Therefore, however strange it may appear to those occupied with military
plans, preparations, diplomatic considerations, administrative,
financial, economical measures, revolutionary, socialistic propaganda,
and various unnecessary sciences, by which they think to save mankind
from its calamities, the deliverance of man, not only from the calamities
of war, but also from all the calamities which men inflict upon
themselves, will take place not through emperors or kings instituting
peace alliances, not through those who would dethrone emperors, kings, or
restrain them by constitutions, or substitute republics for monarchies,
not by peace conferences, not by the realization of socialistic
programmes, not by victories or defeats on land or sea, not by libraries
or universities, nor by those futile mental exercises which are now
called science; but only by there being more and more of those simple men
who, like the Dukhobors, Drojjin, Olkhovik, in Russia, the Nazarenes in
Austria, Condatier in France, Tervey in Holland, and others, having
placed as their object not external alterations of life, but the closest
fulfilment in themselves of the will of Him who has sent them into life,
will direct all their powers to this realization. Only such people
realizing the Kingdom of God in themselves, in their souls, will
establish, without directly aiming at this purpose, that external Kingdom
of God which every human soul is longing for.
Salvation will come to pass only in this one way and not in any other.
Therefore what is now being done by those who, ruling men, inspire them
with religious and patriotic superstitions, exciting in them
exclusiveness, hatred, and murder, as well as by those who, for the
purpose of freeing men from slavery and oppression, invoke them to
violent external revolution, or think that the acquisition by men of very
much incidental and for the most part unnecessary information will of
itself bring them to a good life--all this, by distracting men from what
alone they need, only removes them further from the possibility of
salvation.
The evil from which the men of the Christian world suffer is that they
have temporarily lost religion.
Some people, having come to see the discord between the existing religion
and the degree of mental and scientific development attained by humanity
at the present time, have decided that in general no religion whatever is
necessary. They live without religion and preach the uselessness of any
religion of whatever kind. Others, holding to that distorted form of the
Christian religion which is now preached, likewise live without religion,
professing empty external forms, which cannot serve as guidance for men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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