be replaced by peace and love. Even if there were only a small minority of them, they would rarely experience anything worse than the world's contempt. In the meantime, the world, though unconscious of it, and not grateful for it, would be continually becoming wiser and better for their unseen action on it. And if, in the worst case, some members of the minority were persecuted to death in dying for the truth, they would have left behind them their doctrine, sanctified by the blood of their martyrdom, peace, then, to all who seek peace, and may overruling love be the imperishable heritage of every soul who obeys willingly Christ's word, Resist Non-Evil. Aidan Bellew. For fifty years, Bellew wrote and published books dealing principally with the question of non-resistance to evil by force. In these works, which are distinguished by the clearness of their thought and eloquence of exposition, the question is looked at from every possible side, and the binding nature of this command on every Christian who acknowledges the Bible as the revelation of God is firmly established. All the ordinary objections to the doctrine of non-resistance from the Old and New Testaments are brought forward, such as the expulsion of the money changers from the temple, and so on, and arguments follow in disproof of them all. The practical reasonableness of this rule of conduct is shown independently of Scripture, and all the objections ordinarily made against its practicability are sated and refuted. Thus one chapter in a book of his treats of non-resistance in exceptional cases, and he owns in this connection that if there were cases in which the rule of non-resistance were impossible of application, it would prove that the law was not universally authoritative. Quoting these cases, he shows that it is precisely in them that the application of the rule is both necessary and reasonable. There is no aspect of the question either on his side or on his opponents, which he has not followed up in his writings. I mention all this to show the unmistakable interest which such works ought to have for men who make a profession of Christianity, and because one would have thought Baloo's work would have been well known, and the ideas expressed by him would have been either accepted or refuted. But such has not been the case. The work of Garrison the father in his foundation of the society of non-resistance and his declaration, even more than my correspondence with the Quakers, convinced me of the fact that the departure of the ruling form of Christianity from the law of Christ on non-resistance by force is an error that has long been observed and pointed out, and that men have labored and are still laboring to correct. Baloo's work confirmed to me still more in this view, but the fate of Garrison still more than that of Baloo in being completely unrecognized in spite of fifty years of obstinance and persistent work in the same direction confirmed to me in the idea that there exists a kind of tacit but steadfast conspiracy of silence about all such efforts. Baloo died in August 1890, and there was an obituary notice of him in an American Journal of Christian Views, Religio Philosophical Journal, August 23. In this laudatory notice it is recorded that Baloo was the spiritual director of a parish that he delivered from eight to nine thousand sermons, married one thousand couples, and wrote about five hundred articles, but there is not a single word said of the object to which he devoted his life. Even the word non-resistance is not mentioned, precisely as it was with all the preaching of the Quakers for two hundred years and, two, with the efforts of Garrison the father, the foundation of his society and journal, and his declaration, so it is with the life work of Baloo. It seems, just as though it did not exist and never had existed. We have an astounding example of the obscurity of works which aim at expounding the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force and at confuding those who do not recognize this commandment. In the book of the Czech Helchetsi, which has only lately been noticed and has not hitherto been printed, soon after the appearance of my book in German, I received a letter from Prague from a professor of the university there informing me of the existence of a work never yet printed by Helchetsi, a Czech of the fifth century, entitled The Net of Faith. In this work the professor told me, Helchetsi expressed precisely the same view as to true and false Christianity as I had expressed in my book What I Believe. The professor wrote to me that Helchetsi's work was to be published for the first time in the Czech language in the journal of the Petersburg Academy of Science. Since I could not obtain the book itself, I tried to make myself acquainted with what was known of Helchetsi and I gained the following information from a German book sent me by the Prague professor from Pippin's History of Czech Literature. This was Pippin's account. The Net of Faith is Christ's teaching which ought to draw a man up out of the dark depths of the sea of worldliness and his own iniquity. True faith consists in believing God's word, but now a time has come when men mistake the true faith for heresy and therefore it is for the reason to point out what the true faith consists in if anyone does not know this. It is hidden in darkness from men and they do not recognize the true law of Christ. To make this law plain, Helchetsi points to the primitive organization of Christian society, the organization which, he says, is now regarded in the Roman church as an abominable heresy. This primitive church was his special ideal of societal organization founded on equality, liberty and fraternity. Christianity, in Helchetsi's