CHRISTIANITY MISUNDERSTOOD BY BELIEVERS.
Meaning of Christian Doctrine, Understood by a Minority,
has Become Completely Incomprehensible for the Majority
of Men--Reason of this to be Found in Misinterpretation
of Christianity and Mistaken Conviction of Believers and
Unbelievers Alike that they Understand it--The Meaning of
Christianity Obscured for Believers by the Church--The First
Appearance of Christ's Teaching--Its Essence and Difference
from Heathen Religions--Christianity not Fully Comprehended
at the Beginning, Became More and More Clear to those who
Accepted it from its Correspondence with Truth--Simultaneously
with this Arose the Claim to Possession of the Authentic
Meaning of the Doctrine Based on the Miraculous Nature of
its Transmission--Assembly of Disciples as Described in the
Acts--The Authoritative Claim to the Sole Possession of the
True Meaning of Christ's Teaching Supported by Miraculous
Evidence has Led by Logical Development to the Creeds of the
Churches--A Church Could Not be Founded by Christ--Definitions
of a Church According to the Catechisms--The Churches have
Always been Several in Number and Hostile to One Another--What
is Heresy--The Work of G. Arnold on Heresies--Heresies
the Manifestations of Progress in the Churches--Churches
Cause Dissension among Men, and are Always Hostile to
Christianity--Account of the Work Done by the Russian
Church--Matt. xxiii. 23--The Sermon on the Mount or the
Creed--The Orthodox Church Conceals from the People the True
Meaning of Christianity--The Same Thing is Done by the Other
Churches--All the External Conditions of Modern Life are such
as to Destroy the Doctrine of the Church, and therefore the
Churches use Every Effort to Support their Doctrines.
Thus the information I received, after my book came out, went to show
that the Christian doctrine, in its direct and simple sense, was
understood, and had always been understood, by a minority of men,
while the critics, ecclesiastical and freethinking alike, denied the
possibility of taking Christ's teaching in its direct sense. All this
convinced me that while on one hand the true understanding of this
doctrine had never been lost to a minority, but had been established
more and more clearly, on the other hand the meaning of it had been
more and more obscured for the majority. So that at last such a depth
of obscurity has been reached that men do not take in their direct
sense even the simplest precepts, expressed in the simplest words, in
the Gospel.
Christ's teaching is not generally understood in its true, simple,
and direct sense even in these days, when the light of the Gospel
has penetrated even to the darkest recesses of human consciousness;
when, in the words of Christ, that which was spoken in the ear is
proclaimed from the housetops; and when the Gospel is influencing
every side of human life--domestic, economic, civic, legislative,
and international. This lack of true understanding of Christ's words
at such a time would be inexplicable, if there were not causes to
account for it.
One of these causes is the fact that believers and unbelievers alike
are firmly persuaded that they have understood Christ's teaching a
long time, and that they understand it so fully, indubitably, and
conclusively that it can have no other significance than the one
they attribute to it. And the reason of this conviction is that the
false interpretation and consequent misapprehension of the Gospel is
an error of such long standing. Even the strongest current of water
cannot add a drop to a cup which is already full.
The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted
man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest
thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is
firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt,
what is laid before him.
The Christian doctrine is presented to the men of our world to-day
as a doctrine which everyone has known so long and accepted so
unhesitatingly in all its minutest details that it cannot be
understood in any other way than it is understood now.
Christianity is understood now by all who profess the doctrines of
the Church as a supernatural miraculous revelation of everything
which is repeated in the Creed. By unbelievers it is regarded as
an illustration of man's craving for a belief in the supernatural,
which mankind has now outgrown, as an historical phenomenon which
has received full expression in Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, and
Protestantism, and has no longer any living significance for us. The
significance of the Gospel is hidden from believers by the Church,
from unbelievers by Science.
I will speak first of the former. Eighteen hundred years ago there
appeared in the midst of the heathen Roman world a strange new
doctrine, unlike any of the old religions, and attributed to a man,
Christ.
This new doctrine was in both form and content absolutely new to the
Jewish world in which it originated, and still more to the Roman
world in which it was preached and diffused.
In the midst of the elaborate religious observances of Judaism, in
which, in the words of Isaiah, law was laid upon law, and in the
midst of the Roman legal system worked out to the highest point
of perfection, a new doctrine appeared, which denied not only
every deity, and all fear and worship of them, but even all human
institutions and all necessity for them. In place of all the rules
of the old religions, this doctrine sets up only a type of inward
perfection, truth, and love in the person of Christ, and--as a result
of this inward perfection being attained by men--also the outward
perfection foretold by the Prophets--the kingdom of God, when all men
will cease to learn to make war, when all shall be taught of God and
united in love, and the lion will lie down with the lamb. Instead
of the threats of punishment which all the old laws of religions
and governments alike laid down for non-fulfillment of their rules,
instead of promises of rewards for fulfillment of them, this doctrine
called men to it only because it was the truth. John vii. 17: "If any
man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be
of God." John viii. 46: "If I say the truth, why do ye not believe
me? But ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth. Ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. God is a
spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in
truth. Keep my sayings, and ye shall know of my sayings whether they
be true." No proofs of this doctrine were offered except its truth,
the correspondence of the doctrine with the truth. The whole teaching
consisted in the recognition of truth and following it, in a greater
and greater attainment of truth, and a closer and closer following
of it in the acts of life. There are no acts in this doctrine which
could justify a man and make him saved. There is only the image of
truth to guide him, for inward perfection in the person of Christ,
and for outward perfection in the establishment of the kingdom of
God. The fulfillment of this teaching consists only in walking in the
chosen way, in getting nearer to inward perfection in the imitation
of Christ, and outward perfection in the establishment of the kingdom
of God. The greater or less blessedness of a man depends, according
to this doctrine, not on the degree of perfection to which he has
attained, but on the greater or less swiftness with which he is
pursuing it.
The progress toward perfection of the publican Zaccheus, of the woman
that was a sinner, of the robber on the cross, is a greater state
of blessedness, according to this doctrine, than the stationary
righteousness of the Pharisee. The lost sheep is dearer than
ninety-nine that were not lost. The prodigal son, the piece of money
that was lost and found again, are dearer, more precious to God than
those which have not been lost.
Every condition, according to this doctrine, is only a particular
step in the attainment of inward and outward perfection, and
therefore has no significance of itself. Blessedness consists in
progress toward perfection; to stand still in any condition whatever
means the cessation of this blessedness.
"Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." "No man
having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the
kingdom of God." "Rejoice not that the spirits are subject to you,
but seek rather that your names be written in heaven." "Be ye
perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." "Seek ye first
the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness."
The fulfillment of this precept is only to be found in uninterrupted
progress toward the attainment of ever higher truth, toward
establishing more and more firmly an ever greater love within
oneself, and establishing more and more widely the kingdom of God
outside oneself.
It is obvious that, appearing as it did in the midst of the Jewish
and heathen world, such teaching could not be accepted by the
majority of men, who were living a life absolutely different from
what was required by it. It is obvious, too, that even for those by
whom it was accepted, it was so absolutely opposed to all their old
views that it could not be comprehensible in its full significance.
