Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/62

 perty, armies, law-courts, or Governments, and this was understood by Christians who lived in the first centuries.

The Christian ideal is that of love to God and to one's fellow-man: it is the renunciation of one's self for the service of God and one's neighbour; whereas sexual love, marriage, is a service of self, and consequently in any case an obstacle to the service of God and man, and therefore, from a Christian point of view, a fall, a sin.

To get married would not help the service of God and man, though it were done to perpetuate the human race. For that purpose, instead of getting married and producing fresh children, it would be much simpler to save and rear those millions of children who are now perishing around us for lack of food for their bodies, not to mention food for their souls.

Only if he were sure all existing children were provided for could a Christian enter upon marriage without being conscious of a moral fall.

It may be possible to reject Christ's teaching—which permeates our whole life and on which all our morality is founded—but once that teaching is accepted, we cannot but admit that it points to the ideal of complete chastity.

For in the Gospels it is said clearly, and so that there is no possibility of misinterpretation: First, that a married man should not divorce his wife to take another, but should live with her whom he has once taken. Secondly, that it is wrong (and it is said of men generally, married or unmarried) to look on a