view, still preserves these elements and it is only necessary for society to return to its pure doctrine to render unnecessary every other form of social order in which kings and popes are essential. The law of love would alone be sufficient in every case. Historically, Helchetsi attributes the generation of Christianity to the times of Constantine the Great, whom the Pope Sylvester admitted into the Christian church with all his heathen morals and life. Constantine, in his turn, endowed the Pope with worldly riches and power. From that time forward these two ruling powers were constantly aiding one another to strive for nothing but outward glory. Divines and ecclesiastical dignitaries began to concern themselves only about subduing the whole world to their authority, inciting men against one another to murder and plunder, and in creed and life reduced Christianity to anality. Helchetsi denies completely the right to make war and to inflict the punishment of death. Every soldier, even the knight, is only a violent evildoer, a murderer. The same account is given by the German book with the addition of a few biographical details and some extracts from Helchetsi's writings. Having learnt the drift from Helchetsi's teaching in this way, I awaited all the more impatiently the appearance of the net of faith in the Journal of the Academy. But one year passed, then two and three, and still the book did not appear. It was only in 1888 that I learned that the printing of the book which had been begun was stopped. I obtained the proofs of what had been printed and read them through. It is a marvellous book from every point of view. Its general tenor is given with perfect accuracy by Pippin. Helchetsi's fundamental idea is that Christianity, by allying itself with temporal power in the days of Constantine, and by continuing to develop in such conditions, has become completely distorted and has ceased to be Christian altogether. Helchetsi gave the title, The Net of Faith, to his book, taking as his motto the verse of the Gospel about the calling of the disciples to be fishers of men, and developing this metaphor, he says, The greater fishes who broke the net are the rulers, emperors, popes, kings, who have not renounced power, and instead of true Christianity have put on what is simply a mask of it. Helchetsi teaches precisely what has been, and is taught in these days by the non-resistant Mennonites and Quakers, and in former tunes by the Bagamalites, Policians, and many others. He teaches that Christianity, expecting from its adherents gentleness, meekness, peaceableness, forgiveness of injuries, turning the other cheek when one is struck, and love for enemies is inconsistent with the use of force, which is an indispensable condition of authority. The Christian, according to Helchetsi's reasoning, not only cannot be a ruler or a soldier, he cannot take any part in government, nor in trade, or even be a landowner. He can only be an artisan or a husbandsman. This book is one of the few works attacking official Christianity that has escaped being burned. All such so-called heretical works were burned at the stake, together with their authors, so that there are few ancient works exposing the errors of official Christianity. The book has a special interest for this reason alone. But apart from its interest from every point of view, it is one of the most remarkable products of thought for its depth of aim, for the astounding strength and beauty of the national language in which it is written, and for its antiquity. And yet for more than four centuries it has remained unprinted and is still unknown, except to a few learned specialists. One would have thought that all such works, whether of the Quakers, of Garrison, of Baloo, or of Helchetsi, asserting and proving as they do on the principles of the gospel that our modern world takes a false view of Christ's teaching, would have awakened interest, excitement, talk, and discussion among spiritual leaders and their flocks alike. Works of this kind, dealing with the very essence of Christian doctrine, ought, one would have thought, to have been examined and accepted as true, or refuted and rejected, but nothing of the kind has occurred, and the same fate has been repeated with all those works. Men of the most diverse views, believers, and, what is surprising, unbelieving liberals also, as though by agreement all preserve the same persistent silence about them, and all that has been done by people to explain the true meaning of Christ's doctrine remains either ignored or forgotten. But it is still more astonishing that two other books, of which I heard on the appearance of my book, should be so little known. I mean Diamond's Book on War, published for the first time in London in 1824, and Daniel Musser's Book on Non-Resistance, written in 1864. It is peculiarly astonishing that these books should be unknown, because, apart from their intrinsic merits, both books treat not so much of the theory of the practical application, of the theory to life, of the attitude of Christianity to military service, which is especially important and interesting now in these days of universal conscription.  