Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/203

 LETTER ON NON-RESISTANCE 187

Christianity would have been indefatigable in exposing deception in this matter_, for such an exposure forms one of the chief features of Christianity. What really liappened was just the reverse. People who profited by violence, and wlio did not wish to give up their advan- tages, took on themselves a monopoly of Christian preaching, and declared that as cases can be found in which Non-Resistance causes more liarm than the use of violence (the imaginary robber killing the imaginary cliild), therefore Christ's doctrine of Non-Resistance need not always be followed, and that one may deviate from his teaching to defend one's life or the life of others, to defend one^s country, to save society from lunatics or criminals, and in many other cases. The decision of the question. In what cases should Christ's teaching be set aside .'* was left to the very people who employed violence. So that it ended by Christ's teaching, on the subject of not resisting evil, by violence being com- pletely annulled. And, worst of all, the very people Christ denounced came to consider themselves the sole preachers and expositors of his doctrines. But the light shines through tlie darkness, and Christ's teaching is again exposing the pseudo-teachers of Christianity.

We may think about rearranging the world to suit our own taste — no one can prevent that — and we may try to do what seems to us pleasant or profitable, and with that object treat our fellow-creatures with violence on the pretext that we are doing good. But acting thus we cannot pretend to follow Christ's teach- ing, for Christ denounced just this deception. Truth sooner or later reappears, and the false teachers are unmasked, which is just what is happening to-day.

Only let the question of man^s life be rightly put, as Christ put it, and not as it has been perversely put by the Churches, and the whole structure of falsehood which the Churches have built over Christ's teaching, will collapse of itself.

The real question is not whether it would be good or bad for a certain human society that people sliould follow the law of Love and the consequent law of Non-