The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / MiscellaniesTolstoy, Leo, graf
Religion
The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / Miscellanies
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Russian literature -- Translations into English
The activity of Garrison the father, with his foundation of a
society of non-resistants and his declaration, convinced me even
more than my relations with the Quakers, that the departure of state
Christianity from Christ's law about non-resistance to evil is
something that has been observed and pointed out long ago, and that
men have without cessation worked to arraign it. Ballou's activity
still more confirmed this fact to me. But the fate of Garrison and
especially of Ballou, who is not known to any one, in spite of
his fifty years of stubborn and constant work in one and the same
direction, has also confirmed to me the other fact, that there
exists some kind of unexpressed but firm understanding as to passing
all such attempts in silence.
Ballou died in August, 1890, and his obituary was given
in an American periodical with a Christian tendency
(_Religio-Philosophical Journal_, August 23d).
In this eulogistic obituary it says that Ballou was a spiritual
guide of a community, that he delivered between eight and nine
thousand sermons, married one thousand pairs, and wrote about five
hundred articles, but not a word is said about the aim to which he
devoted all his life,--the word "non-resistance" is not even used.
Like all that which the Quakers have been preaching for two hundred
years, like the activity of Garrison the father, the foundation of
his society and periodical, and his declaration, so Ballou's whole
activity does not seem to have existed at all.
A striking example of such an ingloriousness of writings intended to
elucidate non-resistance to evil, and to arraign those who do not
recognize this commandment, is found in the fate of the book by the
Bohemian Chelcický, which has but lately become known and has so far
not yet been printed.
Soon after the publication of my book in German, I received a letter
from a professor of the Prague University, which informed me of the
existence of a still unpublished work by the Bohemian Chelcický, of
the fifteenth century, by the name of _The Drawnet of Faith_. In
this work, as the professor wrote me, Chelcický about four centuries
ago expressed the same view in regard to the true and the false
Christianity, which I had expressed in my work, _My Religion_. The
professor wrote to me that Chelcický's work was for the first time
to be published in Bohemian in the periodical of the St. Petersburg
Academy of Sciences. As I was unable to procure the work itself, I
tried to become acquainted with what was known of Chelcický, and
such information I got from a German book sent me by the same Prague
professor, and from Pýpin's "History of Bohemian Literature." This
is what Pýpin says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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