Eighteen hundred years ago there appeared in the pagan Roman world
a strange, new teaching, which resembled nothing which preceded it,
and which was ascribed to the man Christ.
This new teaching was absolutely new, both in form and in contents,
for the European world, in the midst of which it arose, and
especially in the Roman world, where it was preached and became
diffused.
Amidst the elaborateness of the religious rules of Judaism,
where, according to Isaiah, there was rule upon rule, and amidst
the Roman legislation, which was worked out to a great degree of
perfection, there appeared a teaching which not only denied all
the divinities,--every fear of them, every divination and faith
in them,--but also all human institutions and every necessity
for them. In the place of all the rules of former faiths, this
teaching advanced only the model of an inner perfection of truth
and of love in the person of Christ, and the consequences of this
inner perfection, attainable by men,--the external perfection, as
predicted by the prophets,--the kingdom of God, in which all men
will stop warring, and all will be taught by God and united in love,
and the lion will lie with the lamb. In place of the threats of
punishments for the non-compliance with the rules, which were made
by the former laws, both religious and political, in place of the
enticement of rewards for fulfilling them, this teaching called men
to itself only by its being the truth. John vii. 17: "If any man
wants to know of this doctrine, whether it be of God, let him fulfil
it." John viii. 46: "If I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?"
Why do you seek to kill a man who has told you the truth? The truth
alone will free you. God must be professed in truth only. The whole
teaching will be revealed and will be made clear by the spirit of
truth. Do what I say, and you will know whether what I say is true.
No proofs were given of the teaching, except the truth, except the
correspondence of the teaching with the truth. The whole teaching
consisted in the knowledge of the truth and in following it, in a
greater and ever greater approximation to it, in matters of life.
According to this teaching, there are no acts which can justify a
man, make him righteous; there is only the model of truth which
attracts all hearts, for the inner perfection--in the person of
Christ, and for the outer--in the realization of the kingdom of
God. The fulfilment of the teaching is only in the motion along a
given path, in the approximation to perfection,--the inner,--the
imitation of Christ, and the outer,--the establishment of the
kingdom of God. A man's greater or lesser good, according to this
teaching, depends, not on the degree of perfection which he attains,
but on the greater or lesser acceleration of motion.
The motion toward perfection of the publican, of Zacchæus, of the
harlot, of the robber on the cross, is, according to this teaching,
a greater good than the immovable righteousness of the Pharisee.
A sheep gone astray is more precious than ninety-nine who have
not. The prodigal son, the lost coin which is found again, is more
precious, more loved by God than those who were not lost.
Every condition is, according to this teaching, only a certain step
on the road toward the unattainable inner and outer perfection, and
so has no meaning. The good is only in the motion toward perfection;
but the stopping at any stage whatsoever is only a cessation of the
good.
"Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth," and "No man,
having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the
kingdom of God." "Rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto
you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven."
"Be ye perfect as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect." "Seek
the kingdom of God and His righteousness."
The fulfilment of the teaching is only in unceasing motion,--in the
attainment of a higher and ever higher truth, and in an ever greater
realization of the same in oneself by means of an ever increasing
love, and outside of oneself by an ever greater realization of the
kingdom of God.
It is evident that, having appeared in the midst of the Jewish and
the pagan world, this teaching could not have been accepted by
the majority of men, who lived a life entirely different from the
one which this teaching demanded; and that it could not even be
comprehended in its full significance by those who accepted it, as
it was diametrically opposed to their former views.
Only by a series of misconceptions, blunders, one-sided
explanations, corrected and supplemented by generations of men,
was the meaning of the Christian teaching made more and more clear
to men. The Christian world-conception affected the Jewish and the
pagan conceptions, and the Jewish and pagan conceptions affected
the Christian world-conception. And the Christian, as being vital,
penetrated the reviving Jewish and pagan conceptions more and more,
and stood forth more and more clearly, freeing itself from the false
admixture, which was imposed upon it. Men came to comprehend the
meaning better and better, and more and more realized it in life.
The longer humanity lived, the more and more was the meaning of
Christianity made clear to it, as indeed it could not and cannot be
otherwise with any teaching about life.
The subsequent generations corrected the mistakes of their
predecessors, and more and more approached the comprehension of
its true meaning. Thus it has been since the earliest times of
Christianity. And here, in the earliest times, there appeared men,
who began to assert that the meaning which they ascribed to the
teaching was the only true one, and that as a proof of it served
the supernatural phenomena which confirmed the correctness of their
comprehension.
It was this that was the chief cause, at first, of the failure to
comprehend the teaching, and later, of its complete corruption.
It was assumed that Christ's teaching was not transmitted to men
like any other truth, but in a special, supernatural manner, so
that the truth of the comprehension of the teaching was not proved
by the correspondence of what was transmitted with the demands of
reason and of the whole human nature, but by the miraculousness of
the transmission, which served as an incontrovertible proof of the
correctness of the comprehension. This proposition arose from a
lack of comprehension, and its consequence was an impossibility of
comprehending.
This began with the very first times, when the teaching was still
understood incompletely and often perversely, as we may see from the
gospels and from the Acts. The less the teaching was understood, the
more obscurely did it present itself, and the more necessary were
the external proofs of its veracity. The proposition about not doing
unto another what one does not wish to have done to oneself did
not need any proof by means of miracles, and there was no need for
demanding belief in this proposition, because it is convincing in
itself, in that it corresponds to both man's reason and nature, but
the proposition as to Christ being God had to be proved by means of
miracles, which are absolutely incomprehensible.
The more obscure the comprehension of Christ's teaching was, the
more miraculous elements were mixed in with it; and the more
miraculous elements were mixed in, the more did the teaching deviate
from its meaning and become obscure; and the more it deviated from
its meaning and became obscure, the more strongly it was necessary
to assert one's infallibility, and the less did the teaching become
comprehensible.
We can see from the gospels, the Acts, the epistles, how from the
earliest times the failure to comprehend the teaching called forth
the necessity of proving its truth by means of the miraculous and
the incomprehensible.
According to the Acts, this began with the meeting of the disciples
at Jerusalem, who assembled to settle the question which had arisen
as to baptizing or not baptizing the uncircumcised who were still
eating meats offered to idols.
