Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/482

 and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world (Mark xvi. 15; Matt. xxviii. 18-20).

“But these disciples evidently could not live to the end of the world, and if they were able to preach the Gospel to all the nations which were contemporaneous with them, they certainly could not preach it to the nations of the subsequent times. Consequently, in the person of his apostles the Saviour sent out all their future successors to the work of the universal preaching, and also encouraged them with his presence. This is not a simple divination of the mind, but the positive doctrine of one of the apostles themselves, who said that Christ himself gave his church not only apostles, prophets, evangelists, but also pastors and teachers (Ephes. iv. 11).”

Even if we accept that incomprehensible, obviously interpolated passage about baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, there is not a word to point to the church. On the contrary, there is a direct indication that no one should call himself a teacher.

What can more clearly be said against the church, according to the ideas of the church? And this very place, as though in ridicule of its exact meaning, they quote! And against the teachership? Not two or three passages speak against the teachers, but the whole meaning of the Gospel (We have taught in thy name; go into eternal fire, ye who are working iniquity): all the speeches to the Pharisees and concerning the external worship,—that the blind should not lead the blind, for they would fall down together,—but mainly the whole meaning of Jesus’ teaching in John and in the other gospels. He comes to announce the good to those who are lowly in spirit, and he calls them blessed. He repeats several times that his teaching is accessible and intelligible to babes and to the imprudent, in contradistinction to the wise and the learned. He chooses the foolish, the imprudent, the downtrodden, and they understand him; he says that