comprehensible doings: doings which seemed to me to lead into
temptation, and I was in a dilemma -- whether to lie or to reject
them.
Never shall I forge the painful feeling I experienced the day
I received the Eucharist for the first time after many years. The
service, confession, and prayers were quite intelligible and
produced in me a glad consciousness that the meaning of life was
being revealed to me. The Communion itself I explained as an act
performed in remembrance of Christ, and indicating a purification
from sin and the full acceptance of Christ's teaching. If that
explanation was artificial I did not notice its artificiality: so
happy was I at humbling and abasing myself before the priest -- a
simple, timid country clergyman -- turning all the dirt out of my
soul and confessing my vices, so glad was I to merge in thought
with the humility of the fathers who wrote the prayers of the
office, so glad was I of union with all who have believed and now
believe, that I did not notice the artificiality of my explanation.
But when I approached the altar gates, and the priest made me say
that I believed that what I was about to swallow was truly flesh
and blood, I felt a pain in my heart: it was not merely a false
note, it was a cruel demand made by someone or other who evidently
had never known what faith is.
I now permit myself to say that it was a cruel demand, but I
did not then think so: only it was indescribably painful to me. I
was no longer in the position in which I had been in youth when I
thought all in life was clear; I had indeed come to faith because,
apart from faith, I had found nothing, certainly nothing, except
destruction; therefore to throw away that faith was impossible and
I submitted. And I found in my soul a feeling which helped me to
endure it. This was the feeling of self-abasement and humility.
I humbled myself, swallowed that flesh and blood without any
blasphemous feelings and with a wish to believe. But the blow had
been struck and, knowing what awaited me, I could not go a second
time.
I continued to fulfil the rites of the Church and still
believed that the doctrine I was following contained the truth,
when something happened to me which I now understand but which then
seemed strange.
I was listening to the conversation of an illiterate peasant,
a pilgrim, about God, faith, life, and salvation, when a knowledge
of faith revealed itself to me. I drew near to the people,
listening to their opinions of life and faith, and I understood the
truth more and more. So also was it when I read the Lives of Holy
men, which became my favourite books. Putting aside the miracles
and regarding them as fables illustrating thoughts, this reading
revealed to me life's meaning. There were the lives of Makarius
the Great, the story of Buddha, there were the words of St. John
Chrysostom, and there were the stories of the traveller in the
well, the monk who found some gold, and of Peter the publican.
There were stories of the martyrs, all announcing that death does
not exclude life, and there were the stories of ignorant, stupid
men, who knew nothing of the teaching of the Church but who yet
were saves.
But as soon as I met learned believers or took up their books,
doubt of myself, dissatisfaction, and exasperated disputation were
roused within me, and I felt that the more I entered into the
meaning of these men's speech, the more I went astray from truth
and approached an abyss.
XV
How often I envied the peasants their illiteracy and lack of
learning! Those statements in the creeds which to me were evident
absurdities, for them contained nothing false; they could accept
them and could believe in the truth -- the truth I believed in.
Only to me, unhappy man, was it clear that with truth falsehood was
interwoven by finest threads, and that I could not accept it in
that form.
So I lived for about three years. At first, when I was only
slightly associated with truth as a catechumen and was only
scenting out what seemed to me clearest, these encounters struck me
less. When I did not understand anything, I said, "It is my fault,
I am sinful"; but the more I became imbued with the truths I was
learning, the more they became the basis of my life, the more
oppressive and the more painful became these encounters and the
sharper became the line between what I do not understand because I
am not able to understand it, and what cannot be understood except
by lying to oneself.
In spite of my doubts and sufferings I still clung to the
Orthodox Church. But questions of life arose which had to be
decided; and the decision of these questions by the Church --
contrary to the very bases of the belief by which I lived --
obliged me at last to renounce communion with Orthodoxy as
impossible. These questions were: first the relation of the
Orthodox Eastern Church to other Churches -- to the Catholics and
to the so-called sectarians. At that time, in consequence of my
interest in religion, I came into touch with believers of various
faiths: Catholics, protestants, Old-Believers, Molokans [Footnote:
A sect that rejects sacraments and ritual.], and others. And I
met among them many men of lofty morals who were truly religious.
I wished to be a brother to them. And what happened? That
teaching which promised to unite all in one faith and love -- that
very teaching, in the person of its best representatives, told me
that these men were all living a lie; that what gave them their
power of life was a temptation of the devil; and that we alone
possess the only possible truth. And I saw that all who do not
profess an identical faith with themselves are considered by the
Orthodox to be heretics, just as the Catholics and others consider
the Orthodox to be heretics. And i saw that the Orthodox (though
they try to hide this) regard with hostility all who do not express
their faith by the same external symbols and words as themselves;
and this is naturally so; first, because the assertion that you are
in falsehood and I am in truth, is the most cruel thing one man can
say to another; and secondly, because a man loving his children and
brothers cannot help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his
children and brothers to a false belief. And that hostility is
increased in proportion to one's greater knowledge of theology.
And to me who considered that truth lay in union by love, it became
self-evident that theology was itself destroying what it ought to
produce.
