Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/489

 marriage, is the same as, in describing a man's travels, to break off in the place where the traveller has fallen among robbers.

Yes, in the Gospel there are no indications of marriage; there is a negation of it, there is a counteraction to debauchery, lust, and divorce for those who are already in marriage; but of the institution of marriage, in the way the church speaks of it, there is not even any mention. Nothing but the insipid miracle at Cana, which confirms marriage to the same extent that Zaccheus's visit confirms the collection of tribute.

Yes, I think that marriage is a non-Christian institution. Christ never married, nor did His disciples, and He never established marriage, but, when He turned to people, of whom some were married, and some not, He told the married people not to change their wives through divorce, as could be done according to the law of Moses (Matt. v. 32), and those who were not married, He told to refrain from getting married, if they could do so (Matt. xix. 10-12). He told both that they must understand that the chief sin consists in looking upon woman as a subject of enjoyment (Matt. v. 28). (Naturally, the same must be understood on the part of woman in relation to man.)

From this proposition naturally result the following moral deductions:

1. We must not consider, as people now do, that every person, man or woman, must by all means enter into wedlock; but, on the contrary, we must consider that every person, man or woman, ought best of all to preserve his or her purity, so that nothing may interfere with giving all the strength to the service of God.

2. We must not look, as people now do, on the fall of man,—man or woman,—that is, on the entrance into sexual intercourse as on an error which may be mended