Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/324

300 to suffer? Of such people there are millions; not in Russia only, but in all Christian countries; not only in Christian, but in Moslem countries; in Persia, Turkey, and Arabia, for instance, there are the Karidshity and the Babisty. It is needful to prevent contagion from these ten of thousands who acknowledge no government, and do not wish to take part in government. But how? Certainly they cannot be killed. They are too many. It is no less difficult to put them in prison. It is only possible to ruin and torture them. And just this is done.

But what if these tortures have not the desired effect, and these people still persist in declaring the truth, and by so doing attract more adherents? The position of governments is crucial; the more so that they can take no certain stand. You cannot denounce as bad the deeds of men like Drozhin, who was tortured to death in prison; or Izyumchenko, still suffering in Siberia; or Dr. Skarvan, imprisoned in Austria; or like all those others at present in prisons,—men who are ready to suffer and to die, only to be faithful to the most simple, universally comprehensible and approved religious principles, which prohibit murder and participation in murder.

By no device of logic can you demonstrate the acts of these men to be bad or unchristian; and not only are you unable to disapprove, but you cannot help admiring them. Because you must admit that men who so act, act in the name of the noblest qualities of man's soul,—qualities which, if you do not recognize their nobility, you reduce man's life to the level of animal existence. Therefore, however government acts toward these men, it must inevitably forward, not their, but its own, destruction. If government refrains from persecuting these people who, like the Dukhobors, Stundists, Nazarenes, and isolated individuals, refuse to take part in the acts of government, then the advantages of the peaceful Christian lives of these men will attract to them not only sincerely convinced Christians, but also those who will become Christians externally; and the