It has been only by a succession of misunderstandings, errors,
partial explanations, and the corrections and additions of
generations that the meaning of the Christian doctrine has grown
continually more and more clear to men. The Christian view of
life has exerted an influence on the Jewish and heathen, and the
heathen and Jewish view of life has, too, exerted an influence on
the Christian. And Christianity, as the living force, has gained
more and more upon the extinct Judaism and heathenism, and has
grown continually clearer and clearer, as it freed itself from the
admixture of falsehood which had overlaid it. Men went further
and further in the attainment of the meaning of Christianity, and
realized it more and more in life.
The longer mankind lived, the clearer and clearer became the meaning
of Christianity, as must always be the case with every theory of life.
Succeeding generations corrected the errors of their predecessors,
and grew ever nearer and nearer to a comprehension of the true
meaning. It was thus from the very earliest times of Christianity.
And so, too, from the earliest times of Christianity there were men
who began to assert on their own authority that the meaning they
attribute to the doctrine is the only true one, and as proof bring
forward supernatural occurrences in support of the correctness of
their interpretation.
This was the principal cause at first of the misunderstanding of the
doctrine, and afterward of the complete distortion of it.
It was supposed that Christ's teaching was transmitted to men not
like every other truth, but in a special miraculous way. Thus the
truth of the teaching was not proved by its correspondence with the
needs of the mind and the whole nature of man, but by the miraculous
manner of its transmission, which was advanced as an irrefutable
proof of the truth of the interpretation put on it. This hypothesis
originated from misunderstanding of the teaching, and its result was
to make it impossible to understand it rightly.
And this happened first in the earliest times, when the doctrine
was still not so fully understood and often interpreted wrongly,
as we see by the Gospels and the Acts. The less the doctrine was
understood, the more obscure it appeared and the more necessary were
external proofs of its truth. The proposition that we ought not to
do unto others as we would not they should do unto us, did not need
to be proved by miracles and needed no exercise of faith, because
this proposition is in itself convincing and in harmony with man's
mind and nature; but the proposition that Christ was God had to be
proved by miracles completely beyond our comprehension.
The more the understanding of Christ's teaching was obscured,
the more the miraculous was introduced into it; and the more the
miraculous was introduced into it, the more the doctrine was strained
from its meaning and the more obscure it became; and the more it
was strained from its meaning and the more obscure it became, the
more strongly its infallibility had to be asserted, and the less
comprehensible the doctrine became.
One can see by the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles how from the
earliest times the non-comprehension of the doctrine called forth the
need for proofs through the miraculous and incomprehensible.
The first example in the book of Acts is the assembly which gathered
together in Jerusalem to decide the question which had arisen,
whether to baptize or not the uncircumcised and those who had eaten
of food sacrificed to idols.
The very fact of this question being raised showed that those who
discussed it did not understand the teaching of Christ, who rejected
all outward observances--ablutions, purifications, fasts, and
sabbaths. It was plainly said, "Not that which goeth into a man's
mouth, but that which cometh out of a man's mouth, defileth him," and
therefore the question of baptizing the uncircumcised could only have
arisen among men who, though they loved their Master and dimly felt
the grandeur of his teaching, still did not understand the teaching
itself very clearly. And this was the fact.
Just in proportion to the failure of the members of the assembly
to understand the doctrine was their need of external confirmation
of their incomplete interpretation of it. And then to settle this
question, the very asking of which proved their misunderstanding of
the doctrine, there was uttered in this assembly, as is described in
the Acts, that strange phrase, which was for the first time found
necessary to give external confirmation to certain assertions, and
which has been productive of so much evil.
That is, it was asserted that the correctness of what they had
decided was guaranteed by the miraculous participation of the Holy
Ghost, that is, of God, in their decision. But the assertion that
the Holy Ghost, that is, God, spoke through the Apostles, in its
turn wanted proof. And thus it was necessary, to confirm this, that
the Holy Ghost should descend at Pentecost in tongues of fire upon
those who made this assertion. (In the account of it, the descent
of the Holy Ghost precedes the assembly, but the book of Acts was
written much later than both events.) But the descent of the Holy
Ghost too had to be proved for those who had not seen the tongues
of fire (though it is not easy to understand why a tongue of fire
burning above a man's head should prove that what that man is going
to say will be infallibly the truth). And so arose the necessity for
still more miracles and changes, raisings of the dead to life, and
strikings of the living dead, and all those marvels which have been
a stumbling-block to men, of which the Acts is full, and which, far
from ever convincing one of the truth of the Christian doctrine, can
only repel men from it. The result of such a means of confirming the
truth was that the more these confirmations of truth by tales of
miracles were heaped up one after another, the more the doctrine was
distorted from its original meaning, and the more incomprehensible it
became.
Thus it was from the earliest times, and so it went on, constantly
increasing, till it reached in our day the logical climax of the
dogmas of transubstantiation and the infallibility of the Pope, or of
the bishops, or of Scripture, and of requiring a blind faith rendered
incomprehensible and utterly meaningless, not in God, but in Christ,
not in a doctrine, but in a person, as in Catholicism, or in persons,
as in Greek Orthodoxy, or in a book, as in Protestantism. The more
widely Christianity was diffused, and the greater the number of
people unprepared for it who were brought under its sway, the less it
was understood, the more absolutely was its infallibility insisted
on, and the less possible it became to understand the true meaning of
the doctrine. In the times of Constantine the whole interpretation
of the doctrine had been already reduced to a _résumé_--supported by
the temporal authority--of the disputes that had taken place in the
Council--to a creed which reckoned off--I believe in so and so, and
so and so, and so and so to the end--to one holy, Apostolic Church,
which means the infallibility of those persons who call themselves
the Church. So that it all amounts to a man no longer believing in
God nor Christ, as they are revealed to him, but believing in what
the Church orders him to believe in.
But the Church is holy; the Church was founded by Christ. God could
not leave men to interpret his teaching at random--therefore he
founded the Church. All those statements are so utterly untrue
and unfounded that one is ashamed to refute them. Nowhere nor in
anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that
God or Christ founded anything like what Churchmen understand by the
Church. In the Gospels there is a warning against the Church, as it
is an external authority, a warning most clear and obvious in the
passage where it is said that Christ's followers should "call no
man master." But nowhere is anything said of the foundation of what
Churchmen call the Church.
The word church is used twice in the Gospels--once in the sense of
an assembly of men to decide a dispute, the other time in connection
with the obscure utterance about a stone--Peter, and the gates of
hell. From these two passages in which the word church is used, in
the signification merely of an assembly, has been deduced all that we
now understand by the Church.
But Christ could not have founded the Church, that is, what we now
understand by that word. For nothing like the idea of the Church as
we know it now, with its sacraments, miracles, and above all its
claim to infallibility, is to be found either in Christ's words or in
the ideas of the men of that time.
The fact that men called what was formed afterward by the same word
as Christ used for something totally different, does not give them
the right to assert that Christ founded the one, true Church.
