miracles of Jesus in Cana and Capernaum, the driving out of devils, the walking on the water, the withering of the fig tree, the healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, the resurrection of Christ Himself, and indication of prophecies fulfilled in the life of Christ. These verses are omitted, because they do not contain any teaching but merely describe events which took place before, during, and after the teaching of Jesus, and so complicate the exposition. However they are to be understood, they do not contradict the teaching nor prove its truth. The only significance of these verses for Christianity was the fact that they served as proofs of the deity of Jesus for unbelievers. For a man who understands the unconvincing character of a story about a miracle, and doubts whether the deity of Jesus is contained in his teaching, these verses drop out of themselves because of their uselessness." St. Paul deserves a very high place in the list of those who had corrupted Christianity, for the writings of the Apostle show that he was not acquainted with the Sermon on the Mount, and consequently he could know little or nothing of Christianity. Besides that, none of the Apostles were infallible. The actual teachings of Christ were the only thing of importance, and these were preserved by the criminal and self-seeking Church but disregarded. Tolstoy never apparently faced the inconsistency of the theories that some portion of the New Testament represents the real words of Christ, and that the same books had been worked over by men who were directly interested in destroying and abrogating that teaching.

Let us consider now the positive beliefs of Tolstoy. First, what did he mean by religion? The answer is: "True religion is that relationship which is fully consonant with the reason and knowledge of a man and which he has es

tablished with the infinite life which surrounds him and which binds up his life with this infinity and governs his actions" ("What Is Religion" iii). No religion can be real which establishes man's relation to God in a way of which his reason cannot approve.

With this as a basis and remembering that he considered the higher forms of other religions as approximating to Christianity, let us see how he regarded God. To him God was life and love and a man was truly alive only when he was conscious of God. But God is unknowable and "every attempt to imagine that I do know Him (for example, that He is the Creator, or merciful, or anything of the sort), removes me from Him and prevents my approach to Him.

I must add that the pronoun 'He' somewhat destroys God for me. 'He' in some way belittles Him." The exact relationship betwen God and man can be seen from the following: "God is everything unlimited which I find limited in myself: I am a limited body: God, an unlimited body; I am a being which has existed for 63 years: God, a being which has existed eternally; I am a being thinking within the limits of my comprehension: God, a being which thinks without limits; I am a being which loves some things sometimes: God, a being which loves endlessly. I am a part: He is the whole. I cannot understand myself, save as a part of Him" ("Thoughts on God"). Of course this is far removed from the personal God worshipped by the Christian Church. With such a conception of Deity the Trinity is impossible, and in obedience to his reason Tolstoy rejected it as inconsistent with the above ideas.

With the Trinity, the Incarnation disappeared. The idea that Christ could be both God and man was illogical. According to the Christian theories of God, "God is independence, man is dependence, God is Creator, man is cre

ated, God is good, man is evil." Again the author makes no attempt to understand fully the position of the Church. He has taken certain salient points and striven to present them in an impossible form, and he continues with his attack on the Incarnation by ridiculing the various attempts made throughout the ages to define the position of the Church. He reaches the amazing conclusion that nowhere in the Gospels, or at least in Christ's teaching, did He ever claim to be more than an ordinary man. All references to Christ's relation to God, as in "As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father" (St. John 10:15), he interprets as meaning that the Son of Man, i. e., humanity, is in close relations with God. Even the opening of St. John's Gospel has been misinterpreted, for the Word cannot refer to Christ, and he considers v. 18, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him," a sure proof that Christ is not God, for "if the only begotten Son declared God, Whom no one can ever see, it is obvious that this Son is not God." There is no need to continue quoting examples of this method of interpretation. It is obviously an attempt to disprove the claims of the Church. The Atonement fares no better, because the idea that the sacrifice of the Son of God on Calvary could take away the sins of the world is unreasonable. Further, it is false, because every one knows that sin has not been abolished and that human life has gone on as before. He flatly denies the Resurrection, and in each case when he makes an outline of the Gospel story, he ends with the last words of Christ on the Cross and with His death. In a word, he repudiates all the doctrines concerning themselves with Christ and asserts plainly that He was not God and never claimed to be.

As far as the Holy Ghost is concerned, we have again a denial of Personality, of His influence on the Church and the Bible, and Tolstoy asserts that the story of the descent of the Holy Ghost as found in the Book of Acts was inspired by the necessity of finding supernatural sanction for the Council of Jerusalem.

The Church stripped of Her Divine Founder is regarded merely as a self-created hierarchy desirous of obtaining power by violence, and lacking since the time of Constantine even the desire to carry out the teachings of Christ.

Not content with thus dismantling the entire structure of Christian theology, Tolstoy set himself to rewrite the teaching of Christ in a way that accorded with his own views. A few examples of this "impartial" method of translation may be given. St. Luke 9:58, "And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head," becomes in Tolstoy's gospel: "And Jesus said to him: you have no place to go to follow me: I have no house nor place to live. Animals have dens and holes but a man is everywhere at home, if he lives in the spirit."

Christ's rebuke to His apostles after calming the storm, "Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?" (St. Mark 4:40) becomes "Why are ye so timid? Have ye no faith in the life of the spirit?"

St. John 8:58, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am," is explained to mean: "Before Abraham was, there existed the understanding of good, the thing which I am explaining to you."

St. John 12:32, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me," means according to the Tolstoyan system, "When the Son of man shall be raised above earthly life, he will unite all in one," and the comment on

vv. 35-6 explains that "to lift up the Son of man means to live by that light of understanding which is in you. To lift up the Son of man above the earth is to believe in the light, while there is light, so as to be the son of understanding."

The object of all these passages is clearly to destroy personality. Tolstoy taught that in heaven there were no personalities. There is no bodily or personal resurrection from the dead. This is the lesson to be drawn from Christ's answer to the Sadducees (St. Matt. 22:23-33). "If there is a living God, that man who has come into communion with the eternally living God is alive," and there are no personal questions possible. Elsewhere, Tolstoy objected to all solutions proposed as to the future. "The heaven and delights of Mohammed are too rough and clearly incompatible with a true understanding of man and God. Similarly the ecclesiastical idea of heaven and hell is inconsistent with the idea of a God of love. The transmigration of souls is less unspiritual but it postulates the individual character of being; the idea of Nirvana lacks all material character but it contradicts the demands of reason-of the rationality of existence" ("Christian Teaching").

Naturally with this desire to abolish personality and the removal from God of all attributes except love, prayer was very vitally affected. The following version of the Lord's Prayer may be cited here: "Our father without beginning and ending like heaven! Let only your being be holy. Let only your power exist, so that your will may be performed without beginning or ending on earth. Give me food for life at present. Remove and wipe out my former mistakes, as I remove and wipe out all the mistakes of my brothers, so that I may not fall into error and may be freed from evil. For thine is the power and the strength and