But let us hear Tolstoi simply as a follower of Christ. We cannot do better than reproduce some of his sentences _in extenso_. "Christ not only never instituted marriage, but, if we search for formal precept on the subject, we find that he rather disapproved it than otherwise. ('And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.' Matthew xix. 29, Mark z. 29, 30, Luke xviii. 29,30). He only impressed upon married and unmarried alike the necessity of striving after perfection, which includes chastity in marriage and out of it." "There is not and cannot be such an institution as Christian marriage.... This is what was always taught and believed by true Christians of the first and following centuries.... In the eyes of a Christian, sexual relations in marriage not only do not constitute a lawful, right, and happy state, as our society and our churches maintain, but, on the contrary, are always a fall, a weakness, a sin." "Such a thing as Christian marriage never was and never could be. Christ did not marry, nor did he establish marriage; neither did his disciples marry." "A Christian, I say, cannot view sexual intercourse otherwise than as a deviation from the doctrine of Christ--as a sin. This is clearly laid down in Matt. v. 28, and the ceremony called Christian marriage does not alter its character one jot. A Christian will never, therefore, desire marriage, but will always avoid it." "In the Gospel it is laid down so clearly as to make it impossible to explain it away, that he who is already married when he discovers and accepts the truth, must abide with her with whom he has been living, i.e., must not change his wife, and must live more chastely than before (Matt. v. 32, xix. 8-12), that he who is single should remain unmarried and continue to live chastely (Matt. xix. 10, 12), and that both the one and the other, in their yearning and striving after perfect chastity, are guilty of sin if they look on a woman as an object of pleasure (Matt. v. 28, 29)." Pozdnischeff, at the close of the _Kreutzer Sonata_, clinches all this by saying--"People should understand the true significance of the words of St. Matthew as to looking upon a woman with the eye of desire; for the words apply to woman in her sisterly character--not only to another man's wife, but also, and above all, to one's own." If this view of marriage prevailed, and perfect chastity obtained, the human race would come to an end. Tolstoi says he cannot help that. Carnal love perpetuates the race, and spiritual love will extinguish it. But what if it does? It is a familiar religious dogma that the world will have an end, and science tells us that the sun is losing its heat, the result of which must in time be the extinction of the human race.