What does the sixth commandment forbid?
Murder; or taking away our neighbor’s life in any way. Is taking a man’s life always illegal murder?
Murder is not unlawful, when it is our duty to take away a man’s life; for instance: When we punish a criminal by death.
When we kill the enemies in fighting for our sovereign and our native land. And further on:
18 The Moscow Metropolitan, 1785.
19 The Moscow Metropolitan, 1826-1868.
What other instances can you cite of murder?
… When a man harbors a murderer or sets him free.
And that is published in hundreds and thousands of copies, and instilled into the Russians by violence, by threats and fear of punishment, under the pretence of its being the Christian doctrine. This is taught to the whole Russian nation. This is taught to innocent children, in speaking of whom Christ said, ‘Allow little children to come to Me, for theirs is the kingdom of God’; to children whom we must be like, in order to enter the kingdom of God; like them in knowing nothing of all this; to children, in speaking of whom Christ said, ‘Woe to him who tempts one of these little ones.’ And these children are made to learn this; they are told that it is the sacred law of God!
Such things are not proclamations secretly propagated, under fear of being sent to hard work in the mines; but they are proclamations, acting contrary to which leads men to hard work in the mines. While I write, a chill creeps over me at my daring to say what I must say – that we have no right to annihilate the commandments of God, which are written in all His laws and in all our hearts, by adding such words as ‘duty,’ ‘our sovereign,’ ‘our father-land,’ etc., which explain nothing.
Yes, what Christ warned us against has come to pass, for He said (Luke 11:33-36, and Matt. 6:23), ‘Take heed that the light that is in you is not darkened. If the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!’
The light that is in us has indeed become darkness; and that darkness is an awful one.
Christ said, ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees; for you shut up the kingdom of God against men. For you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow others to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; for you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers; therefore you are still more guilty. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you search seas and lands to make one proselyte, and when you have done so, you make him worse than he had been before. Woe to you, blind guides!’
‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build up the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous; and you suppose that if you had lived in the days when the prophets were martyred, you would not have joined in shedding their blood. Then you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are no better than those who killed the prophets. Fill up then the measure begun by those like you yourselves. And behold, I will send to you wise prophets and scribes, and some of them you shall kill and crucify, and some of them shall you scourge in your synagogues and drive them from city to city. And may all the righteous blood shed since the days of Abel fall back upon your heads.
‘Every blasphemy may be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall never be forgiven.’ Isn’t it as if this had been written only yesterday against those who now force men to accept their faith, and persecute and destroy all the prophets and just men, who try to bring their deception to light? And I saw that though the Church calls its teaching a Christian doctrine, it is in truth the very darkness against which Christ strove and enjoined His disciples to strive.
The doctrine of Christ has two parts. First, it bears upon the life of each individual and upon our social lives; or it has an ethical mission. Second, it points out why men ought to live in the way it enjoins and not otherwise; or it has a metaphysical mission. One is the effect and, at the same time, the cause of the other. Man must live thus because such is the purpose of his creation; or the purpose of his creation is such, and therefore he must life thus. These two sides of every doctrine are to be found in all the religions of the world. Such is the religion of Brahma, Confucius, Buddha, and Moses, and such is the religion of Christ. It teaches us how we are to live and explains why we are to live thus.
But what befell all these other doctrines has befallen the doctrine of Christ also. Men have turned aside from it, and there are many who try to justify their having done so. Sitting down in Moses’ seat, they explain the metaphysical part of the doctrine in a way that makes the ethical requirements of the doctrine no longer obligatory, and they replace them by outward worship, rites, and ceremonies. The same occurs in all religions, but it appears to me that never has the evil influence been so striking as in Christianity.
It acted with peculiar force, because the doctrine of Christ is the most sublime of all doctrines; it is the most sublime just because the metaphysical and ethical parts of the doctrine are so indissolubly bound together, and so bear upon each other that it is impossible to separate one from the other without depriving the whole doctrine of its true sense. The doctrine of Christ is ultra-Protestantism, for it rejects not only all the ritualistic observances of Judaism, but also every outward form of worship. This rupture in Christianity could have no other effect than to completely pervert the doctrine and deprive it of all sense. And it did so.
The rupture between the doctrine of life and the exposition of how we are to live began with the sermon of Paul, who did not know the ethical teaching expressed in the gospel of Matthew, and who preached a metaphysically cabalistic theory, foreign to Christ. The rupture was definitely accomplished in the time of Constantine, when it was found possible to array the whole pagan course of life in Christian clothing, without any change, and then to call it Christianity.
From the time of Constantine, the heathen of heathens, whom the Church has canonized for all his vices and crimes, began ‘councils,’ and the center of gravity of Christianity was transferred to the metaphysical side of the teaching alone. And this metaphysical teaching, with the rites that form part of it, losing more and more of its fundamental sense, reached its present point. It has become a teaching that explains the mysteries of life in heaven, and gives the most complicated rites for divine worship, but at the same time gives no religious teaching at all concerning life on earth.
All religious creeds, except that of the Christian Church, enjoin, besides the observance of certain rites, good deeds and forbearance from evil ones. Judaism requires circumcision, the keeping of the Sabbath, the bestowing of alms, the keeping of the year of jubilee, and many other things. Islam requires circumcision, daily prayers five times a day, the tenth part of a man’s riches to be given to the poor, the adoration of the tomb of the prophet, and so on. We find the same in all other religions. Be the duties good or bad, they are deeds. Pseudo-Christianity alone exacts nothing of its followers.
There is nothing that is obligatory to a Christian, if we exclude fast-days and prayers, which the Church itself does not consider as obligatory; there is nothing that he must refrain from. All that is necessary for a pseudo-Christian is never to neglect the sacraments. But the believer does not administer the sacraments to himself; others administer them to him. No obligation lies on the pseudo-Christian; the Church does all that is necessary for him: he is baptized and anointed, the sacraments of Holy Communion and Extreme Unction are administered to him, his confession is taken for granted if he is unable to make it orally, prayers are said for him, and he is saved.
From the time of Constantine the Church never required any deeds of its members; it never even enjoined a man to refrain from anything. The Christian Church acknowledged and consecrated all that had existed in the pagan world. It acknowledged and consecrated divorce, slavery, courts of law, and all the powers that had existed before, such as war and persecution, and only required evil to be renounced in word at baptism. The Church acknowledged the doctrine of Christ in word, but denied it in deed.
Instead of pointing out to the world what life ought to be, the Church expounded the metaphysical part of Christ’s doctrine in a way that required no duties, and did not hinder people from living on as they had lived before. The Church, having once given way to the world, followed it ever after. The world organized its existence in direct opposition to the doctrine of Christ, and the Church invented metaphors according to which it appeared that men who really lived contrary to the law of Christ lived in accordance with it.
And the world began to lead a life that rapidly grew worse than that of the pagans, and the Church began to justify this
