The Gospel as the Basis of Life

With the large number of all kinds of societies and circles for the promotion of physical development and scientific and artistic self-education among the students, do we know of at least a few aesthetic circles aimed at promoting moral self-education? All these are questions to which reality provides answers to depressing bitterness. It is not difficult to explain why it is so. In political economy it is recognized by law that the cultivation of land always begins with less productive, but easier to work plots, and then passes on to more fertile soils, but requiring both more labor and greater expenditure to bring them into a cultivated state. We see the same thing in the field of education. And here they usually begin with the study of the phenomena that are the least complex, the least abundant in important consequences, in the sense of their influence on our actions, and perhaps only in the future will they pass on to the essential, fundamental phenomena, which require more attention and more work, but on the other hand have a more beneficial effect on life. Undoubtedly, it is easier to strengthen the physical organism of a child, to make it strong, enduring, dexterous, to enrich the mind of students with versatile knowledge, to develop in them a taste for the elegant, than to develop an integral moral character from them, to direct their will to the search for eternal truth and spiritual beauty, and this latter is the main thing in man. The Roman sage Epictetus says: "You will render the greatest service to the state if, instead of erecting tall buildings, you will try to elevate the soul of your fellow citizens; for it is much better if people with high souls huddle in small huts than if low souls hide in huge mansions." Swift in his "Gulliver" advises "when choosing persons to occupy government posts, to pay more attention to the moral qualities of these persons than to their abilities and talents." In his opinion, "the highest intellectual gifts cannot replace moral qualities, and therefore it is most dangerous to entrust government posts to gifted persons without moral foundations, since with a good intention, a mistake from ignorance cannot have such fatal consequences for the public good as the activity of a morally depraved person by nature, who, thanks to his talents, has the opportunity to further develop and hide his depravity." Rousseau adds: "Anyone can be a nobleman, but not everyone is capable of being a man." To be a man in the full sense of the word requires tremendous work on oneself, a long stubborn struggle against coarse animal instincts, and a tireless growth of reverence for the Supreme Ideal of life. Here lies the main mistake of our upbringing. People naively think that it is enough to show children what is right and what is wrong, and children will do the right thing. In most cases, we do not yet understand that the moral benefit that can be achieved by education must be the result of the education of the heart and will rather than of the mind. If, instead of admonishing the child, "This is good and that is bad," you make him feel it, if you make him (by your own or someone else's example) love virtue and hate vice, if you strengthen his noble desires and blunt the base ones, if you bring to life a good feeling that has been dormant until then, if you instill in him a sympathetic aspiration, then you really bring up a child, develop a person out of him. The German moralist Hilti says: "It is impossible not to recognize as a great pedagogical mistake the attempt to fill the heads of young children with religious teachings; this frequent occurrence is explained by a completely wrong understanding of the saying of Jesus Christ. We do know that He "embraced them and blessed them," but nowhere do we see Him making any demands of them, expounding His doctrine to them, or wishing them to follow it (cf. Matt. 18:2; Matt. 10:14-16; Luke 18:15-17). Children are in great need of love and good feelings, but very little of religious teaching. For the most part, they are taught too much teaching (which is much easier) and too few examples of love. And when the time comes when children could use religion on their own, for the most part this means has completely lost its power and knowledge for them" [1]. Now look at the consequences of this incorrect arrangement of the education of the generations that are coming to replace us. Both in literature and in society, there is only talk of the absence of high interests among young people, of the impoverishment of ideals, of a complete relaxation of the will; there are no ideological workers; conscience, duty, the common good are forgotten words. But where do high ideals, strong characters, and a strong will come from? Only what is sown there sprouts in the field. Young people become what they are brought up by their family, school, and life itself. An integral, moral character, that is, an indestructible power over oneself, moral self-government, a strengthened predominance in our soul of noble feelings and moral concepts over animal inclinations, are not characteristic of man from birth. Our characters are not developed in the mysterious laboratories of nature by some unknown force, but in the environment of the surrounding life by ourselves. If, in the education of youth, due attention is not paid to the development of character, the mind develops, tastes are refined, and the will is not cultivated, there are no characters, and there will not be until things change. Here I consider it necessary to dwell on the analysis of Schopenhauer's doctrine on the question of interest to us. The famous preacher of pessimism claims that character is born with a person and cannot be changed. Under the changeable shell of his age, his relations, even his knowledge and views, there hides, like a cancer in its shell, completely unchanging, always the same person. The forms of manifestation change, in which at different times and under different circumstances the character reveals itself, but the character itself does not change. With the same degree of anger, one can die on the chopping block, and the other - quietly in the family circle. The same degree of malice in one people can be expressed in coarse traits: murder and cannibalism; the other - in court intrigues, oppression and subtle tricks exquisitely, cautiously and even elegantly. The shape is different; The essence is the same. Water, whether it falls foaming from the cliff; whether it reflects, like a quiet lake, its shores; whether it splashes upwards like a fountain, it still remains water with all its inherent properties. In the same way, human character manifests itself: under different conditions, in different forms, but always the same in essence. It is as impossible to change character itself, says Schopenhauer, as it is to turn gold into diamonds. An egoist cannot be freed from egoism, just as it is impossible to wean a cat from a tendency to mice. Every man, under the most diverse conditions, is what he is, and invariably remains the same. If character could gradually change, improve year after year, then the older would have to be noticeably more virtuous than the younger, but in fact this is not the case. All these arguments do not stand up to proper criticism; They do not prove that characters cannot change, but that they do not usually change, that most people do not make an attempt to rework themselves. We are more willing to follow the beaten, though slippery, road than to carve out for ourselves a new, honest and glorious path. Fearing the struggle and effort necessary to fight with themselves and with others for the higher principles of life, people give up their ideals more easily than the comfort and tranquility of life. If, on the other hand, when entering an independent life, in the years of public service, a person puts an end to all the ideals, over the best dreams of youth, then, of course, in old age he will not become a model of virtue and, according to Schopenhauer, will be faithful to his character all his life. There is no desire to change one's character, no aversion to evil is awakened, no need is felt to make an inner effort to push away evil from oneself and renounce it, the character remains unchanged; But that doesn't mean it can't be changed. Now, if it were possible to prove that all struggle is useless, and that man, with all his desire and perseverance, cannot become anything else, for example, an egoist to rise to self-sacrifice, a robber-murderer to become a merciful Samaritan, a dissolute sensualist a strict ascetic, this would be a really valuable argument, but there is no reason to assert anything of the kind. On the contrary, we know of many examples of how the most inveterate villains, under the influence of special conditions, became ascetics, performed deeds of high nobility. The lives of many saints, the thief of Golgotha, Nekrasov's uncle Vlas are living witnesses of how abruptly the human will can turn. Character, then, is not something immutable; it is the product of what is given to us by nature, and of what the family, school, society, and, most importantly, we ourselves have made of the material given by nature.

