the question: How many Christmas days will yet have to come and go
before its gospel of peace and good-will will govern the hearts of
all who call themselves Christians as it governed that of the Russian
peasant-saint.
Lessening of church
power shown by
failure of Tolstoy's
excommunication.
And vividly I recalled his remarks on the shorn power of the church,
when, six years later, the papers brought the news that Tolstoy had
been excommunicated by the Russian church. I could picture to myself
the expression of sorrow or disgust on his face when that church decree
was conveyed to him. Its ecclesiastical wrath, could have meant only
hollow sounds to him. None knew better than he that the metropolitans
who issued this excommunication merely grasped at a shadow, that
the substance was gone, that that age was happily passed when the
pronouncement of the ecclesiastical _anathema_ deprived its victim
of all association with friend or foe, deprived him of intercourse
even with the closest members of his family, prevented them, under
the penalty of like punishment, from providing him even with food,
shelter and raiment. When during his flight from home, shortly before
his death, he knocked at the doors of a monastery, and said "I am
the excommunicated and anathematized Leo Tolstoy," the reply was "It
is a duty and a pleasure to offer you shelter." The life of Tolstoy
passed on as serenely, in the midst of his family and friends, after
his excommunication as before. And the world's esteem of him grew even
greater than it had been, by reason of the charges upon which the
excommunication was based, namely:
"In his writings on religious questions he clearly shows himself
an enemy of the Russian Orthodox Church. He does not recognize God
in three persons (or three persons in one God), and he calls the
Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, a mortal human being.
He scoffs at the idea of Incarnation. He perverts the text of the
Gospel. He censures the Holy Church and calls it a human institution.
He denies the Church Hierarchy and ridicules the Holy Sacraments and
the rites of the Holy Orthodox Church. Therefore, the Holy Synod
has decreed that no priest is to absolve Count Tolstoy, or give
him communion. Nor is he to be given burial ground, unless, before
departing this life he shall repent, acknowledge the Orthodox Church,
believe in it, and return to it."
Died unreconciled
with church.
He never recanted. He never changed his attitude towards the errors
and wrongs of the Russian orthodox church. And no one who ever stood
and talked with him, face to face, could ever have believed that
that modern Prometheus, that stern and fearless personality, that
re-incarnation of Mattathias of old, and of his valiant sons, the
Maccabees, could ever swerve from a position once taken by him.
When upon his death-bed, he was frequently importuned to return as
a penitent to the mother-church; he spurned every mention of it. He
was still in the possession of his senses, he said, he still knew
and believed that twice two equals four, and as long as he knew and
believed this so long would he continue to know and to believe that
what he had said and written concerning the errors and wrongs of the
church was the truth.
Never a truer
follower of Jesus
than he.
It is noteworthy, and quite in keeping with the general tenor of the
Russian orthodox church, that no cognizance was taken by the church
of the many noble things Tolstoy had said and written and done; no
cognizance of the self-sacrificing efforts he had made to live the
life which Jesus had lived and had enjoined upon his followers; no
cognizance of his having conscientiously endeavored to square his life
with the teachings of the _Sermon on the Mount_; no cognizance of his
having brought light to those in darkness and comfort to those in
sorrow, of his having consorted and labored with the poor and lightened
their burden, of his having thirsted and hungered after righteousness,
of his having sought peace and protested against war, and preached the
gospel of the wrongfulness of all physical resistance, of his having,
though of the oldest nobility, spurned luxury and ease and even money,
having regarded these the source of corruption and the root of many of
the evils in society.
Yet refused Christian
burial.
Such a person, and one even but half as good as this, should have been
entitled to sepulture in the most sacred of Christian cemeteries, and
the most eminent of priests should have deemed it a privilege to have
been permitted to perform the last rites over his mortal remains. So
would it have happened among rational people, but so could it not have
happened in Russia. There, because he could not subscribe to doctrines
and rites and ceremonies for which he found neither scriptural nor
rational warrant, priests felt themselves disgraced, and in danger of
eternal damnation, even when their names were associated with that of
Tolstoy.