Besides, if Christ had really founded such an institution as the
Church for the foundation of all his teaching and the whole faith,
he would certainly have described this institution clearly and
definitely, and would have given the only true Church, besides tales
of miracles, which are used to support every kind of superstition,
some tokens so unmistakable that no doubt of its genuineness could
ever have arisen. But nothing of the sort was done by him. And there
have been and still are different institutions, each calling itself
the true Church.
The Catholic catechism says: "L'Église est la société des fidéles
établie par notre Seigneur Jésus Christ, répandue sur toute la terre
et soumise à l'authorité des pasteurs légitimes, principalement
notre Saint Père le Pape,"[2] understanding by the words "pasteurs
légitimes" an association of men having the Pope at its head,
and consisting of certain individuals bound together by a certain
organization.
[2] "The Church is the society of the faithful, established by our
Lord Jesus Christ, spread over the whole earth, and subject to the
authority of its lawful pastors, and chief of them our Holy Father
the Pope."
The Greek Orthodox catechism says: "The Church is a society founded
upon earth by Jesus Christ, which is united into one whole, by one
divine doctrine and by sacraments, under the rule and guidance of a
priesthood appointed by God," meaning by the "priesthood appointed by
God" the Greek Orthodox priesthood, consisting of certain individuals
who happen to be in such or such positions.
The Lutheran catechism says: "The Church is holy Christianity, or the
collection of all believers under Christ, their head, to whom the
Holy Ghost through the Gospels and sacraments promises, communicates,
and administers heavenly salvation," meaning that the Catholic
Church is lost in error, and that the true means of salvation is in
Lutheranism.
For Catholics the Church of God coincides with the Roman priesthood
and the Pope. For the Greek Orthodox believer the Church of God
coincides with the establishment and priesthood of Russia.[3]
[3] Homyakov's definition of the Church, which was received with some
favor among Russians, does not improve matters, if we are to agree
with Homyakov in considering the Greek Orthodox Church as the one
true Church. Homyakov asserts that a church is a collection of men
(all without distinction of clergy and laymen) united together by
love, and that only to men united by love is the truth revealed (let
us love each other, that in the unity of thought, etc.), and that
such a church is the church which, in the first place, recognizes
the Nicene Creed, and in the second place does not, after the
division of the churches, recognize the popes and new dogmas. But
with such a definition of the church, there is still more difficulty
in reconciling, as Homyakov tries to do, the church united by love
with the church that recognizes the Nicene Creed and the doctrine
of Photius. So that Homyakov's assertion that this church, united
by love, and consequently holy, is the same church as the Greek
Orthodox priesthood profess faith in, is even more arbitrary than the
assertions of the Catholics or the Orthodox. If we admit the idea of
a church in the sense Homyakov gives to it--that is, a body of men
bound together by love and truth--then all that any man can predicate
in regard to this body, if such an one exists, is its love and truth,
but there can be no outer signs by which one could reckon oneself
or another as a member of this holy body, nor by which one could
put anyone outside it; so that no institution having an external
existence can correspond to this idea.
For Lutherans the Church of God coincides with a body of men who
recognize the authority of the Bible and Luther's catechism.
Ordinarily, when speaking of the rise of Christianity, men belonging
to one of the existing churches use the word church in the singular,
as though there were and had been only one church. But this is
absolutely incorrect. The Church, as an institution which asserted
that it possessed infallible truth, did not make its appearance
singly; there were at least two churches directly this claim was made.
While believers were agreed among themselves and the body was one, it
had no need to declare itself as a church. It was only when believers
were split up into opposing parties, renouncing one another, that
it seemed necessary to each party to confirm their own truth by
ascribing to themselves infallibility. The conception of one church
only arose when there were two sides divided and disputing, who each
called the other side heresy, and recognized their own side only as
the infallible church.
If we knew that there was a church which decided in the year 51 to
receive the uncircumcised, it is only so because there was another
church--of the Judaists--who decided to keep the uncircumcised out.
If there is a Catholic Church now which asserts its
own infallibility, that is only because there are
churches--Greco-Russian, Old Orthodox, and Lutheran--each asserting
its own infallibility and denying that of all other churches. So that
the one Church is only a fantastic imagination which has not the
least trace of reality about it.
As a real historical fact there has existed, and still exist, several
bodies of men, each asserting that it is the one Church, founded by
Christ, and that all the others who call themselves churches are only
sects and heresies.
The catechisms of the churches of the most world-wide influence--the
Catholic, the Old Orthodox, and the Lutheran--openly assert this.
In the Catholic catechism it is said: "Quels sont ceux qui sont hors
de l'église? Les infidèles, les hérétiques, les schismatiques."[4]
The so-called Greek Orthodox are regarded as schismatics, the
Lutherans as heretics; so that according to the Catholic catechism
the only people in the Church are Catholics.
[4] "Who are those who are outside the Church? Infidels, heretics,
and schismatics."
In the so-called Orthodox catechism it is said: By the one Christian
Church is understood the Orthodox, which remains fully in accord
with the Universal Church. As for the Roman Church and other sects
(the Lutherans and the rest they do not even dignify by the name of
church), they cannot be included in the one true Church, since they
have themselves separated from it.
According to this definition the Catholics and Lutherans are outside
the Church, and there are only Orthodox in the Church.
The Lutheran catechism says: "Die wahre Kirche wird darein erkannt,
dass in ihr das Wort Gottes lauter und rein ohne Menschenzusätze
gelehrt und die Sacramente treu nach Christi Einsetzung gewahret
werden."[5]
[5] "The true Church will be known by the Word of God being studied
clear and unmixed with man's additions and the sacraments being
maintained faithful to Christ's teaching."
According to this definition all those who have added anything to
the teaching of Christ and the apostles, as the Catholic and Greek
churches have done, are outside the Church. And in the Church there
are only Protestants.
The Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost has been transmitted without
a break in their priesthood. The Orthodox assert that the same Holy
Ghost has been transmitted without a break in their priesthood.
The Arians asserted that the Holy Ghost was transmitted in their
priesthood (they asserted this with just as much right as the
churches in authority now). The Protestants of every kind--Lutherans,
Reformed Church, Presbyterians, Methodists, Swedenborgians,
Mormons--assert that the Holy Ghost is only present in their
communities. If the Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost, at the time
of the division of the Church into Arian and Greek, left the Church
that fell away and remained in the one true Church, with precisely
the same right the Protestants of every denomination can assert that
at the time of the separation of their Church from the Catholic
the Holy Ghost left the Catholic and passed into the Church they
professed. And this is just what they do.
Every church traces its creed through an uninterrupted transmission
from Christ and the Apostles. And truly every Christian creed that
has been derived from Christ must have come down to the present
generation through a certain transmission. But that does not prove
that it alone of all that has been transmitted, excluding all the
rest, can be the sole truth, admitting of no doubt.
