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 iig Htatt to Slolfitng 
 
 *♦ 
 
 «a 
 
 Sabht HoBtpk Ktmskopt i. i. 
 
 lan 
 
Utatt tn Sulatog. 
 
 A Discourse, at Tempi<e Keneseth Israel, 
 
 BY 
 
 Rabbi Joseph Krauskopp, D. D. 
 
 Philadelphia, December nth, 1910. 
 
 In the summer of 1894 I visited Russia for the purpose 
 of proposing to the Czar a plan that might end or lessen the 
 terrible persecution of the Jews in his realm. My ,isit to Russia 
 The plan intended was a removal of the perse- *"" "* """"''*• 
 cuted Jews to unoccupied lands in the interior, there to be 
 colonized on farms, and to be maintained, until self-supporting, 
 by their correligionists of other parts of the world. 
 
 lycarning that, because a Jew, I would not be admitted 
 into Russia, I conferred with President Cleveland and Secre- 
 tary Gresham, both of whom heartily endorsed 
 
 Refused admission 
 
 my plan and resolved to intervene. The Russian by Russian govcm- 
 Minister at Washington declaring his powerless- 
 ness to visS my passport, our Secretary of State cabled to the 
 American Minister at St. Petersburg to obtain the desired 
 permission from the foreign office, only to receive as reply the 
 words ' 'Russian government deeply regrets its inability to accede 
 to request in behalf of Reverend Jewish divine." 
 
 The injustice of the reply determined me more than ever 
 to enter Russia, if only to make a test case of my citizenship 
 rights. The treaty between the United States 
 
 Determined to test 
 
 and Russia guarantees to every American citizen my citizenship 
 the right of entry on Russian soil, and as an 
 American citizen that right was mine; my religion being my 
 private affair and no concern of Russia's. The determination 
 
to test the supremacy of international law over national preju- 
 dice aroused a large part of the American press to a vigorous 
 endorsement of my position. A bill was introduced in 
 Congress to the efiPect that the treaty between the two coun- 
 tries be declared abrogated if an American citizen be turned 
 back from the gates of Russia by reason of his religion. 
 
 In the height of the agitation I departed for Russia, 
 
 knocked at the gates of St. Petersburg — and was admitted. 
 
 Russia had evidently come to the conclusion 
 
 Was admitted. 
 
 that it was better policy to admit me and to keep 
 her eyes on me than to allow the agitation and the indignation 
 to continue in our country. 
 
 While within the Russian borders, I was privileged to 
 come in contact with many prominent Russians, one of them 
 Met distinguished M. Witte, who at that time was Minister of 
 Russians. Finance and practically at the head of the em- 
 
 pire, the Czar, Alexander III, being critically ill in the Crimea, 
 where he shortly after died. 
 
 But of all the men I met none made the impression that 
 was left upon me by my visit to Count Leo Tolstoy. It was 
 Tolstoy most dis- made possible by Mr. Andrew D. White, the dis- 
 tinguisiied of all. tingujgiied scholar and statesman, who at that 
 time represented our country at St. Petersburg. He had 
 written and asked the count to meet me and to learn of the 
 mission that brought me to Russia. The count's daughter, 
 Tatiana, replied that her father would be pleased to have me 
 visit him, adding that he was just then engaged in hay-making, 
 and, therefore, had not much leisure. To take as little of his 
 time as possible I arranged to arrive in the court-yard of bis 
 manor-house at Yasnaya Polyana, late in the afternoon. 
 Approaching a group of peasants that stood at a well dhuka.^ 
 water and mopping their brows, my travelling-companion, a 
 young Russian lawyer, asked them where we might find the 
 count. One of them .stepped out of the group, and, lifting 
 
his cap, said most courteously that he was Tolstoy, and, 
 learning my name, he bade me a hearty welcome. 
 
 From the moment I first gazed upon him he held me 
 captive, and, by a strange psychic power, he has held me en- 
 thralled ever since. No wish of mine has been Held me captive 
 more fondly cherished in the sixteen years that 'i-""" ""t meeting, 
 have since passed by than that of some day visiting Russia 
 again, and only for the purpose of seeing once more that 
 strangely fascinating personality, of listening again to his 
 marvelous flow of wisdom. 
 
 I had. often wondered how a Moses, an Isaiah, a Jeremiah, 
 a Socrates, looked and talked, denounced and dreamed, the 
 moment I saw and heard Tolstoy I knew. One 
 
 His personality. 
 
 hour's talk with him seemed equal to a whole 
 university course in political and social science; one walk 
 with him on his estate stored up in the listener more knowl- 
 edge of moral philosophy than could be crowded into a year's 
 seminary instruction. Great as was the power of his pen, 
 immeasurably greater was the power of his living word. In 
 some mysterious way the flow of his speech seemed to exercise 
 an hypnotic spell upon the speaker as much as upon the 
 listener. The speaker seemed at times translated into a super- 
 human being, seemed inspired, seemed to speak words not his 
 own, as one of the ancient prophets of Israel must have spoken 
 when he said the words: "Thus saith the I^ord," while the 
 listener seemed scarcely capable of thought or speech, felt his 
 being almost lose its identity and become merged with that of 
 the speaker. 
 
 At times his voice would sound as Elijah's voice must 
 have sounded when he said to Ahab, the king, " Thou art he 
 who troubleth Israel," and at times it would seem as sweet as 
 the voice of one of Russia's nightingales. At times his strong, 
 rugged, bearded face would resemble that of the pictured 
 Jupiter in wrath, and then it would rival in serenity one of 
 
Raphael's saints. At times he would seem to carry on his 
 shoulders all the woe of the world, resembling one of the 
 mediaeval pictures of the martyr of Nazareth, and then again 
 he would seem as care-free and happy as a little babe. He 
 had never learned the art of concealing his thoughts and emo- 
 tions. His face and voice were as a mirror that revealed with 
 microscopic exactness his innermost self. What he felt moved 
 to speak he spoke; what he felt urged to do he did; he never 
 stopped to consider whether it will please or displease, whether 
 it will bring praise or censure upon him. Like a piece of 
 living, weather-beaten New England granite he looked in his 
 home-spun crash blouse, his jean trousers girded at the waist 
 with a rope, his coarse woolen shirt open at the neck, his 
 well-worn bast shoes. He seemed, indeed, a composite of the 
 looks and traits and thoughts that characterized the Puritans 
 in the early history of the New England states. 
 
