Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/17

 Entering into marriage relations cannot assist the service of God and man, even although the person so related were to have as their object the life of the human race; it would be far simpler for such persons to sustain and save those millions of children perishing around us for want of material -not to mention spiritual -food, instead of entering into marriage for the production of new young lives.

A Christian could enter into marriage without the consciousness of a fall, a sin, only if he could see and know that all the existing children were provided for.

One may refuse to accept Christ's teaching -that teaching which has penetrated our whole life, and upon which all our morality is founded; but, if we accept it, we cannot but recognize that it points to the ideal of complete chastity.

In the Gospel it is said clearly and without the possibility of any misinterpretation, firstly, that a husband should not divorce his wife in order to take another but should live with the one to whom he has been united (Matthew v. 31, 32; xix. 8); secondly, that for man in general, and, therefore, both for the married and unmarried ones, it is sinful to look upon woman as an object of pleasure (Matt. v. 28, 29); and thirdly, that for an unmarried man it is better not to marry at all, that is to say, to be perfectly chaste (Matt. xix. 10-12).

To very many these thoughts will appear strange and even contradictory. And they are indeed contradictory, though not among themselves; they contradict our whole life; and the question involuntarily arises, Which are right -these thoughts, or the lives lived by millions of people, myself among them? This feeling was experienced by me in the most intense degree when I was being drawn to the convictions I now express. I never expected that the