At the celebration of these holidays, feeling that importance was
being attributed to the very things that to me presented a negativeimportance, I either devised tranquillizing explanations or shut my
eyes in order not to see what tempted me. Most of all this happened to me when taking part in the most
usual Sacraments, which are considered the most important: baptismand communion. There I encountered not incomprehensible but fully
comprehensible doings: doings which seemed to me to lead intotemptation, and I was in a dilemma -- whether to lie or to reject
them. Never shall I forge the painful feeling I experienced the day
I received the Eucharist for the first time after many years. Theservice, confession, and prayers were quite intelligible and
produced in me a glad consciousness that the meaning of life wasbeing revealed to me. The Communion itself I explained as an act
performed in remembrance of Christ, and indicating a purificationfrom sin and the full acceptance of Christ's teaching. If that
explanation was artificial I did not notice its artificiality: sohappy was I at humbling and abasing myself before the priest -- a
simple, timid country clergyman -- turning all the dirt out of mysoul and confessing my vices, so glad was I to merge in thought
with the humility of the fathers who wrote the prayers of theoffice, so glad was I of union with all who have believed and now
believe, that I did not notice the artificiality of my explanation. But when I approached the altar gates, and the priest made me say
that I believed that what I was about to swallow was truly fleshand blood, I felt a pain in my heart: it was not merely a false
note, it was a cruel demand made by someone or other who evidentlyhad never known what faith is.
I now permit myself to say that it was a cruel demand, but Idid not then think so: only it was indescribably painful to me. I
was no longer in the position in which I had been in youth when Ithought all in life was clear; I had indeed come to faith because,
apart from faith, I had found nothing, certainly nothing, exceptdestruction; therefore to throw away that faith was impossible and
I submitted. And I found in my soul a feeling which helped me toendure it. This was the feeling of self-abasement and humility.
I humbled myself, swallowed that flesh and blood without anyblasphemous feelings and with a wish to believe. But the blow had
been struck and, knowing what awaited me, I could not go a secondtime.
I continued to fulfil the rites of the Church and stillbelieved that the doctrine I was following contained the truth,
when something happened to me which I now understand but which thenseemed strange.
I was listening to the conversation of an illiterate peasant,a pilgrim, about God, faith, life, and salvation, when a knowledge
of faith revealed itself to me. I drew near to the people,listening to their opinions of life and faith, and I understood the
truth more and more. So also was it when I read the Lives of Holymen, which became my favourite books. Putting aside the miracles
and regarding them as fables illustrating thoughts, this readingrevealed to me life's meaning. There were the lives of Makarius
the Great, the story of Buddha, there were the words of St. JohnChrysostom, and there were the stories of the traveller in the
well, the monk who found some gold, and of Peter the publican. There were stories of the martyrs, all announcing that death does
not exclude life, and there were the stories of ignorant, stupidmen, who knew nothing of the teaching of the Church but who yet
were saves. But as soon as I met learned believers or took up their books,
doubt of myself, dissatisfaction, and exasperated disputation wereroused within me, and I felt that the more I entered into the
meaning of these men's speech, the more I went astray from truthand approached an abyss.
XV How often I envied the peasants their illiteracy and lack of
learning! Those statements in the creeds which to me were evidentabsurdities, for them contained nothing false; they could accept
them and could believe in the truth -- the truth I believed in. Only to me, unhappy man, was it clear that with truth falsehood was
interwoven by finest threads, and that I could not accept it inthat form.
So I lived for about three years. At first, when I was onlyslightly associated with truth as a catechumen and was only
scenting out what seemed to me clearest, these encounters struck meless. When I did not understand anything, I said, "It is my fault,
I am sinful"; but the more I became imbued with the truths I waslearning, the more they became the basis of my life, the more
oppressive and the more painful became these encounters and thesharper became the line between what I do not understand because I
am not able to understand it, and what cannot be understood exceptby lying to oneself.
In spite of my doubts and sufferings I still clung to theOrthodox Church. But questions of life arose which had to be
decided; and the decision of these questions by the Church --contrary to the very bases of the belief by which I lived --
obliged me at last to renouncecommunion with Orthodoxy asimpossible. These questions were: first the relation of the
Orthodox Eastern Church to other Churches -- to the Catholics andto the so-called sectarians. At that time, in consequence of my
interest in religion, I came into touch with believers of variousfaiths: Catholics, protestants, Old-Believers, Molokans [Footnote:
A sect that rejects sacraments and ritual.], and others. And Imet among them many men of lofty morals who were truly religious.
I wished to be a brother to them. And what happened? Thatteaching which promised to unite all in one faith and love -- that
very teaching, in the person of its best representatives, told methat these men were all living a lie; that what gave them their
power of life was a temptation of the devil; and that we alonepossess the only possible truth. And I saw that all who do not
profess an identical faith with themselves are considered by theOrthodox to be heretics, just as the Catholics and others consider
the Orthodox to be heretics. And i saw that the Orthodox (thoughthey try to hide this) regard with hostility all who do not express
their faith by the same external symbols and words as themselves;and this is naturally so; first, because the assertion that you are
in falsehood and I am in truth, is the most cruel thing one man cansay to another; and secondly, because a man loving his children and
brothers cannot help being hostile to those who wish to pervert hischildren and brothers to a false belief. And that hostility is
increased in proportion to one's greater knowledge of theology. And to me who considered that truth lay in union by love, it became
self-evident that theology was itself destroying what it ought toproduce.
This offence is so obvious to us educated people who havelived in countries where various religions are professed and have
seen the contempt, self-assurance, and invincible contradictionwith which Catholics behave to the Orthodox Greeks and to the
Protestants, and the Orthodox to Catholics and Protestants, and theProtestants to the two others, and the similar attitude of Old-
Believers, Pashkovites (Russian Evangelicals), Shakers, and allreligions -- that the very obviousness of the temptation at first
perplexes us. One says to oneself: it is impossible that it is sosimple and that people do not see that if two assertions are
mutually contradictory, then neither of them has the sole truthwhich faith should possess. There is something else here, there
must be some explanation. I thought there was, and sought thatexplanation and read all I could on the subject, and consulted all
whom I could. And no one gave me any explanation, except the onewhich causes the Sumsky Hussars to consider the Sumsky Hussars the
best regiment in the world, and the Yellow Uhlans to consider thatthe best regiment in the world is the Yellow Uhlans. The
ecclesiastics of all the different creeds, through their bestrepresentatives, told me nothing but that they believed themselves
to have the truth and the others to be in error, and that all theycould do was to pray for them. I went to archimandrites, bishops,
elders, monks of the strictest orders, and asked them; but none ofthem made any attempt to explain the matter to me except one man,
who explained it all and explained it so that I never asked any oneany more about it. I said that for every unbeliever turning to a
belief (and all our young generation are in a position to do so)the question that presents itself first is, why is truth not in
Lutheranism nor in Catholicism, but in Orthodoxy? Educated in thehigh school he cannot help knowing what the peasants do not know --
that the Protestants and Catholics equallyaffirm that their faithis the only true one. Historical evidence, twisted by each
religion in its own favour, is insufficient. Is it not possible,said I, to understand the teaching in a loftier way, so that from
its height the differences should disappear, as they do for one whobelieves truly? Can we not go further along a path like the one we
are following with the Old-Believers? They emphasize the fact thatthey have a differently shaped cross and different alleluias and a
different procession round the altar. We reply: You believe inthe Nicene Creed, in the seven sacraments, and so do we. Let us
hold to that, and in other matters do as you pease. We have unitedwith them by placing the essentials of faith above the
unessentials. Now with the Catholics can we not say: You believein so and so and in so and so, which are the chief things, and as
for the Filioque clause and the Pope -- do as you please. Can wenot say the same to the Protestants, uniting with them in what is
most important? My interlocutor agreed with my thoughts, but told me that such
conceptions would bring reproach o the spiritual authorities fordeserting the faith of our forefathers, and this would produce a
schism; and the vocation of the spiritual authorities is tosafeguard in all its purity the Greco-Russian Orthodox faith
inherited from our forefathers. And I understood it all. I am seeking a faith, the power of
life; and they are seeking the best way to fulfil in the eyes ofmen certain human obligations. and fulfilling these human affairs
they fulfil them in a human way. However much they may talk oftheir pity for their erring brethren, and of addressing prayers for
them to the throne of the Almighty -- to carry out human purposesviolence is necessary, and it has always been applied and is and
will be applied. If of two religions each considers itself trueand the other false, then men desiring to attract others to the