Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/368

 362 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

without any moral demands to restrain them, feel quite con^dnced they are living a really Christian life.

People live in insensate luxury, obtaining their wealth by the labour of the humble poor, and defend- ing themselves and their riches by policemen, law- courts and executions — and the clergy, in the name of Christ, approve, sanctify, and bless this way of life, merely advising the rich to allot a small part of what they have stolen to the ser'ice of those from whom they continue to steal. (When slavery existed, the clergy always and everywhere j ustified it, and did not consider it inconsistent with Christianity.)

People strive by force of arms, by murder, to attain their covetous aims, personal or public, and the clergy approve, and in Christ's name bless preparations for war, and war itself, and not only approve, but often encourage these things ; holding war — that is, murder — not to be contrary to Christianity.

People who believe in such teaching are not merely led by it into an evil way of life, but are fully persuaded that their evil life is a good one, which there is no need for them to alter.

Nor is that all : the chief evil of this teaching is, that it is so skilfully interwoven with the external forms of Christianity, that, while professing it, people think your doctrine is the one true Christianity, and that there is no other ! It is not only that you have diverted from men the spring of living water — were that all, people might still find it — but you have poisoned it with your teachings, so that people cannot find any Christianity but this one poisoned by your interpretations.

The Christianity preached by you is an inoculation of false Christianity, resembling the inoculation for small- pox or diphtheria, and has the effect of making those who are inoculated immune to true Christianity.

People having for many generations built their lives on foundations irreconcilable with true Christianity, feel fully persuaded that they are living Christian