Every branch in a tree comes from the root in unbroken connection;
but the fact that each branch comes from the one root, does not
prove at all that each branch was the only one. It is precisely the
same with the Church. Every church presents exactly the same proofs
of the succession, and even the same miracles, in support of its
authenticity, as every other. So that there is but one strict and
exact definition of what is a church (not of something fantastic
which we would wish it to be, but of what it is and has been in
reality)--a church is a body of men who claim for themselves that
they are in complete and sole possession of the truth. And these
bodies, having in course of time, aided by the support of the
temporal authorities, developed into powerful institutions, have been
the principal obstacles to the diffusion of a true comprehension of
the teaching of Christ.
It could not be otherwise. The chief peculiarity which distinguished
Christ's teaching from previous religions consisted in the fact
that those who accepted it strove ever more and more to comprehend
and realize its teaching. But the Church doctrine asserted its own
complete and final comprehension and realization of it.
Strange though it may seem to us who have been brought up in the
erroneous view of the Church as a Christian institution, and in
contempt for heresy, yet the fact is that only in what was called
heresy was there any true movement, that is, true Christianity, and
that it only ceased to be so when those heresies stopped short in
their movement and also petrified into the fixed forms of a church.
And, indeed, what is a heresy? Read all the theological works one
after another. In all of them heresy is the subject which first
presents itself for definition; since every theological work deals
with the true doctrine of Christ as distinguished from the erroneous
doctrines which surround it, that is, heresies. Yet you will not find
anywhere anything like a definition of heresy.
The treatment of this subject by the learned historian of
Christianity, E. de Pressensé, in his "Histoire du Dogme" (Paris,
1869), under the heading "Ubi Christus, ibi Ecclesia," may serve as
an illustration of the complete absence of anything like a definition
of what is understood by the word heresy. Here is what he says in
his introduction (p. 3): "Je sais que l'on nous conteste le droit de
qualifier ainsi [that is, to call heresies] les tendances qui furent
si vivement combattues par les premiers Pères. La désignation même
d'hérésie semble une atteinte portée à la liberté de conscience et de
pensée. Nous ne pouvons partager ce scrupule, car il n'irait à rien
moins qu'à enlever au Christianisme tout caractère distinctif."[6]
[6] "I know that our right to qualify thus the tendencies which were
so actively opposed by the early Fathers is contested. The very use
of the word heresy seems an attack upon liberty of conscience and
thought. We cannot share this scruple; for it would amount to nothing
less than depriving Christianity of all distinctive character."
And though he tells us that after Constantine's time the Church did
actually abuse its power by designating those who dissented from it
as heretics and persecuting them, yet he says, when speaking of early
times: "L'église est une libre association; il y a tout profit à se
séparer d'elle. La polémique contre l'erreur n'a d'autres ressources
que la pensée et le sentiment. Un type doctrinal uniforme n'a pas
encore été élaboré; les divergences secondaires se produisent en
Orient et en Occident avec une entière liberté; la théologie n'est
point liée à d'invariables formules. Si au sein de cette diversité
apparait un fonds commun de croyances, n'est-on pas en droit d'y
voir non pas un système formulé et composé par les représentants
d'une autorité d'école, mais la foi elle-même dans son instinct
le plus sûr et sa manifestation la plus spontanée? Si cette même
unanimité qui se révèle dans les croyances essentielles, se retrouve
pour repousser telles ou telles tendances, ne serons-nous pas en
droit de conclure que ces tendances étaient en désacord flagrant
avec les principes fondamentaux du christianisme? Cette présomption
ne se transformera-t-elle pas en certitude si nous reconnaissons
dans la doctrine universellement repoussée par l'Eglise les traits
caractéristiques de l'une des religions du passé? Pour dire que
le gnosticisme ou l'ébionitisme sont les formes légitimes de la
pensée chrétienne il faut dire hardiment qu'il n'y a pas de pensée
chrétienne, ni de caractère spécifique qui la fasse reconnaître. Sous
prétexte de l'élargir, on la dissout. Personne au temps de Platon
n'eût osé couvrir de son nom une doctrine qui n'eut pas fait place
à la théorie des idées; et l'on eût excité les justes moqueries
de la Grèce, en voulant faire d'Epicure ou de Zénon un disciple
de l'Académie. Reconnaissons donc que s'il existe une religion
ou une doctrine qui s'appelle christianisme, elle peut avoir ses
hérésies."[7]
[7] "The Church is a free association; there is much to be gained by
separation from it. Conflict with error has no weapons other than
thought and feeling. One uniform type of doctrine has not yet been
elaborated; divergencies in secondary matters arise freely in East
and West; theology is not wedded to invariable formulas. If in the
midst of this diversity a mass of beliefs common to all is apparent,
is one not justified in seeing in it, not a formulated system, framed
by the representatives of pedantic authority, but faith itself in
its surest instinct and its most spontaneous manifestation? If the
same unanimity which is revealed in essential points of belief is
found also in rejecting certain tendencies, are we not justified in
concluding that these tendencies were in flagrant opposition to the
fundamental principles of Christianity? And will not this presumption
be transformed into certainty if we recognize in the doctrine
universally rejected by the Church the characteristic features of one
of the religions of the past? To say that gnosticism or ebionitism
are legitimate forms of Christian thought, one must boldly deny the
existence of Christian thought at all, or any specific character by
which it could be recognized. While ostensibly widening its realm,
one undermines it. No one in the time of Plato would have ventured
to give his name to a doctrine in which the theory of ideas had no
place, and one would deservedly have excited the ridicule of Greece
by trying to pass off Epicurus or Zeno as a disciple of the Academy.
Let us recognize, then, that if a religion or a doctrine exists which
is called Christianity, it may have its heresies."
The author's whole argument amounts to this: that every opinion which
differs from the code of dogmas we believe in at a given time, is
heresy. But of course at any given time and place men always believe
in something or other; and this belief in something, indefinite at
any place, at some time, cannot be a criterion of truth.
It all amounts to this: since ubi Christus ibi Ecclesia, then
Christus is where we are.
Every so-called heresy, regarding, as it does, its own creed as
the truth, can just as easily find in Church history a series of
illustrations of its own creed, can use all Pressensé's arguments on
its own behalf, and can call its own creed the one truly Christian
creed. And that is just what all heresies do and have always done.
The only definition of heresy (the word αἵρεσις, means a
part) is this: the name given by a body of men to any opinion which
rejects a part of the Creed professed by that body. The more frequent
meaning, more often ascribed to the word heresy, is--that of an
opinion which rejects the Church doctrine founded and supported by
the temporal authorities.
There is a remarkable and voluminous work, very little known,
"Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie," 1729, by Gottfried
Arnold, which deals with precisely this subject, and points out all
the unlawfulness, the arbitrariness, the senselessness, and the
cruelty of using the word heretic in the sense of reprobate. This
book is an attempt to write the history of Christianity in the form
of a history of heresy.
In the introduction the author propounds a series of questions: (1)
Of those who make heretics; (2) Of those whom they made heretics;
(3) Of heretical subjects themselves; (4) Of the method of making
heretics; and (5) Of the object and result of making heretics.
On each of these points he propounds ten more questions, the answers
to which he gives later on from the works of well-known theologians.