This question is, I think, a most vital one, and the answer to it is especially important in these days of universal conscription. All, or at least the great majority of the people are Christians, and all men are called upon for military service. How ought a man as a Christian to meet this demand? This is the gist of Diamond's answer. His duty is humbly but steadfastly to refuse to serve. There are some people who, without any definite reasoning about it, conclude straight away that the responsibility of government measures rests entirely on those who resolve on them, or that the governments in sovereigns decide the question of what is good or bad for their subjects, and the duty of the subjects is merely to obey. I think that arguments of this kind only obscure men's conscience. I cannot take part in the councils of government, and therefore I am not responsible for its misdeeds. Indeed, but we are responsible for our own misdeeds, and the misdeeds of our rulers become our own if we, knowing that they are misdeeds, assist in carrying them out. Those who suppose that they are bound to obey the government, and that the responsibility for the misdeeds they commit is transferred from them to their rulers to see themselves. They say, We give our acts up to the will of others, and our acts cannot be good or bad. There is no merit in what is good nor responsibility for what is evil in our actions, since they are not done of our own will. It is remarkable that the very same thing is said in the instructions to soldiers which they make them learn. That is, that the officer is alone responsible for the consequences of his command. But this is not right. A man cannot get rid of the responsibility for his own actions. And that is clear from the following example.  If you would not obey, the whole argument falls to the ground, for if you can disobey the governors in one case, where do you draw the line up to which you can obey them? There is no line other than that laid down by Christianity, and that line is both reasonable and practicable. And therefore we consider the duty of every man who thinks war inconsistent with Christianity, meekly but firmly, to refuse to serve in the army, and let those whose lot it is to act thus. Remember that the fulfillment of a great duty rests with them. The destiny of humanity in the world depends, so far as it depends on men at all, on their fidelity to their religion. Let them confess their conviction and stand up for it, and not in words alone, but in sufferings too, if need be. If you believe that Christ forbade murder, pay no heed to the arguments nor to the commands of those who call on you to bear a hand in it. By such a steadfast refusal to make use of force, you call down on yourselves the blessing promised to those who hear these sayings and do them. And the time will come when the world will recognize you as having aided in the reformation of mankind. Musser's book is called Non-Resistance Asserted, or Kingdom of Christ and Kingdoms of This World Separated. This book is devoted to the same question, and was written when the American government was exacting military service from its citizens at the time of the Civil War. And it has too a value for all time dealing with the question how, in such circumstances, people should and can refuse to enter military service. Here is the tenor of the author's introductory remarks. It is well known that there are many persons in the United States who refuse to fight on grounds of conscience. They are called the defenseless, or non-resistant, Christians. These Christians refuse to defend their country, to bear arms, or at the call of government to make war on its enemies. Till lately, this religious scruple seemed a valid excuse to the government, and those who urged it were let off service. But at the beginning of our Civil War, public opinion was agitated on this subject. It was natural that persons who considered it their duty to bear all the hardships and dangers of war in defense of their country, should feel resentment against those persons who had for long shared with them the advantages of the protection of government, and who now, in time of need and danger, would not share in bearing the labors and dangers of its defense. It was even natural that they should declare the attitude of such men monstrous, irrational, and suspicious. A host of orators and writers, our author tells us, arose to oppose this attitude and tried to prove the sinfulness of non-resistance, both from scripture and on common sense grounds, and this was perfectly natural, and in many cases the authors were right. Right, that is, in regard to persons who did not renounce the benefits they received from the government, and tried to avoid the hardships of military service, but not right in regard to the principle of non-resistance itself. Above all, our author proves the binding nature of the rule of non-resistance for a Christian, pointing out that this command is perfectly clear and is enjoined upon every Christian by Christ without possibility of misinterpretation. Be think yourselves whether it is righteous to obey man more than God, said Peter and John. And this is precisely what ought to be the attitude to every man who wishes to be Christian to the claim on him for military service, when Christ has said, Resist not evil by force. And for the question of the principle itself, the author regards that as decided. As to the second question, whether people have the right to refuse to serve in the army who have not refused the benefits conferred by a government resting on force, the author considers it in detail and arrives at the conclusion that a Christian following the law of Christ, since he does not go to war, ought not either to take advantage of any institutions of government, courts of law, or elections, that in his private concerns he must not have recourse to the authorities, the police, or the law. Further on in the book, he treats of the relation of the Old Testament to the new, the value of government for those who are Christians, and makes some observations of the doctrine of non-resistance and the attacks made on it. The author concludes his book by saying, Christians do not need government, and therefore they cannot either obey it in what is contrary to Christ's teaching, nor still less take part