_The Kingdom of God Is Within Y

er, Prophetic of the Destruction of the Pagan Life, and therefore of Necessity of the Acceptance of the Christian Doctrines-Non-resistance of Evil by Force is One Aspect of the Christian Doctrine, whi

of Arms-State Violence Can Never be Suppressed by the Forcible Overthrow of the Government-Men are Led by the Sufferings of the Pagan Mode of Life to the Necessity of Accepting Christ's Teaching with its Doctrine of Non-resistance by Force-The Consciousness of its Truth which is Diffused Throughout Our Society, Will also Bring About its Acceptance-This Consciousness is in Complete Contradiction with Our Life-This is Specially Obvious in Compulsory Military Service, but Through Habit and the Application of the Four Methods of Violence by the State, Men do not See this Inconsistency of Christianity with Life of a Soldier-They do Not even See It, though the Authorities Themselves Sho

irectly it appeared, and ought to have transformed men's lives for the better. But this is lik

s a new and higher conception of life. A new conception of life cannot be imposed on men; it can only be freely assimila

hemselves to it and adopt it. Others-the majority-only through a long course of mistakes, experiment

this necessity of assimilating the doctrine. One sometimes wonders what necessitated the corrupt

ched by it as the nations of Asia are now. The peoples who accepted it in its corrupt form were subjected to its slow but certain influence, and by a

by the majority of men was as necessary as it is that the seed shoul

h they ought to live, and at the same time foretold what human life would become if men would not live by it but continued to liv

rock; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that heareth these sayings, and doeth them not, shall be

generally and its application to social life in non-resistance to evil, men have been brought in spite o

ery thinking man. Ever since Christianity has been outwardly professed, this question is for men in their social life like the question which presents itself to a traveler when the road on which he has be

nd will not decide the question of resistance or non-resistance to evil by force. At every new struggl

rce to what each of the combatants regards as evil. But before Christ, men did not see that resistance by force to what each regards as evil, simply because one thin

resistance to evil by force. And they acted accordingly, each of the combatants trying to convin

ook the form of laws, supposed to have been received by supernatural means, sometimes of the commands of rulers or assemblies to whom infallibility was attribu

ally by those who had gained possession of authority, a

at to resist by force what each regarded as evil was irrational, that conflict was in no way lessened thereby

ever the external majesty with which they are invested, and that erring men are not rendered infallible by assembling together and calling themselves a senate or any other name. Even at that time this was felt and understood by many. And it was then that Christ preached his doctrine, which consisted not only of the prohibition of resistance to evil by force,

e in power, even after the nominal acceptance of Christianity, continued to maintain for themselves the principle of resista

as it was in the early ages of Christianity, becomes still more obvious through the division of the Roman Empire i

resisted by force was at one time the Pope, at another an emperor or king, an elective assembly or a whole nation. But both within and without the state there were always men to be found who did not accept as binding on themselves the laws given out as the decrees of a god, or made

and vice versa, and the struggle grew more and more intense. And the longer men used violence as the means of settling their disputes, th

ept the definition of evil laid down by them, but simply obey because they cannot help themselves. It was not because it was a good thing, necessary and beneficial to men, and the contrary course would have been an evil, but simply because it was the will of those in power that Nice was incorporated into France, and Lorraine into Germany, and Bohemia into Austria, and that Poland was divided, and Ireland and India ruled by the English government, and that the Chinese are attacked and the Africans slaughtered, and the Chinese prevented from immigrating by the

m from evil; that taxes, dues, serfage, prisons, scourging, knouts, executions, the army and war were what ought to be-we know now that one can seldom find a man who believes that all these means of violence p

il for the other was ordained by God himself, we know very well that nowadays, thanks to the growth of population and the diffusion of books and education, it would be hard to find in Europe or even in Russia, either among rich or poor, a man to whom in one shape or another a doubt as to the justice of this state of things had never presented itself. The rich know that they are guilty in the very fact of being rich, and try to expiate their guilt by sacrifices to art and science, as of old they expiated their sins by sacrifices to the Church. And even the larger half of the working people openly declare that the existing order is iniquitous and bound to be destroyed or reformed. One set of religious people of whom there are millions in Russia, the so-called sectaries, consider the existing social order as unjust and to be destroyed on the ground of the Gospel teachi

ation carried to such a point of perfection by the aid of science that everyone is caught in the circle of violence and has no chance

something sacred and immutable, and therefore following any efforts to alter it with the cruellest punishments. This method is in use now-as it has been from olden times-whe

