Love the sinner as well! Do not fly away from the sinners, but go to them
without fear. After all--whoever you may be--you are not much better than
they are. Try to love the sinners; you will see that it is easier to love
those whom you despise than those whom you envy. The old Zosim (from the
"Brothers Caramazov") said, "Brothers, don't be afraid of the sins of a
sinner; but love a sinner also--that is the record of love upon earth." I
know you love St. Peter and St. John, but could you love the sinner
Zacchæeus? You can love the good Samaritan but love, please, the prodigal
son also! You love Christ, I am sure; but what about Judas, the seller of
Christ? He repented, poor human creature. Why don't you love him?
Dostojevsky--like Tolstoi and Gogol--emphasised two things: first, there is
no great man; secondly, there is no worthless man. He described the
blackest crimes and the deepest fall and showed that the authors of such
crimes are men just as other men, with much good hidden under their sins.
Servants and vagabonds, idiots and drunkards, the dirty _katorzniki_ from
the Serbian prisons--all those people are God's sons and daughters, with
souls full of fears and hopes, of repentance and longings after good and
justice.
Between _saintliness_ and _vice_ there is a bridge, not an abyss. The
saintliest and the meanest men have still common ground for brotherhood.
Your sins are my sins, my sins are your sins. That is the starting-point
for a practical and lucid Christianity. I cannot be clean as long as you
are not clean. I cannot be happy as long as you are unhappy. I cannot enter
Heaven as long as you are in Hell. What does that mean? It means that you
and I are blended together for eternity, and that your effort to separate
yourselves from me is disastrous for you and for me. As long as you look to
the greatest sinner in the world and say: "God, I thank thee that I am not
as that man," you are far from Christ and the Kingdom of God. God wants not
one good man only, He wants a Kingdom of good men. If ninety-nine of us are
good and saintly but one of our brothers is far from our solace and
support, in sin and darkness, be sure God is not among us ninety-nine, but
He has gone to find our brother whom we have lost and forgotten. Will you
follow him or will you stand self-sufficient? Never has there existed in
the world such a social power binding man to man and commanding each to
take and bear the other's sorrows as Christianity did. Your sins are my
sins, my sins are your sins. Such a conception of the Christian religion
had Tolstoi in common with Dostojevsky and Gogol, with the Holy Synod, with
the popular religious conscience of millions and millions of the living and
the dead, in the orthodox world, and with all the _jurodivi_, the fools for
Christ's sake. That is the religious spirit of the best of the Slavs.