Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/473

 if I am among the number of the fortunate, but have the misfortune to regard the demands of my reason as legitimate and do not renounce them, in order to believe the church, I perish just the same. More than that,—even if I believe everything, but have not had time to receive the last sacrament and my relatives absent-mindedly forget to pray for me, I shall just as much go to hell and remain there.

According to this teaching the meaning of my life is an absolute absurdity, much worse than what presented itself to me by the light of my reason. Then I saw that I was living and was enjoying life so long as I was living, and that when I died I should not feel anything. Then I was frightened by the meaninglessness of my own life and by the insolubility of the question: What are my strivings, my life, for, since all that will end?

But now it is much worse: all that will not end, but that absurdity, somebody’s arbitrary will, lasts for ever. To the question as to how I should live, the answer of this teaching directly denies everything which my moral feeling demands, and demands that which has always appeared as the most immoral thing to me,—hypocrisy.

From all the moral applications of the dogmas there results but this: Save yourself by faith; you cannot understand what you are commanded to believe, say that you believe, crush out with all the powers of your soul the necessity of light and truth,—say that you believe, and do what results from faith. The matter is clear. In spite of all the statements that good works are for some reason necessary, and that it is necessary to follow the teaching of Christ about love, humility, and self-renunciation, it is evident that those works are not needed, and the practice of life of all the believers confirms that. Logic is inexorable. What is the use of works, when I am redeemed by God’s death, when even