The very putting of the question showed that those who were
discussing it did not understand the teaching of Christ, who
rejected all external rites--ablutions, purifications, fasts,
Sabbaths. It says directly that not the things which enter a man's
mouth, but those which come out of his heart, defile him, and so the
question as to the baptism of the uncircumcised could have arisen
only among men who loved their teacher, dimly felt His greatness,
but still very obscurely comprehended the teaching itself. And so it
was.
In proportion as the members of the assembly did not understand
the teaching, they needed an external confirmation of their
incomplete understanding. And so, to solve the question, the very
putting of which shows the failure to comprehend the teaching,
the strange words, "It has seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to
us," which were in an external manner to confirm the justice of
certain establishments, and which have caused so much evil, were,
as described in the Book of Acts, for the first time pronounced at
this meeting, that is, it was asserted that the justice of what they
decreed was testified to by the miraculous participation of the Holy
Ghost, that is, of God, in this solution. But the assertion that
the Holy Ghost, that is, God, spoke through the apostles, had again
to be proved. And for this it was necessary to assert that on the
day of Pentecost the Holy Ghost came down in the shape of tongues
of fire on those who asserted this. (In the description the descent
of the Holy Ghost precedes the assembly, but the Acts were written
down much later than either.) But the descent of the Holy Ghost
had to be confirmed for those who had not seen the tongues of fire
(though it is incomprehensible why a tongue of fire burning above
a man's head should prove that what a man says is an indisputable
truth), and there were needed new miracles, cures, resurrections,
putting to death, and all those offensive miracles, with which the
Acts are filled, and which not only can never convince a man of the
truth of the Christian teaching, but can only repel him from it. The
consequence of such a method of confirmation was this, that the more
these confirmations of the truth by means of stories of miracles
heaped up upon one another, the more did the teaching itself depart
from its original meaning, and the less comprehensible did it become.
Thus it has been since the earliest times, and it has been
increasingly so all the time, until it logically reached in our
time the dogmas of the transubstantiation and of the infallibility
of the Pope, or of the bishops, or of the writings, that is,
something absolutely incomprehensible, which has reached the point
of absurdity and the demand for a blind faith, not in God, not in
Christ, not even in the teaching, but in a person, as is the case in
Catholicism, or in several persons, as in Orthodoxy, or in a book,
as in Protestantism. The more Christianity became diffused, and the
greater was the crowd of unprepared men which it embraced, the less
it was understood, the more definitely was the infallibility of
the comprehension asserted, and the less did it become possible to
understand the true meaning of the teaching. As early as the time of
Constantine the whole comprehension of the teaching was reduced to a
résumé, confirmed by the worldly power,--a résumé of disputes which
took place in a council,--to a symbol of faith, in which it says, I
believe in so and so, and so and so, and finally, in the one, holy,
catholic, and apostolic church, that is, in the infallibility of
those persons who call themselves the church, so that everything
was reduced to this, that a man no longer believes in God, nor in
Christ, as they have been revealed to him, but in what the church
commands him to believe.
But the church is holy,--the church was founded by Christ. God
could not have left it to men to give an arbitrary interpretation
to His teaching,--and so He established the church. All these
expositions are to such an extent unjust and bold that one feels
some compunction in overthrowing them.
There is nothing but the assertion of the churches to show that God
or Christ founded anything resembling what the churchmen understand
by church.
In the Gospel there is an indication against the church, as an
external authority, and this indication is most obvious and clear in
that place where it says that Christ's disciples should not call any
one teachers and fathers. But nowhere is there anything said about
the establishment of what the churchmen call a church.
In the gospels the word "church" is used twice,--once, in the
sense of an assembly of men deciding a dispute; the other time, in
connection with the obscure words about the rock, Peter, and the
gates of hell. From these two mentions of the word "church," which
has the meaning of nothing but an assembly, they deduce what we now
understand by the word "church."
But Christ could certainly not have founded a church, that is,
what we now understand by the word, because neither in Christ's
words, nor in the conceptions of the men of that time, was there
anything resembling the concept of a church, as we know it now, with
its sacraments, its hierarchy, and, above all, its assertion of
infallibility.
The fact that men named what was formed later by the same word
which Christ had used in respect to something else, does in no way
give them the right to assert that Christ established the one, true
church.
Besides, if Christ had really founded such an institution as
the church, on which the whole doctrine and the whole faith are
based, He would most likely have expressed this establishment in
such definite and clear words, and would have given the one, true
church, outside of the stories about the miracles, which are used
in connection with every superstition, such signs as to leave no
doubts concerning its authenticity; there is nothing of the kind,
but there are now, as there have been, all kinds of institutions
which, each of them, call themselves the one, true church.
The Catholic catechism says: "_L'église est la société de fidèles
établie par notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, répandue sur toute la terre
et soumise à l'autorité des pasteurs légitimes, principalement notre
Saint Père--le Pape_," meaning by "_pasteurs légitimes_" a human
institution, which has the Pope at its head and which is composed
of certain persons who are connected among themselves by a certain
organization.
The Orthodox catechism says: "The church is a society, established
by Jesus Christ upon earth, united among themselves into one whole
by the one, divine teaching and the sacraments, under the guidance
and management of the God-established hierarchy," meaning by
"God-established hierarchy" the Greek hierarchy, which is composed
of such and such persons, who are to be found in such and such
places.
The Lutheran catechism says: "The church is holy Christianity,
or an assembly of all believers, under Christ, their chief, in
which the Holy Ghost through the Gospel and the sacraments offers,
communicates, and secures divine salvation," meaning, by this, that
the Catholic Church has gone astray and has fallen away, and that
the true tradition is preserved in Lutheranism.
For the Catholics the divine church coincides with the Roman
hierarchy and the Pope. For the Greek Orthodox the divine church
coincides with the establishment of the Eastern and the Russian
Church.[8] For the Lutherans the divine church coincides with the
assembly of men who recognize the Bible and Luther's catechism.
