The Kingdom of God is within you by Leo Tolstoy

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"In the maintenance and use of these expensive appliances for
murder, we can very suitably exercise to the full the virtues
of forgiveness to those who injure us, love toward our enemies,
blessings to those who curse us, and doing good to those who
hate us.

"For this we have a succession of Christian priests to pray for
us and beseech the blessing of Heaven on the holy work of
slaughter.

"I see all this (i.e., the contradiction between profession and
practice), and I continue to profess religion and take part in
government, and pride myself on being at the same time a devout
Christian and a devoted servant of the government. I do not
want to agree with these senseless notions of non-resistance.
I cannot renounce my authority and leave only immoral men in
control of the government. The Constitution says the
government has the right to declare war, and I assent to this
and support it, and swear that I will support it. And I do not
for that cease to be a Christian. War, too, is a Christian
duty. Is it not a Christian duty to kill hundreds of thousands
of one's fellow-men, to outrage women, to raze and burn towns,
and to practice every possible cruelty? It is time to dismiss
all these false sentimentalities. It is the truest means of
forgiving injuries and loving enemies. If we only do it in the
spirit of love, nothing can be more Christian than such
murder."

In another pamphlet, entitled "How many Men are Necessary to
Change a Crime into a Virtue?" he says: "One man may not kill. If
he kills a fellow-creature, he is a murderer. If two, ten, a
hundred men do so, they, too, are murderers. But a government or
a nation may kill as many men as it chooses, and that will not be
murder, but a great and noble action. Only gather the people
together on a large scale, and a battle of ten thousand men
becomes an innocent action. But precisely how many people must
there be to make it so?--that is the question. One man cannot
plunder and pillage, but a whole nation can. But precisely how
many are needed to make it permissible? Why is it that one man,
ten, a hundred, may not break the law of God, but a great number
may?"

And here is a version of Ballou's catechism composed for his
flock:

CATECHISM OF NON-RESISTANCE.

Q. Whence is the word "non-resistance" derived?

A. From the command, "Resist not evil." (M. v. 39.)

Q. What does this word express?

A. It expresses a lofty Christian virtue enjoined on us by
Christ.

Q. Ought the word "non-resistance" to be taken in its widest
sense--that is to say, as intending that we should not offer
any resistance of any kind to evil?

A. No; it ought to be taken in the exact sense of our Saviour's
teaching--that is, not repaying evil for evil. We ought to
oppose evil by every righteous means in our power, but not by
evil.

Q. What is there to show that Christ enjoined non-resistance in
that sense?

A. It is shown by the words he uttered at the same time. He
said: "Ye have heard, it was said of old, An eye for an eye,
and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you Resist not evil.
But if one smites thee on the right cheek, turn him the other
also; and if one will go to law with thee to take thy coat from
thee, give him thy cloak also."

Q. Of whom was he speaking in the words, "Ye have heard it was
said of old"?

A. Of the patriarchs and the prophets, contained in the Old
Testament, which the Hebrews ordinarily call the Law and the
Prophets.

Q. What utterances did Christ refer to in the words, "It was
said of old"?

A. The utterances of Noah, Moses, and the other prophets, in
which they admit the right of doing bodily harm to those who
inflict harm, so as to punish and prevent evil deeds.

Q. Quote such utterances.

A. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed."--GEN. ix. 6.

"He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to
death...And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life
for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for
foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."
--Ex. xxi. 12 and 23-25.

"He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death. And if
a man cause a blemish in his neighbor, as he hath done, so
shall it be done unto him: breach for breach, eye for eye,
tooth for tooth."--LEV. xxiv. 17, 19, 20.

"Then the judges shall make diligent inquisition; and behold,
if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely
against his brother, then shall ye do unto him as he had
thought to have done unto his brother...And thine eye shall not
pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,
hand for hand, foot for foot."--DEUT. xix. 18, 21.

