Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/274

 which are quoted here in what purports to be a confirmation of the divinity of Christ. (2) Another passage is the parable about the “vineyard, which a certain man planted, and set an hedge about it, and let out to husbandmen (Mark xii. 1); understanding by it the heavenly Father, who had planted his church among the Jewish nation and had turned it over to the leaders of the nation, the Saviour said that at first the master of the vineyard, at a certain time, sent his servants, one after another, to the husbandmen, in order to receive of the fruit of the vineyard (v. 2). But when the husbandmen beat one of the messengers, and sent him away shamefully handled, and even killed others (v. 3-5), the master decided to send his son to them: Having yet therefore one son, his well-beloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son. But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard (v. 6-8).” (p. 49.)

In this parable the husbandmen, according to the interpretation of the church, mean the Jews, the fruits are the good deeds, the master means God, then why should. the son mean the son only? According to the spirit of the parable, the son, too, must have and does have a transferred meaning. The whole parable proves that by the son something is to be understood, only not the son.

“(3) When the Saviour cured him that was diseased, and the Jews sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the Sabbath day (John v. 16), he, as though in justification, replied to them: My Father worketh hitherto, and I work (v. 17). This answer, in which the Lord Jesus ascribes to himself an equality with God the Father in right and power—”

Jesus told all to pray to God the Father, and to call and regard God as a father, and so this place can only prove