[8] Khomyakóv's definition of the church, which has some currency
among Russians, does not mend matters, if we recognize with
Khomyakóv that the Orthodox is the one true church. Khomyakóv
asserts that the church is an assembly of men (of all, both the
clergy and the congregation) united in love, and that the truth
is revealed only to those who are united in love (Let us love one
another, so that in agreement of thought, and so forth), and that
such a church is the one which, in the first place, recognizes
the Nicene symbol, and, in the second, after the division of the
churches, does not recognize the Pope and the new dogmas. But with
such a definition of the church there appears a still greater
difficulty in harmonizing, as Khomyakóv wants to, the church which
is united in love with the church which recognizes the Nicene symbol
and the justice of Photius. Thus Khomyakóv's assertion that this
church, which is united in love and so is holy, is the church as
professed by the Greek hierarchy, is still more arbitrary than the
assertions of the Catholics and of the ancient Orthodox. If we admit
the concept of the church in the sense which Khomyakóv gives to it,
that is, as an assembly of men united in love and in truth, then
everything a man can say in relation to this assembly is, that it is
very desirable to be a member of such an assembly, if such exists,
that is, to be in love and truth; but there are no external signs
by which it would be possible to count oneself or another in with
this holy assembly, or to exclude oneself from it, as no external
institution can correspond to this concept.--_Author's Note._
Speaking of the origin of Christianity, men who belong to one or the
other of the existing churches generally use the word "church" in
the singular, as though there has been but one church. But this is
quite untrue. The church, as an institution which asserts of itself
that it is in possession of the unquestionable truth, appeared only
when it was not alone, but there were at least two of them.
So long as the believers agreed among themselves, and the assembly
was one, it had no need of asserting that it was the church. Only
when the believers divided into opposite parties, which denied one
another, did there appear the necessity for each side to assert its
authenticity, ascribing infallibility to itself. The concept of the
one church arose only from this, that, when two sides disagreed and
quarrelled, each of them, calling the other a heresy, recognized
only its own as the infallible church.
If we know that there was a church, which in the year 51 decided
to receive the uncircumcised, this church made its appearance only
because there was another church, that of the Judaizing, which had
decided not to receive the uncircumcised.
If there now is a Catholic Church, which asserts its infallibility,
it does this only because there are the Græco-Russian, Orthodox,
Lutheran Churches, each of which asserts its own infallibility, and
thus rejects all the other churches. Thus the one church is only a
fantastic conception, which has not the slightest sign of reality.
As an actual, historical phenomenon there have existed only many
assemblies of men, each of which has asserted that it is the one
church, established by Christ, and that all the others, which call
themselves churches, are heresies and schisms.
The catechisms of the most widely diffused churches, the Catholic,
the Orthodox, and the Lutheran, say so outright.
In the Catholic catechism it says: "_Quels sont ceux, qui sont hors
de l'église? Les infidèles, les hérétiques, les schismatiques._"
As schismatics are regarded the so-called Orthodox. The Lutherans
are considered to be heretics; thus, according to the Catholic
catechism, the Catholics alone are in the church.
In the so-called Orthodox catechism it says: "By the one church of
Christ is meant nothing but the Orthodox, which remains in complete
agreement with the œcumenical church. But as to the Roman Church
and the other confessions" (the church does not even mention the
Lutherans and others), "they cannot be referred to the one, true
church, since they have themselves separated from it."
According to this definition the Catholics and Lutherans are outside
the church, and in the church are only the Orthodox.
But the Lutheran catechism runs as follows: "_Die wahre Kirche wird
daran erkannt, dass in ihr das Wort Gottes lauter und rein ohne
Menschenzusätze gelehrt und die Sacramente treu nach Christi
Einsetzung gewahrt werden_."
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 are
only the Protestants.
The Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost has uninterruptedly
operated in their hierarchy; the Orthodox assert that the same Holy
Ghost has operated in their hierarchy; the Arians asserted that the
Holy Ghost operated in their hierarchy (this they asserted with as
much right as the now ruling churches assert it); the Protestants of
every description, Lutherans, Reformers, Presbyterians, Methodists,
Swedenborgians, Mormons, assert that the Holy Ghost operates only in
their assemblies.
If the Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost during the division of
the Arian and of the Greek Churches left the apostatizing churches
and remained only in the one, true church, the Protestants of
every denomination can with the same right assert that during the
separation of their church from the Catholic the Holy Ghost left the
Catholic Church and passed over to the one which they recognize. And
so they do.
Every church deduces its profession through an uninterrupted
tradition from Christ and the apostles. And, indeed, every Christian
confession, arising from Christ, must have inevitably reached the
present generation through a certain tradition. But this does not
prove that any one of these traditions, excluding all the others, is
indubitably the correct one.
Every twig on the tree goes uninterruptedly back to the root; but
the fact that every twig comes from the same root does in no way
prove that there is but one twig. The same is true of the churches.
Every church offers precisely the same proofs of its succession
and even of the miracles in favour of its own authenticity; thus
there is but one strict and precise definition of what the church
is (not as something fantastic, which we should like it to be, but
as something which in reality exists), and this is: the church is
an assembly of men, who assert that they, and they only, are in the
full possession of the truth.
It was these assemblies, which later on, with the aid of the support
of the temporal power, passed into mighty institutions, that were
the chief impediments in the dissemination of the true comprehension
of Christ's teaching.
Nor could it be otherwise: the chief peculiarity of Christ's
teaching, as distinguished from all the former teachings, consisted
in this, that the men who accepted it tried more and more to
understand and fulfil the teaching, whereas the church doctrine
asserted the full and final comprehension and fulfilment of this
teaching.
However strange it may seem to us people educated in the false
doctrine about the church as a Christian institution, and in the
contempt for heresy, it was only in what is called heresy that there
was true motion, that is, true Christianity, and it ceased to be
such when it stopped its motion in these heresies and became itself
arrested in the immovable forms of the church.
Indeed, what is a heresy? Read all the theological works which treat
about heresies, a subject which is the first to present itself for
definition, since every theology speaks of the true teaching amidst
the surrounding false teachings, that is, heresies, and you will
nowhere find anything resembling a definition of heresy.
As a specimen of that complete absence of any semblance of a
definition of what is understood by the word "heresy" may serve
the opinion on this subject expressed by the learned historian
of Christianity, E. de Pressensé, in his _Histoire du Dogme_,
with the epigraph, "_Ubi Christus, ibi Ecclesia_" (Paris, 1869).
