Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/95

 Royal Doors, and the priest made me repeat that I believed that what I was going to swallow was the real body and blood, I was cut to the quick; that was not merely a false note, it was a cruel demand made by one who apparently had never known what faith was.

It is only now that I permit myself to say that it was a cruel demand; at that time I did not even think of it,—then it merely pained me inexpressibly. I was no longer in that condition in which I had been in my youth, thinking that everything in life was clear; I had arrived at faith because outside of faith I had found nothing, absolutely nothing, but certain perdition, and so it was not possible to reject that faith, and I submitted to it. I found in my soul a feeling which helped me to bear it. That was the feeling of self-abasement and humility. I humbled myself and swallowed this blood and body without any blasphemous feeling, with the desire to believe, but the blow had been given to me. Knowing in advance what was awaiting me, I could not go there a second time.

I continued to do the rites of the church and still believed that in the faith which I was following there was the truth, and in me took place what now is clear to me, but then seemed strange to me.

When I listened to the conversation of an illiterate peasant, of a pilgrim, about God, about faith, about life, about salvation, the knowledge of the faith was revealed to me. When I came in contact with the masses and heard their opinions about life and about faith, I understood the truth more and more. The same was true during the reading of the masses and of the prologues, for they became my favourite reading. Leaving out the miracles, upon which I looked as upon fables expressing an idea, this reading disclosed the meaning of life to me. There I found the lives of Macarius the Great, of Prince Ioasaph (the history of Buddha), there were the words of