Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/365

 AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY 349

that some of them are loved, and others are not loved, by God ; and that some people are called by God to rule, others to submit.

Instead of that wish to love and to be loved, which forms the strongest desire in the soul of every unper- verted man, you teach him that the relations betAveen men can only be based on violence, on threats, on executions ; and you tell him that judicial and military murders are conmiitted not only with the sanction but at the command of God.

In place of the need of self-improvement, you tell him that man^s salvation lies in belief in the Redemp- tion, and that by improving himself by his own powers, without the aid of prayers, sacraments and belief in the Redemption, man is guilty of sinful pride, and that for his salvation man must trust, not to his own reason but to the commands of the Church, and must do what she decrees.

It is terrible to think of the perversion of thought and feeling produced in the soul of a child or an ignorant adult by such teaching.

Only to think of the things I know of, that have been done in Russia during the sixty years of mj con- scious life, and that are still being done !

In the theological colleges, and among the bishops, learned monks and missionaries, hair-splittiug discus- sions of intricate theological problems are carried on — they talk of reconciling moral and dogmatic teaching, they dispute about the develcT)ment or immutability of dogmas, and discuss similar religious subtleties. But to the hundred million populace all that is preached is a belief in Iberian or Kazan icons of the Mother of God, a belief in relics, in devils, in the redemptive efficacy of having bread blessed and placing candles, and having prayers for the dead, etc. ; aiid not only is this all preached and practised, but the inviolability of these popular superstitions is guarded with particular