Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/484

 is grandeur; instead of poverty, luxury; instead of not judging our neighbours, the most cruel condemnation of all; instead of forgiving offences, hatred and wars; instead of endurance of evil, punishments. And all men deny one another, but not themselves.

The name of Christ’s kingdom cannot save it, but in its definition there is, in addition to the definition as a church of pastors, also another obscure definition as a church of the pastured, who must obey. What is understood by the first is clear, but what is to be understood by the second is completely obscure.

An assembly of believers?

If believers have come together, believing in one and the same thing, they constitute an assembly of believers. There is such an assembly of believers in Wagner’s music, an assembly of believers in the social theory.

To them the word “church” is not applicable, with the concept of infallibility, which is attached to it, and that is all there is to it. It is an assembly of believers and nothing else, and it is impossible to see the limits of this church, because faith is not a carnal matter. The religion of our popes can indeed be felt in the vestments, the panagias, and all the remaining nonsense, but the faith of the believers, that one thing which is the life and the light in men, cannot be felt, and it cannot be said where it is and how much there is of it. Consequently, this is said only for the purpose that the pastors may have some one to herd, and there is no other meaning to it. The church, all this word, is the name of a deception by means of which one set of men wants to rule another. There is no other church, and there can be none. Only in this deception, which is based on the true teaching and is carried on by all the churches, have there appeared all those monstrous dogmas which distort and conceal the whole teaching of the church,—such as the divinity of Jesus and of the Holy Ghost, and the Trinity,