Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/195

10 religion, however cultured, however crude, but has its beginnings in the assessment of the relations of man to the surrounding universe or to its first cause. There is no ceremony of religion so rustic, nor ritual so refined, which has not a like foundation. All the teaching of religion is the expression of the relations in which the founder of the religion regards himself—and therefore all mankind—as standing towards the universe or towards its origin and first cause.

The expressions of these relations are very numerous, and correspond to the conditions of race and time in which the founder of the religion and those appropriating it are placed. Moreover, these expressions are variously misinterpreted and deformed by the founder's disciples, who, often for hundreds, sometimes for thousands of years, are in advance of the understanding of the masses. Hence many accounts appear to exist of this relation of man to the universe, called religions but in substance there are only three relations to the universe or its first cause of an essential quality: (1) The primitive personal relation; (2) the pagan social, or family, or State relation; (3) the Christian or godly relation. Strictly speaking, man can only be related to the universe in two ways: the personal, which is the recognition of life as the welfare of the individual, separately or in union with others; and the Christian, which is the recognition of life as the service of Him who sent man