 He lived his life according to his own light. Excepting 
 God, he bowed to no master. His conscience was his sole 
 rule of right. His law was his own. His creed was his own. 
 His style of dress, his mode of living were of his own choosing. 
 His was above all else himself, not an echo of another. 
 He was the freest man in the most enslaved of lands. His 
 was the brightest mind in darkest Russia, the most democratic 
 spirit in the most autocratic of realms. His peasant garb 
 could not hide the noble man, ennobled by exalted thought 
 and achievement and not by the will of potentate. His 
 peasant labor could not hide the man born to command, not 
 by means of knout or sword or prison but by the law of love 
 and right and truth. 
 
 As fearless as he was in his denunciations of the wrong- 
 doings of government and church and society, and as bold as 
 
 AS severe with the ^^ ^^' '"^ ^'' ''^°™ propositions, SO gentle and 
 world so gentle simple-minded was he at his family table. I had 
 
 with his own. , . , . 
 
 read that two kinds of meals were served at his 
 
table, a frugal one for himself and a sumptuous one for the 
 rest of his family. The meal of which I partook was a frugal 
 one for all. I was, however, little conscious of what I ate. 
 I was held spell-bound by the count's conversation which 
 dominated the table, and which was carried on in English, 
 occasionally passing into German or French or Russian. 
 
 He was in an especially happy mood that evening. In 
 the mail that had been brought to the table there were a 
 number of papers. Opening one of these, the 
 
 A lable incident. 
 
 London Sta7idard, I believe, he observed that an 
 article of his had been severely censored by the Russian 
 government. Large parts of it had been smeared over with 
 black ink. "What amused him was that the parts that were 
 left uncensored were worse than those that had been blackened 
 out, revealing the stupidity of the censor. Turning to me, 
 who sat at his right, . he said that had the article been a 
 panegyric on the Czar, it would probably have received the 
 same treatment, for no matter what he writes, it is daubed 
 over, here and there, on the general principle that, having 
 been written by Tolstoy, it must of necessity be revolutionary. 
 Continuing, he told me that that particular article was one of 
 a series on the subject of ^'Christianity and Patriotism,^' which, 
 not being permitted to be published in Russia, appeared in 
 translation in England. In it he endeavored to show that 
 Christianity and patriotism were incompatible, that the latter 
 was an artificial creation, skilfully nourished by rulers for 
 selfish purposes. On account of it wars are waged, evils are 
 wrought, sufferings are inflicted by Christians upon Christians, 
 who are religiously taught to love one another, to forgive one 
 another, to do good to each other, and who are patriotically 
 trained to hate and overreach each other. Humanity, he said, 
 must be put in the place of patriotism. The latter is both 
 stupid and unmoral, stupid because it leads each nation to 
 regard itself the superior of all others, and unmoral because it 
 
lures nations to possess themselves of advantages at the cost 
 of others, thus violating the fundamental law of morality, 
 that of not doing to others what they would not have others 
 do to them. Humanity makes the whole world every man's 
 country, and every man each man's brother. 
 
 When first introduced to the family I felt that their wel- 
 come was not quite as hearty as was that of the count. I 
 His home over-run could easily Understand the reason. The pres- 
 by visitors. ^^^^ ^^ guests was almost a daily occurrence, 
 
 and quite a burden on the household. The count denied him- 
 self to none who had a genuine purpose for seeking him. But 
 he was out of patience with mere curiosity seekers or news- 
 paper writers, who sought to rob him of his valuable time in 
 order to fill a column or two with sensational matter. One 
 such writer, a lady journalist, came one day for the sole pur- 
 pose of having him give her the menu of his vegetarian diet, 
 to tell her whether his undergarments were of as coarse a 
 fabric as were his outer clothes, and whether an equally 
 picturesque peasant-garb might not be designed for women. 
 
 My first impression that I was classed with the other 
 afflictions of the count's universal popularity soon wore off. 
 Special incident however, by reason of a letter to the family 
 "amny" special ^^i«=^ ^ brought with me from a distinguished 
 welcome. professor. This gentlemen had, a short time 
 
 before, been dismissed from the university of St. Petersburg 
 because he had published an essay on Tke Ethics of the Talmud, 
 in which he had endeavored to show the lofty moral teachings 
 of the Jews. I had made his acquaintance while in St. Peters- 
 burg, and before leaving that city he called on me, and asked 
 me whether I would not take a letter from him, of an entirely 
 uncompromising nature, to Tolstoy, inasmuch, as at that 
 particular time, a letter mailed to the count did not, for easily 
 accountable reasons, always reach him. I readily consented 
 and that little service, the professor having been a great 
 
favorite of the count, made me a welcome guest also to the 
 family. 
 
 Supper over, the count invited my companion and myself 
 to join him on a walk and to tell him of what service he could 
 be to me. I told him of the mission that brought 
 
 Approves of stand 
 
 me to Russia and of the difficulties that were taken to gain 
 placed in the way of my admission. He approved 
 of the stand I had taken, but asked me to blame the govern- 
 ments for it, mine as well as his, and not the Russians, who 
 are a kindly people. 
 
 He entered at length upon an exposition showing that if 
 the United States would refuse to countenance discriminations 
 between her citizens on account of religious if united states 
 belief, Russia would be obliged to yield. I told ^^^^ itissia"'"" 
 him of the audience which Mr. White and myself "'»'''' v'^""- 
 had had with M. Witte, and that the latter had said that, the 
 Czar being sick, nothing could be done without his consent, 
 that I should state my request in the form of a petition, 
 written in English and Russian, and that he would present it 
 to the Czar with his approval upon the latter's return, and 
 that I had complied with the advice given. The count had 
 little faith that my petition would ever reach the eyes of the 
 Czar — and it never did, for the Czar never returned alive. And 
 he had little faith in all official promises. The men in power 
 at that time he believed to be either fanatics or cowards. The 
 former sought to secure for themselves a soft berth in heaven, 
 the latter sought it on earth. These were afraid to speak out 
 their honest thought and to deal an honest blow for right and 
 justice. They were afraid of losing caste or position or of 
 being condemned to penal servitude, as if better persons than 
 they had not suffered martyrdom before, or were not now 
 paying in Siberia the price for exercising their right to liberty 
 of thought and speech. 
 
