Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/22

 what we call marriage. Whereas, if we understood that such a fall is a sin which must and can be redeemed only by an indissoluble marriage, and by all the activities involved in educating the children born of marriage, then the fall would not be by any means a reason for plunging into vice.

If a farmer who is learning to sow corn were to leave the field he has sown badly, and after having tried his shill unsuccessfully in a second and third place were to recognize as sown land only the one successful field, it is evident such a man would waste much land and seed, and would not learn to sow properly. Only acknowledge chastity as the ideal, and regard every fall, no matter whose it may be, or with whom, as the one irrevocable life-long marriage, and it will be clear that the guidance given by Jesus is not only sufficient, but is the only possible guidance.

"Man is weak; he must be given a task proportioned to his strength," people say. This is like saying, "My hand is weak and I cannot draw a perfectly straight line, (the shortest between two points), and therefore, to help myself to trace a straight line, I will take as my model a crooked or broken line."

The weaker my hand the more perfect model do I require. Having heard the Christian teaching of the ideal we cannot act as if we were ignorant, and replace it by external ordinances. The Christian teaching of the ideal has been revealed to man just because it can guide him in his present stage of development. Humanity has already outgrown the period of external religious ordinances; no one believes in them anymore.

The Christian teaching is the only teaching that can guide mankind. We cannot, we must not, replace Christ's ideal by external