Priest objected
to his name being
associated with
Tolstoy's.
A striking illustration of this was given, seven years ago, at the
university of Dorpat, at the occasion of the celebration of its
hundredth anniversary. In commemoration of that event the institution
elected as honorary members of the corporation a number of Russians
distinguished in literature, science and art, one of these was Tolstoy,
another was Ivan, the miracle-working priest of Cronstadt, elected to
allay the church's indignation at the choice of Tolstoy. Ivan, the
priest, refused the honor, and in the following letter to the Rector of
the University:
"YOUR EXCELLENCY--I have read your estimable and respectful letter
to me, which is so full of subtle delicacy--I decline absolutely
the honor of the membership to which I have been elected. I do not
wish to become connected, in any way, with a corporation--however
respectable and learned--which, by some lamentable misunderstanding,
has put me side by side with that atheist Leo Tolstoy--the most
malignant heretic of our unfortunate age--who, in presumption and
arrogance, surpasses all previous heretics of any age. I do not wish
to stand beside Antichrist. I am surprised furthermore, to see with
what indifference the University Council regards that satanic author,
and with what slavishness it burns incense to him."
IVAN SERGEIEF, _Prior and Archpriest of the Cronstadt Cathedral_.
This letter tells of the attitude of the church towards Tolstoy better
than any words of mine can tell. And this same Ivan, it is said,
approved of the massacre of the petitioners of St. Petersburg on that
memorable White Sunday, and when petitioned to protect the Jews against
threatening massacres, treated the appeal with silent contempt.
Government hatred
back of that of the
church.
It is to be remembered, however, that over and back of the Church of
Russia stands the government. The Czar is the head of the church. Whom
the government favors the church favors; whom the government hates, the
church hates. The church hated Tolstoy because the government hated
him, and why it hated him we shall be told in the next discourse of
this series.
My Visit to Tolstoy.
(_Continued._)
A DISCOURSE, AT TEMPLE KENESETH ISRAEL,
BY
RABBI JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF, D. D.
Philadelphia, January 1st, 1911.
Government used
church for
discrediting Tolstoy.
Speaking in our last discourse of the church's excommunication of
Tolstoy, and of its refusing a resting place to his remains in what she
calls "consecrated ground," we said that the Czar is the spiritual as
well as the temporal head of the Church of Russia, and that the hated
of the church is yet more the hated of the government. This statement
explains what otherwise is difficult to understand, namely, how so good
a man as Tolstoy, who, for more than two score years, strove to square
his life with the teachings of the _Sermon on the Mount_, could have
incurred the hatred of the Russian orthodox Church. The government
had far more reason to hate Tolstoy than had the church. Finding it
impolitic to proceed directly against him, it availed itself of the
church for discrediting Tolstoy in the eyes of the credulous populace.
Before giving reason
why.
Before entering upon a discussion as to why the government feared
Tolstoy, we must first have a glimpse of his earlier years, and
briefly follow his heroic self-extrication from the corruption of the
aristocratic society into which he was born, and his gradual rise to
the exalted station of greatest reformer in the history of Russia.
Must hear story of
his life.
He was born eighty-two years ago of an ancient noble family. His
childhood years were spent in the midst of the gay military life of
Moscow. Yet more gay and more corrupt was the society that surrounded
him during his university life. Experiencing a revulsion of feeling
against the kind of life he was leading, he fled from the university
before graduation, returned to his family estate at Yasnaya Polyana and
took up the life of a farmer.
This impetuous flight, and a later one of which we shall hear
presently, may throw some light upon his last flight, a few weeks ago,
which came to a pathetic end, and of which we shall speak in our next
discourse.
His early glory and
shame.