in it. Christ took his disciples out of the world, he says. They did not expect worldly blessings and worldly happiness, but they expect eternal life. The spirit in whom they live makes them contented and happy in every position. If the world tolerates them, they are always happy. If the world will not leave them in peace, they will go elsewhere, since they are pilgrims on the earth, and they have no fixed place of habitation. They believe that the dead may bury their dead. One thing only is needful for them to follow their master. Even putting aside the question as to the principle laid down in these two books as to the Christian's duty in his attitude to war, one cannot help perceiving the practical importance and the urgent need of deciding the question. There are people, hundreds of thousands of Quakers, Mennonites, All-Hour, Duhoborzi, Molokani, and others who do not belong to any definite set, who consider that the use of force and, consequently, military service is inconsistent with Christianity. Consequently, there are every year among us in Russia some men called upon for military service who refuse to serve on the ground of their religious convictions. Does the government let them off then? No. Does it compel them to go and, in the case of disobedience, punish them? No. This was how the government treated them in 1818. Here is an extract from the diary of Nicholas Mirovkov of Kars, which was not passed by the censor, and is not known in Russia. Tiflis, October 2, 1818. In the morning the commandment told me that five peasants belonging to a landowner in the Tambov government had lately been sent to Georgia. These men had been sent for soldiers, but they would not serve. They had been several times flogged and made to run the gauntlet, but they would submit readily to the cruelest tortures and even to death rather than serve. Let us go, they said, and leave us alone. We will not hurt anyone. All men are equal and the Tsar is a man like us. Why should we pay him tribute? Why should I expose my life to danger, to kill in battle, some man who has done me no harm? You can cut us to pieces and we will not be soldiers. He who has compassion on us will give us charity, but as for the government rations, we have not had them and we do not want to have them. These were the words of those peasants who declare that there are numbers like them in Russia. They brought them four times before the committee of ministers and at last decided to lay the matter before the Tsar who gave orders that they should be taken to Georgia for correction and command the commander-in-chief to send him a report every month of their gradual success in bringing these peasants to a better mind. How the correction ended is not known, as the whole episode indeed was unknown having been kept in profound. This is how the government behaved 75 years ago. This is how the government behaved 75 years ago. This is how it has behaved in a great number of cases, studiously concealed from the people. And this is how the government behaves now, except in the case of the German Mennonites, living in the province of Kirsten, whose plea against military service is considered well grounded. They are made to work off their term of service in labor in the forests. But in the recent cases of refusal on the part of Mennonites to serve in the army on religious grounds, the government authorities have acted in the following manner. To begin with, they have recourse to every means of coercion used in our times to correct the culprit and bring him to a better mind, and these measures are carried out with the greatest secrecy. I know that in the case of one man who declined to serve in 1884 in Moscow, the official correspondence on the subject had two months after his refusal accumulated into a big portfolio and was kept absolutely secret among the ministry. They usually began by sending the culprit to the priests and the latter to their shame, be it said, always exhort him to obedience. But since the exhortation in Christ's name to forswear Christ is for the most part unsuccessful, after he has received the admonitions of the spiritual authorities, they send him to the gendarmes and the latter, finding as a rule no political cause for offense in him, dispatch him back again, and then he is sent to the learned men, to the doctors, and to the madhouse. During all these vicissitudes, he is deprived of liberty and has to endure every kind of humiliation and suffering as a convicted criminal. All this has been repeated in four cases. The doctors let him out of the madhouse, and then every kind of secret shift is employed to prevent him from going free, whereby others would be encouraged to refuse to serve as he has done, and at the same time to avoid leaving him among the soldiers for fear that they too should learn from him that military service is not at all their duty by the law of God, or assured, but quite contrary to it. The most convenient thing for the government would be to kill the non-resistant by flogging him to death or some other means, as was done in former days, but to put a man openly to death because he believes in the creed we all confess is impossible. To let a man alone who has refused obedience is also impossible, and so the government tries either to compel the man by ill treatment to renounce Christ, or in some way or other to get rid of him unobserved without openly putting him to death and to hide somehow both the action and the man himself from other people, and so all kinds of shifts and wiles and cruelties are set on foot against him. They either send him to the frontier or provoke him to insubordination, and then try him for breach of discipline and shut him up in the prison of the disciplinary battalion, where they can ill-treat him freely unseen by anyone, or they declare him mad and lock him up in a lunatic asylum. They sent one man in this way to Tashkent. That is, they pretended to transfer to the Tashkent army. Another to Omsk.  