"There is no more glorious victory," says St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, "than to conquer oneself." "Whoever holds himself in subjection in such a way that the brute instincts obey reason, reason submits to God in everything, he," adds Thomas of Kempis, "is the true conqueror over himself and the master of the world." I will not hide the fact that this victory is not easy. The Gospel says: "The Kingdom of God is needed by force," it is obtained with difficulty. Moral self-education, the gradual development of the spiritual nature is work that requires persistent and constant observation and exercises on oneself. It is not for nothing that Peter the Great, aware of the passionate dissoluteness and intemperance of his nature, said with bitterness: "I have pacified the streltsy, overpowered Sophia, defeated Charles, but I cannot overcome myself." A morally perfect person is the embodiment of high ideas of love and truth in a living person, and the higher the idea, the more effort it requires for its implementation. In order to fully master it, all our spiritual faculties must be directed to it alone. It is necessary that this idea, by means of a slow and constantly increasing interaction with our other ideas, should gradually expand the circle of its influence, become the guiding center of the whole structure of our inner life. The famous artist Ivanov, before creating his famous painting "The Appearance of the Messiah", worked for more than twenty years to clarify its main idea, thought deeply about the plot, studied everything that concerned it at least somewhat; He made many sketches. When Newton was asked how he discovered the law of gravitation, he replied: "Constantly thinking about it"! On another occasion he expressed himself even more explicitly: "I constantly keep in mind the subject of my study and patiently wait until the faint flickering of the morning gradually and little by little turns into a full brilliant light." In a word, every major work of art, outstanding scientific work and original thought of a genius is not born suddenly; they are nurtured for a long time in the mind and heart of the author, mature for years, and require long, persistent, concentrated attention. The same process is inevitable in the development of an integral moral personality. If, for example, we want the ideal of evangelical love and truth to become our inalienable possession, to be transformed into our flesh and blood, we must pay special attention to it. If it only briefly passes through our consciousness, it is as if it does not exist: it will die, it will be forgotten, leaving no trace. It should be dwelt upon with serious, concentrated reflection. Then he will acquire the necessary vitality, with the help of the mysterious magnetic force - the association of ideas, he will attract to himself other fruitful thoughts, powerful feelings; will merge with them into one inseparable whole. This work of consolidating in the soul a sublime idea or developing an ideal feeling can be compared to the artificial formation of crystals. "If we dip a crystal into a chemical solution containing several different bodies in the degree of saturation," says the French psychologist Peyo, "then the particles homogeneous with the crystal under the influence of a mysterious force of attraction will be separated from the liquid and gradually grouped around it. The crystal will grow little by little, and if the solution remains in complete rest for weeks and months, it will be one of those magnificent specimens which, in their beauty and volume, are the joy and pride of chemical laboratories. The same is true in psychology. Take any psychic state, bring it to the fore in your consciousness, hold it for a long time, and imperceptibly, by the same mysterious affinity as the chemical, ideas and psychic movements similar to it will be grouped around it. The result will be an imperious, powerful feeling, to which the will will slavishly obey. In comparison with them, everything else will fade into the background. Even low, shameful feelings, if we succumb to them, can acquire unlimited power over us" [2]. Let us recall at least Pushkin's "The Miserly Knight" in the basement among the illuminated piles of gold. He says: Who knows how many bitter abstinences, Bridled passions, heavy thoughts, Daytime cares, sleepless nights all this cost me? Or will the son say That my heart is overgrown with moss, That I knew no desires, that my conscience never gnawed at me?.. No, first suffer for yourself wealth. In Drill's book "Crime and Criminals" there are a number of personalities in whom instincts of a lower order dominate the whole being and determine their owner to appropriate actions. A certain M., for example, devoted his whole life to the service of the stomach. He traveled through all the parts of France, at least in some way remarkable for the edible part. He diligently studied the physiology of digestion, as well as history and travel, but only from a culinary point of view. He knew perfectly well and liked to tell in what year, under which king, what of the edibles, by whom and from where it was exported. Apart from gastronomy, he did not talk about anything and sincerely respected only gastronomes and cooks. Another similar gentleman, at the age of six, ate up a fortune which alone yielded half a million rubles annually. He had agents in Mexico, China, Canada, etc., who sent him tidbits. Left with a guinea in his pocket, he bought himself a snipe, roasted it according to all the rules of cooking, gave his stomach two hours for pleasant digestion, and, enjoying it for the last time, went and drowned himself. The meaning of life without money to satisfy the demands of an all-powerful stomach was exhausted for him, and he ceased to exist. Gilti. Happiness, 1st ed., p. 94 ^ Peyo. "Education of the Will" ^

Part 2

The Gospel gives us the most perfect ideal of life. The moral image of man, embodied in the Divine Herald of love, breathes with enchanting spiritual beauty. Have this ideal and image always before your eyes, and their characteristic features will be imprinted on your soul. It has been noticed that spouses who have spent many years in close communication, not only in character and habits, but even in face, become similar to each other. Such is the powerful effect on a person of the frequent repetition of the same impressions. Therefore, let the impressions you take away from your acquaintance with the Gospel not be accidental, fragmentary, fleeting. The more often you are in the position of Mary at the feet of Jesus, the more hours you spend in deep meditation on the pages of the Evangelists, the more familiar, and closer, and dearer the image of Christ will become to you, the more vivid and vivid will be its characteristic features in your moral character. Time after time, as if under the blows of the chisel of a brilliant sculptor, the roughness and ugliness of your character will be smoothed out and leveled, until your own inner image, passing from property to quality, from lower to higher, from higher to still better, slowly and gradually transforms itself into the perfect image of Christ. The image of Christ that is being created in us should be the primary task of our life, both personal and social. After all, if the life of our time is still far from moral perfection in its constitution, if it is often overshadowed by crude manifestations of violence, shamelessness and dishonesty, then this explains why there are not enough people among us who would embody the image of Jesus in their character, who would cultivate their will in the service of His words. In our private and public lives, there is a great lack of a reflection of Christ. Everywhere there is a constant, never satisfied demand for the bearers of His ideas. Therefore, to all in whom the spark of God has not been extinguished, in whom the womb has not completely taken over, this is a great holy deed: be imbued with the light of the Gospel, bring the truth of Christ into the world, build your life on the principles proclaimed by the Savior. Let there be darkness in life, you be the light of the world. This or that specialty, this or that kind of service is indifferent here. Each and every one of us, before entering into public affairs, must be a person in the true sense of the word. To be a useful worker, one must be a morally educated person. Moral dignity must be considered the necessary principle of human greatness, in whatever form it may be manifested. In fact, it is not important what kind of business you are engaged in: whether you perform a feat, or carry out modest, everyday, ordinary work; it is important that you always and everywhere be faithful to the Savior's commandment: "Be the salt of the earth, be the light of the world"; It is important that in every place, in every environment, exert a beneficial influence on all those around you, force them by the power of your example to love the good and the truth, teach them to appreciate the moral beauty of life. "Whether you eat, drink, or do anything else, do all to the glory of God," the Apostle exhorts (1 Corinthians 10:31). "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven," said Jesus Christ (Matt. 5:16). Any deviation from this commandment is already a betrayal of duty, weakens our moral energy, and has a corrupting influence on our entire future life. A drop of swamp mud that gets into a clean spring or stream will be invisible to the eye, but, dissolved in crystal streams, it will bring some turbidity into them and can serve as a source of many pathogenic fungi or bacteria. This is a natural law that operates equally in both the physical and spiritual worlds. Therefore, be attentive to yourself even in individual cases. Poison, in whatever doses it is taken, is still poison, and evil is always evil, even if it seems insignificant. The string, weakened during the playing even for a second, immediately gives a false sound and thus spoils the impression of the whole piece. The same should be said about the moral harmony of the human spirit. We are usually accustomed to take our individual petty weaknesses and shortcomings too lightly; however, they are of very serious importance. Just as the Alps and the Himalayas consist of insignificant grains of sand, the boundless oceans are made of tiny droplets, so life is composed of individual trifles. After all, heroes are born for centuries and feats are not performed every hour, and life in the meantime goes on its own track, carrying with it ordinary, everyday needs and worries. It is in his attitude to these everyday trifles that, strictly speaking, a person is most truly known. Here, so to speak, every fluff shows the direction of the wind, an insignificant straw determines the course of the river... "He who is faithful in little," says the Saviour, "is faithful in much, but he who is unfaithful in little is unfaithful also in much" (Luke 16:10). A few years ago, during the excavations of Pompeii, a Roman soldier was unearthed in full armor with a spear in his hand and with a visor lowered over his face. Obviously, standing on the clock, the soldier saw the imminent death approaching him, but, faithful to his duty, he remained motionless at his post, only lowered his visor so as not to see the horrors happening around him, and so, covered with ashes, he stood to this day. Undoubtedly, this is one of the innumerable heroes, unknown to the world, whose deeds, having been performed in a different, more convenient situation, are recorded on the pages of history for the edification of posterity. Had he not perished in Pompeii, his life, if he had not fallen to the lot of performing a resounding feat, would in any case have been the life of a courageous man, faithful to his duty. Therefore, remember that you may not have to do great things in life, but all of you can and must honestly fulfill your purpose: to bring into life that portion of goodness and justice that corresponds to your innate abilities. I repeat, not everyone is given to be a hero, and even those who have the data to do so, not every day there is a need for exploits or an occasion for them, but we can all be good, honest people, bearers of the highest ideals of life, workers in the work of building the Kingdom of God on earth. And if you want to honestly fulfill your purpose in the world, prepare for it, work on yourself, so that you may be worthy of that great goal for the sake of which you have been called from non-existence to existence by the Higher Will. Know that moral strength, as well as physical strength, grows through exercise. In order to rotate pound kettlebells freely, you need to start with exercises with pounds; Without this, you will not suddenly become an athlete. Therefore, work tirelessly on your will, exercise it in striving for goodness and truth; Do not miss a single opportunity to let her show herself from the ideal side. Who knows, maybe a single insignificant incident will touch the best strings in the recesses of your soul, unknown to yourself, and your whole life will be one victorious hymn to love God and people. The Gospel notes several striking cases in this regard. Take, for example, the conversion of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10). Jesus Christ, surrounded by dense crowds of people, was passing through Jericho. Taking advantage of the opportunity, a man named Zacchaeus, the chief of the publicans and a rich man, sought to see Jesus, but did not know how to do it. He did not dare to come close; considered himself unworthy. At the mere memory of the past, a thick flush of shame flooded Zacchaeus's face, and his heart ached painfully. Is there a place for him, a robber of the people, a destroyer of the weak and defenseless, next to the Great Teacher of love and truth? No, Zacchaeus is willing to sink into the earth rather than stand beside this poor Righteous One and see the gaze of His pure eyes, which, they say, penetrate to the depths of the soul and read the innermost things in the heart. And you irresistibly want to see. Zacchaeus had heard so much about the goodness, about the holiness of Jesus, who was now passing through Jericho, that his whole soul yearned for Him. Both in his own life and in the lives of other people, Zacchaeus saw so little truth that he would have given dearly just to look at the One Who Himself was the Truth and taught the truth to others. On Mount Zacchaeus is small in stature and cannot see Jesus behind people from afar. Then he ran forward, climbed up on a fig tree by the wayside, and waited for Jesus to pass by. When Jesus came to this place, he looked and saw Zacchaeus and said to him, "Zacchaeus! Come down quickly, for today I must be in your house." Zacchaeus, not remembering himself, rushed out of the tree and joyfully received Jesus in his home. The few words of the Savior were enough for Zacchaeus' heart to be instantly reborn. The thought that Jesus is the Greatest Righteous Man does not disdain him, a dishonest covetous, like lightning, illuminated his dark soul. Zacchaeus perked up. Although others continue to despise him as an offender, robber and reckless, it became clear to Zacchaeus that not everything had yet perished before God, that some spark of God had been preserved inside him, which was dear to his Great Guest and which would now become a valuable asset for the rest of Zacchaeus' life. Everything for which Zacchaeus had previously so brazenly trampled on the good and the truth, now lost its value in his eyes. One thing is important to him: to retain the favor with which Jesus unexpectedly treated him. And Zacchaeus, as the Gospel says, "stood up and said to the Lord, Lord! I will give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have wronged anyone, I will repay fourfold. Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house" (Luke 19:8-9). Tens of minutes ago, when he climbed a fig tree to see Jesus passing by from a distance, did Zacchaeus think that such a change would happen to him? There is an old Indian legend, how a certain father, having plucked a ripe fruit from a branchy tree, broke it in half and then, showing the middle to his son, asked him what he saw there. "A few small seeds," the son replied quickly. "Take one of them, have a snack and tell me what's in the middle?" "There's nothing in the middle," the boy remarked, perplexed. "My son," his father wisely remarked to him then, "inside the grain, where you see nothing, is hidden the possibility of the life of a mighty tree; its fruits could be enjoyed by hundreds of people, if only the embryo fell on good soil and sprouted. And how many such germs of good perish in any of us only because we frivolously, like children, do not see anything in them, do not attach importance to them! How many holy lofty feelings are deafened because we do not dwell on them with due attention, do not allow them to develop and become stronger in us! And so, over the years, a sensitive, sympathetic heart becomes coarse; Good impulses flare up less often, possible deeds of love and truth are not accomplished, and life is so poor in them, so much in need of them.

III. Moral Degeneration

Part 1

"To everyone who has it will be given and will abound, but from him who does not have it will be taken away even that which he has." (Matt. 25:29). If, in the words of the Psalm of David, only fools can deny God in their hearts, then those who hope to convince unbelievers by logical proofs are no wiser. To adduce evidence in the field of religion and faith is a thankless, dubious task. It is like telling a blind person about the Divine beauty of Raphael's Madonna, telling a deaf person about the tender melodies of Rossini and Mozart. Both the blind and the deaf may willingly take your word for it, agree that all this is really so, but they themselves will not experience your impressions, they will not experience in their hearts the emotions that touched and touched you. It is the same with the truths of faith. Let a long series of the most brilliant and irresistible proofs be built in the face of unbelievers in favor of the truths of religion, but this will not lead them to faith in the least. They may agree that faith is reasonable, but they themselves will not be able to believe. To recognize the reasonableness of faith and to actually believe are two entirely different things. Between that which constitutes the object of the intellect acts upon thought, and that which constitutes the object of the heart influences the will, lies a great gulf. It is possible to agree with the first and not submit to the second; and in order to believe fully, one must believe not only with one's understanding, but with all one's heart and with all one's soul (Matt. 22:37). The philosopher Fichte says: "Our system of thoughts is often only the history of our heart," that is, people do not want something as they think, but think as they want. Therefore, our faith, or our unbelief, is for the most part a reflection of our moral disposition. This is exactly how Jesus Christ explained to His opponents, the scribes and Pharisees, the reason for their disbelief in the divinity of His mission. He said to them, "You are from the lowest, I am from the highest; you are of this world, I am not of this world... He who is of God hears the words of God. For this reason ye do not hear, because ye are not of God" (John 8:23 and 47). Christianity is the good news of salvation for the whole world, for the whole world, as the Saviour said, lies in evil. The way of salvation from this universal evil was opened by Jesus Christ by His teaching and his life, and those who were burdened by this evil, did not reconcile themselves to the existing order of life, strove to embody the truth of God on earth, heeded the words of Christ, followed them. The meaning of Christianity remained obscure. For such people, Christ's preaching was a silent word, because they did not see the evil from which Christ came to save the world. And they have not seen it and do not see it because they themselves are from this world, they are completely obsessed with the world's evil, they do not want to rise above it, to renounce it.

Others, with complete material security and complete freedom from all business activities, are carried away entirely by the pursuit of pleasures and external joys of life. Self-sacrificing work for the common good seems to them to be the extravagance of dreamers; the highest requirements of morality are the unnecessary restriction of freedom of action. "Life smiles," they say, "beckons to itself, promises bliss; Why are there serious faces, some questions about the goals and objectives of life? Health, funds are in abundance; Live and let live!" With such a worldview, people, of course, cannot have a sincere heartfelt attraction to Christianity, as to a voice calling humanity from the egoism of the coarse animal nature to the embodiment in oneself and in one's neighbors of the highest love and truth of God. They have gone completely into the earthly and do not even dream of the heavenly. The voice of Christ does not find access to their hearts, does not awaken in them dissatisfaction with themselves, does not call them to inner work. They do not grow spiritually, and if organisms do not grow, they must inevitably deteriorate. This is a law of nature, equally valid in the physical world and in the spiritual world. The inorganic world is inert, immobile, free from external influences, it invariably retains its stability. The organic world is a different matter: living beings are mobile. Even the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that just as it is impossible to enter the same stream twice, which is constantly changing in the stream, so it is impossible to be in the same body twice, that is, at two different moments of time, to be in the same state. "Our bodies," he said, "flow like streams; matter is eternally renewed in them, like water in a stream. Our consciousness is also moving, changing." With such a constant change of matter in the body and sensations in the spiritual world, it is extremely difficult, not to say impossible, for living organisms to maintain equilibrium; In them, life goes either up or down: organisms either improve, develop, or degenerate, become worse. Take any plant; With proper, skillful care, it can be changed for the better beyond recognition: the shape, color, and smell of the flower will become completely different. The same thing is repeated with animals. In England, there are famous poultry farmers who at the age of three undertake to create any color of feathers for a pigeon, and at the age of six they can rework the head and beak. With appropriate knowledge and persistent work, they give the bird, as well as the animal, a better and better shape. On the contrary, when caring for plants or animals stops, they necessarily deteriorate and become wild. The universal law of nature is as follows: under the influence of a corresponding culture, organisms improve, without it they degenerate. Man is not free from its influence, both from the side of his physical and from the side of his spiritual organization. When a cultured European, thrown out after a shipwreck on a deserted island, is forced for several years to neglect the care of his body, he degenerates in appearance into a coarse savage, half-animal, half-human. If in the same way a person is deprived of the opportunity to take care of the development of his mind, he will sink mentally, become dumb, and may even become idiotic. Sad proof of this is solitary confinement for many years: they often make idiots out of prisoners. The same process of degeneration, in the absence of proper culture, takes place in the moral nature of man. If we neglect spiritual needs, if we stop listening to the voice of conscience, we will become vicious people, we will lose all moral sense. In the course of time, this moral sense will die out completely; A person will not only not grow spiritually, improve, but will lose the very ability to perceive and respond to all morally beautiful impressions. It will turn out to be a type of outright predator, brazenly trampling on everything sacred; everything sublime, truly human, will be atrophied, and there will remain only an evil animal, armed with the power of the mind and the power of science. The Apostle Paul quite legitimately and justifiably asks: "How shall we escape, having neglected the little salvation which was first preached by the Lord, and was established in us by those who heard from Him?" ... (Hebrews 2:3). In nature (physical as well as spiritual) there is a law according to which every organ that is not developed or exercised gradually weakens and finally atrophies, completely paralyzes and even disappears. It is known, for example, that in the huge caves of the Australian province of Carnelia and the American state of Kentucky live whole special breeds of rats, insects, frogs, crayfish and even fish, since these caves contain underground lakes and rivers. All these animals, belonging to the most diverse divisions and classes, are among themselves in that they are all completely blind. Those who live closer to the very entrance to the cave have eyes, but they see nothing; and many others who live in the very depths of the caves do not even have signs of an organ of sight, there are no eye sockets. Obviously, not a single ray of light had penetrated there, under the arches of the caves, for centuries; Fish and rats have never used the organ of sight, and it first weakened in them, became paralyzed, and then completely disappeared [1]. The eagle that lives on the mountain peaks has sharpened its eyesight to the point where it looks freely at the sun, and the fish of the Mammoth Cave do not even have a trace of eye sockets. It is the same with spiritual vision. An enlightened, moral sense gives a person the opportunity to hear the voice of the Divine in himself. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matt. 5:8). Negligence about moral self-perfection leads to spiritual blindness, to a complete blunting of even the very feeling for everything good, lofty, holy. Of people of this kind, Jesus Christ remarked: "And the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled over them, which says, With your ears you will hear, you will not understand, and with your eyes you will see, and you will not see: for the heart of these people is hardened, and with their ears they can hardly hear, and their eyes are closed, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and be converted, that I may heal them" (Matt. 13:14-15). After this, the words of the parable of the talents become clear: "To everyone who has will be given and will abound, but from him who does not have even that which he has will be taken away" (Matt. 25:29). Each of us has our own needs of the heart, spiritual needs. These needs are our most wondrous and sacred talent. Know how to appreciate it, try to develop and multiply it. Do not stifle good impulses in yourselves, obediently follow the attraction of your young, still pure, undefiled by worldly vulgarity and filth. Guard the spark of God in your heart; It is not difficult to blow it out, but remember: when the fire is extinguished and the wind of life blows away the very ashes, then you will no longer be able to fan the flame. "The lamp of the body is the eye," says the Saviour, "and if thy eye is pure, then the whole body is light, and if the eye is evil, then the whole body will be dark." If the source of light darkens, what will be the darkness? And how can we escape this darkness if we neglect the light that Jesus Christ has given us? "Know and remember," the ancient sage Epictetus taught, "that if people are unhappy, then it is their own fault, because God created all people for happiness, and not for them to be unhappy. God has dealt with us as a good Father; in His goodness He has given into our possession all that leads to true good." And if, in spite of all this, our life is unsuccessful, burdens us, Like a smooth path without a goal, Like a feast at someone else's feast, then we use it clumsily, unwisely. And indeed, we have an amazingly easy, even criminal, attitude to the question of the organization of our life. Spencer says, "You might think that most people set out to live their lives in such a way that they spend as little thought as possible." No contractor will undertake to build a barn without preliminary calculations, estimates and other considerations; Not a single bricklayer will lay a row of bricks without checking it with a water pass, and we often build our whole life without thinking about any questions about its meaning and significance, without having any criterion for evaluating its normal, rational course. What is surprising if such buildings often collapse and break us under their ruins? How can we avoid this if we neglect the only plan of life that Jesus Christ has given us? Let us suppose that, while we are young and frivolous, as long as we have means, beauty, and health, we may, without asking ourselves any questions, arrange for ourselves an easy, cheerful, pleasant life; but it cannot satisfy us for long: sooner or later it will inevitably seem "an empty and stupid joke." No matter what we say, no matter how much we distract our thoughts from the higher demands of the spirit, man will not live on bread alone. At some point, let everyone have a moment when he will be forced to say, together with the poet: Living, I want to live not in idle rapture, Afraid of myself: "Why?" to inquisitively ask, But so that in every day, and hour, and moment, An eternal meaning would be hidden, giving the right to live. Pessimism, like rust, which is more and more corroding modern life, explains precisely the fact that we soar high under the heavens with one wing, and helplessly drag the other among the vulgarity and filth of life. Hence the inevitable internal discord, dissatisfaction with oneself and life, and often a premature forcible reckoning with the latter. But life, no matter how sad it may seem, is always more precious than a piece of lead or a sip of hydrocyanic acid. It is only necessary to comprehend its true meaning, to comprehend the principle by which it acquires extraordinary value. To us, who have the Gospel and recognize it, this meaning should seem to be clear from early childhood. It would seem that everyone who calls himself a Christian cannot be thought of otherwise than as a person who arranges his life according to the covenant of Christ. But reality shows something completely different. Here we meet one of those dismal contradictions of life, when common sense literally goes upside down. A soldier who does not know the military regulations is inadmissible; it is inconceivable to have a lawyer who is not familiar with the code of laws, and it is an ordinary phenomenon - a Christian who does not understand the fundamentals of the truths of the teaching of Christ. You will not find a single person who has graduated from at least elementary school who would not know the fables of Krylov, and you will meet hundreds of people with an academic diploma who will not be able to convey to you the content of the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus Christ. Is it possible for an intellectual who has not read Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy? And how many of them are there who do not even know the names of the four Evangelists! Vitkovsky. Across the Ocean, p. 252 ^

Part 2

Having memorized a few facts from the life of Jesus Christ at school, we smugly consider ourselves sufficiently familiar with the Gospel and then often do not take it in our hands for the rest of our lives. What would we say of anyone who, having learned a number of episodes from the lives of Socrates, Bacon, Spinoza, Hegel, and Kant, would on this basis recognize himself as a philosopher, or at least an expert in philosophy? And you will meet millions of Christians like such philosophers. What wonder after this, if they, with all the splendor of cultures, remain by their spiritual nature brutal beasts, if they do not believe in a better future for mankind, in the brotherhood of peoples, in the possibility of the Kingdom of God on earth; if they do not want to work for the majority to become the image and likeness of God, for the bright transformation of the man-beast into the Son of the Heavenly Father to take place. How can we avoid our usual moral brutality if we are not imbued with the spirit of the Gospel, if we do not understand and feel the greatness of this book as the basis of life? One of the saddest mistakes for a person is vain self-satisfaction with his moral image. Like the Pharisee of the Gospel parable, we repeat more than once in our souls, admiring ourselves: "God! I thank Thee that I am not like other people" (Luke 18:II). And to a certain extent we have reason to do so, surrounded everywhere by moral misery, and, naturally, we may not notice our spiritual ugliness. But reproduce before you the morally majestic image of the Divine Teacher of love and truth, and the impression of inner self-esteem will immediately change dramatically. In our consciousness all the coarseness of our instincts, all the baseness of our strivings, the miserable emptiness and vulgarity of life will stand out vividly; instead of the proud self-satisfaction of the Pharisee, we, oppressed by the oppression of the moral filth recognized in us, together with the Gospel publican, humbly bowing our heads, will