TOLSTOI REPLIES TO THE CHURCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11686, 22 June 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

TOLSTOI REPLIES TO THE CHURCH.

DENOUNCER EXCOMMUNICATION WRIT. THREATENED WITH ASSASSINATION. Parts. May 11.Count Leo Tolstoi has replied to the writ of excummunication launched at him by the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church. He starts by quoting Coleridge:—"He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all." That. Tolstoi contends, is exactly the position of his assailants. He himself has pursued the contrary course.

" I began by loving the Orthodox Church more than myself ; then 1 loved Christianity more than the Orthodox Church; now 1 love Truth more than all else."

He says the writ of excommunication is illegal, arbitrary, unjustifiable, mendacious, libellous, and calculated to promote evil sentiments and unworthy deeds; that its issue has already so stirred the hatred of bigots that he is daily threatened with assassination.

" 1 have renounced the Church that calls itself Orthodox." he continues, "because I wished to serve God. 1 followed every precept of the.Church. . . . and am now convinced that its teaching is. theoretically, ail astute and noxious lie. and, practically, a. mixture of gross superstition, and witchcraft. That is why 1 inserted a request in my will that no priest should be allowed to approach my body. " Yes, it is true, 1 deny an incomprehensible trinity, and the fable about the fall of man, which is absurd in our days. It is true I deny the sacrilegious story of a Cod born of a virgin to redeem the human race. But God-spirit, God-love, God the sole principle of all things, Ido not deny. I believe in eternal life, and I believe that man is rewarded according to his deeds here and everywhere, now and forever.

" it is said that I deny all the sacraments. That is perfectly correct. The marriage of divorced persons seems to me in formal contradiction with evangelic teaching. Periodical forgiveness of sins encourages immorality. " The teaching of Christ is disfigured, transformed into grossest sorcery—ablution, unction, movements of the body, incantations, deglutition of pieces of bread —all of which has nothing to do with that teaching which only commands men to love one another, not to lender bad for evil, not to judge others, not to kill. " Yet those who make a business of lies declare in their books, their newspapers, and their catechisms that Christ never forbade swearing (taking the oath); that lie never forbade murder (capital punishment and war), and that the doctrine of nonresistance to evil is an invention, a. Satanic luse of the enemies of Christ. "They behave like the brigand who murdered a. whole family of five or six persons in order to steal an old clock and forty kopeks,

'" If Christ could come back he would sweep them out with their ikons and other instruments of witchcraft.

" 1 believe that the will of God was never so clearly, so precisely, explained as in the doctrine of the man Christ but one cannot regard Chrisjt as Cod and offer prayers to Him without committing the greatest sacrilege. If another doctrine were to arise that satisfied me better 1 should not. hesitate to adopt it, for nothing matters to God but truth."