Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/412

 gifts, spiritual and bodily, which are necessary for human life.”

That ends the exposition of the sacrament of the eucharist. It took up eighty pages. Everything which has been expounded here, the whole blasphemous delirium, all that was founded by Christ. The fall is taking place with terrible celerity, the fall from the height of questions into the bog of most incomprehensible superstitions. The first fall happened when it was asserted that God redeemed us in a visible manner, and now the last, when there are described the actions of that grace. There is no place to go any lower. What is the difference between a Chuvash, who smears his God with cream, and an Orthodox, who eats a small piece of his God, or who is hastening to offer five kopeks, that his name may be mentioned in a certain place and at a certain time? Then follows the sacrament of repentance.

221. Connection with the preceding; conception of the sacrament of repentance and its various appellations. “In the three saving sacraments of the church, heretofore discussed by us, there is imparted to man the whole abundance of spiritual gifts, which are necessary for him to become a Christian and, having become one, to abide in Christian godliness and attain everlasting happiness. Baptism purifies sinful man from all of his sins, both the original and the voluntary, and introduces him into Christ’s kingdom of grace. Unction with chrism communicates to him divine powers for his strengthening and growth in the life of grace. The eucharist furnishes him with divine food and unites him with the fountain of life and of grace. But since, having become completely cleansed from all sin in the bath of baptism, man is not freed from the consequences of original sin and inherited corruption, such as, in the soul, the propensity to do evil, and in the body, diseases and death (Arts. 91-93), since even after baptism, being a Christian, he may sin,