Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/21

 as it was then, to find out whether he is a believer or not. If there is a difference between one who openly professes Orthodoxy and one who denies it, it is not in favour of the first. The open recognition and profession of Orthodoxy has generally been met with in dull, cruel, and self-important people, while intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good-heartedness, and morality are generally met with in people who profess to be unbelievers.

In the schools the pupils are taught the Catechism and are sent to church; officials have to show certificates of having received their communion. But a man of our circle, who is no longer studying and is not holding a government position, may nowadays pass dozens of years,—and formerly that was even more the case,—without thinking once that he is living among Christians and himself is professing the Christian Orthodox faith.

Thus, now as then, the religious teaching, which is accepted through confidence and is supported through external pressure, slowly melts under the influence of knowledge and the experiences of life, which are contrary to the religious teaching, and a man frequently goes on imagining that the religious teaching with which he has been imbued in childhood is in full force in him, whereas there is not even a trace left of it.

S, an intelligent and truthful man, told me how he came to stop believing. When he was twenty-six years old he once at a night’s rest during the chase followed his old habit, acquired in his childhood, and stood up to pray. His elder brother, who took part in the chase, was lying on the hay and looking at him. When S got through and was about to lie down, he said to him: “So you are still doing these things?”

That was all that was said. And S that very day quit praying and attending church. Thirty years have passed since he stopped praying, receiving the com-