He warmly approved of my mission but saw no present 
 
 possibility of its realization. Even if tlie Czar were to feel 
 
 kindly disposed toward my plan, Pobiedonostzeff, 
 
 Approves o? my 
 
 mission but lias the Procurator of the Holy Synod, would inter- 
 
 littiB iiope. 
 
 pose his objections to permitting Jews rooting 
 
 themselves on Russian soil, 
 
 The policy of the Procurator, he said, was to root out the 
 Jews, to drive them either into the Greek Catholic Church or 
 into exile or starvation, stupidly attributing the evils of Russia 
 to her tolerance of non-orthodox-Christian faiths and seeing 
 relief only in their extinction within the empire. And that 
 miscreant considered himself the official head of the Russian 
 church, and the administrator of its creed in the name of Jesus, 
 of him who bade man to love even his enemy, to do good 
 even to those who do evil, to forgive even those who offend, 
 to bless even those who curse. 
 
 Stopping suddenly, and turning his face full upon me, he 
 
 asked "What is your belief respecting Jesus ? " I answered 
 
 that I regard the Rabbi of Nazareth as one of 
 
 Asifs my attitude 
 
 toward Jesus, and the greatest of Israel's teachers and leaders and 
 reformers, not as a divine being who lived and 
 taught humanly but as a human being who lived and taught 
 divinely. "Such is my belief," said he, and he continued 
 "Your belief, however, is not that of the Jews in Russia. 
 Many of them have little knowledge of Jesus, and more of 
 them, I fear, have little love for him. And who can blame 
 them?" he continued, "they have been made to suffer so 
 much in his name that it would be little short of a miracle if 
 they loved him. Mohamed was more honest, he gave to 
 people the choice between the Koran and the sword. Chris- 
 tians profess love, and practice hatred." I told the count 
 that through the mediation of Mr. White, the Procurator had 
 consented to grant me an audience, but not till after the lapse 
 of seven weeks, after his return from some monastery to which 
 
he had retired for prayer, penance and meditation. ' ' Well 
 may he meditate," said the count, "on the wrongs he has 
 committed, and even were he to do penance seven times seven 
 weeks or seven times seven months or seven years, he could 
 not blot out the guilt that stains his soul, and that has darkened 
 and cursed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent human 
 beings. 
 
 Amazed at the freedom with which he exposed his con- 
 demnation of the most powerful officials of the realm, and con- 
 vinced that as he spoke to me he must have Teiis why he es- 
 spoken often to others, and that the government "^''^'^ Siberia, 
 could not possibly be ignorant of it, I asked how it was that 
 he had escaped seizure, exile or imprisonment, to which he 
 replied : " I am not yet sure that I shall not end my days in 
 Siberia. That I have escaped thus far is due to the govern- 
 ment's sensitiveness of the world's opinion. It knows of the 
 hold my publications have gained for me on civilized people. 
 It fears the cry of outrage that would be raised at the banish- 
 ment or imprisonment of a man as old as I." 
 
 He was at that time sixty-six years old. I have since 
 read, that when the Czar was one day approached by one 
 of the grand dukes with a request for the banishment of 
 Tolstoy on the ground that he incited rebellion against the 
 government and the church, the Czar is said to have replied, 
 ' '/e 7ie veux pas ajouter a sa gloire une couronne d' un martyr ' ' 
 — /do not wish to add to his glory the martyr' s crown — words 
 used by Louis XIV of France, when a similar request was 
 made of him. 
 
 After that statement, he walked silently, lost in deep 
 thought, perhaps picturing to himself his declining days among 
 fellow martyrs in far-away Siberia, perhaps under the Poverty 
 thinking of the agonies and tortures and untimely ^'''°" 
 deaths that had been inflicted by a cruel or misguided govern- 
 ment on thousands of Russia's noblest sons and daughters. 
 
lO 
 
 Silently he led the way toward a tree that stood near the 
 house, upon a slight eminence. It was the Poverty Tree that 
 was destined to afford him beneath its wide spreading branches 
 his last resting place. It derived its name from the custom of 
 poor peasants laying there their troubles before the count. 
 Seating himself on a bench beneath the tree he beckoned to 
 us to seat ourselves along side of him. He continued silent 
 for some time, while the setting sun bathed his lionine face 
 and hair in crimson and golden light, and gave him an appear- 
 ance not unlike one of the old Norse gods or vikings which 
 the artist's brush has made familiar to us. At last he resumed 
 his speech. 
 
ilg ItBtt to alnlBtog. 
 
 ( Continued. ) 
 
 A Discourse, at Templb Kensseth Israel, 
 
 BY 
 
 Rabbi Joseph Krauskops, D. D. 
 
 Philadelphia, December i8th, igro. 
 
 [Resumd — Discourse I : Reason for my visit to Russia and for my 
 calling on Tolstoy. Description of his appearance and personality. Some 
 of his views on Russia, its statesmen, its religion, its misgovernment. 
 A pause under Poverty Tree beneath which he now lies buried.] 
 
 The first question count Tolstoi put to me, after his long 
 
 silence, was from what part of the United States I hailed. 
 
 Upon my telling him that Philadelphia was my 
 
 ^ " r J Tolstoy recalled 
 
 home, he expressed himself as much pleased, aid sent from 
 
 ,, , , , . , •, r r ■, Philadelphia to 
 
 He recalled the two shiploads of food we sent tamine-stricken in 
 from our port, two years earlier, for the relief of ''"*^'^- 
 the famine-stricken of Russia, and of the distribution of which 
 he had had personal charge, and he spoke with pleasure and 
 appreciation of Mr. Francis B. Reeves, our fellow-townsman, 
 who had accompanied the food-relief. 
 
 With even keener delight he recalled that the first aid 
 received from the United States was from the Jewish congre- 
 gation of Sacramento, California, which to him 
 
 Said first aid came 
 
 was all the more remarkable from the fact that trom Sacramento 
 
 synagogue, 
 the district stricken was, through governmental 
 
 restriction, uninhabited by Jews. The expression of pleasure 
 
 turned to one of sorrow when he remarked that Russia had 
 
 little deserved such generous treatment at the hands of Jews, 
 
 — and he lived to see the manner in which it W3S repaid in 
 
 Kishineff and other places. 
 