A fourth they sent to a lunatic asylum. Everywhere the same story is repeated. Not only the government, but the great majority of liberal advanced people, as they are called, studiously turn away from everything that has been said, written, or done, or is being done, by men, to prove the incompatibility of force in its most awful, gross, and glaring form, in the form, that is, of an army of soldiers prepared to murder anyone, whoever it may be, with the teachings of Christianity, or even of the humanity which society professes as its creed. So that the information I have gained of the attitude of the higher ruling classes, not only in Russia, but in Europe and America, toward the elucidation of this question has convinced me that there exists in these ruling classes a consciously hostile attitude to true Christianity, which is shown preeminently in their reticence in regard to all manifestations of it. End of Chapter 1. Recording by Nikki Sullivan, Chicago. Chapter 2.  This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Lenny.  By Leo Tolstoy. Translated by Constance Garnet. Chapter 2. CRITICISMS OF THE DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE, ON THE PART OF BELIEVERS AND OF UNBELIEVERS. FATE OF THE BOOK, WHAT I BELIEVE. EVASIVE CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISMS OF PRINCIPLES OF MY BOOK. First reply. Use a force not opposed to Christianity. Second reply. Use a force necessary to restrain evil doers. Third reply. Duty of using force in defense of one's neighbor. Fourth reply. The breach of the command of non-resistance to be guarded simply as a weakness. Fifth reply. Reply evaded by making believe that the question has long been decided. To devise such subterfuges and to take refuge behind the authority of the church, of antiquity and of religion is all that ecclesiastical critics can do to get out of the contradiction between use of force and Christianity in theory and in practice. General attitude of the ecclesiastical world and of the authorities to profession of true Christianity. General character of Russian free-thinking critics. Foreign free-thinking critics. Mistaken arguments of these critics the result of misunderstanding the true meaning 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 burned. 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 free thinkers. 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 his special 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, that is, that although on the one side one cannot absolutely deny yet on the other side one cannot mainfully ascend, 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 seem 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 anti-Christian 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 un-Christian way the punishment of Ananias and Sapphira, of Simon the sorcerer, etc. They quote all those sayings of Christs 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 the city, 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 cannot 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 were 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 show how he's mistaken in my book what I believe this argument is ill grounded because if we allow ourselves to regard any man as intrinsically wicked men then in the first place we know by so doing the whole idea of the Christian teaching according to which we are all equals and brothers and 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 thirdly even if it were possible to distinguish the wicked from the good unfailingly even then it would be impossible to kill or injure or shut up in prison these wicked men because there would be no one in a Christian society to carry out such punishment since every Christian as a Christian has been commanded to use no force against the wicked the third kind of answer so more subtle than the preceding consists in asserting that though the command of non-resistance to evil by force is binding on the Christian when the evil is directed against himself personally it seizes to be binding when the evil is directed against his neighbors and that then the Christian is not only not bound to fulfill the commandment but is even bound to act in opposition to it in defense of his neighbors and to use force against transgressors by force this assertion is an absolute assumption and one cannot find in all Christ's teaching any confirmation of such an argument such an argument is not only a limitation but a direct contradiction and negation of the commandment if every man has the right to have recourse to force in face of a danger threatening another the question of the use of force is reduced to a question of the definition of danger for another if my private judgment is to decide the question of what is danger for another there's no occasion for the use of force which could not be justified on the ground of danger threatening some other man they killed and burned witches they killed aristocrats and journalists they killed their enemies because those who were in authority regarded them as dangerous for the people if this important limitation which fundamentally undermines the whole value of the commandment had entered into Christ's meaning there must have been mention of it somewhere this restriction is made nowhere in our saviour's life or preaching on the contrary warning is given precisely against these treacherous and scandalous restriction which nullifies the commandment the error and impossibility of such a limitation is shown in the Gospel