The Kingdom of God is Within You

il Doers-3d Reply: Duty of Using Force in Defense of One's Neighbor-4th Reply: The Breach of the Command of Non-resistance to be Regarded Simply as a Weakness-5th Reply: Reply Evaded by Making Believe

cal World and of the Authorities to Profession of True Christianity-General Character of Russian Freethinking Critics-Foreign

, to hush up, what I had tried to express in m

to have been burnt. But, at the same time, it was discussed among officials, and circulated

and these the government tolerated, and even encouraged. So that the refutation of a book which no one was

eneral divisions-the religious criticisms of men who regard themselves

cipal point of my charge against them, and to say plainly, do they or do they not admit the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount and the commandment of non-resistance to evil as binding on a Christian. And they were bound to answer this question, not after the usual fashion (i. e., "that although on the one side one cannot absolutely deny, yet on the other side one cannot again fully assent, all the more seeing that," etc., etc.). No; they should have answered the question as plainly as it was put in my book-Did Christ really demand from his disciples that they should carry out what he taught them in the Sermon on the Mount? And can a Christian, then, o

my book there was no such plain and direct answer. No; my book received precisely the same treatment as all the attacks upo

the soul. A very great deal was said, but not a word about the one thing which for every Christian is the most essential question in life-how to reconcile the duty of forgiveness, meekness, patience, and love for all, neig

five heads. I have tried to bring together in this connection all I could, not only fro

he use of force is not opposed by the teaching of Christ; that it is perm

eir position that what is Christian in Christianity presents itself to them as heresy, while everything in the Old and New Testaments which can be distorted into an antichristian and heathen meaning they regard as the foundation of Christianity. In support of their assertion that Christianity is not opposed to the use of force, these men usually, with the greatest audacity, bring together all the most obscure passages from the Old and New Testaments, interpreting them in t

a Christ of their own in the place of him in whose name the Church itself exists, as well as their office in it. If all men were to learn that the Church professes

k also, and this is the highest moral duty, yet that there are wicked men in the world, and if these wicked men were not restrained by force, the whole world and a

se force against wicked men had been permitted by God, since it is impossible to find a perfect and unfailing distinction by which one could positively know the wicked from the good, so it would come to all individual men and societies of men mutually regarding each other as wicked men, as is the case now. Thirdly, even if it we

of his neighbors, and to use force against transgressors by force. This assertion is an absolute assumption, and one cannot find in all Christ's teaching any confirmation of such an argument. Such an argument is not only a limitation, but a direct contradiction and negation of the commandment. If every man has the right to have recourse to force in face of a danger threatening another, the question of the use of force is reduced

ror and impossibility of such a limitation is shown in the Gospel with special clearness in the account of the judgment of Caiaphas, who makes precisely this distinction. He acknowledged that it was wrong to punish the innocent Jesus, but he saw in him a source of danger not for himself, but for the whole people, and therefore he said: It is better for one man to die, that the wh

would not have been a changed man to-morrow, and whether our punishment of him is not useless cruelty. We shut up the dangerous-as we think-member of society, but the next day this man might cease to be dangerous and his imprisonment might be for nothing. I see that a man I know to be a ruffian is pursuing a young girl. I have a gun in my hand-I kill the ruffian and save the girl. But the death or the wounding of the ruffian

Ballou, Dymond, the Quakers, the Mennonites, and the Shakers do now, and as the Moravian brothers, the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Bogomilites, and the Paulicians did in the past, is a one-sided heresy. This command has neither more nor less value than all the other commands, and the man who through weakness transgresses any command whatever, the command of non-resistance included, does not cease to be a Christian if he hold the tru

teach that we should avoid temptations to break it, chief of which is the military oath, but they themselves administer it. The preachers of the Church never in any other case advocate the breaking of any other commandment. But in connection with the commandment of non-resistance they openly teach that we must not understand it too literally, but that there are conditions and circumstances in which we must do the direct opposite, that is, go to law, fight, punish. So that occasions for fulfilling the comm

ognize it; only not daring to acknowledge this

or the fo

ut it. This method of reply is employed by all the more or less cultivated religious writers, that is to say, those who feel the laws of Christ binding for themselves. Knowing that the contradiction existing between the teaching of Christ which we profess with our lips and the whol

thing is discussed except what constitutes the principal subject of the book. As a characteristic example of such criticisms, I will quote the article of a well-known and ingenious English writer a

eld by civil society to be compatible with war, courts of justice, capital punishment, divorce, oaths, national prejudice, and, indeed, with most of the institutions of civil and social life. He now believes

