Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/474

 from the Tsar to the beggar, are striving not to fulfil this law, but to avoid fulfilling it. The above mentioned work of Bondaref is consecrated to an explanation of the importance, of the unalterableness, of the law, and the inevitability of the misfortunes arising from a neglect of it. Bondaref calls this law primeval, and the chief of all laws.

He shows that sin—in other words, the mistakes, the false steps we make—results only from the neglect of this law. Of all the obligations imposed on man, Bondaref considers the first, chief, and invariable duty of every man to work with his hands for his daily bread, meaning by bread all the heavy "black work" which is necessary to save a man from death by cold and starvation—in other words, bread and drink and raiment and shelter and warmth.

Bondaref's fundamental idea is that this law,—the law that a man to eat must work,—which till now has been considered as necessary, must be regarded as a blessed law of life, an obligation for every one.

This law must be acknowledged as a religious law, like the observance of the Sabbath, circumcision among the Hebrews, like the observance of the sacraments and Lent among Church Christians, like fivefold prayer among the Mohammedans.

Bondaref says in one place that if only men will recognize labor for their daily bread as a religious duty, then no particular private occupations can prevent them from doing this work, just as no special occupations can prevent churchmen from participating in the inactivity of their festivals. More than eighty days are taken out for festivals, but according to Bondaref only forty days are required to earn a man's daily bread. Strange as it may seem at first that such a simple method, comprehensible to all, free from anything subtile or sophisticated, can serve as a salvation from the actual numberless evils of humanity; it is still stranger, when you come to think of it, how we, having had such a simple and clear method, long known to all men, have put it aside and sought relief from our ills in