Noah, Moses, and the Prophets taught that he who kills, maims,
or injures his neighbors does evil. To resist such evil, and
to prevent it, the evil doer must be punished with death, or
maiming, or some physical injury. Wrong must be opposed by
wrong, murder by murder, injury by injury, evil by evil. Thus
taught Noah, Moses, and the Prophets. But Christ rejects all
this. "I say unto you," is written in the Gospel, "resist not
evil," do not oppose injury with injury, but rather bear
repeated injury from the evil doer. What was permitted is
forbidden. When we understand what kind of resistance they
taught, we know exactly what resistance Christ forbade.

Q. Then the ancients allowed the resistance of injury by
injury?

A. Yes. But Jesus forbids it. The Christian has in no case the
right to put to death his neighbor who has done him evil, or to
do him injury in return.

Q. May he kill or maim him in self-defense?

A. No.

Q. May he go with a complaint to the judge that he who has
wronged him may be punished?

A. No. What he does through others, he is in reality doing
himself.

Q. Can he fight in conflict with foreign enemies or disturbers
of the peace?

A. Certainly not. He cannot take any part in war or in
preparations for war. He cannot make use of a deadly weapon.
He cannot oppose injury to injury, whether he is alone or with
others, either in person or through other people.

Q. Can he voluntarily vote or furnish soldiers for the
government?

A. He can do nothing of that kind if he wishes to be faithful
to Christ's law.

Q. Can he voluntarily give money to aid a government resting on
military force, capital punishment, and violence in general?

A. No, unless the money is destined for some special object,
right in itself, and good both in aim and means.

Q. Can he pay taxes to such a government?

A. No; he ought not voluntarily to pay taxes, but he ought not
to resist the collecting of taxes. A tax is levied by the
government, and is exacted independently of the will of the
subject. It is impossible to resist it without having recourse
to violence of some kind. Since the Christian cannot employ
violence, he is obliged to offer his property at once to the
loss by violence inflicted on it by the authorities.

Q. Can a Christian give a vote at elections, or take part in
government or law business?

A. No; participation in election, government, or law business
is participation in government by force.

Q. Wherein lies the chief significance of the doctrine of
non-resistance?

A. In the fact that it alone allows of the possibility of
eradicating evil from one's own heart, and also from one's
neighbor's. This doctrine forbids doing that whereby evil has
endured for ages and multiplied in the world. He who attacks
another and injures him, kindles in the other a feeling of
hatred, the root of every evil. To injure another because he
has injured us, even with the aim of overcoming evil, is
doubling the harm for him and for oneself; it is begetting, or
at least setting free and inciting, that evil spirit which we
should wish to drive out. Satan can never be driven out by
Satan. Error can never be corrected by error, and evil cannot
be vanquished by evil.

True non-resistance is the only real resistance to evil. It is
crushing the serpent's head. It destroys and in the end
extirpates the evil feeling.

Q. But if that is the true meaning of the rule of non-
resistance, can it always put into practice?

A. It can be put into practice like every virtue enjoined by
the law of God. A virtue cannot be practiced in all
circumstances without self-sacrifice, privation, suffering, and
in extreme cases loss of life itself. But he who esteems life
more than fulfilling the will of God is already dead to the
only true life. Trying to save his life he loses it. Besides,
generally speaking, where non-resistance costs the sacrifice of
a single life or of some material welfare, resistance costs a
thousand such sacrifices.

Non-resistance is Salvation; Resistance is Ruin.

It is incomparably less dangerous to act justly than unjustly,
to submit to injuries than to resist them with violence, less
dangerous even in one's relations to the present life. If all
men refused to resist evil by evil our world would be happy.

