Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/507

 difficulty of the migration and of the new establishment. It is above their strength, and every building which is reared with labour caves in. I know, you will say that there is no need of living with the family: Leave your wife and children, as Christ has said; but I believe that this may be done only by mutual consent, and there is another saying of Christ, and one which is more obligatory: Man and wife are not twain, but one flesh, and that those whom God has united man cannot sever. People like you and other happy and strong men must not get married, but if they have married and have children, they must not violate what has been done, must not wipe out the sin, but bear its consequences. I think that it is a great sin to ask or advise husbands to abandon their wives. It is true, it seems that God's work will gain from it, that without a wife I shall do a great deal more than now, but frequently it only seems so. If I could be absolutely pure, absolutely without sin, it would be so. We must not ask and advise this for this other reason, that with such a view people who have sinned, that is, married people, would appear to themselves and to others as people who are done for, and that is not good. I think that sinners and weak people can also serve God.

Having once come to sin through marriage, we must bear the consequences of our sin in the best, most Christian manner, and not free ourselves from it, by committing a new sin, and we must in this situation serve God with all our strength.

You understand the words of the Gospel, Leave father and mother, and wife, and children, and follow me, in too literal a sense. In respect to the meaning of these words,—especially as to how we ought to solve those conflicts and contradictions which take place between domestic ties and the demands of Christ, that is, of truth,—I think that the solution of these questions cannot be from with-