Page:The Novels and Other Works of Lyof N. Tolstoï-v17.djvu/12

 his faith. If the thief on the cross could have lived to preach he might have been a prototype of Paul; but Count Tolstoï was not condemned to die without speaking, and he felt it his duty to tell the world what brought him happiness and peace. It was not to be supposed that his arraignment of a Church, which preached one thing and practised its opposite, would be permitted. The Orthodox Church of his own land stopped it easily enough by forbidding his book to be published and sold. Personally he was let alone, because he preached the gospel of non-resistance and disapproved of nihilistic violence. Elsewhere the reverend critics, avoiding the real question at issue, attacked him with more or less violence, or tried to minimize the effect of his prophet’s word by calling him names. In fact, he has been treated with the same spirit as has animated the persecutors of the prophets since the beginning of the world.

Count Tolstoï tells in his “Confession” how he was led from nihilism in the real sense of the word to faith in the literal interpretation of Christ’s words, and how he was saved from despair and brought to a joyful knowledge of the meaning of life. In “My Religion” he shows how he threw aside the Church interpretation and went to the original Greek, to Christ’s own words, and how he was amazed to find how perfectly they answered the needs of his soul, when once they were stripped of fictitious and extraneous notions. Mr. Huntington Smith, the former translator of “My Confession,” in his preface said:—

“The interpretation is not new in theory, but never before has it been carried out with so much zeal, so much determination, so much sincerity, and, granting