But a time came when the light of the true doctrine, which lies in the gospel, penetrated among the people in spite of the Church, which had tried to conceal the doctrine by forbidding the translation of the Bible; the time came when this light penetrated among the people through so-called sectarians, and even through free-thinkers, and then the falsity of the Church teaching grew evident to all, and men began to change their former lives and live up to that doctrine of Christ that had reached them independently of the Church.
Thus men annihilated slavery, which had been justified by the Church; annihilated religious executions, which had been sanctioned by the Church; annihilated the power of sovereigns and popes, which had been consecrated by the Church; and now the turn of property and kingdoms has come. The Church never rose in defense of anything, and cannot do so, because the annihilation of these false principles of life is based on the Christian doctrine that the Church has preached and still preaches.
The doctrine of life has emancipated itself from the Church, and has established itself independently of it. The Church retains the right to interpret Christ’s doctrine; but what interpretation can it give? The metaphysical explanation of the doctrine has weight only when it explains what life is, or ought to be. But no such teaching is left to the Church. It could only speak of the life that it had organized of old, which is now no more. If any of the old interpretations remain, as, for instance, when the catechism tells us that we must kill when it is our duty to do so, nobody believes them; and nothing is left to the Church but its temples, images, brocades, and words.
The Church has carried the light of the Christian doctrine of life through eighteen centuries; and while trying to conceal it in its raiment it has been burnt itself in this light. The world, with its social adjustments consecrated by the Church, has now thrown the Church aside in the name of the same Christian truths that the Church unwillingly carried along with it, and the world now lives without it. The Church is done with, and it is impossible to conceal the fact. All those who really live, and do not drearily vegetate, in our European world have left the Church.
All Churches, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant, are like sentinels keeping guard over a captive, while the captive has escaped and even walks about among the sentinels. All that now forms true ‘life’ in the world, Socialism, Communism, theories of political economy, utilitarianism, liberty and equality, all the moral opinions of men, all that governs the world and that the Church considers to be inimical to it, is a part of the very doctrine the same Church unwittingly brought in together with the doctrine of Christ that it tried to conceal.
The life of the world in our time follows its own course, independently of the teaching of the Church. That teaching has remained so far behind that men of the world hearken no more to the voices of the teachers; and, indeed, there is nothing worth listening to, because the Church only gives explanations that the world has already grown tired of – explanations of an organization that is rapidly decaying.
Certain men set out in a boat, while a man at the helm steered. He was a skilful pilot, and the boat glided rapidly on; but a time came when a less skilful helmsman took his place. Finding the latter incapable of steering well, those in the boat first ridiculed him and then drove him away.
That would not have mattered much if the men had not forgotten, in their anger against the useless helmsman, that without one they would not know in what direction they were going. So it was with our Christian world. The Church does not stand at the helm any more; we row rapidly on, and all the progress of knowledge on which our nineteenth century prides itself is only the result of our floating without a helmsman. We do not know where we are going. We go on leading our present lives absolutely without knowing why we do so. And yet it is as unreasonable to live without knowing why we do so as it is to set off in a boat without knowing to where we are bound.
If men did nothing themselves, but were placed in the position they occupy by some outward power, then they might answer the question, ‘Why are you in such a position?’ by saying that they did not know why. But men make their own positions for themselves, for each other, and especially for their children, and they must therefore be able to answer when asked why they assemble into armies, to cripple and to kill each other; why they waste the immense strength of millions in erecting useless and pernicious cities; why they organize their petty courts of law, and send men whom they call criminals out of France to Cayenne, out of Russia to Siberia, and out of England to Australia, while knowing that it is senseless to act thus.
When they are asked why they leave the fields and woods they love to work in factories and sweatshops that they hate; why they bring up their children to lead the same lives though they disapprove of them; they ought to be able to give some reason for their conduct. Even if all this were pleasant, men should be able to give their reasons; but when it is the hardest possible work, when men groan over it, how can they go on acting in this way without trying to find adequate reasons. Men never have lived without trying to solve these questions; men cannot live without making the attempt.
The Jew lived as he lived – he made war, he executed men, he built temples, he organized his life thus and not otherwise – because it was enjoined him by the Law, which, according to his conviction, came from God Himself. It is thus likewise with the Hindus and the Chinese, it was thus with the Romans and the Muslims, it was thus with the Christians a hundred years ago, and it is thus now with the ignorant crowd. The unthoughtful Christian now solves these questions in this way: soldiery, war, courts of law, and executions exist according to the commandments of God, transmitted to us by the Church. The Church teaches that the world, as we know it, is a lost world.
All the evil that fills it exists only by the will of God as a punishment for the sins of men, and therefore we must submit to it. We can only save our souls by faith, by the sacraments, by prayer, and by submission to the will of God. The Church teaches us that each must submit to the sovereign, who is the anointed of God, and to those who are in authority over us; that each must defend his own property by violence, make war, and execute or be executed according to the will of the authorities placed over him by God. It does not matter if this explanation good or bad, it formerly explained all the various phases of life to the believing Christian, and man did not renounce his own reason while living according to the law that he acknowledged as divine. But now the time has come when only the most ignorant believe in this, and even their number decreases with every day and every hour of the day. There is no possibility of stopping this progression.
All eagerly follow those who are in front, and all will soon reach the point where the foremost now stand. But the foremost are standing upon the brink of an abyss. The position of the foremost is an awful one. They point out the path to those who are to follow them, and are themselves completely ignorant both of what they are doing and of the things that impel them to act as they do. There is not one man among them who could now answer the direct question, “Why do you lead the life that you lead?’ ‘Why do you do what you do?’
I have addressed such questions to hundreds of men, and have never received a direct reply. Instead of a plain answer to the question, I always received an answer to some question that I had not asked. Whenever I asked a Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox believer why he lived as he did – so contrary to the doctrine of Christ, which he professed – instead of a direct answer, each would begin to talk of the lamentable want of faith of the present generation, of the wicked men who propagate irreligion, and of what awaited the Church in future. But the answer why the man did not do what his creed enjoined was never given to me. Instead of answering about himself he would speak of the general state of mankind, and of the Church, as if his own life was of no importance whatever, and as if he were engrossed by the idea of saving all mankind, and especially the institution called ‘the Church.’
A philosopher, whether an idealist, a spiritualist, a pessimist, or a positivist, would answer the question of why he did not live according to his philosophical teaching by talking of the progress of mankind and of the historical law of that progress,