with special clearness in the account of the judgment of Caiaphas who makes precisely this distinction he acknowledged that it was wrong to punish the innocent Jesus but he signed him a source of danger not for himself but for the whole people and therefore he said it is better for one man to die that the whole people perish not and the erroneousness of such a limitation is still more clearly expressed in the word spoken to Peter when he tried to resist by force evil directed against Jesus Peter was not defending himself but his beloved and heavenly master and Christ at once reproved him for this saying that he who takes up the sword shall perish by the sword besides, apologist for violence used against one's neighbor in defense of another neighbor from greater violence are always untrustworthy because when force is used against one who has not yet carried out his evil intent I can never know which would be greater the evil of my act of violence or of the act I want to prevent we kill the criminal that society may be rid of him and we never know whether the criminal of today would not have been a changed man tomorrow and whether our punishment of him is not useless cruelty we shut up the dangers as we think member of society but the next day this man might cease to be dangerous and his imprisonment might be for nothing I see that a man I know to be a Ruffian is pursuing a young girl I have a gun in my hand I kill the Ruffian and save the girl death or the wounding of the Ruffian has positively taken place while what would have happened if this had not been I cannot know in what an immense mass of evil must result and indeed does result from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen 99% of the evil of the world is founded on this reasoning from the inquisition to dynamite bombs execution or punishments of tens of thousands of political criminals a fourth still more refined reply to the question what ought to be the Christians attitude to Christ's command of non-resistance to evil by force consists in declaring that they do not deny the command of non-resisting evil but recognize it but they only do not ascribe to this command the special exclusive value attached to it by sectarians to regard this command as the indispensable condition of Christian life as Garrison, Baloo, Diamond, the Quakers, the Mennonites and the Shakers do now and as the Murevian brothers, the Woldensis, the Albigensis the Bogomalites and the Politions did in the past is a one-sided heresy this command has neither more nor less value than all the other commands and the men who through weakness transgresses any command whatever the command of non-resistance included does not cease to be a Christian if we hold the true faith this is a very skillful device and many people who wish to be deceived are easily deceived by it the device consists in reducing a direct conscious denial of a command to a casual breach of it but one need only compare the attitude of the teachers of the church to this and to other commands which they really do recognize to be convinced that their attitude to this is completely different from their attitude to other duties the command against fornication they do really recognize and consequently they do not admit that in any case fornication can cease to be wrong the church preachers never point out cases in which the command against fornication can be broken and always teach that we must avoid seductions which lead to temptation to fornication but not so with the command of non-resistance all church preachers recognize cases in which that command can be broken and teach the people accordingly and they not only do not teach that we should avoid temptations to break it chief of which is the military oath but they themselves administer it the preachers of the church never in any other case advocate the breaking of any other commandment but in connection with the commandment of non-resistance they openly teach that we must not understand it too literally but that there are conditions and circumstances in which we must do the direct opposite that is go to law, fight, punish so that occasions for fulfilling the commandment of non-resistance to evil by force are taught for the most part as occasions for not fulfilling it the fulfillment of this command they say is very difficult and pertains only to perfection and how can you not be difficult when the breach of it is not only not forbidden but law courts, prisons, cannons, guns, armies and wars are under the immediate sanction of the church it cannot be true then that this command is recognized by the preachers of the church as on a level with other commands 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 worthwhile 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 loss 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 evaded 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. Troisky 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 not to speak on the subject at all as such silence leads to error end of footnote 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 Farrah, 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 Farrah 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 one, live in peace with all men two, be pure three, take no oaths four, resist not evil five, 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, that is 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 he will say that such an interpretation is untrue we'll show why and we'll give some other correct interpretation of those words which I interpret incorrectly but nothing of this kind is done Ferrer only expresses his belief that quote 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 and quote what this error consists in is