these five commandments of Christ?" You expect, then, that in answer to this essential question, which is the only one that could induce a man to write an article about the book, he will say either that this interpretation of Christ's teaching is true and we ought to follow it, or he will say that such an interpretation is untrue, will show why, and will give some other correct interpretation of those words which I interpret incorre

des, in a tra

principles, but not to disturb the bases and revolutionize the institutions of all human society, which themselves rest on divine sanctions as well as on inevitable conditions. Were it my object to prove how untenable is the doctrine of communism, based by Count Tolstoy upon the divine paradoxes [sic], which can be interpreted only on historical principles in accordance with the whole method of the teaching of Jesus, it would require an ampler canvas th

ne that all that has been repeated from century to century with such earnestness and solemnity by all those archdeacons, bishops, archbishops, holy synods, and popes, is all of it a base lie and a calumny foisted upon Christ by them for the sake of keeping safe the money they must have to live luxuriously on the necks of other men? And it is a lie and a calumny so transparent that the only way of keeping it up consists in overawing people by their earnestness, their conscientiousness. It is just what has taken place of

hristian-I cannot." "What is he muttering?" asks the president, frowning impatiently and raising his eyes from his book to listen. "Speak louder," the colonel with shining epaulets shouts to him. "I-I as a Christian--" And at last it app

uttering. They do not even pay attention to it. "They all mutter som

he him. Next: Vassily Nikitin." And they lead the trembling youth away. And it does not strike anyone-the guards, or Vassily Nikitin, whom they are bringing in, or any of the spectators of this scene-that these inar

rom all sides directly there is anywhere a glimpse of truth exposing a predominant falsehood. At once begins the series of long, clever, ingenio

ctions in which Church Christianity has placed itself, by professing its faith in Christ

d and can easily be convicted of error; but this last class, who do not argue, who do not condescend to argue about it, but take shelter behind their own grandeur, and make a show of all this having been decided by them or at least by someone long ago, a

is contradiction. So that one cannot expect from them free discussion of the very essence of the question-that is, of the change in men's life which must result from applying Christ's teaching to the existing order of the world. Such free discussion I only expected from worldly, freethinking critics who are not bound to Christ's teaching in any way, and can therefore

This was not done in a single criticism. The freethinking Russian critics taking my book as though its whole contents could be reduced to non-resistance to evil, and understanding the doctrine of non-resistance to evil itself (no doubt for greater convenience in refuting it) as though it would prohibit every kind of conflict with evil, fell vehemently upon this doctrine, and for so

e Russian advanced critics, obviously unaware of all that has been done to elucidate the question of non-resistance, and sometimes even imagining apparently that the rule of non-resistance to evil had been invented by me personally, fell foul of the very idea of it. They opposed it and attacked

o, because this principle would hinder their resistance to evil as applied to the conservatives and the overthrowing of them. The conservatives were indignant at the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force hindering the energetic destruction of the revolutionary elements, which may ruin the national prosperity; the revolutionists were indignant at the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force hindering the overthrow of the conservatives, who are ruining t

practical life would turn mankind aside out of the path of civilization along which it is moving. The path of civil

eral character of t

book were somewhat different from those of Russian critics, not only in be

olicism or Protestantism according to their views)-the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is only a string of very pretty impracticable dreams du charmant docteur, as Renan says, fit for the simple and half-savage i

ch a conviction is partly due to my want of knowledge, my ignorance of history, my ignorance of all the vain attempts to apply the principles of the Sermon on the Mount to life, which have been made in history and have led to nothing; and partly it is due to my

so wrote the American author Savage, and Ingersoll, the

s teaching held by persons of refinement and culture of our times. The teaching is no use for our industrial age, precisely as though the existence of this industrial age were a sacred fact which ought no

er of presentation, all amount essentially to the same strange misapprehension-namely, that Christ's teaching, one

ng sinfully, as we do live and are accustomed to live. Not only is the question of non-resistance to evil not discussed; the very mention of the

t at least some kind of solution of the following question, s

versa? And to reply that that is evil which I think evil, in spite of the fact that my opponent thinks it good, is not a solution of the

ginning of historical times, and, as we all know,

we consider evil until we have found a universal

uestion. But we cannot treat the question as the learned critics of Christianity do. They pretend either that no such question exists at all or that the question is solved by granting to certain persons or assemblies of persons the right to define evil and to resist it

ment of freethinking critics about the Christian religion. In this way, then, the discussions of my book on the part of Churchmen and freethinking