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
Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax
not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief
approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is
there will your heart be also (Luke xii. 33-34).
Go and sell that thou hast, and follow me, and who hath not forsaken
father or mother, or children, or brethren, or fields, or house,
cannot be my disciple.
Turn away from thyself, take thy cross for every day, and come after
me. My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to do His
work. Not my will be done, but Thine; not what I want, but what Thou
wantest, and not as I want, but as Thou wantest. The life is in
this, not to do one's will, but the will of God.
All these propositions seem to men who are standing on a lower
life-conception to be an expression of an ecstatic transport, which
has no direct applicability to life. And yet these propositions
just as strictly result from the Christian conception of life as
the tenet about giving up one's labour for the common good, about
sacrificing one's life in the defence of one's country, results from
the social conception.
Just as a man of the social life-conception says to a savage, "Come
to your senses, bethink yourself! The life of your personality
cannot be the true life, because it is wretched and transitory. Only
the life of the aggregate and of the sequence of personalities,
of the tribe, the family, the race, the state, is continued and
lives, and so a man must sacrifice his personality for the life of
the family, the state." Precisely the same the Christian teaching
says to a man of the aggregate, of the social conception of life.
"Repent, μετανοεῖτε, that is, bethink yourselves, or
else you will perish. Remember that this carnal, personal life,
which originated to-day and will be destroyed to-morrow, cannot be
made secure in any way, that no external measures, no arrangement of
it, can add firmness and rationality to it. Bethink yourselves and
understand that the life which you live is not the true life: the
life of the family, the life of society, the life of the state will
not save you from ruin." The true, rational life is possible for man
only in proportion as he can be a participant, not in the family or
the state, but in the source of life, the Father; in proportion as
he can blend his life with the life of the Father. Such indubitably
is the Christian life-comprehension, which may be seen in every
utterance of the Gospel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account