But he leaves the reader to draw for himself the principal
conclusion from the expositions in the whole book. As examples of
these questions, in which the answers are to some extent included
also, I will quote the following. Under the 4th head, of the manner
in which heretics are made, he says, in one of the questions (in the
7th):
"Does not all history show that the greatest makers of heretics
and masters of that craft were just these wise men, from whom the
Father hid his secrets, that is, the hypocrites, the Pharisees, and
lawyers, men utterly godless and perverted (Question 20-21)? And
in the corrupt times of Christianity were not these very men cast
out, denounced by the hypocrites and envious, who were endowed by
God with great gifts and who would in the days of pure Christianity
have been held in high honor? And, on the other hand, would not the
men who, in the decline of Christianity raised themselves above all,
and regarded themselves as the teachers of the purest Christianity,
would not these very men, in the times of the apostles and disciples
of Christ, have been regarded as the most shameless heretics and
anti-Christians?"
He expounds, among other things in these questions, the theory
that any verbal expression of faith, such as was demanded by the
Church, and the departure from which was reckoned as heresy, could
never fully cover the exact religious ideas of a believer, and that
therefore the demand for an expression of faith in certain words was
ever productive of heresy, and he says, in Question 21:
"And if heavenly things and thoughts present themselves to a man's
mind as so great and so profound that he does not find corresponding
words to express them, ought one to call him a heretic, because he
cannot express his idea with perfect exactness?" And in Question 33:
"And is not the fact that there was no heresy in the earliest days
due to the fact that the Christians did not judge one another by
verbal expressions, but by deed and by heart, since they had perfect
liberty to express their ideas without the dread of being called
heretics; was it not the easiest and most ordinary ecclesiastical
proceeding, if the clergy wanted to get rid of or to ruin anyone, for
them to cast suspicion on the person's belief, and to throw a cloak
of heresy upon him, and by this means to procure his condemnation and
removal?
"True though it may be that there were sins and errors among the
so-called heretics, it is no less true and evident," he says farther
on, "from the innumerable examples quoted here (_i. e._, in the
history of the Church and of heresy), that there was not a single
sincere and conscientious man of any importance whom the Churchmen
would not from envy or other causes have ruined."
Thus, almost two hundred years ago, the real meaning of heresy was
understood. And notwithstanding that, the same conception of it has
gone on existing up to now. And it cannot fail to exist so long as
the conception of a church exists. Heresy is the obverse side of the
Church. Wherever there is a church, there must be the conception
of heresy. A church is a body of men who assert that they are in
possession of infallible truth. Heresy is the opinion of the men who
do not admit the infallibility of the Church's truth.
Heresy makes its appearance in the Church. It is the effort to break
through the petrified authority of the Church. All effort after a
living comprehension of the doctrine has been made by heretics.
Tertullian, Origen, Augustine, Luther, Huss, Savonarola, Helchitsky,
and the rest were heretics. It could not be otherwise.
The follower of Christ, whose service means an ever-growing
understanding of his teaching, and an ever-closer fulfillment of it,
in progress toward perfection, cannot, just because he is a follower
of Christ, claim for himself or any other that he understands
Christ's teaching fully and fulfills it. Still less can he claim this
for any body of men.
To whatever degree of understanding and perfection the follower of
Christ may have attained, he always feels the insufficiency of his
understanding and fulfillment of it, and is always striving toward
a fuller understanding and fulfillment. And therefore, to assert
of one's self or of any body of men, that one is or they are in
possession of perfect understanding and fulfillment of Christ's word,
is to renounce the very spirit of Christ's teaching.
Strange as it may seem, the churches as churches have always been,
and cannot but be, institutions not only alien in spirit to Christ's
teaching, but even directly antagonistic to it. With good reason
Voltaire calls the Church _l'infâme_; with good reason have all or
almost all so-called sects of Christians recognized the Church as
the scarlet woman foretold in the Apocalypse; with good reason is
the history of the Church the history of the greatest cruelties and
horrors.
The churches as churches are not, as many people suppose,
institutions which have Christian principles for their basis,
even though they may have strayed a little away from the straight
path. The churches as churches, as bodies which assert their own
infallibility, are institutions opposed to Christianity. There is not
only nothing in common between the churches as such and Christianity,
except the name, but they represent two principles fundamentally
opposed and antagonistic to one another. One represents pride,
violence, self-assertion, stagnation, and death; the other, meekness,
penitence, humility, progress, and life.
We cannot serve these two masters; we have to choose between them.
The servants of the churches of all denominations, especially of
later times, try to show themselves champions of progress in
Christianity. They make concessions, wish to correct the abuses
that have slipped into the Church, and maintain that one cannot, on
account of these abuses, deny the principle itself of a Christian
church, which alone can bind all men together in unity and be a
mediator between men and God. But this is all a mistake. Not only
have the churches never bound men together in unity; they have always
been one of the principal causes of division between men, of their
hatred of one another, of wars, battles, inquisitions, massacres of
St. Bartholomew, and so on. And the churches have never served as
mediators between men and God. Such mediation is not wanted, and was
directly forbidden by Christ, who has revealed his teaching directly
and immediately to each man. But the churches set up dead forms in
the place of God, and far from revealing God, they obscure him from
men's sight. The churches, which originated from misunderstanding of
Christ's teaching and have maintained this misunderstanding by their
immovability, cannot but persecute and refuse to recognize all true
understanding of Christ's words. They try to conceal this, but in
vain; for every step forward along the path pointed out for us by
Christ is a step toward their destruction.
To hear and to read the sermons and articles in which Church writers
of later times of all denominations speak of Christian truths and
virtues; to hear or read these skillful arguments that have been
elaborated during centuries, and exhortations and professions,
which sometimes seem like sincere professions, one is ready to
doubt whether the churches can be antagonistic to Christianity. "It
cannot be," one says, "that these people who can point to such men
as Chrysostom, Fénelon, Butler, and others professing the Christian
faith, were antagonistic to Christianity." One is tempted to say,
"The churches may have strayed away from Christianity, they may be
in error, but they cannot be hostile to it." But we must look to
the fruit to judge the tree, as Christ taught us. And if we see that
their fruits were evil, that the results of their activity were
antagonistic to Christianity, we cannot but admit that however good
the men were--the work of the Church in which these men took part
was not Christian. The goodness and worth of these men who served
the churches was the goodness and worth of the men, and not of
the institution they served. All the good men, such as Francis of
Assisi, and Francis of Sales, our Tihon Zadonsky, Thomas à Kempis,
and others, were good men in spite of their serving an institution
hostile to Christianity, and they would have been still better if
they had not been under the influence of the error which they were
serving.
But why should we speak of the past and judge from the past, which
may have been misrepresented and misunderstood by us? The churches,
with their principles and their practice, are not a thing of the
past. The churches are before us to-day, and we can judge of them to
some purpose by their practical activity, their influence on men.
What is the practical work of the churches to-day? What is their
influence upon men? What is done by the churches among us, among the
Catholics and the Protestants of all denominations--what is their
practical work? and what are the results of their practical work?