Five years long he lived the life of a peasant, when a call to arms
landed him on the battlefields of the Crimea, where he soon won
distinction for heroic service. But the dissoluteness of campaign-life
soon disclosed that the Tartar in him was not yet dead. He returned
to the debaucheries of his former years, and, according to his own
confession, with all the greater zest, because of the double glory that
had come to him, that of a distinguished soldier and of a brilliant
author. He had taken to story-writing, and displayed in it a talent
that made success instantaneous. He became the lion of his day, and
was courted by high and low. And the greater his glory the more
unrestrained grew his libertinism.[1]
[1] See his book "_My Confession_."
His reform.
But there were lucid intervals, now and then, during which he held up
to himself the lofty ideals of his former peasant life, and bitterly
he denounced himself, and even portrayed himself unsparingly in the
character-sketches of some of his novels. His better self acquired
mastery at last; he threw off the yoke that had held him fast to the
corrupt society of his day, and for the second time he fled to his
estate.
He himself told of the circumstance that led to that flight. He had
attended a ball at the home of a prominent nobleman, and passed the
night in dancing and feasting, leaving his peasant-coachman waiting for
him outside, in an open sleigh, in a bitter cold night. When at four in
the morning he wished to return home, he found the coachman seemingly
frozen dead, and it required several hours of strenuous effort to
restore him to consciousness and to save his life. "Why," he asked
himself, "should I, a rich, young aristocrat, who has done nothing for
society, spend the night amid warmth and luxuries and feastings, while
this peasant who represents the class that has built our cities, given
us our food and clothing and other necessities, be kept outside to
freeze?" He resolved, then and there, to dedicate the remainder of his
life to the righting of this and other wrongs. And he kept his promise.
How strong an impression this incident made upon him may be gathered
from an indirect allusion to it, in his novel "_Master and Man_,"
published some two score years later.
Consecrates life to
peasant.
It was discouraging work at first. The people whom he desired to
benefit had no faith in him. They could not conceive of an aristocrat,
to whom the serfs had been no more than worms to be trod upon, becoming
suddenly interested in their welfare. There were long spells of utter
disheartenment. A number of times he found himself at the brink of
suicide. He sought relief and diversion in travel, but returned more
convinced than ever of the corruptions and evils of society, of the
tyranny of the classes and of the sufferings of the masses.
Marriage opened at last a new vista of life to him. Aided and
stimulated by his cultured and companionable wife he entered upon his
reform work by directing a powerful search-light on the goings-on among
the high and the low, in a series of novels that secured for him at
once rank among the greatest novelists of his age.
Aided by his writings.
In the second discourse of this series, I spoke of his having
deprecated his novels, and of his having expressed his preference for
his ethical and religious and sociological and economical and political
writings. I ventured to say to him that but for his novels he would
have gotten but comparatively few people to look into his other
writings, that his fiction had secured a world-wide audience, that they
contained many of the teachings of his other books, and that the public
swallows a moral pill easiest when offered in the form of a novel. To
which he replied "Most readers swallow the sugar-coating and leave the
pill untouched, or, if they swallow it, it remains unassimilated."
His novels criticized.
And he was right. I have heard much criticism of Tolstoy's novels.
Some find him too realistic, too plain spoken, even coarse. A certain
magazine that had begun publishing his "_Resurrection_" was obliged to
discontinue the story, because of complaints by many of its readers. It
was a sad commentary, not on the morals of the writer but on the lack
of morals, or on the false modesty, of the readers, for that novel has
been declared by eminent critics to be "the greatest and most moral
novel ever written." Others again value his realism for whatever spice
they might find therein, little heeding the serious purpose for which
the story was written.
Few know meaning of
novel in Russia.
