Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/254

 Indeed it needs it. The necessity of this contradiction will be made clear in the teaching about grace. After this follows:

102. The moral application of the dogma. It consists in (1) singing praises to God, (2) hoping in him, (3) praying, (4) complying with God’s providence, and (5) doing good to others, even as God does it. With this properly ends the teaching about divine providence. The next section is only a justification of the coarsest superstitions which are connected with this teaching.

Here is what the Theology deduces from divine providence. About divine providence in relation to the spiritual world.

103. The connection with what precedes.

104. God coöperates with the good angels. Proved by Holy Scripture. The angels serve the all-satisfied, all-perfect God.

105. God directs the good angels: (a) their serving God.

106. (b) Angels in the service of men: (aa) in general “they are given for the preservation of cities, kingdoms, districts, monasteries, churches, and men, both clerical and lay—”

107. (bb) Angels as guardians of human societies. There are angels of kingdoms, nations, and churches.

108. (cc) Angels as guardians of private individuals.

109. God merely allows the activity of evil angels. God only permits the devils to act.

110. God has limited and still limits the activity of the evil spirits, directing it, withal, toward good results. In this chapter there is an account, confirmed by Scripture, of all kinds of devils, of how to protect oneself against them with the cross and with prayers, and what the devils are good for: they humble us, and so forth.

111. The moral application of the dogma about the angels and devils is this, that it is necessary to worship the angels and fear the devil: