THE NOVELS AND OTHER WORKS OF LYOF N. TOLSTOÏ MY CONFESSION MY RELIGION THE GOSPEL IN BRIEF NEW YORK 1899 This One 7RDC-RP7-98N8 INTRODUCTION COUNT TOLSTOï's religious teachings are not allowed by the censorship to be published complete in Russia, but they are issued in a cheap pamphlet form printed in Geneva, Switzerland. This so-called Elpidin edition has been used in preparing the present translation of "My Confession," and "My Religion," or as it is called in the original, F Chom Moya Viera, "In What my Faith?" If it varies in any material respect from the English translation made some years ago through the medium of the French, it is in the line of greater simplicity. Count Tolstoï can hardly be called a stylist; he writes earnestly, convincingly, often eloquently, but never hesitates to repeat, so that the word or set of words will be found recurring again and again even in the same sentence. The French are stylists, and they modify, condense, and amplify till the semblance of form is sometimes lost, and the thought is transferred in a paraphrase. The plain figure is embroidered and covered with filigree. Nevertheless, the main thing in these essays is the thought. It is that which Count Tolstor so earnestly wishes to make known. As he says, he was in the same condition as the thief on the cross, and was saved by 1 The "Short Exposition of the Gospels," published separately in the same form, is only a part of Count Tolstor's "Gospel in Brief" which is included in the present volume. his faith. If the thief on the cross could have lived to preach he might have been a prototype of Paul; but Count Tolstor was not condemned to die without speaking, and he felt it his duty to tell the world what brought him happiness and peace. It was not to be supposed that his arraignment of a Church, which preached one thing and practised its opposite, would be permitted. The Orthodox Church of his own land stopped it easily enough by forbidding his book to be published and sold. Personally he was let alone, because he preached the gospel of non-resistance and disapproved of nihilistic violence. Elsewhere the reverend critics, avoiding the real question at issue, attacked him with more or less violence, or tried to minimize the effect of his prophet's word by calling him names. In fact, he has been treated with the same spirit as has animated the persecutors of the prophets since the beginning of the world. Count Tolstor tells in his "Confession" how he was led from nihilism in the real sense of the word to faith in the literal interpretation of Christ's words, and how he was saved from despair and brought to a joyful knowledge of the meaning of life. In "My Religion" he shows how he threw aside the Church interpretation and went to the original Greek, to Christ's own words, and how he was amazed to find how perfectly they answered the needs of his soul, when once they were stripped of fictitious and extraneous notions. Mr. Huntington Smith, the former translator of "My Confession," in his preface said : "The interpretation is not new in theory, but never before has it been carried out with so much zeal, so much determination, so much sincerity, and, granting the premises, with logic so unanswerable, as in this beautiful confession of faith. How movingly does he depict the doubts and fears of the searcher after the better life; how impressive his earnest inquiry for truth; how inspiring his confidence in the natural goodness as opposed to the natural depravity of man; how convincing his argument that the doctrine of Jesus is simple, practicable, and conducive to the highest happiness; how terrifying his enumeration of the sufferings of 'the martyrs to the doctrine of the world'; how pitiless his arraignment of the Church for its complacent indifference to the welfare of humanity here in this present stage of existence; how sublime his prophecy of the golden age when men shall dwell together in the bonds of love, and sin and suffering shall be no more the common lot of mankind! We read, and are thrilled with a divine emotion, but which of us is willing to accept the truth here unfolded as the veritable secret of life? "Shall we take seriously this eloquent enunciation of faith in humility, in self-denial, in fraternal love, or shall we regard it only as a beautiful and peaceful phase in the career of a man of genius who, after the storm and stress of a life of sin and suffering, has turned back to the ideals of youth and innocence, and sought to make them once more the objects of desire? Fanaticism, do you say? Ah, yes; but did not Jesus and his disciples practise just such fanaticism as this? Does any one deny that all that is best in this modern world (and there is so much of the best, after all), that all that is best has come from the great moral impulse generated by a little group of fanatics in an obscure corner of Asia eighteen centuries ago? That impulse we still |