Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/114

110 will deal trickily, and they have no one to whom they can complain. Endeavor to speak to him of the commandment, and he will not let you utter a word. He will overwhelm you with arguments, and will prove to you that he follows the commandment, and that he is himself content to eat his bread in the sweat of his face, and that the peasants on the contrary are sluggards and parasites, etc.

Perhaps there are some good pomestchiks somewhere; but I insist that at least all those on the Don are such as I have described them.

127. Is it right, you ask, to thus insult the benefactors who nourish you, or, in other words, to return evil for good, and hatred for love?

But how can you always thus praise yourselves, and claim that no one is just or compassionate but yourself?

128. They say: A pomestchik may be a virtuous man.

Well, without doubt he might if he labored for his own bread. That never has happened, nor ever will.

In the eyes of the true believer, the principal means of being absolved from sin is in receiving the holy communion. But according to God's first commandment, the absolution gained by laboring for one's own bread is a thousand times more to be esteemed. But the millionaire has paid twenty kopecks the measure for wheat, and so he is free of the commandment!