This is what he says in his introduction: "_Je sais que l'on nous
conteste le droit de califier 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
ces scrupules, car ils n'iraient à rien moins qu'à enlever au
christianisme tout caractère distinctif._"
And after saying that after Constantine the church actually misused
its power in defining the dissenters as heretics and persecuting
them, he passes judgment on the early times and says:
"_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 resources
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 fond 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 revèle dans les croyances essentielles, se retrouve
pour repousser telles ou telles tendances, ne seront-nous pas en
droit de conclure que ces tendances étaient en désaccord 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'église les traits
caractéristiques de l'une des religions du passé? Pour dire que
le gnosticisme ou l'ebionitisme sont les formes légitimes de la
pensée chrétienne, il faut dire hardiment qu'il n'y a pas de pensée
chrétienne, ni de caractère specifique qui la fasse reconnaître.
Sous prétexte de l'élargir on la dissent. Personne, au temps de
Platon, n'eut osé de couvrir de son nom, une doctrine qui n'eut pas
fait place à la théorie des idées, et l'on eut 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 et une doctrine qui s'appelle le christianisme elle peut
avoir ses hérésies._"
The whole discussion of the author reduces itself to this, that
every opinion which is not in agreement with a code of dogmas
professed by us at a given time is a heresy; but at a given time and
in a given place people profess something, and this profession of
something in some place cannot be a criterion of the truth.
Everything reduces itself to this, that "_Ubi Christus, ibi
Ecclesia_;" but Christ is where we are. Every so-called heresy, by
recognizing as the truth what it professes, can in a similar manner
find in the history of the churches a consistent explanation of what
it professes, using for itself all the arguments of De Pressensé and
calling only its own confession truly Christian, precisely what all
the heresies have been doing.
The only definition of heresy (the word ἁίρεσις means
_part_) is the name given by an assembly of men to every judgment
which rejects part of the teaching, as professed by the assembly.
A more particular meaning, which more frequently than any other is
ascribed to heresy, is that of an opinion which rejects the church
doctrine, as established and supported by the worldly power.
There is a remarkable, little known, very large work
(_Unpartheyische Kirchen und Ketzer-Historia_, 1729), by Gottfried
Arnold, which treats directly on this subject and which shows all
the illegality, arbitrariness, senselessness, and cruelty of using
the word "heresy" in the sense of rejection. This book is an attempt
at describing the history of Christianity in the form of a history
of the heresies.
In the introduction the author puts a number of questions: (1)
regarding those who make heretics (_von den Ketzermachern selbst_);
(2) concerning those who were made heretics; (3) concerning the
subjects of heresy; (4) concerning the method of making heretics,
and (5) concerning the aims and consequences of making heretics.
In connection with each of these points he puts dozens of questions,
answers to which he later gives from the works of well-known
theologians, but he chiefly leaves it to the reader himself to
make the deduction from the exposition of the whole book. I shall
quote the following as samples of these questions, which partly
contain the answers. In reference to the fourth point, as to how
heretics are made, he says in one of his questions (the seventh):
"Does not all history show that the greatest makers of heretics and
the masters of this work were those same wise men from whom the
Father has hidden His secrets, that is, the hypocrites, Pharisees,
and lawyers, or entirely godless and corrupt people?" Questions 20
and 21: "And did not, in the most corrupt times of Christianity,
the hypocrites and envious people reject those very men who were
particularly endowed by God with great gifts, and who in the time
of pure Christianity would have been highly esteemed? And, on
the contrary, would not these men, who during the decadence of
Christianity elevated themselves above everything and recognized
themselves to be the teachers of the purest Christianity, have
been recognized, in apostolic times, as the basest heretics and
antichristians?"
Expressing in these questions this thought, among others, that the
verbal expression of the essence of faith, which was demanded by the
church, and a departure from which was considered a heresy, could
never completely cover the world-conception of the believer, and
that, therefore, the demand for an expression of faith by means of
particular words was the cause of heresy, he says, in Questions 21
and 33:
"And if the divine acts and thoughts present themselves to a man as
so great and profound that he does not find corresponding words in
which to express them, must he be recognized as a heretic, if he is
not able precisely to express his ideas? And is not this true, that
in the early times there was no heresy, because the Christians did
not judge one another according to verbal expressions, but according
to the heart and acts, in connection with a complete liberty of
expression, without fear of being recognized as a heretic? Was it
not a very common and easy method with the church," he says in
Question 21, "when the clergy wanted to get rid of a person or ruin
him, to make him suspected as regards his doctrine and to throw over
him the cloak of heresy, and thus to condemn and remove him?
"Though it is true that amidst the so-called heretics there were
errors and sins, yet it is not less true and obvious from the
numberless examples here adduced" (that is, in the history of the
church and of heresy), he says farther on, "that there has not been
a single sincere and conscientious man with some standing who has
not been ruined by the churchmen out of envy or for other causes."
Thus, nearly two hundred years ago, was the significance of heresy
understood, and yet this conception continues to exist until the
present time. Nor can it fail to exist, so long as there is a
concept of the church. Heresy is the reverse of the church. Where
there is the church, there is also heresy. The church is an assembly
of men asserting that they are in possession of the indisputable
truth. Heresy is the opinion of people who do not recognize the
indisputableness of the church truth.
Heresy is a manifestation of motion in the church, an attempt at
destroying the ossified assertion of the church, an attempt at a
living comprehension of the teaching. Every step of moving forward,
of comprehending and fulfilling the teaching has been accomplished
by the heretics: such heretics were Tertullian, and Origen, and
Augustine, and Luther, and Huss, and Savonarola, and Chelcický, and
others. Nor could it be otherwise.
A disciple of Christ, whose teaching consists in an eternally
greater and greater comprehension of the teaching and in a greater
and greater fulfilment of it, in a motion toward perfection,
cannot, for the very reason that he is a disciple of Christ, assert
concerning himself or concerning any one else, that he fully
understands Christ's teaching and fulfils it; still less can he
assert this concerning any assembly.
No matter at what stage of comprehension and perfection a disciple
of Christ may be, he always feels the insufficiency of his
comprehension and of his fulfilment, and always strives after a
greater comprehension and fulfilment. And so the assertion about
myself or about an assembly, that I, or we, possess the complete
comprehension of Christ's teaching, and completely fulfil it, is a
renunciation of the spirit of Christ's teaching.
