Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/259



God the Saviour and his special relation to the human race.

Thus begins the Second Part.

122. Connection with the preceding, importance of the subject, doctrine of the church about it, and the division of the doctrine. “Heretofore we were, so to speak, in the sanctuary of the Orthodox dogmatic theology; now we enter the sanctum sanctorum.” (p. 7.)

This Second Part, which enters the sanctum sanctorum, indeed, sharply contrasts with the First.

In the First are shown the propositions and questions which have always lain in the soul of each man: about the beginning of everything—God, about the beginning of the material and of the spiritual world, about man, about the soul, and about man’s struggle between the good and the evil.

In this Second Part there is no longer anything of the kind. None of the dogmas which are disclosed here answer any question of faith, but they are arbitrary propositions, which are not connected with anything human, and which are based only on a certain very coarse interpretation of all kinds of words of Holy Scripture, and so cannot be analyzed or judged on the basis of their relation to reason. There is no connection whatsoever. These dogmas may be viewed only in relation to their correct-