Q. But so long as only a few act thus, what will happen to
them?

A. If only one man acted thus, and all the rest agreed
to crucify him, would it not be nobler for him to die in the
glory of non-resisting love, praying for his enemies, than to
live to wear the crown of Caesar stained with the blood of the
slain? However, one man, or a thousand men, firmly resolved
not to oppose evil by evil are far more free from danger by
violence than those who resort to violence, whether among
civilized or savage neighbors. The robber, the murderer, and
the cheat will leave them in peace, sooner than those who
oppose them with arms, and those who take up the sword shall
perish by the sword, but those who seek after peace, and behave
kindly and harmlessly, forgiving and forgetting injuries, for
the most part enjoy peace, or, if they die, they die blessed.
In this way, if all kept the ordinance of non-resistance, there
would obviously be no evil nor crime. If the majority acted
thus they would establish the rule of love and good will even
over evil doers, never opposing evil with evil, and never
resorting to force. If there were a moderately large minority
of such men, they would exercise such a salutary moral
influence on society that every cruel punishment would be
abolished, and violence and feud would be replaced by peace and
love. Even if there were only a small minority of them, they
would rarely experience anything worse than the world's
contempt, and meantime the world, though unconscious of it, and
not grateful for it, would be continually becoming wiser and
better for their unseen action on it. And if in the worst case
some members of the minority were persecuted to death, in dying
for the truth they would have left behind them their doctrine,
sanctified by the blood of their martyrdom. Peace, then, to
all who seek peace, and may overruling love be the imperishable
heritage of every soul who obeys willingly Christ's word,
"Resist not evil."

ADIN BALLOU.

For fifty years Ballou wrote and published books dealing
principally with the question of non-resistance to evil by force.
In these works, which are distinguished by the clearness of their
thought and eloquence of exposition, the question is looked at
from every possible side, and the binding nature of this command
on every Christian who acknowledges the Bible as the revelation of
God is firmly established. All the ordinary objections to the
doctrine of non-resistance from the Old and New Testaments are
brought forward, such as the expulsion of the moneychangers from
the Temple, and so on, and arguments follow in disproof of them
all. The practical reasonableness of this rule of conduct is
shown independently of Scripture, and all the objections
ordinarily made against its practicability are stated and refuted.
Thus one chapter in a book of his treats of non-resistance in
exceptional cases, and he owns in this connection that if there
were cases in which the rule of non-resistance were impossible of
application, it would prove that the law was not universally
authoritative. Quoting these cases, he shows that it is precisely
in them that the application of the rule is both necessary and
reasonable. There is no aspect of the question, either on his
side or on his opponents', which he has not followed up in his
writings. I mention all this to show the unmistakable interest
which such works ought to have for men who make a profession of
Christianity, and because one would have thought Ballou's work
would have been well known, and the ideas expressed by him would
lave been either accepted or refuted; but such has not been the
case.

The work of Garrison, the father, in his foundation of the Society
of Non-resistants and his Declaration, even more than my
correspondence with the Quakers, convinced me of the fact that the
departure of the ruling form of Christianity from the law of
Christ on non-resistance by force is an error that has long been
observed and pointed out, and that men have labored, and are still
laboring, to correct. Ballou's work confirmed me still more in
this view. But the fate of Garrison, still more that of Ballou,
in being completely unrecognized in spite of fifty years of
obstinate and persistent work in the same direction, confirmed me
in the idea that there exists a kind of tacit but steadfast
conspiracy of silence about all such efforts.

Ballou died in August, 1890, and there was as obituary notice of
him in an American journal of Christian views (RELIGIO-
PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL, August 23). In this laudatory notice it is
recorded that Ballou was the spiritual director of a parish, that
he delivered from eight to nine thousand sermons, married one
thousand couples, and wrote about five hundred articles; but there
is not a single word said of the object to which he devoted his
life; even the word "non-resistance" is not mentioned. Precisely
as it was with all the preaching of the Quakers for two hundred
years and, too, with the efforts of Garrison the father, the
foundation of his society and journal, and his Declaration, so it
is with the life-work of Ballou. It seems just as though it did
not exist and never had existed.

We have an astounding example of the obscurity of works which aim
at expounding the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force, and
at confuting those who do not recognize this commandment, in the
book of the Tsech Helchitsky, which has only lately been noticed
and has not hitherto been printed.

