R. M. L. PREFACE ACCEPTING the second great commandment-we must love others as ourselves-as fundamentally necessary to a Christian's life, I have endeavored in this volume to consider all that obedience to it involves, and especially what the consequences would be to any man in present society who attempted to obey that commandment implicitly. I have sought to point out some of the obstacles which blocked the path of one really great spirit, who, with incredible perseverance, energy and devotion, strove to follow literally this teaching of the gospel and to become a worthy follower of Jesus. I mean Leo Tolstoy, who in his life and in his art labored for thirty years to be a meritorious expression of the Christ spirit. Needless to say, I am not attempting here a comprehensive study of Christianity. Anyone who undertook to limit its scope to the relations between men, or to the problems of society, would lay himself open to just and serious criticism. There is something in Christianity for every soul; there is in it light for everyone in distress of mind and comfort for everyone in distress of body. There is no phase of life that Christianity fails to touch; and, therefore, we see scientists, psychologists, sociologists, theologians and men of every other conceivable intellectual, spiritual and social interest go to it as to a rich and inexhaustible quarry which never fails to reward them for their labor in working it. In this volume only one vein is followed, and yet it may prove the most valuable of all. It may be that here we shall find the precious metal from which all others are derived. That we must love others as ourselves is, to be sure, the second, not the first, com vii 405510 mandment; but did not St. John tell us, "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" Nor is Tolstoyism in any complete sense my theme. There are tenets in his faith that I have not touched upon. Nonresistance and perfect chastity are perhaps the two most important. When I was with him at Yasnaya Polyána in 1903, he took me into his study just before my departure, and there endeavored to impress upon me that, in his opinion, the two cardinal virtues were voluntary poverty and nonresistance. Tolstoy also considered bread-labor, a vegetarian diet, temperance, service, meditation, celibacy and prayer as essential to the Christian life. The Tolstoyism that is dwelt upon here is his literal interpretation of the gospels, the emphasis he laid upon love of one's neighbor and his strenuous effort to live the perfect Christian life. Tolstoy failed, not because of his own weakness, vices or lack of faith, but because of the hostility of everyone about him and the obstructive power of established social and economic institutions. And the causes of his failure lead the author to consider this question: Is a Christian society necessary to the success of Christianity? If it is not possible in present society to love others as ourselves, then it is certainly necessary-and the first duty of Christiansto establish a new society wherein the commandments of Jesus can be obeyed. May it not be that we fail because as Christians we have accepted that world-that social system-toward which Jesus says we must be hostile? Even the Church which was to be the refuge of those opposed to "this present evil world" (Gal. i, 4), now accepts its subsidies. It has become one of the strongest bulwarks of competitive society with its many inequities, and even in Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany it fought to the end against any change in the social structure. Consciously and unconsciously, then, is not the Church and are not we striving to perpetuate the very economic and social conditions which choke the life out of the divine spirit? ... That any Christian should seek to preserve an unjust society is inexplicable and inexcusable, because Jesus in many places in the gospels makes it perfectly clear that certain social and economic conditions are absolutely essential for the germination, growth and full-flowering of Christianity. It cannot thrive in some places: it can not live at all in certain other places. It can only grow in the very best soil. That the "world" is its enemy is made clear in many texts. It knoweth us not. Love not the world. The cares of this world choke the Word. . . . Not as the world giveth give I unto you. . . . And Jesus said to his judges, "My kingdom is not of this world." In every case the term, the world, is used as a contrast to the ideal society established by Jesus. And while the term refers to the dominate society and competitive system which existed at that time, it is in all its essential features exactly the same society and economic system which prevails to-day. Upon the statement of the Master himself, Christianity must fail in such an environment. His seed was then falling on barren ground, as it is to-day. There is, to be sure, a something which is called Christianity that has been adopted by the Kaiser, the militarists, the imperialists and the plutocrats, and it succeeds in material greatness, pomp and grandeur; but to what a state of world disaster has it brought us? How repulsive and blasphemous it seemed coming from the mouth of the supreme war-lord! How is it possible that he could find one word in the gospel to comfort his soul or sustain him in his monstrous course? What is this Christianity that soothes his conscience? Is it the cactus that grows upon the barren plain, and, being devoid of every good quality and covered with ugly thorns, appeals to his perverted soul as a thing of beauty? Is it some product of the seed that Jesus sowed upon a soil that was too barren to permit it to live except in this cruel and frightful form? I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. This is the promise of the Master. Yet here we are hungry and thirsty in a war-torn world; and shall we have nothing but this cactus for food and drink? Surely something has gone wrong. Is it not possible that we have given to the precious seed only a stony and barren soil in which it could not survive except by changing its essential being; and that it now lives as a repellent and useless exotic, capable neither of satisfying hunger, nor of assuaging thirst? It is possible, perhaps, that if given a friendly soil and a wholesome environment the seed which became this hideous thing might yet become the food of man and his earthly and heavenly salvation. It may be that the world in which we live-this society to which we all cling so fondly-is the deadly enemy of the truly Christian life. These are some of the questions and problems which are considered in this book. And the answer to them all seems to be found in the society that Jesus and his disciples established and lived in during the three years of his ministry. It was a new social and economic system-wholly unlike that of the world; it was the kingdom of God on earth. It was a just and humane economic system. It was a soil in which the divine seed could grow. It was a body suited to the sublime spirit of the word of God. It was an earthly temple wherein men could worship God and love each other in word and in deed. It was a society where men could serve each other in every act of their daily lives. Although the apostles tried valiantly to continue the new order after the crucifixion, the world soon crushed the new kingdom and Christianity became an exotic, struggling feebly for life at times, full of fire and hope at other times, in an en |