No matter how strange this may seem, the churches, as churches, have
always been, and cannot help but be, institutions that are not only
foreign, but even directly hostile, to Christ's teaching. With good
reason Voltaire called the church "_l'infâme_;" with good reason
all, or nearly all, the Christian so-called sects have recognized
the church to be that whore of whom Revelation prophesies; with good
reason the history of the church is the history of the greatest
cruelties and horrors.
The churches, as churches, are not certain institutions which have
at their base the Christian principle, though slightly deviated
from the straight path, as some think; the churches, as churches,
as assemblies, which assert their infallibility, are antichristian
institutions. Between the churches, as churches, and Christianity
there is not only nothing in common but the name, but they are
two absolutely divergent and mutually hostile principles. One is
pride, violence, self-assertion, immobility, and death; the other is
meekness, repentance, humility, motion, and life.
It is impossible at the same time to serve both masters,--one or the
other has to be chosen.
The servants of the churches of all denominations have tried,
especially of late, to appear as advocates of motion in
Christianity; they make concessions, wish to mend the abuses which
have stolen into the church, and say that for the sake of the
abuses we ought not to deny the principle of the Christian church
itself, which alone can unite all men and be a mediator between
men and God. But all this is not true. The churches have not only
never united, but have always been one of the chief causes of the
disunion of men, of the hatred of one another, of wars, slaughters,
inquisitions, nights of St. Bartholomew, and so forth, and the
churches never serve as mediators between men and God, which is,
indeed, unnecessary and is directly forbidden by Christ, who has
revealed the teaching directly to every man, and they put up dead
forms in the place of God, and not only fail to reveal God to man,
but even conceal Him from them. Churches which have arisen from the
failure to comprehend, and which maintain this lack of comprehension
by their immobility, cannot help persecuting and oppressing every
comprehension of the teaching. They try to conceal this, but this is
impossible, because every motion forward along the path indicated by
Christ destroys their existence.
As one hears and reads the articles and sermons, in which the church
writers of modern times of all denominations speak of Christian
truths and virtues, as one hears and reads these clever discussions,
admonitions, confessions, which have been worked out by the ages,
and which sometimes look very much as though they were sincere,
one is prepared to doubt that the churches could be hostile to
Christianity: "It certainly cannot be that these people, who
have produced such men as Chrysostom, Fénelon, Butler, and other
preachers of Christianity, should be hostile to it." One feels like
saying: "The churches may have deviated from Christianity, may be in
error, but cannot be hostile to it." But as one looks at the fruits,
in order to judge the tree, as Christ has taught us to do, and sees
that their fruits have been evil, that the consequence of their
activity has been the distortion of Christianity, one cannot help
but feel that, no matter how good the men have been, the cause of
the churches in which they have taken part has not been Christian.
The goodness and the deserts of all these men, who served the
churches, were the goodness and the deserts of men, but not of the
cause which they served. All these good men--like Francis d'Assisi
and Francis de Lobes, our Tíkhon Zadónski, Thomas à Kempis, and
others--were good men, in spite of their having served a cause which
is hostile to Christianity, and they would have been better and more
deserving still, if they had not succumbed to the error which they
served.
But why speak of the past, judge of the past, which may have been
falsely represented to us? The churches with their foundations and
with their activity are not a work of the past: the churches are now
before us, and we can judge of them directly, by their activity,
their influence upon men.
In what does the activity of the churches now consist? How do they
act upon men? What do the churches do in our country, among the
Catholics, among the Protestants of every denomination? In what
does their activity consist, and what are the consequences of their
activity?
The activity of our Russian, so-called Orthodox, Church is in full
sight. It is a vast fact, which cannot be concealed, and about which
there can be no dispute.
In what consists the activity of this Russian Church, this
enormous, tensely active institution, which consists of an army of
half a million, costing the nation tens of millions?
The activity of this church consists in using every possible means
for the purpose of instilling in the one hundred millions of the
Russian population those obsolete, backward faiths, which now have
no justification whatsoever, and which sometime in the past were
professed by people that are alien to our nation, and in which
hardly any one now believes, frequently even not those whose duty it
is to disseminate these false doctrines.
The inculcation of these alien, obsolete formulas of the Byzantine
clergy, which no longer have any meaning for the men of our time,
about the Trinity, the Holy Virgin, the sacraments, grace, and
so forth, forms one part of the activity of the Russian Church;
another part of its activity consists in the activity of maintaining
idolatry in the direct sense of the word,--worshipping holy relics
and images, bringing sacrifices to them, and expecting from them
the fulfilment of their wishes. I shall not speak of what is spoken
and written by the clergy with a shade of learning and liberalism
in the clerical periodicals, but of what actually is done by the
clergy over the breadth of the Russian land among a population of
one hundred million people. What do they carefully, persistently,
tensely, everywhere without exception, teach the people? What is
demanded of them on the strength of the so-called Christian faith?
[Illustration: Russian Peasants at Mass
_Photogravure from Drawing by Carl Buddeus_]
I will begin with the beginning, with the birth of a child: at
the birth of a child, the clergy teaches that a prayer has to be
read over the mother and the child, in order to purify them, since
without this prayer the mother who has given birth to a child
is accursed. For this purpose the priest takes the child in his
hands in front of the representations of the saints, which the
masses simply call gods, and pronounces exorcising words, and
thus purifies the mother. Then it is impressed on the parents,
and even demanded of them under threat of punishment in case of
non-fulfilment, that the child shall be baptized, that is, dipped
three times in water by the priest, in connection with which
incomprehensible words are pronounced and even less comprehensible
acts performed,--the smearing of various parts of the body with
oil, the shearing of the hair, and the blowing and spitting of the
sponsors on the imaginary devil. All this is supposed to cleanse
the child and make him a Christian. Then the parents are impressed
with the necessity of giving the holy sacrament to the child, that
is, of giving him under the form of bread and wine a particle of
Christ's body to eat, in consequence of which the child will receive
the grace of Christ, and so forth. Then it is demanded that this
child, according to his age, shall learn to pray. To pray means to
stand straight in front of the boards on which the faces of Christ,
the Virgin, the saints, are represented, and incline his head and
his whole body, and with his right hand, with fingers put together
in a certain form, to touch his brow, shoulders, and stomach,
and pronounce Church-Slavic words, of which all the children are
particularly enjoined to repeat, "Mother of God, Virgin, rejoice!"