This offence is so obvious to us educated people who have
lived in countries where various religions are professed and have
seen the contempt, self-assurance, and invincible contradiction
with which Catholics behave to the Orthodox Greeks and to the
Protestants, and the Orthodox to Catholics and Protestants, and the
Protestants to the two others, and the similar attitude of Old-
Believers, Pashkovites (Russian Evangelicals), Shakers, and all
religions -- that the very obviousness of the temptation at first
perplexes us. One says to oneself: it is impossible that it is so
simple and that people do not see that if two assertions are
mutually contradictory, then neither of them has the sole truth
which faith should possess. There is something else here, there
must be some explanation. I thought there was, and sought that
explanation and read all I could on the subject, and consulted all
whom I could. And no one gave me any explanation, except the one
which causes the Sumsky Hussars to consider the Sumsky Hussars the
best regiment in the world, and the Yellow Uhlans to consider that
the best regiment in the world is the Yellow Uhlans. The
ecclesiastics of all the different creeds, through their best
representatives, told me nothing but that they believed themselves
to have the truth and the others to be in error, and that all they
could do was to pray for them. I went to archimandrites, bishops,
elders, monks of the strictest orders, and asked them; but none of
them made any attempt to explain the matter to me except one man,
who explained it all and explained it so that I never asked any one
any more about it. I said that for every unbeliever turning to a
belief (and all our young generation are in a position to do so)
the question that presents itself first is, why is truth not in
Lutheranism nor in Catholicism, but in Orthodoxy? Educated in the
high school he cannot help knowing what the peasants do not know --
that the Protestants and Catholics equally affirm that their faith
is the only true one. Historical evidence, twisted by each
religion in its own favour, is insufficient. Is it not possible,
said I, to understand the teaching in a loftier way, so that from
its height the differences should disappear, as they do for one who
believes truly? Can we not go further along a path like the one we
are following with the Old-Believers? They emphasize the fact that
they have a differently shaped cross and different alleluias and a
different procession round the altar. We reply: You believe in
the Nicene Creed, in the seven sacraments, and so do we. Let us
hold to that, and in other matters do as you pease. We have united
with them by placing the essentials of faith above the
unessentials. Now with the Catholics can we not say: You believe
in so and so and in so and so, which are the chief things, and as
for the Filioque clause and the Pope -- do as you please. Can we
not say the same to the Protestants, uniting with them in what is
most important?
My interlocutor agreed with my thoughts, but told me that such
conceptions would bring reproach o the spiritual authorities for
deserting the faith of our forefathers, and this would produce a
schism; and the vocation of the spiritual authorities is to
safeguard in all its purity the Greco-Russian Orthodox faith
inherited from our forefathers.
And I understood it all. I am seeking a faith, the power of
life; and they are seeking the best way to fulfil in the eyes of
men certain human obligations. and fulfilling these human affairs
they fulfil them in a human way. However much they may talk of
their pity for their erring brethren, and of addressing prayers for
them to the throne of the Almighty -- to carry out human purposes
violence is necessary, and it has always been applied and is and
will be applied. If of two religions each considers itself true
and the other false, then men desiring to attract others to the
truth will preach their own doctrine. And if a false teaching is
preached to the inexperienced sons of their Church -- which as the
truth -- then that Church cannot but burn the books and remove the
man who is misleading its sons. What is to be done with a
sectarian -- burning, in the opinion of the Orthodox, with the fire
of false doctrine -- who in the most important affair of life, in
faith, misleads the sons of the Church? What can be done with him
except to cut off his head or to incarcerate him? Under the Tsar
Alexis Mikhaylovich people were burned at the stake, that is to
say, the severest method of punishment of the time was applied, and
in our day also the severest method of punishment is applied --
detention in solitary confinement. [Footnote: At the time this
was written capital punishment was considered to be abolished in
Russia. -- A.M.]
The second relation of the Church to a question of life was
with regard to war and executions.
At that time Russia was at war. And Russians, in the name of
Christian love, began to kill their fellow men. It was impossible
not to think about this, and not to see that killing is an evil
repugnant to the first principles of any faith. Yet prayers were
said in the churches for the success of our arms, and the teachers
of the Faith acknowledged killing to be an act resulting from the
Faith. And besides the murders during the war, I saw, during the
disturbances which followed the war, Church dignitaries and
teachers and monks of the lesser and stricter orders who approved
the killing of helpless, erring youths. And I took note of all
that is done by men who profess Christianity, and I was horrified.
XVI
And I ceased to doubt, and became fully convinced that not all
was true in the religion I had joined. Formerly I should have said
that it was all false, but I could not say so now. The whole of
the people possessed a knowledge of the truth, for otherwise they
could not have lived. Moreover, that knowledge was accessible to
me, for I had felt it and had lived by it. But I no longer doubted
that there was also falsehood in it. And all that had previously
repelled me now presented itself vividly before me. And though I
saw that among the peasants there was a smaller admixture of the
lies that repelled me than among the representatives of the
Church, I still saw that in the people's belief also falsehood was
mingled with the truth.
But where did the truth and where did the falsehood come from?
Both the falsehood and the truth were contained in the so-called
holy tradition and in the Scriptures. Both the falsehood and the
truth had been handed down by what is called the Church.
And whether I liked or not, I was brought to the study and
investigation of these writings and traditions -- which till now I
had been so afraid to investigate.
And I turned to the examination of that same theology which I
had once rejected with such contempt as unnecessary. Formerly it
seemed to me a series of unnecessary absurdities, when on all sides
I was surrounded by manifestations of life which seemed to me clear
and full of sense; now I should have been glad to throw away what
would not enter a health head, but I had nowhere to turn to. On
this teaching religious doctrine rests, or at least with it the
only knowledge of the meaning of life that I have found is
inseparably connected. However wild it may seem too my firm old