The practice of our Russian so-called Orthodox Church is plain to
all. It is an enormous fact which there is no possibility of hiding
and about which there can be no disputing.
What constitutes the practical work of this Russian Church, this
immense, intensely active institution, which consists of a regiment
of half a million men and costs the people tens of millions of rubles?
The practical business of the Church consists in instilling by every
conceivable means into the mass of one hundred millions of the
Russian people those extinct relics of beliefs for which there is
nowadays no kind of justification, "in which scarcely anyone now
believes, and often not even those whose duty it is to diffuse these
false beliefs." To instill into the people the formulas of Byzantine
theology, of the Trinity, of the Mother of God, of Sacraments, of
Grace, and so on, extinct conceptions, foreign to us, and having no
kind of meaning for men of our times, forms only one part of the
work of the Russian Church. Another part of its practice consists in
the maintenance of idol-worship in the most literal meaning of the
word; in the veneration of holy relics, and of ikons, the offering of
sacrifices to them, and the expectation of their answers to prayer.
I am not going to speak of what is preached and what is written
by clergy of scientific or liberal tendencies in the theological
journals. I am going to speak of what is actually done by the clergy
through the wide expanse of the Russian land among a people of one
hundred millions. What do they, diligently, assiduously, everywhere
alike, without intermission, teach the people? What do they demand
from the people in virtue of their (so-called) Christian faith?
I will begin from the beginning with the birth of a child. At the
birth of a child they teach them that they must recite a prayer over
the child and mother to purify them, as though without this prayer
the mother of a newborn child were unclean. To do this the priest
holds the child in his arms before the images of the saints (called
by the people plainly gods) and reads words of exorcizing power, and
this purifies the mother. Then it is suggested to the parents, and
even exacted of them, under fear of punishment for non-fulfillment,
that the child must be baptized; that is, be dipped by the priest
three times into the water, while certain words, understood by no
one, are read aloud, and certain actions, still less understood,
are performed; various parts of the body are rubbed with oil, and
the hair is cut, while the sponsors blow and spit at an imaginary
devil. All this is necessary to purify the child and to make him a
Christian. Then it is instilled into the parents that they ought to
administer the sacrament to the child, that is, give him, in the
guise of bread and wine, a portion of Christ's body to eat, as a
result of which the child receives the grace of God within it, and
so on. Then it is suggested that the child as it grows up must be
taught to pray. To pray means to place himself directly before the
wooden boards on which are painted the faces of Christ, the Mother of
God, and the saints, to bow his head and his whole body, and to touch
his forehead, his shoulders and his stomach with his right hand,
holding his fingers in a certain position, and to utter some words
of Slavonic, the most usual of which as taught to all children are:
Mother of God, virgin, rejoice thee, etc., etc.
Then it is instilled into the child as it is brought up that at the
sight of any church or ikon he must repeat the same action--_i.
e._, cross himself. Then it is instilled into him that on holidays
(holidays are the days on which Christ was born, though no one knows
when that was, on which he was circumcised, on which the Mother of
God died, on which the cross was carried in procession, on which
ikons have been set up, on which a lunatic saw a vision, and so
on)--on holidays he must dress himself in his best clothes and go to
church, and must buy candles and place them there before the images
of the saints. Then he must give offerings and prayers for the dead,
and little loaves to be cut up into three-cornered pieces, and must
pray many times for the health and prosperity of the Tzar and the
bishops, and for himself and his own affairs, and then kiss the cross
and the hand of the priest.
Besides these observances, it is instilled into him that at least
once a year he must confess. To confess means to go to the church
and to tell the priest his sins, on the theory that this informing
a stranger of his sins completely purifies him from them. And after
that he must eat with a little spoon a morsel of bread with wine,
which will purify him still more. Next it is instilled into him that
if a man and woman want their physical union to be sanctified they
must go to church, put on metal crowns, drink certain potions, walk
three times round a table to the sound of singing, and that then
the physical union of a man and woman becomes sacred and altogether
different from all other such unions.
Further it is instilled into him in his life that he must observe
the following rules: not to eat butter or milk on certain days, and
on certain other days to sing Te Deums and requiems for the dead,
on holidays to entertain the priest and give him money, and several
times in the year to bring the ikons from the church, and to carry
them slung on his shoulders through the fields and houses. It is
instilled into him that on his death-bed a man must not fail to eat
bread and wine with a spoon, and that it will be still better if
he has time to be rubbed with sacred oil. This will guarantee his
welfare in the future life. After his death it is instilled into
his relatives that it is a good thing for the salvation of the dead
man to place a printed paper of prayers in his hands; it is a good
thing further to read aloud a certain book over the dead body, and to
pronounce the dead man's name in church at a certain time. All this
is regarded as faith obligatory on everyone.
But if anyone wants to take particular care of his soul, then
according to this faith he is instructed that the greatest security
of the salvation of the soul in the world is attained by offering
money to the churches and monasteries, and engaging the holy men by
this means to pray for him. Entering monasteries too, and kissing
relics and miraculous ikons, are further means of salvation for the
soul.
According to this faith ikons and relics communicate a special
sanctity, power, and grace, and even proximity to these objects,
touching them, kissing them, putting candles before them, crawling
under them while they are being carried along, are all efficacious
for salvation, as well as Te Deums repeated before these holy things.
So this, and nothing else, is the faith called Orthodox, that is
the actual faith which, under the guise of Christianity, has been
with all the forces of the Church, and is now with especial zeal,
instilled into the people.
And let no one say that the Orthodox teachers place the essential
part of their teaching in something else, and that all these are
only ancient forms, which it is not thought necessary to do away
with. That is false. This, and nothing but this, is the faith taught
through the whole of Russia by the whole of the Russian clergy, and
of late years with especial zeal. There is nothing else taught.
Something different may be talked of and written of in the capitals;
but among the hundred millions of the people this is what is done,
this is what is taught, and nothing more. Churchmen may talk of
something else, but this is what they teach by every means in their
power.
All this, and the worship of relics and of ikons, has been introduced
into works of theology and into the catechisms. Thus they teach it
to the people in theory and in practice, using every resource of
authority, solemnity, pomp, and violence to impress them. They compel
the people, by overawing them, to believe in this, and jealously
guard this faith from any attempt to free the people from these
barbarous superstitions.
As I said when I published my book, Christ's teaching and his very
words about non-resistance to evil were for many years a subject
for ridicule and low jesting in my eyes, and Churchmen, far from
opposing it, even encouraged this scoffing at sacred things. But try
the experiment of saying a disrespectful word about a hideous idol
which is carried sacrilegiously about Moscow by drunken men under the
name of the ikon of the Iversky virgin, and you will raise a groan
of indignation from these same Churchmen. All that they preach is an
external observance of the rites of idolatry. And let it not be said
that the one does not hinder the other, that "These ought ye to have
done, and not to leave the other undone." "All, therefore, whatsoever
they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their
works: for they say, and do not" (Matt. xxiii. 23, 3).