, they perish and are forgotten, and the many other modern inventions employed by government, give such power that when once authority has come into certain hands, the police, open and secret,

ression of the people. These bought officials, from the highest ministers to the poorest copying clerks, make up an unbroken network of men bound together by the same interest-that of living at the expense of the people. They become the

lex manner, and starting from their earliest childhood, continues to act on men till the day of their death. It begins in their earliest years in the compulsory schools, created for this purpose, in which the children have instilled into them the ideas of life of their ancestors, which are in direct antagonism with the conscience of

r years by the encouragement of re

he creation, with money taken from the people, of national fêtes, spectacles, monuments, and festivals to dispose men to attach importance to their own nation, and to the aggrandizement of the state and its rulers, and to feel antagonism and even hatred for other nations. With these objects under despotic governments there is direct prohibition against printing and disseminating books to enlighten the people, and everyone who might rouse the people from their lethargy is exiled or imprisoned. Moreover, under every government without exception eve

men have not had time to form clear and definite principles of morals, and removing them from all natural and human conditions of life, home, family and kindred, and useful labor. They are shut up together in barracks, dressed in special clothes, and worked upon by cries, drums, music, and shining objects to go through certain daily actions invented for this purpose, and by this means are brought into an

e circle of viole

o be soldiers; the soldiers give the power of punishing and plundering them (and purchasing officia

d there is no chance of br

it by a new one under which such violence and oppression will be unnecessary, but they deceive themselves and others, and their efforts do not better the position of the oppresse

ly overturned and the power transferred to other hands, the new authority would rarely be less oppressive than the old one; on the contrary, always havin

s, conservatives, and capitalists who consider any socialistic or communistic organization or anarchy as an evil, and all these parties have no means other than violence to bring men to agr

uld be intensified by the struggle, and new forms of oppression would have been devised. So it has always been after all revolutions and all attempts at revolution, all co

especially the ideals most current in it,

ate life and labor. And even this is now-thanks to the efforts of communists and socialists-being gradually encroached upon by government, so that la

tance of Christ's teaching, and the question following upon it in social life of resistance or non-resistance to evil by force. But there is this difference, that whereas formerly me

isery of the position wh

re and more false, the truth of the Christian r

on, for eighteen centuries testified to it in spite of every menace, every privation, and every suf

impossibility of continuing in the pagan life, but also through its simplification, its increased clearness an

man of the modern world recognizes that our salvation lies in fulfilling the law of Christ. Some believers in the supernatural character of Christianity hold that salvation will come when all men are brought to believe in Christ, whose second coming is at hand. Other believers in supernatural Christianity hold that salvation will come through the Church, which will draw all men into its fold, train them in the Christian virtues, and transform their life. A third section, who do not admit the divinity of Christ, hold that the salvation of mankind will be brought about by slow and gradual progress, through which the pagan principles of our existence will be replaced by the principles of liberty, eq

; it must grow like a huge tree from a tiny seed. And so it has grown, and now has reach

y by spiritual intuition, but all the vast majority who seem so far

l see that, far as their social life based on violence may be from realizing Christian truth, in their private life what is considered good by all without exception is nothing but the Christian virtues; what is considered as bad is nothing but t

ted by the Christian spirit, these ideals are out of date and are abandoned, if not by all, at least by all those regarded as t

its cruelty and degradation of men, is terrible indeed. But if one looks at it wit

o for so long; those who do the evil have not had time yet to lear

through some cause independe

l men of the present day hate the very so

lity and what he had expected to find among Christian nations. If we feel no astonishment at the contrast between our convictions and our conduct, that is because the influences, tending to obscure the contrast, produce an effect upon us too. We need only look at our life from the poin

