"Why is it done this way? It must be confessed that much of what has been said here has been said with palpable justice. The suffering state of mankind on earth, the condition before the eyes of all, must have its cause. But how can the offspring be guilty of the sin of the forefather, who is distant from the offspring and is already alien to the offspring? Posterity is punished: this is obvious. Why is it, the innocent, punished? Why does it carry a terrible eternal punishment? The execution passes from generation to generation, falls ponderously on each generation, wipes out each generation from the face of the earth, having previously subjected each generation to innumerable torments. Each generation appears on the face of the earth unconsciously, involuntarily, forcibly. Every man enters earthly life without the ability to voluntarily act with faculties, which in an infant must be likened to seeds rather than to germinations. What kind of participation of posterity in the sin of the forefather, participation worthy of such punishments, when there was and is no very possibility for posterity to take part in sin, either by subtle heartfelt agreement, or by the slightest deviation of the mind? Where is God's justice here? Where is goodness? I see one thing that is contrary to them." Thus cries the feeble man, blinded by his sinful, material life. Thus he cries, and calls before him to interrogate the fate of God.

Thus cries out the ignorance of God! Thus does human pride cry out! Such is man's ignorance of himself! Thus cries out a false conception of oneself and of one's whole situation! Thus they cry out, and no one hearkens to the cry. By means of such exclamations, men, without realizing it, reveal only the affliction of self-conceit and self-deception that has seized them: by means of such exclamations they denounce the consciousness that lives in them of the ability and desire to be the administrators of the universe, the judges and guides of God in His administration of the world, and no one gives them lofty thrones beyond the clouds, on which the rebellious angels wanted to sit on men who had previously been indignant. A reckless undertaking sinks, as in a dark abyss, in its recklessness, tormenting the victims who have recklessly given themselves over to this undertaking, tormenting them with fruitless torments in insoluble chains. Events go on as they go, there is no change in the economy of the universe, God's destinies remain immutable. The insignificance and self-deception of people is proved to them positively and irrefutably by harsh experience.

The most precise mathematical consideration explains to man with all certainty the infinite difference between him and God, both in essence and in properties, although the same words are used to depict both because of the poverty of human language. The infinite is governed by quite different laws than anything that can be represented by numbers according to the method of positive science, on which all other sciences are based, just as the whole constitution of man is based on bones. From this axiom follows another axiom: the actions of the infinite are naturally inaccessible to the comprehension of all rational creatures that are depicted by number. A number, no matter how much it increases, remains a number, and differs from the infinite by an infinite difference, by which all numbers differ equally from the infinite. The striving to comprehend the incomprehensible is nothing but the consequence of false knowledge composed of false concepts. This striving cannot but act in accordance with its origin: it must lead to the most disastrous consequences by the nature of all actions proceeding from falsehood. Where did this aspiration come from? Obviously: from a proud, erroneous opinion of oneself, which leads a person to give himself a meaning other than that given to him in the boundless universe.

I'm looking at myself! And here is the spectacle that was depicted before me when I examined myself! That is how I am described indisputably, described with true features, with living colors, described by the very experiences, the very events of my life! What conclusion should I draw about myself from this painting? The conclusion that I am by no means an original and independent being, that I am deprived of the most basic, most vital knowledge of myself. There is a real need, a need for someone to explain me more satisfactorily, to announce to me my purpose, to show me the right activity, and thus to protect me from activity without meaning and without purpose.

This urgent need, this necessity, was recognized by God Himself. He recognized it and gave people a revealed teaching that leads us to knowledge that is inaccessible to our own comprehension. In the divinely revealed teaching, God revealed Himself to man, to what extent the unlimited and inexplicable God can be explained and revealed to limited man. In the divinely revealed teaching, God revealed to man the meaning and purpose of man, his relationship to God and to the worlds, visible and invisible. God revealed to man the knowledge of man, as far as this knowledge is accessible to the mind of man. The complete and perfect knowledge of man, like that of every other creature, is possessed by one who is capable of the complete and perfect knowledge of all things: the all-perfect God.

Divine revealed teaching, being compared with the knowledge given to man by an accurate examination of himself, is confirmed by this knowledge and confirms it. Knowledge, confirmed by one another, stands before humanity in the bright light of irrefutable truth.

