A CONFESSION [31]
temptation, 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. The
service, confession, and prayers were quite intelligible and
produced in me a glad consciousness that the meaning of life was
being revealed to me. The Communion itself I explained as an act
performed in remembrance of Christ, and indicating a purification
from sin and the full acceptance of Christ's teaching. If that
explanation was artificial I did not notice its artificiality: so
happy was I at humbling and abasing myself before the priest -- a
simple, timid country clergyman -- turning all the dirt out of my
soul and confessing my vices, so glad was I to merge in thought
with the humility of the fathers who wrote the prayers of the
office, 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 flesh
and 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 evidently
had never known what faith is.
I now permit myself to say that it was a cruel demand, but I
did 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 I
thought all in life was clear; I had indeed come to faith because,
apart from faith, I had found nothing, certainly nothing, except
destruction; therefore to throw away that faith was impossible and
I submitted. And I found in my soul a feeling which helped me to
endure it. This was the feeling of self-abasement and humility.
I humbled myself, swallowed that flesh and blood without any
blasphemous feelings and with a wish to believe. But the blow had
been struck and, knowing what awaited me, I could not go a second
time.
I continued to fulfil the rites of the Church and still
believed that the doctrine I was following contained the truth,
when something happened to me which I now understand but which then
seemed 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 Holy
men, which became my favourite books. Putting aside the miracles
and regarding them as fables illustrating thoughts, this reading
revealed to me life's meaning. There were the lives of Makarius
the Great, the story of Buddha, there were the words of St. John
Chrysostom, 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, stupid
men, 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 were
roused within me, and I felt that the more I entered into the
meaning of these men's speech, the more I went astray from truth
and 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 evident
absurdities, 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 in
that form.
So I lived for about three years. At first, when I was only
slightly associated with truth as a catechumen and was only
scenting out what seemed