ΤΗ AUTHOR'S PREFACE HIS present book is extracted from a larger work, which exists in manuscript, and cannot be published in Russia. That work consists of four parts, namely: 1. An account of that course of my personal life, and of my thoughts, which led me to the conviction that in the Christian teaching lies the truth. 2. An investigation of the Christian teaching - first, according to the interpretation of the Greek Church solely; then, according to the interpretation of the Churches generally, and the interpretation of the apostles, councils, and so-called "Fathers." Also, an exposition of the falsity in these interpretations. 3. An investigation of the Christian teaching, based, not upon the above interpretations, but solely upon the words and deeds ascribed to Christ by the four Gospels. 4. An exposition of the real meaning of the Christian teaching, of the motives for its perversions, and of the consequences to which it should lead. From the third of these parts this present volume is condensed. I have there effected the fusion of the four Gospels into one, according to the real sense of the teaching. I had no need to digress from the order in which each Gospel is written, so that in my harmonisation the transpositions of verses, rather than being more, are less numerous than in the greater part of those known to me, and in our Grechoulevitch's version of the four Gospels. In my treatment of the Gospel of John there is no transposition, but all stands in the same order as in the original. My division of the Gospel into twelve chapters (or six, since each pair of the twelve may be taken as one) came about spontaneously from the nature of the teaching. The following is the purport of the chap ters: 1. Man is the son of the Infinite Source of Being; he is the son of this Father, not by the flesh but by the spirit. 2. And therefore, man must serve the Source of his being, in the spirit. 3. The life of all men has a divine Origin. This Origin only is sacred. 4. And therefore, man must serve this Source of all human life. This is the will of the Father. 5. Service of the Will of the Father of Life is lifegiving. 6. And therefore, it is not necessary to life that each man should satisfy his own will. 7. This present life in time is the food of the true life. 8. And therefore, the true life is outside time; it is in the present. 9. Time is an illusion in life; the life of the past and the future clouds men from the true life of the present. 10. And therefore, one must aim to destroy the deception arising from the past and future, the life in time. 11. The true life is that now present to us, common to all, and manifesting itself in love. 12. And therefore, he who lives by love now, in this present, becomes, through the common life of all men, at one with the Father, the source, the foundation of life. So that the chapters, in pairs, are related as cause and effect. Besides these twelve chapters, this exposition includes (a) The introduction of the first chapter of the Gospel of John, where the writer of the Gospel speaks, in his own name, as to the purport of the whole teaching: and (b) a portion of the same writer's Epistle (written probably before the Gospel); this containing the general sense to be derived from the preceding exposition. These two parts are not essential to the teaching. Although the former, as well as the latter of them, might be omitted without loss (the more so as they come in the name of John, and not of Christ), I have, nevertheless, kept them, because, to a straightforward understanding of the whole teaching, these parts, confirming each other and the whole, as against the strange commentaries of the Churches, yield the plainest evidence of the meaning to be put upon the teaching. At the beginning of each chapter, besides a brief indication of the subject, I had put words from the prayer taught by Jesus to His disciples, such as corresponded with the contents of the chapter. At the conclusion of my work I found, to my astonishment and joy, that the Lord's Prayer is nothing less than Christ's whole teaching, stated in most concise form, and in that same order in which I had already arranged the chapters, each phrase of the prayer corresponding to the purport and sequence of the chapters, as follows: 1. Our Father, 2. Which art in heaven, 3. Hallowed be Thy name, 4. Thy kingdom come, Man is the son of the Father. God is the infinite spiritual source of life. May the Source of Life be held holy. May His power be established over all men. 5. Thy will be done, as in May His will be fulfilled, as it heaven, 6. So also on earth. 7. Give us our daily bread 8. This day. 9. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, 10. And lead us not into temp- 11. But deliver us from evil, is in Himself, So also in the bodily life. The temporal life is the food of the true life. The true life is in the present. May the faults and errors of the past not hide this true life from us, And may they not lead us into delusion, So that no evil may come to us, And there shall be order, and strength, and reason. In that large third part from which this work is condensed, the Gospel according to the four Evangelists is presented in full. But in the rendering now given, all passages are omitted which treat of the following matters, namely, - John the Baptist's conception and birth, his imprisonment and death; Christ's birth, and his genealogy; his mother's flight with him into Egypt; his miracles at Cana and Capernaum; the casting out of devils; the walking on the sea; the cursing of the fig-tree; the healing of sick, and the raising of dead people; the resurrection of Christ Himself; and, finally, the reference to prophecies fulfilled in His life. These passages are omitted in this abridgment, because, containing nothing of the teaching, and describing only events which passed before, during, or after the period in which Jesus taught, they complicate the exposition. However one takes them, under any circumstance, they bring to the teaching of Jesus neither contradiction nor confirmation of its truth. Their sole significance for Christianity was that they proved the divinity of Jesus Christ for him who was not persuaded of this divinity beforehand. But they are useless to one whom stories of miracles are powerless to convince, and who, besides, doubts the divinity of Jesus as evidenced in His teaching. In the large work, every departure from the ordinary version, as well as every comment added to the text, and every omission, is made clear, and proved by the comparison of the various versions of the Gospels, from the examination of contexts, and finally, by considerations, philological and other. But in the present abridged rendering, all these arguments and refutations of the false understanding of the Churches, as well as the minute notes and quotations, are omitted; because, however true and exact they may be in their places, they cannot carry conviction as to the true understanding of the teaching. The justness of a conception of this kind is better proved, not by arguing particular points, but by its own unity, clearness, simplicity, fullness, as well as by its harmony with the inner feelings of all who seek truth. Speaking generally, in regard to what divergence there is between my rendering and the Church's authorized text, the reader must not forget that it is a gross error to represent the four Gospels, as is often done, to be books sacred in every verse and in every syllable. The reader must not forget that Jesus never Himself wrote a book, as did, for instance, Plato, Philo, or Marcus Aurelius; that He, moreover, did not, as Socrates did, transmit His teaching to informed and literate men, but spoke to a crowd of illiterate men; and that only a long time after His death men began to write down what they had heard from Him. The reader must not forget that a great number of such accounts have been written, from which, at first, the Churches selected three, and then another. Moreover, in selecting those which seemed to them the best according to the proverb, "No stick without knots," the Churches, out of the enormous heap of the Christian literature, have been forced to take in with their bargain a great many knots; so that the canonical Gospels contain nearly as many faulty passages as those Gospels rejected as apocryphal. The reader must not forget that it is the teaching of Christ which may be sacred, but in no way can a certain measure of verses and syllables be so; and that certain verses, from here to here, say, cannot be sacred merely because men say they are so. Moreover, the reader must not forget that these selected Gospels are, at any rate, the work of thousands of various brains and hands of men; that during centuries the Gospels have been selected, enlarged, and commented upon; that the most ancient copies which have come down to us, from the fourth century, are written straight on without punctuation, so that, even after the fourth and fifth centuries, they have been the subject of the most diverse readings; and that such variations in the Gospels may be counted up to fifty thousand. The reader must have all this present in mind in order to disengage himself from the opinion, so common among us, that the Gospels, in their present shape, have come to us directly from the Holy Spirit. The reader must not forget that, far from it being blamable to dis |