etc. Then the pupil is impressed with the necessity of doing the
same, that is, crossing himself, in presence of any church or image;
then he is told that on holidays (holidays are days on which Christ
was born, though no one knows when that was, and circumcised, on
which the Mother of God died, the cross was brought, the image was
carried in, a saintly fool saw a vision, etc.,) he must put on his
best clothes and go to church, buy tapers there and place them in
front of images of saints, hand in little notes and commemorations
and loaves, that triangles may be cut in them, and then pray many
times for the health and welfare of the Tsar and the bishops, and
for himself and his acts, and then kiss the cross and the priest's
hand.
Besides this prayer he is enjoined to prepare himself at least
once a year for the holy sacrament. To prepare himself for the
holy sacrament means to go to church and tell the priest his sins,
on the supposition that his imparting his sins to a stranger will
completely cleanse him of his sins, and then to eat from a spoon a
bit of bread with wine, which purifies him even more. Then it is
impressed upon a man and a woman, who want their carnal intercourse
to be sacred, that they must come to church, put on metallic crowns,
drink potions, to the sound of singing walk three times around a
table, and that then their carnal intercourse will become sacred and
quite distinct from any other carnal intercourse.
In life people are impressed with the necessity of observing the
following rules: not to eat meat or milk food on certain days, on
other certain days to celebrate masses for the dead, on holidays to
receive the priest and give him money, and several times a year to
take the boards with the representations out of the church and carry
them on sashes over fields and through houses. Before death a man is
enjoined to eat from a spoon bread with wine, and still better, if
he has time, to have himself smeared with oil. This secures for him
happiness in the next world. After a man's death, his relatives are
enjoined, for the purpose of saving the soul of the defunct, to put
into his hands a printed sheet with a prayer; it is also useful to
have a certain book read over the dead body and the name of the dead
man pronounced several times in church.
All this is considered an obligatory faith for everybody.
But if one wants to care for his soul, he is taught, according to
this faith, that the greatest amount of blessedness is secured for
the soul in the world to come by contributing money for churches and
monasteries, by putting holy men thus under obligation to pray for
him. Other soul-saving measures, according to this faith, are the
visiting of monasteries and the kissing of miracle-working images
and relics.
According to this faith, miracle-working images and relics
concentrate in themselves particular holiness, strength, and grace,
and nearness to these objects--touching, kissing them, placing
tapers before them, crawling up to them--contributes very much to a
man's salvation, and so do masses, which are ordered before these
sacred objects.
It is this faith, and no other, which is called Orthodox, that is,
the right faith, and which has, under the guise of Christianity,
been impressed upon the people for many centuries by the exercise
of all kinds of force, and is now being impressed with particular
effort.
And let it not be said that the Orthodox teachers place the essence
of the teaching in something else, and that these are only ancient
forms which it is not considered right to destroy. That is not true:
throughout all of Russia, nothing but this faith has of late been
impressed upon the people with particular effort. There is nothing
else. Of something else they talk and write in the capitals, but
only this is being impressed on one hundred million of people, and
nothing else. The churchmen talk of other things, but they enjoin
only this with every means at their command.
All this, and the worship of persons and images, is introduced
into theologies, into catechisms; the masses are carefully taught
this theoretically, and, being hypnotized practically, with every
means of solemnity, splendour, authority, and violence, are made to
believe in this, and are jealously guarded against every endeavour
to be freed from these savage superstitions.
In my very presence, as I said in reference to my book, Christ's
teaching and his own words concerning non-resistance to evil were
a subject of ridicule and circus jokes, and the churchmen not only
did not oppose this, but even encouraged the blasphemy; but allow
yourself to say a disrespectful word concerning the monstrous idol,
which is blasphemously carried about in Moscow by drunken persons
under the name of the Iberian Virgin, and a groan of indignation
will be raised by these same churchmen. All that is preached is the
external cult of idolatry. Let no one say that one thing does not
interfere with the other, that "these ought ye to have done, and not
to have left the other undone," that "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 is
said of the Pharisees, who fulfilled all the external injunctions
of the law, and so the words, "whatsoever they bid you observe,
that observe," refer to works of charity and of goodness, and the
words, "but do ye not after their works, for they say, and do not,"
refer to the execution of ceremonies and to the omission of good
works, and have precisely the opposite meaning to what the churchmen
want to ascribe to this passage, when they interpret it as meaning
that ceremonies are to be observed. An external cult and serving
charity and truth are hard to harmonize; for the most part one thing
excludes the other. Thus it was with the Pharisees, and thus it is
now with the church Christians.
If a man can save himself through redemption, sacraments, prayer, he
no longer needs any good deeds.
The Sermon on the Mount, or the symbol of faith: it is impossible
to believe in both. And the churchmen have chosen the latter: the
symbol of faith is taught and read as a prayer in the churches; and
the Sermon on the Mount is excluded even from the Gospel teachings
in the churches, so that in the churches the parishioners never hear
it, except on the days when the whole Gospel is read. Nor can it
be otherwise: men who believe in a bad and senseless God, who has
cursed the human race and who has doomed His son to be a victim, and
has doomed a part of humanity to everlasting torment, cannot believe
in a God of love. A man who believes in God-Christ, who will come
again in glory to judge and punish the living and the dead, cannot
believe in Christ, who commands a man to offer his cheek to the
offender, not to judge, but to forgive, and to love our enemies. A
man who believes in the divine inspiration of the Old Testament and
the holiness of David, who on his death-bed orders the killing of
an old man who has offended him and whom he could not kill himself,
because he was bound by an oath (Book of Kings, ii. 3), and similar
abominations, of which the Old Testament is full, cannot believe
in Christ's moral law; a man who believes in the doctrine and the
preaching of the church about the compatibility of executions and
wars with Christianity, cannot believe in the brotherhood of men.
