A Confession by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (best sales books of all time txt) π
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of our faith is the infallibility of the Church. From the admission of that
dogma follows inevitably the truth of all that is professed by the Church.
The Church as an assembly of true believers united by love and therefore
possessed of true knowledge became the basis of my belief. I told myself
that divine truth cannot be accessible to a separate individual; it is
revealed only to the whole assembly of people united by love. To attain
truth one must not separate, and in order not to separate one must love and
must endure things one may not agree with.
Truth reveals itself to love, and if you do not submit to the rites of the
Church you transgress against love; and by transgressing against love you
deprive yourself of the possibility of recognizing the truth. I did not then
see the sophistry contained in this argument. I did not see that union in
love may give the greatest love, but certainly cannot give us divine truth
expressed in the definite words of the Nicene Creed. I also did not perceive
that love cannot make a certain expression of truth an obligatory condition
of union. I did not then see these mistakes in the argument and thanks to it
was able to accept and perform all the rites of the Orthodox Church without
understanding most of them. I then tried with all strength of my soul to
avoid all arguments and contradictions, and tried to explain as reasonably
as possible the Church statements I encountered.
When fulfilling the rites of the Church I humbled my reason and submitted to
the tradition possessed by all humanity. I united myself with my
forefathers: the father, mother, and grandparents I loved. They and all my
predecessors believed and lived, and they produced me. I united myself also
with the missions of the common people whom I respected. Moveover, those
actions had nothing bad in themselves (βbadβ I considered the indulgence of
oneβs desires). When rising early for Church services I knew I was doing
well, if only because I was sacrificing my bodily ease to humble my mental
pride, for the sake of union with my ancestors and contemporaries, and for
the sake of finding the meaning of life. It was the same with my
preparations to receive Communion, and with the daily reading of prayers
with genuflections, and also with the observance of all the fasts. However
insignificant these sacrifices might be I made them for the sake of
something good. I fasted, prepared for Communion, and observed the fixed
hours of prayer at home and in church. During Church service I attended to
every word, and gave them a meaning whenever I could. In the Mass the most
important words for me were: βLet us love one another in conformity!β The
further words, βIn unity we believe in the Father, the Son, and Holy
Ghostβ, I passed by, because I could not understand them.
XIVIn was then so necessary for me to believe in order to live that I
unconsciously concealed from myself the contradictions and obscurities of
theology. but this reading of meanings into the rites had its limits. If the
chief words in the prayer for the Emperor became more and more clear to me,
if I found some explanation for the words βand remembering our Sovereign
Most-Holy Mother of God and all the Saints, ourselves and one another, we
give our whole life to Christ our Godβ, if I explained to myself the
frequent repetition of prayers for the Tsar and his relations by the fact
that they are more exposed to temptations than other people and therefore
are more in need of being prayed for β the prayers about subduing our
enemies and evil under our feet (even if one tried to say that sin was the
enemy prayed against), these and other prayers, such as the βcherubic
songβ and the whole sacrament of oblation, or βthe chosen Warriorsβ, etc.
β quite two-thirds of all the services β either remained completely
incomprehensible or, when I forced an explanation into them, made me feel
that I was lying, thereby quite destroying my relation to God and depriving
me of all possibility of belief.
I felt the same about the celebration of the chief holidays. To remember the
Sabbath, that is to devote one day to God, was something I could understand.
But the chief holiday was in commemoration of the Resurrection, the reality
of which I could not picture to myself or understand. And that name of
βResurrectionβ was also given the weekly holiday. [9] And on those days the
Sacrament of the Eucharist was administered, which was quite unintelligible
to me. The rest of the twelve great holidays, except Christmas, commemorated
miracles β the things I tried not to think about in order not to deny: the
Ascension, Pentecost, Epiphany, the Feast of the Intercession of the Holy
Virgin, etc. At the celebration of these holidays, feeling that importance
was being attributed to the very things that to me presented a negative
importance, I either devised tranquillizing explanations or shut my eyes in
order not to see what tempted me.
Most of all this happened to me when taking part in the most usual
Sacraments, which are considered the most important: baptism and communion.
There I encountered not incomprehensible but fully comprehensible doings:
doings which seemed to me to lead into temptation, and I was in a dilemma
β 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 Christβs teaching. If that
explanation was artificial I did not notice its artificiality: so happy was
I at humbling and abasing myself before the priest β a simple, timid country
clergyman β 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 lifeβs 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 menβs speech,
the more I went astray from truth and approached an abyss.
[9] In Russia Sunday was called Resurrection-day.βA.M.
XVHow 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 β 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, βIt is my fault, I am sinfulβ; 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 β contrary to the very bases of the belief by
which I lived β 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 β 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 [10] , 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
β 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
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