The corruption of Christianity and its acceptance in its corrupted form by the majority of men was as indispensable as that a seed, to sprout, should be for a time concealed by the earth. The Christian teaching is a teaching of the truth and at the same time a prophecy. Eighteen hundred years ago the Christian teaching revealed to men the truth of how they should live, and at the same time predicted what human life would be if men would not live thus, but would continue to live by those principles by which they had lived heretofore, and what it would be if they should accept the Christian teaching and should carry it out in life. In imparting in the Sermon on the Mount the teaching which was to guide the lives of men, Christ said: "Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it" (Matt. vii. 24-27). Now, after eighteen hundred years, the prophecy has been fulfilled. By not following Christ's teaching in general and its manifestation in public life as non-resistance to evil, men involuntarily came to that position of inevitable ruin which was promised by Christ to those who would not follow His teaching. People frequently think that the question of non-resistance to evil is an invented question, a question which it is possible to circumvent. It is, however, a question which life itself puts before all men and before every thinking man, and which invariably demands a solution. For men in their public life this question has, ever since the Christian teaching has been preached, been the same as the question for a traveller which road to take, when he comes to a fork on the highway on which he has been walking. He must go on, and he cannot say, "I will not think, and I will continue to walk as before." Before this there was one road, and now there are two of them, and it is impossible to walk as before, and one of the two roads must inevitably be chosen. Even so it has been impossible to say, ever since Christ's teaching was made known to men, "I will continue to live as I lived before, without solving the question as to resisting or not resisting evil by means of violence." It is inevitably necessary at the appearance of every struggle to solve the question, "Shall I with violence resist that which I consider to be an evil and violence, or not?"