Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/170

146 impose on others a counterfeit of religion and others accept this counterfeit—this sham religion.

Religion cannot be forced and cannot be accepted for the sake of anything, force, fraud, or profit. Therefore what is so accepted is not religion but a fraud. And this religious fraud is a long-established condition of man's life.

In what does this fraud consist, and on what is it based? What induces the deceivers to produce it? and what makes it plausible to the deceived? I will not discuss the same phenomena in Brahminism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Mohammedanism, though any one who has read about those religions may see that the case has been the same in them as in Christianity; but I will speak only of the latter—it being the religion known, necessary, and dear to us. In Christianity, the whole fraud is built up on the fantastic conception of a Church; a conception founded on nothing, and which as soon as we begin to study Christianity amazes us by its unexpected and useless absurdity.

Of all the godless ideas and words there is none more godless than that of a Church. There is no idea which has produced more evil, none more inimical to Christ's teaching, than the idea of a Church.

In reality the word ekklesia means an assembly and nothing more, and it is so used in the Gospels. In the language of all modern nations the word ekklesia (or the equivalent word "church") means a house for prayer. Beyond that, the word has not progressed in any language, notwithstanding the fifteen hundred years' existence of the Church-fraud. According to the definition given to the word by priests (to whom the Church-fraud is necessary) it amounts to nothing else than a preface which says: "All that I am going to say is true, and if you disbelieve I shall burn you, or denounce you, and do you all manner of harm." This conception is a sophistry, needed for certain dialectical purposes, and it has remained the possession of those to whom it is necessary. Among the people, and not only among common people, but also in society, among educated people, no