Soon after the appearance of my book in German, I received a
letter from Prague, from a professor of the university there,
informing me of the existence of a work, never yet printed, by
Helchitsky, a Tsech of the fifteenth century, entitled "The Net of
Faith." In this work, the professor told me, Helchitsky expressed
precisely the same view as to true and false Christianity as I had
expressed in my book "What I Believe." The professor wrote to me
that Helchitsky's work was to be published for the first time in
the Tsech language in the JOURNAL OF THE PETERSBURG ACADEMY OF
SILENCE. Since I could not obtain the book itself, I tried to
make myself acquainted with what was known of Helchitsky, and I
gained the following information from a German book sent me by the
Prague professor and from Pypin's history of Tsech literature.
This was Pypin's account:

"'The Net of Faith' is Christ's teaching, which ought to draw
man up out of the dark depths of the sea of worldliness and his
own iniquity. True faith consists in believing God's Word; but
now a time has come when men mistake the true faith for heresy,
and therefore it is for the reason to point out what the true
faith consists in, if anyone does not know this. It is hidden
in darkness from men, and they do not recognize the true law of
Christ.

"To make this law plain, Helchitsky points to the primitive
organization of Christian society--the organization which, he
says, is now regarded in the Roman Church as an abominable
heresy. This Primitive Church was his special ideal of social
organization, founded on equality, liberty, and fraternity.
Christianity, in Helchitsky's view, still preserves these
elements, and it is only necessary for society to return to its
pure doctrine to render unnecessary every other form of social
order in which kings and popes are essential; the law of love
would alone be sufficient in every case.

"Historically, Helchitsky attributes the degeneration of
Christianity to the times of Constantine the Great, whom he
Pope Sylvester admitted into the Christian Church with all his
heathen morals and life. Constantine, in his turn, endowed the
Pope with worldly riches and power. From that time forward
these two ruling powers were constantly aiding one another to
strive for nothing but outward glory. Divines and
ecclesiastical dignitaries began to concern themselves only
about subduing the whole world to their authority, incited men
against one another to murder and plunder, and in creed and
life reduced Christianity to a nullity. Helchitsky denies
completely the right to make war and to inflict the punishment
of death; every soldier, even the 'knight,' is only a violent
evil doer--a murderer."

The same account is given by the German book, with the addition of
a few biographical details and some extracts from Helchitsky's
writings.

Having learnt the drift of Helchitsky's teaching in this way, I
awaited all the more impatiently the appearance of "The Net of
Faith" in the journal of the Academy. But one year passed, then
two and three, and still the book did appear. It was only in 1888
that I learned that the printing of the book, which had been
begun, was stopped. I obtained the proofs of what had been
printed and read them through. It is a marvelous book from every
point of view.

Its general tenor is given with perfect accuracy by Pypin.
Helchitsky's fundamental idea is that Christianity, by allying
itself with temporal power in the days of Constantine, and by
continuing to develop in such conditions, has become completely
distorted, and has ceased to be Christian altogether. Helchitsky
gave the title "The Net of Faith" to his book, taking as his motto
the verse of the Gospel about the calling of the disciples to be
fishers of men; and, developing this metaphor, he says:

"Christ, by means of his disciples, would have caught all the
world in his net of faith, but the greater fishes broke the net
and escaped out of it, and all the rest have slipped through
the holes made by the greater fishes, so that the net has
remained quite empty. The greater fishes who broke the net are
the rulers, emperors, popes, kings, who have not renounced
power, and instead of true Christianity have put on what is
simply a mask of it."

Helchitsky teaches precisely what has been and is taught in these
days by the non-resistant Mennonites and Quakers, and in former
tunes by the Bogomilites, Paulicians, and many others. He teaches
that Christianity, expecting from its adherents gentleness,
meekness, peaceableness, forgiveness of injuries, turning the
other cheek when one is struck, and love for enemies, is
inconsistent with the use of force, which is an indispensable
condition of authority.

The Christian, according to Helchitsky's reasoning, not only
cannot be a ruler or a soldier; he cannot take any part in
government nor in trade, or even be a landowner; he can only be an
artisan or a husbandman.

