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The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
page 104 of 449 (23%)
heavens opened, that Christ ascended into heaven, but for us all
these phrases nave no sense whatever. Men of the present can only
believe, as indeed they do, that they ought to believe in this;
but believe it they cannot, because it has no meaning for them.

Even if all these phrases ought to be interpreted in a figurative
sense and are allegories, we know that in the first place all
Churchmen are not agreed about it, but, on the contrary, the
majority stick to understanding the Holy Scripture in its literal
sense; and secondly, that these allegorical interpretations are
very varied and are not supported by any evidence.

But even if a man wants to force himself to believe in the
doctrines of the Church just as they are taught to him, the
universal diffusion of education and of the Gospel and of
communication between people of different forms of religion
presents a still more insurmountable obstacle to his doing so.

A man of the present day need only buy a Gospel for three copecks
and read through the plain words, admitting of no
misinterpretation, that Christ said to the Samaritan woman "that
the Father seeketh not worshipers at Jerusalem, nor in this
mountain nor in that, but worshipers in spirit and in truth," or
the saying that "the Christian must not pray like the heathen, nor
for show, but secretly, that is, in his closet," or that Christ's
follower must call no man master or father--he need only read
these words to be thoroughly convinced that the Church pastors,
who call themselves teachers in opposition to Christ's precept,
and dispute among themselves, constitute no kind of authority, and
that what the Churchmen teach us is not Christianity. Less even
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