Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/263

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that I have said relates to instruction in sacred as well as Russian history, to natural history, to geography, partly to physics, chemistry, zoology, especially to all subjects except singing, mathematics, and drawing. As to the instruction in sacred history especially, I must now speak as follows:—

In the first place, Why is the Old Testament chosen at the very beginning? Not to speak of the fact that a knowledge of sacred history is demanded by the pupils themselves as well as by their parents, of all the oral accounts which I have experimented with in the course of three years, nothing has been found so suited to the comprehension and mental capacity of the children as the Bible. The same thing has been repeated in all other schools which I have had a chance to observe in the beginning. I tried the New Testament, tried Russian history and geography, tried what is so popular in our day, "Explanations of the Phenomena of Nature," but it was all speedily forgotten, and was listened to reluctantly. But the Old Testament was remembered and repeated passionately, enthusiastically, both in the class room and at home, and was remembered so well that two months after the stories had been told the children could, from their heads, with scarcely an omission, write out their sacred history copied into their note-books.

It seems to me that the book of the childhood of the human race will always be the best book for the childhood of every man. To alter this book seems to me impossible. To alter, to abridge the Bible, as is done in the manuals of Sontag and others, seems to me injurious. Everything, every word in it, is correct as revelation and correct as art. Read in the Bible about the creation of the world and then the same in some abridgment of sacred history, and the transformation of the Bible into "sacred history" will seem to you perfectly