12 
 
 Reverting to our city, lie said that the name of Phila- 
 delphia had always had a pleasant sound for him, partly 
 Was fond of because of its meaning ^'Brotherly Love," and 
 
 I Quakers. partly because it was founded by "William Penn. 
 
 He expressed a high admiration for Quakers, and asked how 
 strong they were numerically and whether they are still as 
 opposed to war and resistance as their founders were. Upon 
 answering his question to the best of my ability, he asked: 
 "Why is it that war, which is the greatest curse of mankind, 
 has so many advocates, and peace, the greatest of all bless- 
 ings, so few ? " After some discussion we both agreed that it 
 was due to that strange perversity of human nature that sees 
 the right and approves of it, and yet often willfully chooses 
 the wrong. 
 
 He blamed the schools for many of the errors that obtain 
 
 in society, and claimed that there was too much education of 
 
 the wrong kind, and too little of the right. In 
 Blamed school for " ° 
 
 many of present- discussing this Statement of his, I chanced to 
 day wrongs. . , , . . , , 
 
 mention that education in the lower grades was 
 
 compulsory with us. To this he strongly objected. All com- 
 pulsion, he said, was wrong. Man must be gotten to do right 
 by the law of love and not by the rule of force. Upon my 
 telling him that but for compulsory education some parents 
 would never send their children to school, he said : ' ' What of 
 it ? The children would probably be no less moral and no less 
 happy than those of highest education. I have associated 
 with the learned and the ignorant, and I have found more 
 honor and honesty, more fear of the I^ord and more true 
 happiness, among the unlettered than among the lettered. 
 The more of education we cram into the heads of the people 
 the more of the fear of God is crowded out of them. The 
 world lives by the love of God and not by the primer or 
 the multiplication table. " "What, if you had had no edu- 
 cation?" I ventured to ask. Quickly and feelingly came the 
 
13 
 
 answer ' ' The world would have been none the worse, and 
 
 I would have been the happier. " " What if Jesus and the 
 
 other prophets had had no schooling ? " I asked. To which 
 
 he replied ' ' It was not what they got out of their schools that 
 
 made them the spiritual and moral powers they became, but 
 
 what they got out of their hearts. God puts more education 
 
 into the human heart than man has ever been able to put into 
 
 the head. Some of the wisest and best people hereabouts are 
 
 peasants who have never seen the inside of a school, and who 
 
 do not know one letter from another." "What of Paul," 
 
 Tasked, "who certainly enjoyed the benefits of the Greek 
 
 schools of his day?" To which he replied "The schools 
 
 made of Paul a theologian, and Christianity would have been 
 
 the better without the theology of Paul." 
 
 Other objections to some of his paradoxical views on 
 
 education suggested themselves to me, but I left them unsaid. 
 
 I perceived that while tolerant of objections, his 
 
 Warped by un- 
 
 opinions were fixed. He apparently judged of lavorabie sur- 
 
 ., ... ■ , . . ,.,. roundlnys. 
 
 world-conditions from the vievi^-pomt of his 
 
 limited and unfavorable horizon. Under different conditions, 
 
 some of his opinions on education, and on a number of other 
 
 subjects which we discussed, would probably have been quite 
 
 different. 
 
 The conversation turned to social conditions in the United 
 States, and on these matters he displayed an amount of knowl- 
 edge that was amazing. The more I listened weii informed of 
 the more I wondered, till finally I could not but J^S'^tn""" 
 ask him how he who wrote and worked so much 'J"'**" states, 
 could find time to keep himself so well informed of a country 
 so far away as the United States. To which he replied "Your 
 country has interested me even more than mine. I have lost 
 hope in mine; all my hope was, at one time, centered in yours. 
 But yours is a disappointment as much as mine. You call 
 yourselves a Republic; you are worse than an autocracy. I 
 
14 
 
 say worse because you are ruled by gold, and gold is more 
 conscienceless, and therefore, more tyrannical than any human 
 tyrant. Your intentions are good; your execution is lamen- 
 table. Were yours the free and representative government 
 you pretend to have, you would not allow it to be controlled 
 by the money powers and their hirelings, the bosses and 
 machines, as you do. I have read Progress and Poverty by 
 Henry George, and I know what Mr. Bryce says about you in 
 his The Ainerican Commonwealth, and I have read and heard 
 even worse things about your misgovernment than what they 
 say." 
 
 We were all right, he continued, as long as we were 
 
 an agricultural people. Our modes of life, then, were simple, 
 
 and our ideals were high. Politics then was a 
 
 Deplored rule oT 
 
 gold and growth religion with US and not a matter of barter and 
 sale. We became prosperous; prosperity brought 
 luxury, and luxury, as always, brings corruption. The thirst 
 of gold is upon us, and, in our eagerness to quench it and to 
 gratify our lust of luxury, our one-time lofty principles and 
 aspirations are dragged down and trampled in the mire. We 
 build city upon city, and pride ourselves in making one greater 
 than the other, and, in the mean time, we wipe out village 
 after village, whence have come our strength and moral fibre. 
 The price of real estate in the cities is soaring to the skies, 
 while farms are deserted and farm-houses decay. We tempt 
 the farmer's son and daughter from field to factory, and when 
 we have exhausted them of their health and morals we think 
 ourselves charitable when we prolong their miserable existence 
 in hospitals or reformatories. We forget that our greatness 
 lay in the pursuit of husbandry, and we seek our salvation in 
 commerce and in the industries. 
 
 With all our stupendous wealth, our slums are as bad, if 
 not worse, as those of European cities, and we are building 
 Prophesied war Up a proletariat class which will some day prove 
 o! classes. ^^^ undoing. Our rich become degenerates, and 
 
is 
 
 our poor become desperates, and in the struggle to come the 
 desperate will rise up and slay the degenerate. "We keep 
 things quiet by throwing crumbs of charity to those who are 
 in need of justice more yet than they are in need of bread. 
 Some day they will tire of crumbs, and will ask their full 
 share of what the rich eat and have, and, if denied, they will 
 make short work of it. Our origin and our destiny should 
 have warned us against repeating the fatal errors of the past. 
 But for our colossal resources, we would long since have been 
 dashed against the rocks. We may yet save ourselves by 
 going back to the farm, and taking up anew the life and 
 labors of our fathers. 
 
