Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/142

 whole Pentateuch is filled with such passages: Joshua xxiv. 2; Gen. xxxi. 19, 30; Psalm lxxxvi. 8; the first of Moses’ commandments. We wonder for whom these discussions are written; but what is most remarkable is that all that is said to those who are seeking for an explanation of the God-revealed truths about God. In order to reveal to me the truth about God, which is in the keeping of the church, I am told unintelligible words, God is one and three, and, instead of explaining it, they begin to prove to me what I and every believer know and cannot help knowing, namely, that God has no number; and, in order to prove that to me, I am taken down to the sphere of low, savage conceptions about God, and, to fill the cup, they quote in proof of God’s unity from the Old Testament what obviously proves the opposite to me; and, in order to confirm these blasphemous speeches about God, they tell me that the plurality of the expression is a hint at the Holy Trinity, that is, that the gods, as on Olympus, sat there, and said: “Let us make!” feel like throwing it all away and freeing myself from this tormenting, blasphemous reading, but the matter is one of too much importance. It is that doctrine of the church which the masses believe in and which gives the meaning of life to them. I must proceed.

There follow confirmations of the unity of God from the New Testament. Again there is proved what cannot and ought not to be proved, and again with these proofs there is a debasing of the idea of God and again unscrupulous manipulations. In proof of the unity of God the following is quoted:

“The Saviour himself, in reply to the question of a certain scribe, Which is the first commandment of all? answered, The first of all the commandments is Hear, O Israel; The Lord your God is one Lord (Mark xii. 28-29).” (p. 81.)