Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/298

282 the whole meaning which might be attached to the baptism of adults who consciously accepted Christianity; in the performance of the Sacrament of Marriage over those who are known to have had other sexual unions, in the permission of divorce, and in the consecration of the marriages of divorced people, I see a direct infringement both of the meaning and of the words of the Gospel teaching.

In the periodical absolution of sins at Confession I see a harmful deception, which only encourages immorality and causes men not to fear to sin.

Both in Extreme Unction and in Anointing I see methods of gross sorcery—as in the worship of icons and relics, and as in all the rites, prayers and exorcisms which fill the Prayer-Book. In the Sacrament I see a deification of the flesh, and a perversion of Christian teaching. In Ordination I see (beside an obvious preparation for deception) a direct infringement of the words of Jesus, which plainly forbid anyone to be called teacher, father, or master.

It is stated, finally, as the last and greatest of my sins, that, 'reviling the most sacred objects of the faith of the Orthodox people, he has not shrunk from subjecting to derision the greatest of Sacraments, the Holy Eucharist.' That I did not shrink from describing simply and objectively what the priest does when preparing this so-called Sacrament is perfectly true; but that this so-called Sacrament is anything holy, and that to describe it simply, just as it is performed, is blasphemy, is quite untrue. Blasphemy does not consist in calling a partition a partition, and not an icono-