 In this strain he continued for quite awhile, and the 
 longer he spoke the sadder grew his speech and the more 
 prophetic became his look. At length he ceased Disagreed, 
 speaking, and an oppressive quiet ensued. I **' ''*''* '"'"'' 
 recognized that he was deeply moved, and I therefore did not 
 care to contradict some of his statements which were obviously 
 based on error. In other of his statements I fully agreed with 
 him, yet, loyalty to my country forbade my seconding the 
 gloomy prospect he held out for us. 
 
 A fortunate interruption relieved the situation. His wife 
 
 approached with a letter or manuscript in hand. He arose, 
 
 proceded toward her, and, for a while, the two 
 
 Description of Ills 
 
 conferred together. In all probability it was a reiationsiiip with 
 
 ... , . , , , . wife and family. 
 
 manuscript of his which she was translating or 
 revising. I was told that she was always doing something 
 of that sort. She was his consultant, his reviser, his trans- 
 lator, while his daughter, Tatiana, was his correspondent in a 
 number of different languages. It is said that his wife copied 
 twenty-one times the four large volumes of his novel War and 
 Peace, and that there has been no novel nor little else of his 
 writing, since their marriage in 1862, that did not pass 
 through her hands. He found in her, in the fullest sense of 
 
i6 
 
 the word, his help-mate, a woman of great culture as well of 
 great practical sense, who looked after his literary interests 
 no less than after those of the household, and who often found 
 it no easy task to be, as has been well said, "the patient wife 
 of an impatient genius." She bore him thirteen children, six 
 of whom passed away in their early youth. She fairly idolized 
 him and skilfully managed to slip, unknown to him, those 
 little comforts into his life which he required for his well-being 
 and which he had renounced. Neither she nor the children 
 shared his view respecting the distribution among the peasantry 
 of his estate and other property, and keeping for himself no 
 more than an equal share with all the others. The family 
 believed in availing themselves of the benefits of civilization, 
 and for that they required the income of the farm and the 
 royalty of his books. There was quite a wrangle, for a time, 
 between the family and its head, but it was amicably disposed 
 of in the end, the count agreeing to their living as they chose, 
 on the condition that they permitted him to live as he pleased. 
 And so in his Moscow home as well as in that at Yasnaya 
 Polyana, while the family rooms are said to be comfortably 
 furnished, his own were poorly fitted out, and while they have 
 servants and butlers and footmen, he attended to his own 
 wants, fetched his own water, cobbled his own shoes, and, in 
 summer time, labored in the field, from morn to night, along- 
 side the commonest peasant. 
 
 Stopping suddenly in his conversation with his wife, and 
 begging us to excuse him for leaving us, I asked him whether 
 Description of his te knew where my bag was put, as I wanted to 
 working room. ^^^ ^^ ^^ writing material for the purpose of 
 dropping a line to the American Minister. Mr. White had 
 feared that, not being wanted in Russia, I might get into 
 trouble soon after leaving the protection of our embassy in 
 St. Petersburg, and he had enjoined upon me that I keep in 
 constant touch with him, as well as with the American consuls 
 
17 
 
 while in the interior. The count informing me that my bag 
 had been placed into his working-room, on the ground floor 
 of the house, I had a glimpse of the room in which some of 
 the greatest writings of our time, of all times, first saw the 
 light of day. It was a small room with an ordinary, bare 
 floor somewhat the worse for wear, with a vaulted ceiling, 
 and with very thick walls that gave it the aspect of a mediaeval 
 cloister cell. I have since read that at one time it was a store- 
 room, and that from the hooks in the ceiling were formerly 
 suspended the ham supply for the family. Besides a crude 
 writing-desk and a few chairs, there seemed to be no other 
 furniture in the room, and its only ornaments, as far as I can 
 recall, were some farm implements, tools, and seed bags. 
 The desk was littered over with books and papers, and showed 
 the kind of disorder one would expect of a genius like 
 Tolstoy. 
 
 Upon my return to the tree, I found the count in conver- 
 sation with my companion, who told me later that upon 
 Tolstoy's asking him what his occupation was. Favored suppres- 
 and upon his replying that he had graduated *"" "' "">""• 
 from the law-school of the University of Moscow, and that, 
 owing to restrictive laws against Jews, he was not permitted 
 to practice, the count had remarked that the government had 
 done at least one good thing, it had diminished the number of 
 lawyers. 
 
 Resuming my seat alongside of him, he asked me whether 
 it was true that New York expended as much as one hundred 
 thousand dollars daily in public charity. I told 
 
 ■^ ^ ^ Amazed at the 
 
 him that it probably was true. He then returned amount of poverty 
 
 , . ,. . , „. , '" New York. 
 
 to his discussion on the apalling contrast be- 
 tween the very rich and the very poor of the large cities in 
 Europe and America. The rich, he said, would never be as 
 rich as they are nor the poor as poor if the latter were scat- 
 tered as farmers over the land. It is their congregating in 
 
iS 
 
 large numbers in the cities, he said, that makes possible the 
 extensive industries and commercial enterprises which enslave 
 them, and which build up the great fortunes of the rich. 
 
 "Have you read my book What To Do?" he suddenly 
 asked me. I was obliged to ansvi^er "No." I have read it 
 Belittled his own since, and several times, and profitably, too, but, 
 "*"" '■ though I had read quite a number of his books 
 
 before I met him, it was exceedingly embarrassing to be ques- 
 tioned concerning the particular book which I had not read. 
 Not to appear altogether ignorant of his writings, I proceeded 
 to tell him that I had read his "War and Peace," "Anna Kare- 
 nina," etc., etc., and started telling him how much I admired 
 them, when, with an impatient look and gesture, he interrupted 
 me, saying "These works are all chaff, chaff, play-toys, amus- 
 ing gilded youth and idle women. It is my serious writings 
 which I want the world to read. I have ceased publishing 
 novels because readers do not know the meaning of them. 
 They look for entertainment and not instruction, and even 
 though I write only for the uplift of man, for the purifica- 
 tion of society, they, like the hawk, seek out only the carrion. 
 They neither recognize themselves under the fictitious name 
 I adopt, nor do they see their share in the wrongs and vices 
 and injustices depicted, neither do they perceive that it is for 
 their eo-operation that the novelist appeals when he pleads for 
 the kingdom of heaven on earth." 
 