pray: "God, be merciful to us, sinners!" It is surprising, indeed, that not a day goes by that we do not look at ourselves several times in the mirror from head to toe: whether there is any defect in the costume, whether our face is not dirty, and at the same time for whole years, sometimes all our lives, we never once check the purity and neatness of our moral character, do not oppose to ourselves, like a mirror, the perfect image of Christ, sealed in the Gospel. Read the following lines from "A Friend's Address to the Students," which vividly reflected the bright mood derived from direct acquaintance with the Gospel: "Comrades! If we highly value a thinker, we try to get acquainted with his thoughts, with his views. We willingly reread his works. His composition is the decoration of our table. Why, I ask, do we, who are developed, intelligent, educated, who love goodness, truth, justice, and admire brotherly love, take so little interest in Him Who has done most for this idea? We have so unforgivably little interest in Jesus Christ. After all, He gave us His teaching. He lived and died because of his love for people. And yet we do not even have a simple curiosity to read His teaching. Why doesn't the Gospel adorn our desks? Why is the reading of the Gospel neglected in our country? We are looking for the truth, but how can we find it if we neglect the Gospel, its source? In order to see the sun, one must raise one's gaze to heaven, and in order to know the way of life, one must turn to Christ. Nowhere will you find such a clear and complete answer to all the needs of the spirit as in the Gospel, in the teaching of Him who said of Himself, "I am the truth and the life." To begin with, open chapters 5, 6 and 7 in the Gospel of Matthew, and not only read, but reread, think over the meaning of each verse, even each word, and you will be surprised at how wisely and at the same time simply, to the point of tangibility, the most complex, fateful, burning questions of life are resolved here. Take, for example, the fundamental task of moral philosophy, the question of the destiny of man, the question of what and how we should devote all the forces of soul and body, our whole life. At different times, among individual peoples, in different classes of society, we encounter the most diverse, dissimilar answers to the question posed. "If we could compare the castles in the air of a simple farmer and a brilliant thinker," says an English philosopher, "we would discover a striking difference in the construction of these castles." But since the truth is one, among the many contradictory answers to the question about the purpose of life, the correct answer can also be one. This answer is given to us in the Gospel. Here it is formulated in three words, after thinking through which, one cannot but come to the conclusion that there is no other more reasonable and perfect answer. Jesus Christ, explaining to His disciples their purpose in the world, says: "Ye are the salt of the earth" (Matt. 5:31). Salt, as you know, is used in food to improve the taste and to protect it from spoilage. Without salt, the best food is not tasty enough, and the freshest provisions usually rot soon. And what salt is for food, that, according to Jesus, should be the Gospel for life, His followers for mankind. Further significant improvement in life is possible only if it is penetrated by the spirit of the Gospel love and truth, the realization of our cherished thoughts and holy dreams of universal happiness is conceivable only through constant and unremitting work to create the Kingdom of God within ourselves and in the hearts of our neighbors. In the absence of these conditions in the life of mankind, the most brilliant successes of civilization will be imaginary, apparent, and not real, solid and indestructible. Life by bitter experience convinces us of this at every step. Have you ever thought about such a thought: how many wonderful countries on earth are there with luxurious nature, a fertile climate and fertile soil, where everything, it would seem, was created by God for a joyful, joyful life, and where, however, as everywhere, tears flow, groans are heard, and the curses of life are heard! How amazingly quickly all the comforts of life have grown and are increasing, and therefore happiness does not become closer and more accessible. The gloomy philosophy of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, which preaches that life is evil and death is the highest good, is a product of our time. Why all this? With the availability of a wide variety of numerous data for the happiness of man on earth, what else is missing? The most important thing is missing - what Jesus Christ calls the salt of the earth: there is not enough evangelical love and truth in people. Without them, life in the richest capitals of the world, in luxurious chambers behind mirrored glass, will not be happier than life in a Bedouin tent or even in an Eskimo yurt. Of course, there will be more amenities, but they will not bring happiness. Read the curious statistics from Edm's Essays on Morocco. Amicis. "Today," says the author, "I had a very lively conversation with a Moor-merchant. I began an argument to know what he thought of our civilization, as he had travelled extensively, and had occasion to make its acquaintance with it in person. - What can you say about our big cities? I asked. He looked at me intently and answered coldly: "What shall I say?.. Large streets, shops, palaces... Everything is very clean. "Isn't there anything else good?" I asked with an impatient gesture. "Are you not struck by the superiority of our social life over yours?" How can I impress you after that? "Don't get excited," my interlocutor answered me. "What do you think is your advantage?" Isn't it honesty? So it's in vain. We are more honest than you. True, the Moors sometimes deceive the Europeans, but the Europeans deceive the Moors all the time. Then I turned the conversation to our comfort. "Oh, yes, I know!" The Moor laughed. "Why, you're really good at that..." Then he began to enumerate in a comical tone: "The sun is an umbrella; rain - umbrella; dust - gloves; to walk - cane; to look - glasses; sit softly - springs; a finger hurts - doctor; Death is a monument... There are so many things that you can't do without. What kind of people you are! Are you real adult children.. No," he concluded, "I would not have exchanged my position with you. You have more comfort, but you are not happier than we are" [1]. Then stop your attention on the next comparison. Red Indians imagine the afterlife as a continuation of the earthly one. The Great Spirit, so they believe, will carry them to the fields rich in game. In the same way, the warlike Maori of New Zealand imagine life after death as a continuous series of battles, from which the blessed emerge victorious again and again. The ancient Germans had the same hopes. These examples show that these peoples at the lowest levels of culture, in comparison with us, were much more satisfied with their lives. They imagined the world beyond the grave, which is usually depicted in the most rosy colors among all peoples of various religions, only as a more perfected, improved continuation of their earthly existence. Now ask yourselves, would we be satisfied beyond the grave, at least to some extent, with our strengthened present being? For example, will a worker think of imagining the afterlife as an infinitely long spinning mill? soldiers - as a series of endless parades, marches and maneuvers; the official as one boundless department; merchant - how are the most extensive stores and warehouses of goods? Does not all this clearly and eloquently say that the progress of modern civilization, based on the principles of economic materialism, brings mainly only the external comforts of life, and it alone, without the moral regeneration of man, without the reconstruction of society on the principles of the Gospel love and truth, is unable to make human life both bright and joyful? Without the teaching of the Gospel, life, like food without salt, cannot have a proper "taste" that satisfies us; it must inevitably deteriorate, decompose, demoralize.

