THE NOVELS AND OTHER WORKS OF LYOF N. TOLSTOÏ THE KINGDOM OF NEW YORK 1911 INTRODUCTION THE present volume contains a strong appeal for practical religion. It is an arraignment of empty observances and hollow mockeries, and a plea for simple righteousness within. Count Tolstor's earnest and eloquent manner comes out forcibly in his elucidation of Christ's words which he takes for his text, "The Kingdom of God is within you." The writer pleads that the outward forms of religion, however helpful they may be to some souls, are not essential; that the superstitions with which Faith sometimes clothes or masks herself may or may not be uplifting; but that the foundation of Christianity is the truth contained in Christ's words, his simple, plain, undogmatic commands and prohibitions. "I believe it is Max Müller," says Tolstor, "who describes the astonishment of an Indian converted to Christianity, who, having apprehended the essence of the Christian doctrine, came to Europe and beheld the life of Christians. He could not recover from his astonishment in the presence of the reality, so different from the state of things he had expected to find among Christian nations." Contradictions like this between teaching and living will continue to arise, he continues, until men find the essential something which they lack the quality which will make them what they really desire to be, and what many even conscientiously believe themselves to be. One word sums up this need, and that word is Love. If the world should take Love for its guiding star, it is evident that all the evils of mankind would cease, wars, crimes, poverty, ambitions; the millennium would V |