This was spoken of the Pharisees, who fulfilled all the external
observances prescribed by the law, and therefore the words
"whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do," refer to
works of mercy and goodness, and the words "do not ye after their
works, for they say and do not," refer to their observance of
ceremonies and their neglect of good works, and have exactly the
opposite meaning to that which the Churchmen try to give to the
passage, interpreting it as an injunction to observe ceremonies.
External observances and the service of truth and goodness are for
the most part difficult to combine; the one excludes the other. So it
was with the Pharisees, so it is now with Church Christians.
If a man can be saved by the redemption, by sacraments, and by
prayer, then he does not need good works.
The Sermon on the Mount, or the Creed. One cannot believe in both.
And Churchmen have chosen the latter. The Creed is taught and is
read as a prayer in the churches, but the Sermon on the Mount is
excluded even from the Gospel passages read in the churches, so that
the congregation never hears it in church, except on those days when
the whole of the Gospel is read. Indeed, it could not be otherwise.
People who believe in a wicked and senseless God--who has cursed
the human race and devoted his own Son to sacrifice, and a part of
mankind to eternal torment--cannot believe in the God of love. The
man who believes in a God, in a Christ coming again in glory to judge
and to punish the quick and the dead, cannot believe in the Christ
who bade us turn the left cheek, judge not, forgive those that wrong
us, and love our enemies. The man who believes in the inspiration of
the Old Testament and the sacred character of David, who commanded
on his deathbed the murder of an old man who had cursed him, and
whom he could not kill himself because he was bound by an oath to
him, and the similar atrocities of which the Old Testament is full,
cannot believe in the holy love of Christ. The man who believes in
the Church's doctrine of the compatibility of warfare and capital
punishment with Christianity cannot believe in the brotherhood of all
men.
And what is most important of all--the man who believes in salvation
through faith in the redemption or the sacraments, cannot devote all
his powers to realizing Christ's moral teaching in his life.
The man who has been instructed by the Church in the profane doctrine
that a man cannot be saved by his own powers, but that there is
another means of salvation, will infallibly rely upon this means and
not on his own powers, which, they assure him, it is sinful to trust
in.
The teaching of every Church, with its redemption and sacraments,
excludes the teaching of Christ; most of all the teaching of the
Orthodox Church with its idolatrous observances.
"But the people have always believed of their own accord as they
believe now," will be said in answer to this. "The whole history
of the Russian people proves it. One cannot deprive the people of
their traditions." This statement, too, is misleading. The people
did certainly at one time believe in something like what the Church
believes in now, though it was far from being the same thing. In
spite of their superstitious regard for ikons, house-spirits, relics,
and festivals with wreaths of birch leaves, there has still always
been in the people a profound moral and living understanding of
Christianity, which there has never been in the Church as a whole,
and which is only met with in its best representatives. But the
people, notwithstanding all the prejudices instilled into them by the
government and the Church, have in their best representatives long
outgrown that crude stage of understanding, a fact which is proved
by the springing up everywhere of the rationalist sects with which
Russia is swarming to-day, and on which Churchmen are now carrying on
an ineffectual warfare. The people are advancing to a consciousness
of the moral, living side of Christianity. And then the Church comes
forward, not borrowing from the people, but zealously instilling into
them the petrified formalities of an extinct paganism, and striving
to thrust them back again into the darkness from which they are
emerging with such effort.
"We teach the people nothing new, nothing but what they believe, only
in a more perfect form," say the Churchmen. This is just what the man
did who tied up the full-grown chicken and thrust it back into the
shell it had come out of.
I have often been irritated, though it would be comic if the
consequences were not so awful, by observing how men shut one another
in a delusion and cannot get out of this magic circle.
The first question, the first doubt of a Russian who is beginning to
think, is a question about the ikons, and still more the miraculous
relics: Is it true that they are genuine, and that miracles are
worked through them? Hundreds of thousands of men put this question
to themselves, and their principal difficulty in answering it is
the fact that bishops, metropolitans, and all men in positions of
authority kiss the relics and wonder-working ikons. Ask the bishops
and men in positions of authority why they do so, and they will say
they do it for the sake of the people, while the people kiss them
because the bishops and men in authority do so.
In spite of all the external varnish of modernity, learning, and
spirituality which the members of the Church begin nowadays to assume
in their works, their articles, their theological journals, and their
sermons, the practical work of the Russian Church consists of nothing
more than keeping the people in their present condition of coarse
and savage idolatry, and worse still, strengthening and diffusing
superstition and religious ignorance, and suppressing that living
understanding of Christianity which exists in the people side by side
with idolatry.
I remember once being present in the monks' bookshop of the Optchy
Hermitage while an old peasant was choosing books for his grandson,
who could read. A monk pressed on him accounts of relics, holidays,
miraculous ikons, a psalter, etc. I asked the old man, "Has he the
Gospel?" "No." "Give him the Gospel in Russian," I said to the monk.
"That will not do for him," answered the monk. There you have an
epitome of the work of our Church.
But this is only in barbarous Russia, the European and American
reader will observe. And such an observation is just, but only so far
as it refers to the government, which aids the Church in its task of
stultification and corruption in Russia.
It is true that there is nowhere in Europe a government so despotic
and so closely allied with the ruling Church. And therefore the share
of the temporal power in the corruption of the people is greatest in
Russia. But it is untrue that the Russian Church in its influence on
the people is in any respect different from any other church.
The churches are everywhere the same, and if the Catholic, the
Anglican, or the Lutheran Church has not at hand a government as
compliant as the Russian, it is not due to any indisposition to
profit by such a government.
The Church as a church, whatever it may be--Catholic, Anglican,
Lutheran, Presbyterian--every church, in so far as it is a church,
cannot but strive for the same object as the Russian Church. That
object is to conceal the real meaning of Christ's teaching and to
replace it by their own, which lays no obligation on them, excludes
the possibility of understanding the true teaching of Christ, and
what is the chief consideration, justifies the existence of priests
supported at the people's expense.
What else has Catholicism done, what else is it doing in its
prohibition of reading the Gospel, and in its demand for unreasoning
submission to Church authorities and to an infallible Pope? Is the
religion of Catholicism any other than that of the Russian Church?
There is the same external ritual, the same relics, miracles, and
wonder-working images of Notre Dame, and the same processions; the
same loftily vague discussions of Christianity in books and sermons,
and when it comes to practice, the same supporting of the present
idolatry. And is not the same thing done in Anglicanism, Lutheranism,
and every denomination of Protestantism which has been formed into a
church? There is the same duty laid on their congregations to believe
in the dogmas expressed in the fourth century, which have lost
all meaning for men of our times, and the same duty of idolatrous
worship, if not of relics and ikons, then of the Sabbath Day and the
letter of the Bible. There is always the same activity directed to
concealing the real duties of Christianity, and to putting in their
place an external respectability and cant, as it is so well described
by the English, who are peculiarly oppressed by it. In Protestantism
this tendency is specially remarkable because it has not the excuse
of antiquity. And does not exactly the same thing show itself even
in contemporary revivalism--the revived Calvinism and Evangelicalism,
to which the Salvation Army owes its origin?