This book is one of the few works attacking official Christianity
which has escaped being burned. All such so-called heretical
works were burned at the stake, together with their authors, so
that there are few ancient works exposing the errors of official
Christianity. The book has a special interest for this reason
alone. But apart from its interest from every point of view, it
is one of the most remarkable products of thought for its depth of
aim, for the astounding strength and beauty of the national
language in which it is written, and for its antiquity. And yet
for more than four centuries it has remained unprinted, and is
still unknown, except to a few learned specialists.

One would have thought that all such works, whether of the
Quakers, of Garrison, of Ballou, or of Helchitsky, asserting and
proving as they do, on the principles of the Gospel, that our
modern world takes a false view of Christ's teaching, would have
awakened interest, excitement, talk, and discussion among
spiritual teachers and their flocks alike.

Works of this kind, dealing with the very essence of Christian
doctrine, ought, one would have thought, to have been examined and
accepted as true, or refuted and rejected. But nothing of the
kind has occurred, and the same fate has been repeated with all
those works. Men of the most diverse views, believers, and, what
is surprising, unbelieving liberals also, as though by agreement,
all preserve the same persistent silence about them, and all that
has been done by people to explain the true meaning of Christ's
doctrine remains either ignored or forgotten.

But it is still more astonishing that two other books, of
which I heard on the appearance of my book, should be so little
known, I mean Dymond's book "On War," published for the first time
in London in 1824, and Daniel Musser's book on "Non-resistance,"
written in 1864. It is particularly astonishing that these books
should be unknown, because, apart from their intrinsic merits,
both books treat not so much of the theory as of the practical
application of the theory to life, of the attitude of Christianity
to military service, which is especially important and interesting
now in these clays of universal conscription.

People will ask, perhaps: How ought a subject to behave who
believes that war is inconsistent with his religion while the
government demands from him that he should enter military service?

This question is, I think, a most vital one, and the answer to it
is specially important in these days of universal conscription.
All--or at least the great majority of the people--are Christians,
and all men are called upon for military service. How ought a
man, as a Christian, to meet this demand? This is the gist of
Dymond's answer:

"His duty is humbly but steadfastly to refuse to serve."

There are some people, who, without any definite reasoning about
it, conclude straightway that the responsibility of government
measures rests entirely on those who resolve on them, or that the
governments and sovereigns decide the question of what is good or
bad for their subjects, and the duty of the subjects is merely to
obey. I think that arguments of this kind only obscure men's
conscience. I cannot take part in the councils of government, and
therefore I am not responsible for its misdeeds.. Indeed, but we
are responsible for our own misdeeds. And the misdeeds of our
rulers become our own, if we, knowing that they are misdeeds,
assist in carrying, them out. Those who suppose that they are
bound to obey the government, and that the responsibility for the
misdeeds they commit is transferred from them to their rulers,
deceive themselves. They say: "We give our acts up to the will
of others, and our acts cannot be good or bad; there is no merit
in what is good nor responsibility for what is evil in our
actions, since they are not done of our own will."

It is remarkable that the very same thing is said in the
instructions to soldiers which they make them learn--that is, that
the officer is alone responsible for the consequences of his
command. But this is not right. A man cannot get rid of the
responsibility, for his own actions. And that is clear from the
following example. If your officer commands you to kill your
neighbor's child, to kill your father or your mother, would you
obey? If you would not obey, the whole argument falls to the
ground, for if you can disobey the governors in one case, where do
you draw the line up to which you can obey them? There is no line
other than that laid down by Christianity, and that line is both
reasonable and practicable.

And therefore we consider it the duty of every man who thinks war
inconsistent with Christianity, meekly but firmly to refuse to
serve in the army. And let those whose lot it is to act thus,
remember that the fulfillment of a great duty rests with them.
The destiny of humanity in the world depends, so far as it depends
on men at all, on their fidelity to their religion. Let them
confess their conviction, and stand up for it, and not in words
alone, but in sufferings too, if need be. If you believe that
Christ forbade murder, pay no heed to the arguments nor to the
commands of those who call on you to bear a hand in it. By such a
steadfast refusal to make use of force, you call down on
yourselves the blessing promised to those "who hear these sayings
and do them," and the time will come when the world will recognize
you as having aided in the reformation of mankind.

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