Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/100

 teaching all differences may disappear, as they disappear for the true believer? Can we not proceed on the path on which we have started with the Old Ceremonialists? They assert that the cross, the hallelujah, and the procession around the altar as we practise them are wrong. We say: “You believe in the Nicene Symbol and the seven sacraments as we do, so let us stick to that, and in everything else do as you please.” We have united with them by putting the essential in faith above the unessential. Now why can we not say to the Catholics, “You believe in this and that, which is the chief thing, but in relation to Filioque and the Pope do as you please”? Can we not say the same to the Protestants, by agreeing with them on the chief points? My interlocutor agreed with me, but he said that such concessions would produce a disaffection toward the spiritual power because of its departing from the ancestral faith, whereas it was the business of the spiritual power to preserve in all its purity the Græco-Russian Orthodox faith as transmitted to it from antiquity.

I understood it all. I was looking for faith, for the power of life, and they were looking for the best means of performing before people certain human obligations, and, in performing these human works, they performed them in a human manner. Let them say as much as they please about their compassion for their erring brothers, about praying for them before the throne of the Highest,—for the performance of human acts force is needed, and that has always been applied and always will be applied. If two creeds consider themselves right, they will preach their teachings, and if a lying doctrine is preached to the inexperienced sons of the church which is in the truth, the church cannot help burning the books and removing the man who is seducing her sons. What is to be done with that sectarian who, in the opinion of Orthodoxy, of religion, is burning with a false fire and in the most impor-