Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/179

 his deeds in the bloody battle with the enemies of salvation, knows his intentional privations and innocent suffering, knows every sigh and every tear of his amidst heavy temptation! No matter how hypocritical he may be before men, how much he may try to conceal his criminal intentions, in what darkness he may be committing his lawlessness, he cannot help confessing that there is a being from whom it is impossible to conceal himself, before whom everything is naked and open (Heb. iv. 13), and that it is possible to deceive men, but never God. (b) God is infinitely wise; and thus (aa) let not our mind and soul be dejected if in social life or in Nature we shall see any phenomena which seem to threaten a universal ruin and destruction, for all that is done or omitted by the unsearchable fate of the highest wisdom; (bb) let us not be faint of heart or murmur against God if we ourselves have occasion to be in straitened circumstances, but let us rather give ourselves altogether to his holy will, believing that he knows better than we what is useful and what harmful to us; (cc) let us learn according to our strength to imitate his highest wisdom, tending all the time toward that supreme aim, which he has set for us, and selecting for ourselves those most reliable means, which he himself has outlined for us in his revelation.

“(4) Finally, each of the properties of the divine will either only offers us a model for imitation, or at the same time also imparts certain other moral lessons. (a) God is called supremely free, because he always selects only what is good, and this he does without any external pressure or incitement; it is in this, then, that our true freedom ought to consist! In the possibility and freely acquired habit of doing only what is good, only because it is good, and not in the arbitrary will of doing good and evil, as people generally think, and still less in the arbitrary will of doing only what is bad: for whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin, says our Saviour (John