Page:Tolstoy - A Great Iniquity.djvu/33

Rh with Him, did not know, or desire to know, Him. So also with many of the servants of the people—the people are only a banner and they, far from loving them, do not seek communion with them and do not know them, but in the depth of their souls look down upon them with contempt, disgust, and fear.

The third feature is that while they are concerned, the former with the service of one and the same God, the latter with the service of one and the same people, they not only disagree amongst themselves concerning the methods of their service, but pronounce the activity of all who do not agree with them as false and pernicious, and demand its compulsory suspension. Hence stakes, inquisitions, slaughters in the former case, and executions, imprisonments, revolutions, and manslaughters in the latter.

Finally, the chief and the most characteristic feature of the one and the other is their complete indifference, their absolute ignoring of that which the One they profess to serve has stated and is stating that He desires and demands. God, Whom they have served and are serving so zealously, has directly and clearly expressed, in that which they recognise as Divine revelation, that it is necessary to serve Him only by loving one’s neighbour, by acting towards each other as one desires others to act towards himself. But they did not recognise this as the means of serving God; they demanded something quite different, that which they themselves invented and gave out for the demands of God. So likewise act the servants of the people—they do not at all recognise what the people desire and clearly ask for, and they choose to serve them through that which the people not only do not ask from them, and of which they have not the slightest idea, but which these servants of the