The divine revealed teaching proclaims to me, the experiences of life prove to me that I am a creature of God. I am a creature of my God! I am a slave of my God, a slave wholly subject to the power of God, encompassing, contained by His authority, an unlimited power, autocratic in the strict sense of the word. The authority does not consult with anyone, the authority does not give any account of its assumptions and actions to anyone: neither man nor angel is able to give advice, or to listen, or to understand the account. From time immemorial His Word was unto God (John 1:2).

I am a slave of my God, despite the fact that I have been given free will and reason to control the will. My will is free almost only in the choice of good and evil: in other respects it is guarded from everywhere. I can wish it! But my wish, meeting with the opposite will of other people, with the opposite direction of insurmountable circumstances, remains for the most part unfulfilled. I can wish you a lot; but my own infirmity makes unfruitful many of my desires.

When a wish remains unfulfilled, especially when the wish seems to be prudent, useful, and necessary, then the heart is struck with sorrow. In accordance with the meaning of the wish, sorrow can intensify, often turning into despondency and even despair. What calms us in the fierce times of spiritual distress, when any human help is either powerless or impossible? The mere consciousness of oneself as a slave and a creature of God calms down; This consciousness alone has such power. As soon as a man says prayerfully to God from all his heart, let Thy will be done over me, O my Lord, the agitation of the heart subsides. From these words, pronounced sincerely, the most grievous sorrows lose their predominance over man.

What does this mean? This means that man, having confessed himself to be a servant and creature of God, having given himself over entirely to the will of God, immediately enters with his whole being into the realm of holy Truth. Truth brings the right mood to the spirit, to life. He who ascends to the realm of Truth, who submits to the Truth, receives moral and spiritual freedom, receives moral and spiritual happiness. This freedom and this happiness do not depend on people and circumstances.

"If ye abide in My word," said the Saviour to the Jews, "verily ye shall be My disciples, and ye shall understand the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free... Everyone who commits sin, the slave is sin. If the Son of God, Who is Self-truth, sets you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:31-36; 14:6). Service to sin, falsehood, and vanity is slavery in the full sense of the word, even if it appears outwardly as a brilliant freedom. This slavery is eternal slavery. Only he is completely and truly free who is a true slave of his God.

I plunge even deeper into the examination of myself, and a new spectacle opens up before me. I see a decisive disorder of my own will, disobedience to its reason, and in reason I see the loss of the ability to direct the will correctly, the loss of the ability to act correctly. In a distracted life, this state is little noticed; but in solitude, when solitude is illuminated by the light of the Gospel, the state of disorder of the powers of the soul appears in a vast, gloomy, terrible picture. And it serves as a testimony before me that I am a fallen being. I am a slave of my God, but a slave who has angered God, a servant who is outcast, a slave punished by the hand of God. Divine Revelation also declares me to be so.

My state is a state common to all people. Humanity is a category of creatures languishing in various disasters, executed. It can't be otherwise! Proofs of this furnish me both from without and within me. If I were not an exile on earth, like all my brethren men, if my earthly life were not a punishment, then why should this whole life be a field of unceasing labor, of unceasing conflict, of insatiable striving, never satisfied by anything? Why should earthly life be the path of suffering alone, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, sometimes felt, sometimes drowned out by the rapture of earthly cares and pleasures? Why should there be diseases and all other misfortunes, private and public? Why should there be quarrels, insults, murders in human society? Why should there be all the various evils, vigilantly fighting against the good, oppressing and persecuting the good, almost always triumphing over the good? Why is each person poisoned by passions within himself, tormented by them incomparably more than by sorrows from without? Why should there be death, devouring everyone mercilessly? What kind of phenomenon is it – generations, replacing one another, arising from non-existence, entering life for a short time, again plunging forever into the unknown?

What kind of phenomenon is the activity of each generation on earth, as if eternal on it? What kind of phenomenon is this activity, constantly contradicting itself, constantly building with strengthening, resting on streams of human blood, as if on cement, constantly destroying its work with the same effort, with the same bloodshed?.. The earth is the vale of exile, the vale of uninterrupted disorder and confusion, the vale of the urgent suffering of beings who have lost their primitive dignity and home, who have lost their common sense. People suffer from countless images of suffering in this vale, dark and deep! They suffer both under the yoke of poverty and in the abundance of wealth; they suffer both in squalid huts and in magnificent royal palaces; they suffer from calamities from without, and from that terrible disorder with which the nature of each person within him is afflicted, by which both his soul and body are afflicted, by which his mind is perverted and blinded.