"Know the truth," says Christ, "and the truth will set you free." Essays on Morocco, pp. 144-146 ^

IV. The Greatness of the Gospel

"Jesus said unto them that believed on him... if ye abide in my word... you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (John 8:31-32). There is a well-known aphorism that says that every person is by nature a philosopher. The meaning of this aphorism is that man, as a thinking and rational being, no matter how low a degree of mental development he may be, cannot but ask himself certain questions, one or another solution of which constitutes an attempt to know the truth, that is, philosophy. These questions are about the meaning of life and the purpose of man. Oh, solve me the riddle of life, An eternally anxious and terrible question. Give me the answer that the mystery is from the ages? What is the essence of man? What is it? Where is he going? Who lives up there, above the stars? This is how the young man asks with plea in Heine's famous poem. This young man is a symbol of all mankind, and his questions are old, but eternally new questions of all thinking people. People of all countries and times have languished and are languishing over their solution. The mighty king-ruler of many nations also languishes over them; the eternal toiler-ploughman also languishes, wandering after the plow in his meager nurse field; they are inquisitively solved by a brilliant scientist - a great sage, glorified by the world; the coarse savage, the simple-minded son of the forests or the desert, racks his brains, listening to the vague voice of the Great Spirit. In order to understand these eternal perplexities of the mind and heart, the best people of the world in ancient times in wise Greece, under the shadow of the pyramids of Egypt, on the banks of the wide Ganges, under the sultry sky of Arabia, on the stones of the rocks, on the scrolls of papyrus, on copper tablets, on pieces of goat and sheep skin, were written a huge number of extensive books, individual sayings and all kinds of laws. rules, instructions. Hundreds of the greatest minds exerted every effort to open the sealed book of life, to solve the dark riddle of existence, but life still stubbornly guarded its great secret, like the sphinx. Until the time of Jesus Christ, the sought-after truth was not given to people like a treasure: mankind sought it in the wrong place. People realized that without the Supreme Being they could not think of themselves or the world; but only the Deity was presented to the ancient world in a perverted form. Pagan antiquity, with forty centuries of its cultural development, was unable to rise above the physical world. The religious worldview of ancient peoples sought God in the diversity of the world, in the stars of the sky, in the forces of the earth; bowed down before the greatness of heroes, raising them to the assembly of gods [1]. The idea of deity was here degraded to the last degree. Man was not required to exert moral forces in order to rise to the level of divinity. The deities were obsequious to man. Xenophanes of Colophon is deeply indignant that every nation creates gods for itself in its own image. "Red and blue-eyed among the Thracians, gods are black and snub-nosed among the Ethiopians." "If bulls, lions and horses could draw and sculpt," our poet-philosopher ironically says, "then they would also depict the gods as similar to themselves, would give them the body that they themselves possess." Such a crude naturalism of religion inevitably led to a coarse morality: sensuality was rooted in the very source and center of life, in religious ideas. Marked by such a sensual character, the religions of the ancient world were more likely to indulge than to oppose the base instincts of human nature, and therefore religion itself was the deification of the natural forces of nature, so the requirements of morality were in fact only the legitimization of the coarse instincts born in man. Open hostility reigned between the peoples. The Egyptian, from the top of his pyramids, looked with haughty pride at all the surrounding countries; Abraham's descendants, the Jews, considering themselves to be Jehovah's chosen people, despised the rest of the world as rejected by God; the refined and enlightened Greek called every foreigner a barbarian, and the stern Roman looked upon all of them as the rightful prey of his sword. Brutal violence and inhuman cruelty were the basic law of international relations. The peaceful inhabitants of the conquered country were enslaved, and, without distinction of ability, education, or former social position, were reduced to the level of the domestic draught animals of the victor. Secured by the labor of millions of slaves, the victors spent most of their lives in corrupting idleness, drowning in insane luxury. There was not a single coarse sensual pleasure which the flower of the civilized nations of that time did not enjoy to the point of satiety. "Everything here," says one historian, "was cold inhumanity, refinement of taste, satiety of luxury, and shameless pleasure." "What is truth? - said the pagan world with contempt. - Is it worth bothering yourself with such an empty question? Life is short, hurry up to enjoy it." Carpe diem - seize the minutes of pleasure - this is the motto of ancient mankind. Spiritual needs were not awakened, and if individual glimpses of higher aspirations flared up in someone from time to time, then, not finding an appropriate environment for their realization, they gave rise only to heavy dissatisfaction with life. "Why complain about trifles? - asks Seneca. - The whole life of a person in general is deplorable." "Death," cries the emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius, "do not delay your coming." All those who could not reconcile themselves to the suffocating atmosphere of moral depravity, general violence and vile servility, lived only in the hope that one day the dawn of a new life would dawn on the world. They have been waiting for this day, painfully searching for the word of eternal truth, and it has finally been heard. "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden," said a voice from the banks of the Jordan, "and I will give you rest. Learn from me, and you will find rest for your souls." Hearing this call, people, exhausted by the fruitless search for the true ideal of life, followed Him by the thousands, despite persecution, torture, and death itself. The teaching of Christ, like the glow of a great fire, enveloped the entire world of that time, and no streams of the blood of the martyrs, shed by the persecutors of the cross, were able to extinguish it. Christianity passed through the earth like a majestic, crushing everything before it, mighty stream. The Gospel law of love for God and people, like a beacon, has been lit high above the world and has become the guiding star of mankind in the impenetrable darkness of life. The struggle of the pagan system of life that had developed over tens of centuries against the new teaching was stubborn, but the moral force of Christianity is so great that nothing can resist it. "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth" (John 4:24), proclaimed the Gospel, and thus for the first time tore the Divinity away from the earth and the earthly, elevated the thought of Him above the world and human passions, and showed the path of service to Him in moral perfection. God is Spirit; not a force of nature, not a divine hero, but a personal, spiritual Being; He is the Higher Mind, the Highest Love, the Highest Truth, the Highest Holiness. This idea alone powerfully elevates man. The charm of the physical nature is destroyed; the crown of divinity is removed from her; it is given its proper place; it must embody the thoughts of the Divine. The animal needs of man are now represented as the service of gross matter; they should not dominate in man. Man carries within himself the chalice of the Divine, and God is Spirit, therefore spiritual interests must henceforth have the greatest value for people. For spiritual purposes, for truth and goodness, for the highest rational aspirations, man is obliged to renounce the most precious desires inspired by the flesh: he must renounce all the base pleasures of animal nature, and the ties of kinship, if the interests of people close to his heart and their demands run counter to the requirements of the moral sense. "If any man will come after me," says the Saviour, "let him deny himself. He is not worthy of Me who loves more than Me, or father, or mother, or daughter, or son." Man is usually a greedy creature, greedy for self-interest and coarse pleasures. To enjoy, to possess, to gather - this is the desire that eats us, destroys our soul and makes us destroy the souls of others. And now the order of life is still significantly colored by this feeling of self-love. Take, for example, the entire modern industry. It