We are told that Tolstoi made the attempt, in his works published abroad, to explain the miracles of the Gospel in a way intelligible to human reason. Dostoevsky and Soloviev, on the other hand, readily accepted the inexplicable. But generally the miracles of the Gospel attract the people who believe least, for it is impossible to repeat the miracles, and this being so, then it follows that a merely external faith is sufficient, a mere verbal assertion. A man says that he believes in miracles: 'his reputation as a religious man is made, both in his own mind and in others', and as for the rest of the Gospel, there remains 'interpretation.' Consider, for instance, the doctrine of non-resistance to evil. It need not be said that the doctrine of non-resistance is the most terrible, and the most irrational, and mysterious thing that we read in the Gospel. All our reasoning soul is indignant at the thought that full material freedom should be given to the murderer to accomplish his murderous acts. How can you allow a murderer to kill an innocent child before your very eyes, and yet not draw the sword? Who has the right to give that abominable precept? Soloviev[3] and Dostoevsky alike repeat that question, the one in a disguised, the other in an open attack on Tolstoi. Yet since the Gospel plainly declares 'Resist not evil,' both of our believers in miracles have suddenly remembered reason and turned to its testimony, knowing that reason will naturally destroy any meaning whatever that may be in the precept. In other words, they repeat the question of the doubting Jews concerning Christ: 'Who is He that speaketh as one having authority?' God commanded Abraham that he should offer up his son. By his reason, his human reason, Abraham refused to acknowledge any intelligible meaning in the cruel command, but yet made ready to act according to the word of God and made no attempt to rid himself of the hard and inhuman obligation by cunning interpretation. But Dostoevsky and Soloviev refuse to fulfil Christ's demands so soon as they find no justification in the human reason. Yet they say that they believe that Lazarus was raised from the dead and that the man who was sick of a palsy was cured, and all the other miracles which are related by the Apostles. Why then does their belief end just at the point where it begins to place obligations upon them? Why the sudden recourse to reason, when we know exactly that Dostoevsky came to the Gospels only to be rid of the power of reason? But that was in the days of the underworld. Now the 'serene' period of his life has begun. But Soloviev, evidently, had never even known the underworld. Only Tolstoi boldly and resolutely tries to test the truth of the Christian teaching, not in his thoughts alone, but in part in his life also. From the human point of view it is mad to make no resistance to evil. He knows that every whit as well as Dostoevsky, Soloviev and the rest of his many opponents.