 Returning to his book What To Do, he said, "even if you 
 have not read it, you have read the Prophets, and having read 
 Spoke of his book them, you know my teachings. The book is an 
 Wh3i io Do. appeal for pity for the submerged, for justice for 
 the wronged, for liberation of the oppressed and persecuted 
 and for the application of the only remedy — a return to the 
 simple life and labor on the soil. As our subsistence comes 
 from the soil so can justice and right and happiness come from 
 it alone. Help can never come from wealth, for wealth is the 
 
19 
 
 creator of poverty and inequality and injustice. It can not 
 come from the government for that exists largely for the pur- 
 pose of keeping up inequality and injustice. It cannot come 
 from the church, for she fears the Czar more than she fears 
 God. It cannot even come from the schools which tend to 
 train a class of people who think themselves too good for 
 manual labor." 
 
 "Your plan to lead your people back to the soil," he 
 continued, "back to the occupation which your fathers fol- 
 lowed with honor in Palestinian lands, is of some 
 
 Saw solution of 
 encouragement to me. It shows that the light Jewish problem 
 
 J • T. -I . .■ ,,»., only In agriculture. 
 
 IS dawning. It is the only solution of the Jewish 
 problem. Persecution, refusal of the right to own or to till 
 the soil, exclusion from the artisan guilds, made traders 
 of the Jew. And the world hates the trader. Make bread- 
 producers of your people, and the world will honor those who 
 give it bread to it." 
 
 " There is little chance at present," he continued, "for a 
 Jewish colonization scheme in Russia. The government does 
 not want to see the Jews rooting themselves on Made a request 
 Russian soil, and spreads the report that they "' ""*" 
 are unfit for agricultural labor, though I have been reliably 
 informed that in the few Jewish agricultural colonies that 
 have been tolerated on the steppes from the time of Alexander I 
 they are as successful farmers as are the best." And he 
 asked me as a favor that I make a special trip to those colonies 
 and report to him, preferably in person, the result of my 
 observations. I was only too anxious to consent to his 
 request. 
 
 And yet another promise he asked of me, and which I 
 gave no less cheerfully. But of this I shall speak in my next 
 discourse. 
 
HtHtt to Ealsta^, 
 
 ( Continued. ) 
 A Discourse, at Temple Keneseth Israel, 
 
 BY 
 
 Rabbi Josbph Kradseopf, D. D. 
 
 Philadelphia, December 25th, 1910. 
 
 RESum]^ — Discourse I: Reasons for my visit to Russia and for my 
 calling on Tolstoy. His appearance and personality. Some of his views 
 on Russia, its statesmen, religion, misgovernment. A pause under the 
 Poverty Tree— his burial place. 
 
 Discourse II: Recalled food-relief for famine-stricken in Russia 
 from Philadelphia and from Jewish congregation in California. Admired 
 Quakers for their opposition to war. Blamed schools for many social 
 wrongs. Severely criticised political and economical evils of our country. 
 Ascribed them to growth of cities and to farm-desertions. His relation- 
 ship with wife and family. His working-room. Against lawyers. Be- 
 littled his novels. Spoke of his book What To Do? Saw solution of 
 Jewish problem in agriculture only. 
 
 At the conclucion of my last discourse I made mention 
 of yet another request count Tolstoy made of me. It was in 
 connection with his prediction that the Russian Tolstoy suggests 
 government would not look favorably upon my nrioIn'.adrT 
 proposition to colonize Russian Jews upon un- agficunu'e- 
 occupied farm-lands in the interior. ' ' If the plan cannot be 
 entered upon in Russia," he asked, " why can it not be made 
 successful in the United States ? What are you, Americans, 
 doing to prevent a Jewish problem in your own country? 
 How long before the evils that are harrowing your people in 
 the old world may be harrowing them in the new? Your 
 people are crowding into your large cities by the thousands 
 and tens of thousands. You have built up Ghettoes worse 
 than those of Europe. There is excuse for it in Russia; there 
 is no excuse for it in the United States. Yours is the right to 
 own land and the best of it, and to till as much of it as you 
 please. Granted that ages of enforced abstention from agri- 
 cultural labor have weaned the elder generation from a love 
 
22 
 
 of country life and farm-labor, wliy may not a love for it be 
 instilled in the young? Lead your young people to the 
 country and to the farm. Start agricultural schools for them. 
 Teach them to exchange the yard-stick for the hoe, the 
 peddler's pack for the seed-bag, and you will solve the problem 
 while it may yet be solved. You will see the lands tilled by 
 them overflow, as of old, with milk and honey. You will see 
 them give of their plenty to the people of the land, and receive 
 in return goodly profit and esteem. And once again there 
 will arise from among Jewish husbandmen prophets, lawgivers, 
 inspired bards and teachers to whom the civilized world will 
 do homage." 
 
 At yet greater length he spoke on this subject, and the 
 more he spoke the more he quickened within me the resolve 
 to do as he wished it to be done. 
 
 And there, under The Poverty Tree, it was where I gave 
 Tolstoy the solemn promise that upon my return home the 
 Founding of Farm earliest task I would enter upon would be the 
 School promised, establishment of an agricultural school for Jewish 
 lads, and other lads. And the existence of the National Farm 
 School, near Doylestown in this state, is testimony that I kept 
 my promise. I had gone to Russia to see the Czar, and I saw 
 a greater man instead. I had gone with a plan for colonizing 
 Russian Jews in Russia, and I returned with a plan for teach- 
 ing agriculture chiefly to Russian Jewish lads in the United 
 States. Verily, "man proposes and God disposes." And the 
 hundreds of young men who have received their agricultural 
 training at the National Farm School, and the hundreds of 
 others, young and old, who, directly and indirectly, have been 
 encouraged by that school to forsake the congested cities and 
 to take up the farmer's life, owe their escape from the miseries 
 of the Ghetto, and their enjoyment of health and happiness, 
 to the promise asked of me by that noblest of all farmers, 
 count Tolstoy. 
 