is basically guided mainly by the spirit of gross self-interest. I recall Kasatkin's painting "Coal Miners. Change" as a successful symbol of industry itself and, perhaps, to a large extent, of our entire life. The painting shows the interior of a huge worker's barracks above the mine. Early morning; the dawn is barely dawning; The night shift of miners goes out of the mine to the surface of the earth. They go tired, black; only the whites of the eyes are visible. The faces are somehow gloomily calm, as if they keep a great secret - the secret of resignation to inevitable fate. With such a face, probably, the ancient Roman gladiators walked, when, passing by the imperial box, they exclaimed: "Ave, Caesar! Morituri te salutant" [2]. Another shift is waiting for the turn of the descent. A short nap did not restore exhausted strength; the workers yawn, stretch. The frosty boy could not resist the temptation of a few free minutes, curled up on the floor in a ball and dozed off. A drunken, pale face says that he will not have long to go to his shift; the candle of life burns out quickly; But the work will not stop without him: need will bring new victims here. Do you remember Pushkin's words: But a man Sent a man to the anchar with an authoritative look, And he obediently flowed on his way, And in the morning returned with poison... He came, and weakened, and lay down Under the arch of the hut on the bast. And the poor slave died at the feet of the Invincible Lord. Here both the words of the poet and the brush of the artist agree that our blessings of the earth, all these billions of poods of coal, gold and steel, under the present system of life, are bought at a dear, terrible price - the price of untimely deaths and ruined millions of lives. In front of this picture one involuntarily thought in the words of the Saviour: "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and destroy his own soul?" To clarify this last great thought before people, to make them feel the whole truth and its meaning is a task immeasurable in its morally beneficial consequences, which the Gospel takes upon itself and fulfills in the best possible way. Consider at least the words of the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father, Who art in heaven! Hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!" May everything in life be as Jesus taught to pray, and everything will be perfect. There will be no more evil, no more hatred, no more people dying of exhaustion with excessive work, no more idle rich people who are satiated to the point of bestial stupefaction. There will be God in man and man in God; Heaven will come on earth. It is here, in this divine world, in heaven, where the Father, Jesus Christ, dwells, and directs the hearts of his disciples. A disciple of Christ should not be attached with all his heart to the earth, or to man, or to anything created. His thoughts must be completely owned by the Heavenly Father. "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven... for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matt. 6:19-21). A person's heart must inseparably belong to God, and two exceptional loves cannot coexist in one heart. "No one can serve two masters: for he will hate the one, and love the other; or he will be zealous for the one, and not care for the other. You cannot serve God and mammon" (Matt. 6:24). These words do not mean, however, that Jesus condemned all activities that are the source of private and public welfare. He Himself worked at the carpenter's loom. He condemned only attachment to the goods of this world, when they completely absorb a person, ousting all other thoughts and interests from his heart. Foolish children, simple-minded savages, may still be forgivable to be carried away by trinkets, to sacrifice their valuable possessions for the sake of some beads or glasses; But for a reasonable person, who is aware of the strength of a powerful spirit, it is both shameful and criminal to waste oneself in the service of the body, when the highest spiritual interests remain aside. "Therefore I say to you," Jesus Christ preached to the people, "seek first of all the Kingdom of God and righteousness, and all other things will come to you of their own accord." This is the main and only thing that is needed. Service to the Kingdom of God is at the same time service to God. No other service without this, without service in spirit and truth, is pleasing to God. "God does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor requires the service of human hands" (Acts 17:24-25). He needs neither fat sacrifices, nor incense smoke, nor altars shining with gold and precious stones; He does not require prostrations, pilgrimages, or fasts. If we have all this, it is for ourselves, as a means and an environment that contributes to the strengthening of lofty pious moods in us. In the eyes of God, "a heart purer than gold, and a strong will is good" are valuable in man. Only the pure in heart can see God. The heights of Zion are accessible only to him Who has not weighed his deeds at the price of gold, Has not weighed, has not sold, Has not contrived against his brother, And has not slandered his enemy. Nor is our prayer pleasing to God, if it comes from a heart that is not illumined by truth and love. "If you bring your gift to the altar," says the Saviour, "and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go, first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (Matt. 5:23-24). People had never heard anything like this before Jesus Christ. The Gospel for the first time gave the world such a sublime and perfect concept of God, and thus set before man such an ideal that can never be attained, but approaching which, mankind will become purer, more moral, and more perfect. Here it is not the Divinity that is reduced to man, but man undertakes to rise to the Most Perfect Being. The best among the sages suggested to man: "Listen to the voice of conscience": Moses repeated: "Be faithful to the commandments of Jehovah your God, for He is terrible"; Jesus Christ said to His disciples: "Conscience errs, the law is a yoke for servants, but you look at the image of the Godhead given to you. Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. His example is your law; His Spirit is your strength." From now on, the Spirit of God must be the supreme lawgiver of all human life, the true master of human thoughts, desires, and actions. Neither a dead letter nor a fossilized form will any longer fetter or delay the living thought of man. A free, enlightened spirit, unfettered by permanent forms ("for the Son of man has become Lord of the Sabbath"), will create and destroy, passing from the lower to the highest, from the highest to the more perfect. In this spirituality, which belongs exclusively to the Christian religion, thus lies the pledge of the endless future of the progressive movement in humanity. Look at the East, which is alien to Christianity (Turkey, Persia, India, China and other countries) [3]: The human race has been sleeping deeply there for many, many years. Compare then this age-old spiritual slumber of the non-Christian East with the uninterrupted progress of social life among the Gospel-sanctified Western peoples, and you will have to admit that it is Christianity, its spirit, that is the main factor in this extraordinary process of social development. Only the Gospel, preaching the God of love, the Father of all men, laid the foundation for true brotherhood in mankind, broke down international boundaries, removed the chains from slaves, exalted the personality of man, taught in every person to respect his moral dignity, no matter what tribe or class of society he may be. "From now on there shall be neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave, nor master, nor male nor female; "For all in Christ are equal." Thus wrote the great apostle to the Gentiles, opening in these words a new period in the history of mankind. This recognition of the equality of all people before God has had a decisive, indelible influence on our entire European civilization. It constantly softened and mitigates the humiliating distinctions of class, and soon raised the slave to a higher position by instilling in him a sense of innate dignity. Benjamin Kidd, the author of a remarkably clever and original book, Social Evolution, remarks: "If we ask ourselves what is the history of the legislation of European nations over a long period extending to our own times, we shall stumble upon curious things. The whole history of this period can be summed up in a few words. It is simply the history of a series of concessions demanded by a party incomparably much weaker in its position, consisting mainly of the lower classes, leading a hard working life, and receiving from another party of power, capital, leisure and social influence, which we can unmistakably consider incomparably stronger.