Red Cross; the solitary prison cells, the experiments of execution by electricity-and the care of the hygienic

hat they already feel themselves to be in their consciousness, and what they genuinely wish to be. Men of the present day do not merely pretend to hate oppression, inequality, class distinction, and every kind

ed, often illiterate and drunken, creatures because they appropriate the property of others-on a much smaller scale than we do-or because they kill men in a different fashion from that in which we undertake to do it-and shutting them in prison for it, ill treating them and killing them; and whether it is laudable and worthy of a man and a Christian to preach for a salary to the people not Christianity, but superstitions which one knows to be stupid and pernicious; and whether it is laudable and worthy of a man to rob his neighbor for his gratification of what he wants to satisfy his simplest needs, as the great landowners do; or to force him to exhausting labor beyond his strength to augment one's wealth, as

ch they profess, and in the depths of their souls, when they are left alone with their conscience, they are ashamed and miserable at the recollection of it, especially if the baseness of their action has been pointed out to them. A man of the present day, whether he believes in the divinity of Christ or not, cannot fail to see that to assist in the capacity of tzar, minister, governor, or commissioner in taking from a poor family its last cow for taxes to be spent on cannons, or on the pay and pensions of idle officials, who live in luxury and are worse than useless; or in putting into prison some man we have ourselves corrupted, and throwing his family on the streets; or in plundering and butchering in war; or in incu

ttained to so evident as in universal conscription, which

e governments have exerted, in maintaining it, every resource of intimidation, corruption, brutalization, and violence, th

cription, or in countries where compulsory service has not been introduced, of people voluntarily abandoning a life of industry to recruit soldiers and train them as murderers. We know that all of these men are either Christian

that the men that the soldiers will have to kill are not foreigners alone, but their own countrymen, the very working people from whom they themselves are taken

pproach incautiously. By rewarding an action always regarded as base and cowardly even by men on the lowest level of morality, William has shown that a soldier's chief duty-the one most ap

to ME before the altar and the minister of God! You are still too young to understand all the importance of what has been said here; let your care before all things be to obey the orders and instructions given you. You have sworn fidelity TO ME, lads of my guard; THAT MEANS THAT YOU ARE NOW MY SOLDIERS, that YOU HAVE

He says openly that the soldiers are in HIS service, at HIS disposal, and

and the depths of ignominy to which they fall in promising obedience. Like a bold hypnotizer, he tests the degree of insensibilit

ing that can be sacred for a man of the modern world. And yet all the Christians, lib

here is any choice about it. They seem to think there is no course open but slavish submission. One would have thought these insane w

t a man can hold sacred, all express their readiness to kill their brothers, even their fathers, at the bidding of the first crazy creatur

avery may force you to kill even your own father;" and he, often very well educated, trained in all the sciences at the university, quietly puts his head under the yoke. They dress him up in a clown's costume, and order him to cut capers, tu

exity. "If everyone would stand out it would be something, but

ot resist. The aim of his life is his personal welfare. It is b

n said that the invention of terrible weapons of destruction will put an end to war. That is an error. As the means of extermination are improved, the means of reducing men who hold the state conception of life to submission can be improved to correspond. Th

and moral society. What sort of moral and rational society can be formed out of such elements? With warped and rotten planks you cannot build a house, however you put them together. And to fo

t ready, in the name of liberty, to submit to the most slavish degradation; in the name of equality, to accept the crudest, most senseless division of

there are some who advocate that it should be made so) does not affect the servility of the citizens to the government in principle. Here we h

te organization of life based on violence, the aim of which was the security of personal, family, and social welfare, has come to the point

e not accepted Christ's teaching, Their descendants have been brought now to the a