23 
 
 The establishment of the school was not an easy task, nor 
 is its maintenance easy even now, notwithstanding the excel- 
 lent record it has made. The bulk of our people Promise kept 
 have not yet acquired that profound grasp of the """"' "'^i^"'"'^- 
 seriousness of our problem, and of its only possible solution, 
 that Tolstoy had, sixteen years ago. Therefore is the support 
 of that school still so meagre. Therefore has it still less than 
 a hundred students in attendance when it easily could have a 
 thousand, and more, if it had the means. And, therefore, are 
 our Ghettoes more crov»ded than ever, and a greater drain 
 than ever on our charities. That despite indifference and even 
 hostility the school has persevered is due, to a very large 
 extent, to the determination to keep sacred a promise solemnly 
 given to one of the best of men. 
 
 It was late that night when I took leave of the count and 
 of some of the members of his family. Before departing, it 
 was agreed that I enter at once upon my journey Parting from 
 to the Jewish agricultural colonies in the interior, "'''"''' 
 that I might see them at work during the height of their 
 harvesting, and a peasant and his wagon were engaged to 
 take me on that trip. The count bade me a hearty God -speed, 
 and repeatedly urged me to make my report personally to him, 
 and I promised that I would avail myself a second time of his 
 proffered hospitality, if my way should lead me back again to 
 Moscow or St. Petersburg. 
 
 Unfortunately, after my inspection of the Jewish agricul- 
 tural colonies, which fully confirmed the favorable reports the 
 count had received of them, my investigations Never iieard from 
 led me to the Southern and Polish provinces, '''"' ^^*'"' 
 and consumed so much of my limited time that a return North 
 was impossible. And so I never got to see the count again. 
 And I never heard from him. Neither my report, which I 
 sent to him in writing, nor my other communications to him, 
 written in Russia and outside of it, have brought from him a 
 
24 
 
 reply. Never a line from him even in answer to the informa- 
 tion sent him that the National Farm School, which he had so 
 strongly urged, had been founded. Never an acknowledgment 
 from him of the early annual reports of the School that were 
 sent him to show the headway it was making. 
 
 The heartiness of his reception of me, his almost affec- 
 tionate farewell, his deep interest in my mission and his 
 Probable rea$on earnest invitation that I repeat my visit to him, 
 of silence. preclude the thought that I was forgotten by 
 
 him or became indifferent to him after my departure. There 
 is but one explanation— an explanation strengthened by 
 similar experiences of others in connection with him — none 
 of my communications ever reached him. I was not wanted 
 in Russia. I was a persmia non grata to the government; my 
 name was blacklisted, and my mail fell under the ban of the 
 censor. 
 
 But, if my mail has never reached him, my thoughts have 
 been with him often. Many a time have I sat with him, in 
 With him in spirit Spirit, Under that Poverty Tree. And yet more 
 
 under Poverty Tree ^f^.^^ ^jjj j g-^. ^j^j^ ^^^ y^^^^ -^^ y^^^ future, HOW 
 
 that that site has become Holy Ground. 
 
 Gladly do I forgive the church of Russia many an outrage 
 or blunder she has perpetrated or permitted to be perpetrated, 
 Has become his fo^ the one good act she has performed — that of 
 ^^'"^' refusing Tolstoy sepulture in what she is pleased 
 
 to call "consecrated ground." She thus obliged him to desig- 
 nate as his last resting-place a spot that was one of the dearest 
 on earth to him, a spot that was intimately associated with 
 his life's philosophy, a spot located within a confine wherein 
 he ruled more mightily and more exaltedly than any Czar that 
 ever wielded scepter in vast Russia, where he wrote those 
 epochal books of his which are destined some day to become 
 of the basal elements of the religion of the future. 
 
25 
 
 And even thougli no priest was nigh when the last rites 
 
 over his remains were performed, there were present, besides 
 
 his family, those who were more sacred in his 
 
 No Czartan funeral 
 eyes than priests or metropolitan, more honorable more solemn than 
 
 than even the Procurator of the Holy Synod— ^'"'''"'*' 
 his dearly beloved peasants. It was these who followed him 
 to his last resting place. It was these who sang the mortuary 
 hymn Everlasting Memory, at his open grave. It was these, 
 the "orphaned peasantry," as they called themselves because 
 of his death, who gave his burial a distinction such as no 
 Czarian funeral procession had ever enjoyed, notwithstanding 
 ecclesiastical pomp or military display. It was these whose 
 labors and outlook he had sought to soften and to brighten, 
 who delivered the briefest and most eloquent eulogy that has, 
 perhaps, ever been spoken: '^His heart has burst because of his 
 unbounded love for humanity. The light of the world is extin- 
 guished.^^ 
 
 In refusing religious sepulture to the holiest man in 
 Russia, the Greek orthodox church performed the crowning 
 
 feat in her long series of stupidities. And yet. 
 
 In spite of herself 
 
 by that act she did, in despite of herself, the church has made 
 
 , ,. , . , , T ., a saint of him. 
 
 very thing she did not wish to see done. lyike 
 
 Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust who, in response to the 
 
 question who he is, says: "Ich bin ein Theil von jener Kraft, 
 
 die stets das Base will, und stets das Gate schawl,'' so did she 
 
 prove herself the power that sought the evil and yet performed 
 
 the good. By her act of intolerance she gave a new saint to 
 
 Russia, and perhaps the only one she has. By it she furnished 
 
 a sanctuary to that country, one that may be destined to make 
 
 a Mecca of Yasnaya Polyana, one that may be more piously 
 
 sought in the future, and by larger numbers, than any shrine 
 
 or sanctuary of her own creation. By that act she shed a halo 
 
 of immortal glory around the head of him whom she sought 
 
 to cover with infamy. 
 
26 
 
 The church has two ways of conferring saintships, a lesser 
 and a higher one. The lesser distinction she confers upon 
 Has two ways of lesser luminaries, generally upon those made f a- 
 making saints. ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ legend for great endurance in 
 
 fasting or penance, or for conquering imaginarj' devils, for 
 working fancied miracles, or for displaying fiendish cruelty in 
 persecuting and exterminating heretics. The higher distinc- 
 tion she confers generally at the stake or on the gallows, 
 within prison walls or in the torture chamber, upon men of 
 great minds or great hearts, upon lovers of truth and fearless 
 enunciators of it, upon men who because of their love of 
 humanity defy the power that interdicts God's greatest gift 
 to man : the right to think and the right to believe and speak 
 in accordance with the canons of reason and with the dictates 
 of conscience. 
 
