Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/299

Rh stasis, and a cup a cup, and not a chalice, etc.; but it is a most terrible, continual, and revolting blasphemy that men (using all possible means of deception and hypnotization) assure children and simple-minded folk that if bits of bread are cut up in a particular manner while certain words are pronounced over them, and if they are put into wine, God will enter into those bits of bread, and any living person named by the priest when he takes out one of these sops will be healthy, and any dead person named by the priest when he takes out one of these sops will be better off in the other world on that account; and that into the man who eats such a sop—God himself will enter.

Surely that is terrible !

They undertake to teach us to understand the personality of Christ, but his teaching, which destroys evil in the world, and blesses men so simply, easily, and undoubtedly, if only they do not pervert it, is all hidden, is all transformed into a gross sorcery of washings, smearing with oil, gestures, exorcisms, eating of bits of bread, etc., so that of the true teaching nothing remains. And if, at any time, some one tries to remind men that Christ's teaching consists not in this sorcery, not in public prayer, liturgies, candles, and icons, but in loving one another, in not returning evil for evil, in not judging or killing one another—the anger of those to whom deception is profitable is aroused, and with incomprehensible audacity they publicly declare in churches, and print in books, newspapers, and catechisms, that Jesus never forbade oaths (swearing allegiance, or swearing in courts of law), never forbade