Page:Tolstoy - Demands of Love and Reason.djvu/32

 AND REASON. 29

prayers, and the fasting congregation is passing, asking pardon of each other for their sins, and praying picturesquely in ornate churches — recalling the peaceful solemn life of olden times, it is very pleasant to join in with them, and to share a little of their life. But then this is a self-deception ; it is only play- ing a part. The essential point in your position is, not that you find yourself now during Lent, in the town of Pondoj* but that you are living in God*s universe, on the planet Earth, peopled by 1,500 millions of inhabitants, of various races, professing various religions, in some hundred - thousandth year after the appearance of the first man; in one of the corners of the northern hemisphere, among a people called Russians; and that you are living in this place and at this time by the will of God — that same One by whose will exists, not only the planet Earth, with its inhabitants, but all the apparently infinite universe. This position of youri you know, and it is in accordance with this you must establish your relations to God — that is, a relation which would suit equally well any man who is in a similar position ; a relation that shall be clear, compre- hensible, and obligatory to every think- ing man — to Japanese, Malay, Zulu.

♦ Pondoj, a town in the extreme north of Russia, to which the person here addressed was at the time exiled. — Trans,