Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/483

 he came, not to teach, but to fulfil; and he fulfils with his whole life. He repeats again and again that he who will fulfil will find out whether it is from God, and that blessed is he who fulfils, and not he who teaches: that he who fulfils is great, and not he who teaches. He is angry only with those who teach. He says, Do not judge others. He says that he alone opened the door for the sheep, and that he knows the sheep, and the sheep know him. And there the uncalled pastors—the wolves in sheep’s clothing—came in the garments of harlots, stood up before him, and said they, the doers of iniquity—that not he, but they, were the door for the sheep.

The impelling causes are comprehensible, especially during the first times, when the first Paul spoke of the church, of the infallibility. It is comprehensible how an excitable man, who is carried away by the true faith, may have failed fully to understand the spirit of the teacher, and so departed from his teaching. It is comprehensible for that nearest time, as well as later, under the pressure on Constantine’s power, how they could have been carried away by the desire as quickly as possible to establish their external faith; we can understand all the wars which were waged in the name of this departure from the spirit of the teaching. But the time has come for separating the sheep from the goats, for they have already separated themselves in such a way that the true teaching can no longer be met with in the churches. And it is clear that the teachership of the church, though it arose from a small departure, is now the worst enemy of Christianity, and that its pastors serve what they please, except the teaching of Jesus, because they reject it.

The doctrine about the teaching church is now a doctrine which is purely inimical to Christianity. Having departed from the spirit of the teaching, it has corrupted it to such an extent that it has reached a point where it rejects it with the whole life: instead of humility there