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
A Christian acts according to the word of the prophecy applied to
his teacher, "He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man
hear His voice in the streets; a bruised reed shall He not break,
and smoking flax shall He not quench, till He send forth judgment
unto victory" (Matt. xii. 19-20).
A Christian does not quarrel with any one, does not attack any one,
nor use violence against one; on the contrary, he himself without
murmuring bears violence; but by this very relation to violence he
not only frees himself, but also the world from external power.
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free"
(John viii. 32). If there were any doubt as to Christianity being
truth, that complete freedom, which cannot be oppressed by anything,
and which a man experiences the moment he makes the Christian
life-conception his own, would be an undoubted proof of its truth.
In their present condition men are like bees which have just swarmed
and are hanging down a limb in a cluster. The position of the bees
on the limb is temporary, and must inevitably be changed. They
must rise and find a new home for themselves. Every one of the
bees knows that and wishes to change its position and that of the
others, but not one is able to do so before the others are going to
do so. They cannot rise all at once, because one hangs down from
the other, keeping it from separating itself from the swarm, and so
all continue to hang. It would seem that the bees could not get out
of this state, just as it seems to worldly men who are entangled in
the snare of the social world-conception. But there would be no way
out for the bees, if each of the bees were not separately a living
being, endowed with wings. So there would also be no way out for
men, if each of them were not a separate living being, endowed with
the ability of acquiring the Christian concept of life.
If every bee which can fly did not fly, the rest, too, would not
move, and the swarm would never change its position. And as one
bee need but open its wings, rise up, and fly away, and after it a
second, third, tenth, hundredth, in order that the immovable cluster
may become a freely flying swarm of bees, so one man need but
understand life as Christianity teaches him to understand it, and
begin to live accordingly, and a second, third, hundredth, to do so
after him, in order that the magic circle of the social life, from
which there seemed to be no way out, be destroyed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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