Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/208

 192 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

to understand the true meaning of Christ^s teaching to follow the same plan.

Let each man, in reading the Gospels, select all that seems to him quite plain, clear, and comprehensible, and let him score it down the margin — say with a blue pencil — and then, taking the marked passages first, let him separate Christ^s words from those of the Evan- . gelists by marking Christ's words a second time with, say, a red pencil. Then let him read over these doubly- scored passages several times. Only after he has thoroughly assimilated these, let him again read the words attributed to Christ which he did not understand when he first read them, and let him score, in red, those which have become plain to him. Let him leave unscored the words of Christ which remain quite unin- telligible, and also unintelligible words by the writers of the Gospels. The passages marked in red will supply the reader with the essence of Christ's teaching. They will give what all men need, and what Christ therefore said in a way that all can understand. The places marked only in blue will give what the authors of the Gospels said that is intelligible.

Very likely in selecting what is, from what is not, fully comprehensible, people will not all choose the same passages. What is comprehensible to one may seem obscure to another. But all will certainly agree in what is most important, and these are things which will be found quite intelligible to everyone. It is just this — just Avhat is fully comprehensible to all men — that constitutes the essence of Christ's teaching.

[July 22, O.S.. 1896.]