At best, few people understand the meaning of a novel in such a
country as Russia, where free press, free pulpit, free platform and
free speech are unknown, where the novelist attempts to do the work of
all of these, under the guise of fiction, the only form of literature
that has a chance to pass the eye of the censor. Whole systems of
political and social and moral reform are crowded between the covers
of a novel, which, if published in any other form of literature, would
condemn the author to life-long imprisonment in the Siberian mines. The
novelist in Russia does not look upon himself as an entertainer nor as
a money-maker, neither is he looked upon as such. He is the prophet,
the leader, the teacher, the tribune of the people, the liberator--the
emancipation of the Russian serfs, for instance, was entirely due to
the novel. He has serious work to do, and he does it seriously. His
eye is not upon rhetoric nor upon aesthetics, but upon the evil he has
to uproot, on the corruption he has to expose, on the reform he has to
institute, on the philosophy of life he has to unfold, and to do that
means the production of a novel like "_Anna Karénina_" or of a play
like "_The Power of Darkness_." He speaks not to English or American
puritans, but to Russians, whose receptivity of strong, plain speech is
healthier than ours.
Spoke as a prophet
and reformer.
Such a novelist was Tolstoy. His fiction is as powerful as is the art
of the Pre-Raphaelites. It is all sincerity. Nothing escapes him. What
the X-Ray does in the physical world that his penetrating eye does
in the field of morals. He sees the sin through a thousand layers of
pretense and hypocrisy, and he describes it as he sees it. Disagreeable
as are some of the subjects of which he treats, there is not a line
that may not be read without a blush by the pure-minded. Like a
surgeon, who cuts into the sore for the purpose of letting out the
poison, he lays bare the wrongs and rottenness of church and government
for the purpose of affecting the needed cure. As a prophet he speaks
the language of prophets. As a reformer he tells the truth as reformers
tell it, unvarnished and ungarnished. He spares others as little as he
spared himself in his book "_My Confession_." He wants others to do as
he has done, to subject the lusts and appetites and greeds to the rule
of conscience, if the kingdom of God is ever to be established on earth.
Opposed by government.
Radical in his reform propositions from the first, he attracted
attention at once. The world was amazed at the daring of his thought
and at the plainness of his speech, and hailed him as a new prophet.
The government, however, looked upon him as a revolutionist, and gave
him clearly to understand that he would be silenced if he did not
change his views and style of writing. Instead of complying with its
wish, he became all the more daring in thought and all the plainer
in speech. The humblest peasant could understand as clearly as the
shrewdest diplomat what he was after. And it was not long before the
government was after him. The publication and sale of certain of his
books were prohibited. They were read all the more outside of Russia,
and by the thousands of copies within Russia. And the more they were
read the larger loomed his world-fame, till he became too large for
banishment or prison, for fortress or Siberian mine.
Challenged government
to do its worst.
With all the fiery zeal of an ancient Jewish prophet, he challenged the
government to do its worst, "to tighten the well-soaped noose about his
throat" as it tightened it about the throats of thousands of better men
than any that are in the service of the autocrat or of his hirelings,
the bureaucrats. Theirs was a government, he said, by might not by
right, by gallows and knout, not by law.
His political demands.
He demanded the abolition of the throne and of capital punishment,
the disbanding of the army, and the discontinuance of trial by
court-martial. He demanded liberty of speech and freedom of conscience.
He demanded the surrender to the people of lands and rights that
justly belonged to them, and scathingly he denounced those who wasted
in riotousness what had been painfully gotten together with the
heart's blood of the laboring-people. He denounced the government for
its cruelty toward the Jews, and charged it with having instigated
the massacres of them. He held the government responsible for every
misfortune that befell the country--war, famine, pestilence, intense
poverty, hopeless misery, appalling ignorance. In burning words he
charged the slaughter of tens of thousands of husbands and fathers and
sons, in the Japanese war, to the greed of the mighty. He depicted
the Duma as the laughing stock of the world, as composed of people
so stupid as not even to recognize what fools they were making of
themselves. In his "_Resurrection_" he held up to the view of the world
Russia's courts of law, and her iniquitous prison-system, the blocking
of justice, the shocking judicial indifference and laxities in cases
involving life-long sentences to penal servitude, the "lives that are
shed like water upon the ground" during the transport to Siberia, and
the crimes and rebellions that are systematically bred by such crying
injustice.
