Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/123

 divine truths,—you, the church, are teaching us), help my feeble understanding, but do not forget that, no matter what you may say, you will be talking to the understanding. You will be speaking the divine truths as expressed in words, but the words must again be comprehended only through reason. Elucidate these truths to my understanding; show me the futility of my objections; soften my obdurate heart with the irresistible sympathy and striving after the good and the true, which I shall find in you; and do not catch me with words, with an intentional deception, which impairs the sacredness of the subject of which you speak. I am touched by the prayer of the three hermits, of which the popular legend speaks; they prayed to God: “There are three of you, three of us, have mercy on us!” I know that their conception of God is wrong, but I am attracted to them and want to imitate them, just as one feels like laughing, looking at those who laugh, and like yawning, looking at those who yawn, because I feel with all my heart that they are searching after God and do not see the falseness of their expression; but sophisms, intentional deception, in order to catch in their trap those who are not cautious or firm in reason, repels me.

Indeed, what is before us is the exposition of revealed truths about God, about man, about salvation. The men know that and, instead of expounding what they know, they make a series of false deductions, by which they want to convince us that everything which they are going to say about God, about man, about salvation, will be expressed in such a way that it cannot be expressed in any other way, and that it is impossible not to believe everything they are going to tell me.

Maybe you are going to expound to me a revealed truth, but the method which you use in making the exposition is the same that is applied in the exposition of an intentional lie. Let us zealously look at the truths themselves,—what they consist in, and how they are expressed.