Above all else, a man who believes in the salvation of men through
faith, in redemption, or in the sacraments, can no longer employ
all his strength in the fulfilment in life of the moral teaching of
Christ.
A man who is taught by the church the blasphemous doctrine about his
not being able to be saved by his own efforts, but that there is
another means, will inevitably have recourse to this means, and not
to his efforts, on which he is assured it is a sin to depend. The
church doctrine, any church doctrine, with its redemption and its
sacraments, excludes Christ's teaching, and the Orthodox doctrine,
with its idolatry, does so especially.
"But the masses have always believed so themselves, and believe so
now," people will say to this. "The whole history of the Russian
masses proves this. It is not right to deprive the masses of their
tradition." In this does the deception consist. The masses at one
time, indeed, professed something like what the church professes
now, though it was far from being the same (among the masses,
there has existed, not only this superstition of the images, house
spirits, relics, and the seventh Thursday after Easter, with its
wreaths and birches, but also a deep moral, vital comprehension
of Christianity, which has never existed in the whole church, and
was met with only in its best representatives); but the masses, in
spite of all the obstacles, which the government and the church
have opposed to them, have long ago in their best representatives
outlived this coarse stage of comprehension, which is proved by
the spontaneous birth of rationalistic sects, with which one meets
everywhere, with which Russia swarms at the present time, and with
which the churchmen struggle in vain. The masses move on in the
consciousness of the moral, vital side of Christianity. And it is
here that the church appears with its failure to support, and with
its intensified inculcation of an obsolete paganism in its ossified
form, with its tendency to push the masses back into that darkness,
from which they are struggling with so much effort to get out.
"We do not teach the masses anything new, but only what they believe
in, and that in a more perfect form," say the churchmen.
This is the same as tying up a growing chick and pushing it back
into the shell from which it has come.
I have often been struck by this observation, which would be
comical, if its consequences were not so terrible, that men, taking
hold of each other in a circle, deceive one another, without being
able to get out of the enchanted circle.
The first question, the first doubt of a Russian who is beginning
to think, is the question about the miracle-working images and,
above all, the relics: "Is it true that they are imperishable, and
that they work miracles?" Hundreds and thousands of men put these
questions to themselves and are troubled about their solution,
especially because the bishops, metropolitans, and all the
dignitaries kiss the relics and the miracle-working images. Ask the
bishops and the dignitaries why they do so, and they will tell you
that they do so for the sake of the masses, and the masses worship
the images and relics, because the bishops and dignitaries do so.
The activity of the Russian Church, in spite of its external
veneer of modernness, learning, spirituality, which its members
are beginning to assume in their writings, articles, clerical
periodicals, and sermons, consists not only in keeping the masses
in that consciousness of rude and savage idolatry, in which they
are, but also in intensifying and disseminating superstition
and religious ignorance, by pushing out of the masses the vital
comprehension of Christianity, which has been living in them by the
side of the idolatry.
I remember, I was once present in the monastery bookstore of Óptin
Cloister, when an old peasant was choosing some religious books for
his grandson, who could read. The monk kept pushing the description
of relics, holidays, miraculous images, psalters, etc., into his
hands. I asked the old man if he had the Gospel. "No." "Give him the
Russian Gospel," I said to the monk. "That is not proper for him,"
said the monk.
This is in compressed form the activity of our church.
"But this is only true in barbarous Russia," a European or American
reader will say. And such an opinion will be correct, but only in
the measure in which it refers to the government which aids the
church in accomplishing its stultifying and corrupting influence in
Russia.
It is true that nowhere in Europe is there such a despotic
government and one to such a degree in accord with the ruling
church, and so the participation of the power in the corruption of
the masses in Russia is very strong; but it is not true that the
Russian Church in its influence upon the masses in any way differs
from any other church.
The churches are everything the same, and if the Catholic, the
Anglican, and the Lutheran Churches have not in hand such an
obedient government as is the Russian, this is not due to the
absence of any desire to make use of the same.
The church, as a church, no matter what it may be, Catholic,
Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian,--every church, insomuch as it
is a church, cannot help but tend toward the same as the Russian
Church,--toward concealing the true meaning of Christ's teaching
and substituting in its place its own doctrine, which does not
put a person under any obligations, excludes the possibility of
understanding the true activity of Christ's teaching, and, above
all else, justifies the existence of priests who are living at the
expense of the nation.
Has Catholicism been doing anything else with its prohibition of the
reading of the Gospel, and with its demand for unreasoning obedience
to the ecclesiastic guides and the infallible Pope? Does Catholicism
preach anything different from what the Russian Church preaches?
We have here the same external cult, the same relics, miracles,
and statues, the miracle-working Notre-Dames, and processions. The
same elatedly misty judgments concerning Christianity in books and
sermons, and, when it comes to facts, the same maintenance of a
coarse idolatry.
And is not the same being done in Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and in
every Protestantism which has formed itself into a church? The same
demands from the congregation for a belief in dogmas which were
expressed in the fourth century and have lost all meaning for the
men of our time, and the same demand for idolatry, if not before
relics and images, at least before the Sabbath and the letter of
the Bible. It is still the same activity, which is directed upon
concealing the real demands of Christianity and substituting for
them externals, which do not put a man under any obligations, and
"cant," as the English beautifully define the occupation to which
they are particularly subject. Among the Protestants this activity
is particularly noticeable, since they do not even have the excuse
of antiquity. And does not the same take place in the modern
Revivalism,--the renovated Calvinism, Evangelism,--out of which has
grown up the Salvation Army? Just as the condition of all the church
doctrines is the same in reference to Christ's teaching, so are also
their methods.
Their condition is such that they cannot help but strain all their
efforts, in order to conceal the teaching of Christ, whose name they
use.
The incompatibility of all the church confessions with Christ's
teaching is such that it takes especial efforts to conceal this
incompatibility from men. Indeed, we need but stop and think of
the condition of any adult, not only cultured, but even simple,
man of our time, who has filled himself with conceptions, which
are in the air, from the fields of geology, physics, chemistry,
cosmography, history, when he for the first time looks consciously
at the beliefs, instilled in him in childhood and supported by the
churches, that God created the world in six days; that there was
light before the sun; that Noah stuck all the animals into his ark,
and so forth; that Jesus is the same God, the son, who created
everything before this; that this God descended upon earth for
Adam's sin; that He rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and sits
on the right of the Father, and will come in the clouds to judge the
world, and so forth.