not made clear it is only said, quote to enter into the proof of this is impossible in this article for I have already exceeded the space at my command and quote and he concludes in a tranquil spirit quote 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 worried my object to prove how untenable is the doctrine of communism based by Count Tolstoy upon the divine paradoxes sick which can be interpreted only on historical principles in accordance with the whole method of the teaching of Jesus it would require an emperor canvas than I have here at my disposal end quote what a pity he has not an emperor canvas at his disposal and what a strange thing it is that for all these last 15 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 worthwhile to prove what everyone knows it is enough to say enough this kind without exception are all the criticisms of educated believers who must as such understand the danger of their position the soul 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 overall 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 anyone 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 overalling people by their earnestness, their conscientiousness it is just what has taken place of late years at recruiting sessions at a table before desertal the symbol of Tsar's authority in the seat of honor under the life-size portrait of the Tsar 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 onto his coat before a lectured who wears the golden cross and has a gospel bound in gold they summon Iron Petrov 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 hi 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 a pallet shouts to him I I as a Christian and at last it appears that a 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's 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 have 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, Vasily Nikitin and they lead the trembling youth away and it does not strike anyone the guards or Vasily Nikitin whom they are bringing in or any of the spectators of the 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 Farah's article but by all those solemn sermons, articles and books which make their appearance from all sides directly wears 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's sanctioned violence wars and murder repudiate Christ's doctrine directly those who find their defencing 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 that is 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 free thinking 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 free thinking 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 in 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 criticized Christ's doctrines as philosophical, moral and social principles to use their scientific expressions this was not done in a single criticism the free thinking 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 has 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 a 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 had been in all the journals constant attacks and criticisms on the command of Christ simply and directly stated in Matthew 539 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 non-resistance 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 Schleselberg 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 a subject matter in discussing my book and the gospel teaching generally as it is expressed in the Sermon on the Mount the foreign critics maintain 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 the Schachman Docteur, as Réron says fit for the simple and half savage inhabitants of Galilee who lived 1800 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 free-thinking critics have tried in a delicate manner without being offensive to me to give the impression that my conviction that mankind to be guided by such a naive doctrine as that of the Sermon on the Mount proceeds from true 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 scrub cannons, smokeless powder colonization of Africa, Irish coercion bill parliamentary government, journalism, strikes and the Eiffel Tower So wrote the Vogue and Leroy Bolliot and Matthew Arnold So wrote the American author Savage and Ingersoll, the popular free-thinking American preacher and many others Christ's teaching is no use because it is inconsistent with our industrial age such as Ingersoll, naively, 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 free-thinking critics Russian and foreigner-like 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 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 teachings 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's 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 as so when we are ourselves to 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 free-thinking critics about the Christian religion In this way then the discussions of my book on the part of such men and free-thinking 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 End of chapter 2


Presenting TIS Multilingual Translated Content on TIS National's website TIS National's latest initiative improves the multilingual services offered to its diverse multilingual audience. Translated HTML content is now available in the top 10 high-demand languages on the TIS National website. Arabic, Diary, Farsi or Persian, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Tamil, Traditional Chinese, Turkish and Vietnamese. Frequently asked questions are also available in 20 languages. Non-English speakers can access information about using their interpreting services in their language. To find out more about TIS Multilingual, visit the TIS National website at www.tisnational.gov.au or call us on 1300 655 820.