Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/246

 guiding star, illuminate our whole murky path of life!” (p. 514.)

(9) Not to violate the will of God, because “it is terrible to fall into the hands of the living, just God.” (p. 514.) “(10) The original sin, with all its consequences, has passed over to the whole human race, so that we are all begotten and born in iniquity, impotent in soul and body, and guilty toward God. May that serve us as a living, uninterrupted lesson of humility and in the recognition of our own weaknesses and defects, and may it teach us—” you expect to hear “to be better,” but no: “may it teach us to ask the Lord God for his succour of grace, and thankfully to make use of the means for salvation which Christianity offers to us!” (p. 514.)

With the moral application of the dogma of the voluntary fall ends the chapter about God in himself, and the following chapter of the Theology speaks of God in his general relation to man and to the world. It is impossible to understand the meaning of this whole chapter, if we do not keep in mind those controversies which must have been evoked by the strange doctrine about the fall of man and the consequent doctrine about grace and the sacraments. In this chapter the Theology tries to remove the contradiction in which it has placed itself by the history of Adam and of redemption: a good God created men for their good, but men are evil and unhappy.