All these propositions, which were worked out by the men of the
fourth century and had a certain meaning for the men of that time,
have no meaning for the men of the present. The men of our time may
repeat these words with their lips, but they cannot believe, because
these words, like the statements that God lives in heaven, that the
heavens opened and a voice said something from there, that Christ
rose from the dead and flew somewhere to heaven and will again come
from somewhere in the clouds, and so forth, have no meaning for us.
It was possible for a man, who regarded the heaven as a finite, firm
vault, to believe, or not, that God created the heaven, that heaven
was opened, that Christ flew to heaven; but for us these words have
no meaning whatsoever. Men of our time can only believe that they
must believe so; but they cannot believe in what has no meaning for
them.
But if all these expressions are to have a figurative meaning and
are emblems, we know that, in the first place, not all churchmen
agree in this, but that, on the contrary, the majority insist on
understanding Holy Scripture in a direct sense, and, secondly, that
these interpretations are varied and not confirmed by anything.
But even if a man wishes to make himself believe in the doctrine
of the churches, as it is imparted,--the general diffusion of
knowledge and of the Gospels, and the intercourse of men of various
denominations among themselves, form for this another, even more
insuperable obstacle.
A man of our time need but buy himself a Gospel for three kopeks
and read Christ's clear words to the woman of Samaria, which are
not subject to any other interpretation, about the Father needing
no worshippers in Jerusalem, neither in this mountain, nor in that,
worshippers in spirit and in truth, or the words about a Christian's
being obliged to pray, not in temples, as the pagans do, and in
the sight of all, but in secret, that is, in his closet, or that a
disciple of Christ must not call any one father or teacher,--a man
needs but read these words, to become convinced that no ecclesiastic
pastors, who call themselves teachers in opposition to Christ's
teaching, and who quarrel among themselves, form an authority,
and that that which the churchmen teach us is not Christianity.
But more than that: if a man of our time continues to believe in
miracles and does not read the Gospel, his mere intercourse with men
of other denominations and faiths, which has become so easy in our
time, will make him doubt in the authenticity of his faith. It was
all very well for a man who never saw any men of another faith than
his own to believe that his own faith was the correct one; but a
thinking man need only come in contact, as he now does all the time,
with equally good and equally bad men of various denominations,
which condemn the doctrines of one another, in order to lose faith
in the truth of the religion which he professes. In our time only a
very ignorant man or one who is quite indifferent to the questions
of life, which are sanctified by religion, can stay in the church
faith.
[Illustration: Church of Vasili the Blessed, Moscow
_Photogravure from Drawing by E. Thérond_]
What cunning and what effort must be exerted by the churches, if, in
spite of all these conditions which are subversive of faith, they
are to continue building churches, celebrating masses, preaching,
teaching, converting, and, above all, receiving for it a fat income,
like all these priests, pastors, intendants, superintendents,
abbots, archdeacons, bishops, and archbishops.
Especial, supernatural efforts are needed. And such efforts, which
are strained more and more, are used by the churches. With us,
in Russia, they use (in addition to all other means) the simple,
coarse violence of the civil power, which is obedient to the church.
Persons who depart from the external expression of faith and who
give expression to it are either directly punished or deprived of
their rights; while persons who strictly adhere to the external
forms of faith are rewarded and given rights.
Thus do the Orthodox; but even all other churches, without
exception, use for this all such means, of which the chief is what
now is called hypnotization.
All the arts, from architecture to poetry, are put into action,
to affect the souls of men and to stultify them, and this action
takes place without interruption. Particularly evident is this
necessity of the hypnotizing action upon men, in order to bring them
to a state of stupefaction, in the activity of the Salvation Army,
which uses new, unfamiliar methods of horns, drums, songs, banners,
uniforms, processions, dances, tears, and dramatic attitudes.
But we are startled by them only because they are new methods. Are
not the old methods of the temples, with especial illumination,
with gold, splendour, candles, choirs, organs, bells, vestments,
lackadaisical sermons, and so forth, the same?
But, no matter how strong this action of hypnotization may be,
the chief and most deleterious activity of the churches does not
lie in this. The chief, most pernicious activity of the church
is the one which is directed to the deception of the children,
those very children of whom Christ said that it will be woe to him
who shall offend one of these little ones. With the very first
awakening of the child, they begin to deceive him and to impress
upon him with solemnity what those who impress do not believe in
themselves, and they continue to impress him, until the deception,
becoming a habit, is engrafted on the child's nature. The child is
methodically deceived in the most important matter of life, and when
the deception has so grown up with his life that it is difficult to
tear it away, there is revealed to him the whole world of science
and of reality, which can in no way harmonize with the beliefs
instilled in him, and he is left to make the best he can out of
these contradictions.
If we should set ourselves the task of entangling a man in such a
way that he should not be able with his sound reason to get away
from the two opposite world-conceptions, which have been instilled
in him since his childhood, we could not invent anything more
powerful than what is accomplished in the case of every young man
who is educated in our so-called Christian society.
What the churches do to people is terrible, but if we reflect
on their condition, we shall find that those men who form the
institution of the churches cannot act otherwise. The churches are
confronted with a dilemma,--the Sermon on the Mount, or the Nicene
Creed,--one excludes the other: if a man sincerely believes in the
Sermon on the Mount, the Nicene Creed, and with it the church and
its representatives, inevitably lose all meaning and significance
for him; but 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 will become superfluous to him. And so the
churches cannot help but use every possible effort to obscure the
meaning of the Sermon on the Mount and to attract people toward
itself. Only thanks to the tense activity of the churches in this
direction has the influence of the churches held itself until now.
Let a church for the shortest time arrest this action upon the
masses by means of hypnotizing them and deceiving the children, and
people will understand Christ's teaching. But the comprehension
of the teaching destroys the churches and their significance. And
so the churches do not for a moment interrupt the tense activity
and hypnotization of the adults and the deception of the children.
And it is this activity of the churches, which instils a false
comprehension of Christ's teaching in men, and serves as an obstacle
in its comprehension for the majority of so-called believers.