Uniform is the attitude of all the churches to the teaching of
Christ, whose name they assume for their own advantage.
The inconsistency of all church forms of religion with the teaching
of Christ is, of course, the reason why special efforts are
necessary to conceal this inconsistency from people. Truly, we need
only imagine ourselves in the position of any grown-up man, not
necessarily educated, even the simplest man of the present day, who
has picked up the ideas that are everywhere in the air nowadays
of geology, physics, chemistry, cosmography, or history, when he,
for the first time, consciously compares them with the articles
of belief instilled into him in childhood, and maintained by the
churches--that God created the world in six days, and light before
the sun; that Noah shut up all the animals in his ark, and so on;
that Jesus is also God the Son, who created all before time was;
that this God came down upon earth to atone for Adam's sin; that he
rose again, ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of
the Father, and will come in the clouds to judge the world, and so
on. All these propositions, elaborated by men of the fourth century,
had a certain meaning for men of that time, but for men of to-day
they have no meaning whatever. Men of the present day can repeat
these words with their lips, but believe them they cannot. For such
sentences as that God lives in heaven, that the heavens opened and
a voice from somewhere said something, that Christ rose again, and
ascended somewhere in heaven, and again will come from somewhere on
the clouds, and so on, have no meaning for us.
A man who regarded the heavens as a solid, finite vault could believe
or disbelieve that God created the heavens, that the heavens opened,
that Christ ascended into heaven, but for us all these phrases have
no sense whatever. Men of the present can only believe, as indeed
they do, that they ought to believe in this; but believe it they
cannot, because it has no meaning for them.
Even if all these phrases ought to be interpreted in a figurative
sense and are allegories, we know that in the first place all
Churchmen are not agreed about it, but, on the contrary, the majority
stick to understanding the Holy Scripture in its literal sense; and
secondly, that these allegorical interpretations are very varied and
are not supported by any evidence.
But even if a man wants to force himself to believe in the doctrines
of the Church just as they are taught to him, the universal diffusion
of education and of the Gospel and of communication between people
of different forms of religion presents a still more insurmountable
obstacle to his doing so.
A man of the present day need only buy a Gospel for three copecks
and read through the plain words, admitting of no misinterpretation,
that Christ said to the Samaritan woman "that the Father seeketh
not worshipers at Jerusalem, nor in this mountain nor in that, but
worshipers in spirit and in truth," or the saying that "the Christian
must not pray like the heathen, nor for show, but secretly, that is,
in his closet," or that Christ's follower must call no man master or
father--he need only read these words to be thoroughly convinced that
the Church pastors, who call themselves teachers in opposition to
Christ's precept, and dispute among themselves, constitute no kind of
authority, and that what the Churchmen teach us is not Christianity.
Less even than that is necessary. Even if a man nowadays did continue
to believe in miracles and did not read the Gospel, mere association
with people of different forms of religion and faith, which happens
so easily in these days, compels him to doubt of the truth of his
own faith. It was all very well when a man did not see men of any
other form of religion than his own; he believed that his form of
religion was the one true one. But a thinking man has only to come
into contact--as constantly happens in these days--with people,
equally good and bad, of different denominations, who condemn each
other's beliefs, to doubt of the truth of the belief he professes
himself. In these days only a man who is absolutely ignorant or
absolutely indifferent to the vital questions with which religion
deals, can remain in the faith of the Church.
What deceptions and what strenuous efforts the churches must employ
to continue, in spite of all these tendencies subversive of the
faith, to build churches, to perform masses, to preach, to teach, to
convert, and, most of all, to receive for it all immense emoluments,
as do all these priests, pastors, incumbents, superintendents,
abbots, archdeacons, bishops, and archbishops. They need special
supernatural efforts. And the churches do, with ever-increasing
intensity and zeal, make such efforts. With us in Russia, besides
other means, they employ simple brute force, as there the temporal
power is willing to obey the Church. Men who refuse an external
assent to the faith, and say so openly, are either directly punished
or deprived of their rights; men who strictly keep the external forms
of religion are rewarded and given privileges.
That is how the Orthodox clergy proceed; but indeed all churches
without exception avail themselves of every means for the
purpose--one of the most important of which is what is now called
hypnotism.
Every art, from architecture to poetry, is brought into requisition
to work its effect on men's souls and to reduce them to a state of
stupefaction, and this effect is constantly produced. This use of
hypnotizing influence on men to bring them to a state of stupefaction
is especially apparent in the proceedings of the Salvation Army,
who employ new practices to which we are unaccustomed: trumpets,
drums, songs, flags, costumes, marching, dancing, tears, and dramatic
performances.
But this only displeases us because these are new practices. Were
not the old practices in churches essentially the same, with their
special lighting, gold, splendor, candles, choirs, organ, bells,
vestments, intoning, etc.?
But however powerful this hypnotic influence may be, it is not the
chief nor the most pernicious activity of the Church. The chief and
most pernicious work of the Church is that which is directed to the
deception of children--these very children of whom Christ said: "Woe
to him that offendeth one of these little ones." From the very first
awakening of the consciousness of the child they begin to deceive
him, to instill into him with the utmost solemnity what they do not
themselves believe in, and they continue to instill it into him
till the deception has by habit grown into the child's nature. They
studiously deceive the child on the most important subject in life,
and when the deception has so grown into his life that it would be
difficult to uproot it, then they reveal to him the whole world of
science and reality, which cannot by any means be reconciled with the
beliefs that have been instilled into him, leaving it to him to find
his way as best he can out of these contradictions.
If one set oneself the task of trying to confuse a man so that he
could not think clearly nor free himself from the perplexity of two
opposing theories of life which had been instilled into him from
childhood, one could not invent any means more effectual than the
treatment of every young man educated in our so-called Christian
society.
It is terrible to think what the churches do to men. But if one
imagines oneself in the position of the men who constitute the
Church, we see they could not act differently. The churches are
placed in a dilemma: the Sermon on the Mount or the Nicene Creed--the
one excludes the other. If a man sincerely believes in the Sermon
on the Mount, the Nicene Creed must inevitably lose all meaning and
significance for him, and the Church and its representatives together
with it. If a man believes in the Nicene Creed, that is, in the
Church, that is, in those who call themselves its representatives,
the Sermon on the Mount becomes superfluous for him. And therefore
the churches cannot but make every possible effort to obscure the
meaning of the Sermon on the Mount, and to attract men to themselves.
It is only due to the intense zeal of the churches in this direction
that the influence of the churches has lasted hitherto.
Let the Church stop its work of hypnotizing the masses, and deceiving
children even for the briefest interval of time, and men would begin
to understand Christ's teaching. But this understanding will be
the end of the churches and all their influence. And therefore the
churches will not for an instant relax their zeal in the business
of hypnotizing grown-up people and deceiving children. This, then,
is the work of the churches: to instill a false interpretation of
Christ's teaching into men, and to prevent a true interpretation of
it for the majority of so-called believers.