Little wonder that the government had no love for Tolstoy, and that
it suppressed publication after publication of his, and maintained a
special corps of censors and spies to watch him. Little wonder that it
prohibited demonstrations of sorrow at the announcement of his death,
and made use of the church as a cat's paw for holding him up as the
Anti-Christ, and arch-fiend, as the enemy of the Czar, Church and
people.[2]
[2] See his essay "_Church and State_."
His demands of the
people.
Plain and fearless as was his speech to the government it was yet more
so to the people. Not a wrong in society, public or private, which he
did not know, and which he did not castigate as only he knew how to
castigate. Louder and louder, as he grew older, he preached the Law of
God against the law of degenerate society. Art and science, commerce
and industry were to him as nothing in comparison with the Moral Law,
without which he saw no future for mankind.
His views respecting
marriage and society.
The sanctity of the marriage tie, the sobriety and industry of the
husband, the domesticity of the wife, were among the most constant of
his themes. He loathed the self-exhibiting society woman; in his eyes
she was no better than the street-woman. Great to him was the womanly
woman, greater the domestic wife, greatest of all the mother, and so
many more times greater the more times she was mother.[3]
[3] See his essays "_Man and Woman, Their Respective
Functions_;" and "_The Mother_," and his book "_What To Do?_"
His views respecting
labor and capital.
The sad lot of the poor and the riotous extravagances of the rich were
constantly recurrent subjects of discussion with him. "We speak of the
abolition of slavery," said he, "but we have abolished only the word,
the poor are enslaved as much as ever. We need a new emancipation,
the emancipation of the rich from the tyranny of their money, from
the thraldom of the false view of themselves and of society. With
what right do men speak of the abolition of slavery, when every time
they look into the mirror they see a slave-driver, when they live in
idleness, and fatten on the heart's blood of the down-trodden, when
they indulge their stomachs with the choicest of dainties, and wrap
their bodies in silks and broad cloths and furs, while those, whose
slavish toil provides these luxuries and comforts, have not enough food
to keep body and soul together, nor enough of raiment and shelter to
keep from freezing?"
In an article, published a few years ago in the _North American
Review_, Tolstoy spoke of a group of peasants standing aside to let
a picknicking party of rich folks drive by. One of the ladies' hats
"has cost more than the horse with which the peasant plows the field,"
and for the gentleman's riding stick has been paid a week's wages of
an underground workman. "Everywhere, two or three men in a thousand
live so that, doing nothing for themselves, they eat and drink in
one week what would have fed hundreds for a year; they wear garments
costing thousands of dollars; they live in palaces, where thousands of
workmen could have been housed; and they spend upon their caprices the
fruits of thousands and tens of thousands of working days. The others,
sleepless and unfed, labor beyond their strength, ruining their moral
and physical health for the benefit of these few chosen ones." It is
natural that the rich should not object to this arrangement, said
he, the surprising thing is that the poor take it so complacently.
"Why do all these men, strong in physical vigor, and in the habit of
labor--the enormous majority of humanity--why do they submit to and
obey a handful of feeble men, generally incapable of anything?" Tolstoy
finds the answer very simple. It is because the minority have money,
and the workingmen need the money to feed their families. Millions of
workingmen submit "because one man has usurped the factory, another
the land, and a third the taxes collected from the workmen." Were the
millions, who now slave for the rich, to get their food from the soil,
the rich, to keep alive, would be obliged to raise their own food,
and the double redemption would have begun. It is because the number
of workers who produce the prime necessities of life is diminishing
that the number of those who use luxuries is increasing. Under such
conditions, the health of society, wrote he, is as little possible as
is the health of that person, whose body is continually growing heavier
in weight, and his legs are continually growing thinner and weaker.
When the support vanishes the body must fall.[4]
[4] See also his book "_What To Do?_" and his essay "_The
Russian Revolution_."
His Remedy.