Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/175

 not say that this is white, nor that this is black, for the church teaches you to recognize both, that is, that the black is white, and the white black, so that here is expressed not only a demand that you should believe what the church says, but that you should repeat with your tongue what it says.

After that comes Article 23: The moral application of the dogma. The moral application of the first dogma, of the dogma of the divine unity, had struck me only by its inconsistency. The moral rules which were taught on the basis of the unity of God were apparently not deduced from it, but were simply patched on the words, “God is one, we must live in oneness,” and so forth. But when I met with the second application and, in looking through the whole work for all the moral rules which were inevitably applied to each dogma, recalled what had been said in the Introduction, that the dogmas of faith and the laws of morality (p. 36) had inseparably been revealed by God to men and were inseparably connected, I understood that these applications were not accidental, but very important, as showing the meaning of the dogmas for the saving life, and so I turned my close attention to them. Here is the application of the dogma about the essence and the properties of God:

“(1) God by his essence is a spirit, and, by the chief property of the essence which embraces all the others, he is an unlimited spirit, that is, most perfect, highest, all-glorious. From this (a) we learn, first of all, to honour and love God, for whom shall we honour and whom love, if not the most perfect, when every perfection naturally evokes these feelings in us? The love of God, united with respect, forms the foundation of all our obligations toward him (Matt. xxii. 37); (b) we learn at the same time that our love of God and our honouring of God must be (aa) sincerest, spiritual: God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth, says the