A CONFESSION [32]
less. 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 was
learning, the more they became the basis of my life, the more
oppressive and the more painful became these encounters and the
sharper became the line between what I do not understand because I
am not able to understand it, and what cannot be understood except
by lying to oneself.
In spite of my doubts and sufferings I still clung to the
Orthodox 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 renounce communion with Orthodoxy as
impossible. These questions were: first the relation of the
Orthodox Eastern Church to other Churches -- to the Catholics and
to the so-called sectarians. At that time, in consequence of my
interest in religion, I came into touch with believers of various
faiths: Catholics, protestants, Old-Believers, Molokans [Footnote:
A sect that rejects sacraments and ritual.], and others. And I
met among them many men of lofty morals who were truly religious.
I wished to be a brother to them. And what happened? That
teaching which promised to unite all in one faith and love -- that
very teaching, in the person of its best representatives, told me
that these men were all living a lie; that what gave them their
power of life was a temptation of the devil; and that we alone
possess the only possible truth. And I saw that all who do not
profess an identical faith with themselves are considered by the
Orthodox to be heretics, just as the Catholics and others consider
the Orthodox to be heretics. And i saw that the Orthodox (though
they 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 can
say to another; and secondly, because a man loving his children and
brothers cannot help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his
children 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 to
produce.
This offence is so obvious to us educated people who have
lived in countries where various religions are professed and have
seen the contempt, self-assurance, and invincible contradiction
with which Catholics behave to the Orthodox Greeks and to the
Protestants, and the Orthodox to Catholics and Protestants, and the
Protestants to the two others, and the similar attitude of Old-
Believers, Pashkovites (Russian Evangelicals), Shakers, and all
religions -- that the very obviousness of the temptation at first
perplexes us. One says to oneself: it is impossible that it is so
simple and that people do not see that if two assertions are
mutually contradictory, then neither of them has the sole truth
which faith should possess. There is something else here, there
must be some explanation. I thought there was, and sought that
explanation and read all I could on the subject, and consulted all
whom I could. And no one gave me any explanation, except the one
which causes the Sumsky Hussars to consider the Sumsky Hussars the
best regiment in the world, and the Yellow Uhlans to consider that
the best regiment in the world is the Yellow Uhlans. The
ecclesiastics of all the different creeds, through their best
representatives, told me nothing but that they believed themselves
to have the truth and the others to be in error, and that all they
could do was to pray for them. I went to archimandrites, bishops,
elders, monks of the strictest orders, and asked them; but none of
them made any attempt to explain the matter to me except