cord breaks. I feel that I am losing, in my terror, the last remnant of my strength, and that my back is gradually sinking lower and lower. Another instant, and I shall fall.

Then all at once comes into my mind the thought that this cannot be true—it is a dream — I will awake. I strive to wake myself, and cannot. "What can I do? what can I do?" I ask myself, and as I put the question I look above.

Above stretches another gulf. I look into this abyss of heaven, and try to forget the abyss below, and I ́do actually forget it. The infinite depth repels and horrifies me; the infinite height attracts and satisfies me. I still hang on the last cords which have not yet slipped from under me, over the abyss; I know that I am hanging thus, but I look only upwards, and my terror leaves me. As happens in dreams, I hear a voice saying, "Look well; it is there!" My eyes pierce farther and farther into the infinity above, and I feel that it calms me. I remember all that has happened, and I remember how it happened - how I moved my legs, how I was left hanging in air, how I was horrified, and how I was saved from my horror by looking above. I ask myself, "And now, am I not hanging still?" and I feel in all my limbs, without looking, the support by which I am held. I perceive that I no longer hang, and that I do not fall, but have a fast hold. I question myself how it is that I hold on. I touch myself, I look around, and I see that under the middle of my body there passes a stay, and on looking up I find that I am lying perfectly balanced, and that it was this stay alone that held me up before.

As happens in dreams, the mechanism by which I am supported appears perfectly natural to me, a thing to be easily understood, and not to be doubted, although this mechanism has no apparent sense when I am awake. In my sleep I was even astonished that I had not understood this before. At my bedside stands a pillar, the solidity of which is beyond doubt, though there is nothing for it to stand on. From this pillar runs a cord,

somehow cunningly and at the same time simply fixed, and if I lie across this cord and look upward, there cannot be even a question of my falling. All this was clear to me, and I was glad and easy in my mind. It seemed as if some one said to me, "See that you remember!" And I awoke.

1882.

MY RELIGION

I

HAVE lived in the world fifty-five years, and after the fourteen or fifteen years of my childhood, for thirtyfive years of my life I was, in the proper acceptation of the word, a nihilist, not a socialist and revolutionist, as is generally understood by that word, but a nihilist in the sense of one who believed in nothing. Five years ago I came to believe in the doctrine of Christ, and my whole life underwent a sudden transformation. What I had once wished for I wished for no longer. What had once appeared to me good now became evil, and the evil of the past I beheld as good.

My condition was like that of a man who goes forth on some errand, and suddenly on the way decides that the matter is of no importance, and returns home. What was at first on his right hand is now on his left, and what was at his left hand is now on his right; his former desire to be as far as possible from home has changed into a desire to be as near to it as possible. The direction of my life and my desires were completely changed; good and evil had changed places. All this resulted from the fact that I understood the doctrine of Christ in a different way from that in which I had understood it before.

I do not care to expound the doctrine of Christ; I wish only to tell how it was that I came to understand what in this doctrine is most simple, clear, evident, indisputable, and appeals most to all men, and how this understanding refreshed my soul and gave me happiness and peace.

I do not care to expound the doctrine of Christ; I should wish only one thing: to do away with all exposition.

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All the Christian Churches have always maintained that all men, however unequal in education and intellect, -the wise and the foolish,—are equal before God; that divine truth is accessible to every one. Christ has even declared it to be the will of God that what is concealed from the wise shall be revealed to the simple.

Not every one is able to understand the mysteries of dogmatics, homiletics, patristics, liturgics, hermeneutics, apologetics; but every one is able and ought to understand what Christ said to the millions of simple and ignorant people who have lived, and who are living to-day. Now, the things that Christ said to all these simple people who could not avail themselves of the comments of Paul, of Clement, of Chrysostom, and of others, are just what I did not understand, and which, now that I have come to understand them, I wish to make plain to all.

The thief on the cross believed in Christ, and was saved. Would it have been bad or injurious to any one if the thief had not died on the cross, but had descended from it, and told all men how he believed in Christ?

Like the thief on the cross, I believed in the doctrine of Christ, and was saved. This is not a vain comparison, but a most accurate expression of my spiritual condition of horror and despair in the presence of life and death, in which I found myself formerly, and of that condition of happiness and peace in which I find myself

now.

Like the thief, I knew that my past and present life was vile; I saw that the majority of men about me lived in the same way. I knew, like the thief, that I was wretched and suffering, that all those about me suffered and were wretched; and I saw before me no escape from this condition but in death. As the thief was nailed to his cross, so was I nailed to this life of suffering and evil by an incomprehensible power. And as the thief saw before him, after the senseless and evil sufferings of life, the horrible shadows of death, so did I behold the same prospect.

In all this I was absolutely like the thief. But there

was a difference in our conditions; he was about to die, and I was still alive. The thief might believe that his salvation would be beyond the grave, while I had not only that before me, but also life this side the grave. I understood nothing of this life, it seemed to me frightful; and then suddenly I heard the words of Christ, and understood them; life and death ceased to seem evil, and instead of despair I tasted the joy and happiness that death could not take away.

Can it be harmful to any one, then, if I tell how this came about?

CHAPTER I

I HAVE written two large works explaining why I did not understand the doctrine of Christ, and why it became clear to me. “A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology" and a new translation of the four Gospels, followed by a Concordance. In these writings I seek methodically, step by step, to disentangle everything that conceals the truth from men; I translate the four Gospels anew, verse by verse, and I bring them together in a new concordance.

This work has lasted more than five years. Each year, each month, I discover new explanations and corroborations of the fundamental idea; I correct the errors which have crept in through haste and impulse, and I put the last touches to what I have already written. My life, of which only a small portion is before me, will doubtless end before I have finished my work; but I am convinced that the work will be of great service; so I shall do all that I can as long as I live.

Such was my prolonged outward work on theology and the Gospels, but my inward work, that which I propose to tell about in these pages, was of a very different nature. It was not a methodical exposition of theology and the text of the Gospels; it was an instantaneous removal of all that had hidden the meaning of the teaching, and an instantaneous illumination with the light of Truth.

It was an experience similar to that which might happen to a man who, following an erroneous model, should