He compressed the teachings of Jesus into the following commandments: I. "Do not be angry. II. Do not lust. III. Do not give away the control of your future actions by taking oaths. IV. Do not resist evil. V. Do not withhold love from any one." These five commandments he developed into a comprehensive moral philosophy, and by it he conscientiously endeavored to guide his life and thought.[8] [8] See his books "_My Confession_," "_My Religion_," and Aylmer Maude's _The Life of Tolstoy_. Was indebted for his faith to peasants. And for that strong and simple faith of his, which is destined, in the not distant future, to inaugurate an era in the religious world similar to that which Luther inaugurated four centuries earlier in Germany, he was indebted to the peasants. During the libertine life of his early years, he had lost the little faith that had been taught him in his childhood. He had returned to his estate an avowed atheist, and as such had he continued for some time, until, one day, he inquired into what it was that made the wretchedly poor and ignorant and hard-working peasants contented with their lot, resigned to their fate, bearing hardships and sufferings unmurmuringly, and looking happily forward to the end. He found it in their faith. "Surely," said he, "a state of mind that can do so much for the poor is worth having by all." And he devoted himself to a diligent study of their religion. He found it burdened with foreign accretions, contaminated with a putrid mass that had been gathered during centuries of darkness and superstition, adulterated with all kinds of conscious and unconscious inventions. Stripping away the foreign and putrid and false, he alighted upon a rational, satisfying faith, the faith which he believed to have been that of the Rabbi of Nazareth, and, henceforth, consecrated his life to the propagation of it. Gave them his life and labor in return.