incompatible with the idea of God or with the Christian teaching." And,
as the briefest statement of the law of his soul, he added:

"I believe in this: I believe in God, whom I understand
as Spirit, as Love, as the Source of all. I believe that he is
in me, and I in him. I believe that the will of God is most
clearly and intelligibly expressed in the teaching of the man
Jesus, whom to consider as God, and pray to I esteem the
greatest blasphemy. I believe that man's true welfare lies
in fulfilling God's will, and his will is that men should love
one another, and should consequently do to others as they wish
others to do to them--of which it is said in the Gospels that this
is the law and the prophets."

The world has listened to rebels against Church and State before, and
still it goes shuffling along as best it can under external laws and
governments, seeking from symbols, rituals, and miraculous manifestation
such spiritual consolation as it may imbibe. To such rebels the world,
after burning, hanging, and quartering them for several centuries, has
now become fairly well accustomed, though it still shoots or hangs them
now and then as a matter of habit. But Tolstoy's rebellion did not stop
at Church and State. He rebelled against all the ordinary proposals and
ideals of rebels themselves, and to him there was not very much to
choose between the Socialism of Marxists and the despotism of Tsars.
Liberals, Radicals, Social Democrats, Social Revolutionists, and all the
rest of the reforming or rebellious parties--what were they doing but
struggling to re-establish external laws, external governments,
officials, and authorities under different forms and different names? In
the Liberal movements of the day he took no part, and he had little
influence upon the course of revolution. He formed no party; no band of