 In asking me the difference between reform and orthodox 
 Judaism in America, and between American Reform Jews and 
 „ , , Russian Karaitic Jews, and in replying that the 
 
 still makes of in- ^ i r j a 
 
 tolerance an act difference exists mainly in the synagogue, that 
 
 of piety. 
 
 outside of it there is little or no difference in life 
 and in social relationship, Tolstoy replied : ' ' Our church has 
 not yet arrived at the stage of tolerance of different religious 
 beliefs. That is the reason why such people as the Jews and 
 Doukhobors and Stundists are persecuted, and such men as I 
 are in ill repute. Our church still makes of religious hatred an 
 act of piety. It still measures God by the passions of man. 
 Had the church the power in our days which it at one time had 
 and were the age of martyrdom not past, she would long since 
 have silenced me for rebelling against her irrational teaching and 
 for denouncing her craven supineness in the midst of outrageous 
 wrongs and injustices, as now they silence men in our country 
 for rebelling against unjust enactments of the government." 
 
 Upon my saying that it was fortunate for us of the present 
 day that all churches have been deprived of their one-time 
 
27 
 
 all-controlling power, since no churcli has yet 
 
 , , Tolstoy hoped for 
 
 been known to have possessed power and not to the reign of uni- 
 
 have abused it, he replied : " That is true of all '""' """'■"'"'" 
 
 power, temporal as well as of ecclesiastic, and it would be 
 
 more fortunate still if governments were as restricted in their 
 
 power as is the church, if all power, all authority, were to 
 
 cease, if the good that is inherent in every human being were 
 
 to be given a chance to germinate and to flourish, and every 
 
 man learn to live in complete harmony with the highest of all 
 
 laws, the law of peace and good-will, which God has written 
 
 into the human heart. There would then be no need of 
 
 armies and armaments, of courts and police, of prisons and jails, 
 
 no need of impoverishing the masses through heavy taxation 
 
 for the support of millions of soldiers and officers in idleness, 
 
 who ought to raise their own bread by their own handiwork." 
 
 "On that day," said I, " the Messianic Age, for which 
 
 the Jews have hoped and prayed, will surely have dawned." 
 
 To which he answered : " You, Jews, are right, 
 
 ' •' ' * ' Believed that the 
 
 the Messiah is still to come, or, if he has come, his Messiah is stiii to 
 
 , , , , I- ,, come, 
 
 message has not yet entered the hearts of men. 
 
 Recalling this remark of Tolstoy, on this Christmas morn, 
 suggests the question : How many Christmas days will yet 
 have to come and go before its gospel of peace and good-will 
 will govern the hearts of all who call themselves Christians as 
 it governed that of the Russian peasant-saint. 
 
 And vividly I recalled his remarks on the shorn power of 
 
 the church, when, six years later, the papers brought the 
 
 news that Tolstoy had been excommunicated by Lessj„,ng of 
 
 the Russian church. I could picture to myself ch"fch power 
 
 ^ shown by failure of 
 
 the expression of sorrow or disgust on his face Tolstoy's excom- 
 munication. 
 
 when that church decree was conveyed to him. 
 Its ecclesiastical wrath, could have meant only hollow sounds 
 to him. None knew better than he that the metropolitans 
 who issued this excommunication merely grasped at a shadow. 
 
28 
 
 that the substance was gone, that that age was happily passed 
 when the pronouncement of the ecclesiastical anathema de- 
 prived its victim of all association with friend or foe, deprived 
 him of intercourse even with the closest members of his family, 
 prevented them, under the penalty of like punishment, from 
 providing him even with food, shelter and raiment. When 
 during his flight from home, shortly before his death, he 
 knocked at the doors of a monastery, and said "I am the 
 excommunicated and anathematized I^eo Tolstoy," the reply 
 was " It is a duty and a pleasure to offer you shelter." The 
 life of Tolstoy passed on as serenely, in the midst of his family 
 and friends, after his excommunication as before. And the 
 world's esteem of him grew even greater than it had been, by 
 reason of the charges upon which the excommunication was 
 based, namely: 
 
 " In his writings on religious questions he clearly shows himself an 
 enemy of the Russian Orthodox Church. He does not recognize God in 
 three persons (or three persons in one God), and he calls the Son of God, 
 the second person of the Trinity, a mortal human being. He scoffs at 
 the idea of Incarnation. He perverts the text of the Gospel. He cen- 
 sures the Holy Church and calls it a human institution. He denies the 
 Church Hierarchy and ridicules the Holy Sacraments and the rites of the 
 Holy Orthodox Church. Therefore, the Holy Synod has decreed that no 
 priest is to absolve Count Tolstoy, or give him communion. Nor is he to 
 be given burial ground, unless, before departing this life he shall repent, 
 acknowledge the Orthodox Church, believe in it, and return to it." 
 
 He never recanted. He never changed his attitude to- 
 wards the errors and wrongs of the Russian orthodox church. 
 Died unreconciled And no one who ever stood and talked with him, 
 witii church. £gj,g j,Q f^^g^ j,Q^j^ g^gj. j^^^g believed that that 
 
 modern Prometheus, that stern and fearless personality, 
 that re-incarnation of Mattathias of old, and of his valiant 
 sons, the Maccabees, could ever swerve from a position once 
 taken by him. When upon his death-bed, he was frequently 
 importuned to return as a penitent to the mother-church ■ he 
 spurned every mention of it. He was still in the possession 
 of his senses, he said, he still knew and believed that twice two 
 
29 
 
 equals four, and as long as he knew and believed this so lon^ 
 would he continue to know and to believe that what he had 
 said and written concerning the errors and wrongs of the 
 church was the truth. 
 
 It is noteworthy, and quite in keeping with the general 
 tenor of the Russian orthodox church, that no cognizance was 
 taken by the church of the many noble things 
 
 Never a truer f(rf- 
 
 Tolstoy had said and written and done; no lower of J«sus than 
 
 he. 
 
 cognizance of the self-sacrificing efforts he had 
 made to live the life which Jesus had lived and had enjoined 
 upon his followers; no cognizance of his having conscientiously 
 endeavored to square his life with the teachings of the Sermon 
 on the Mount ; no cognizance of his having brought light to 
 those in darkness and comfort to those in sorrow, of his having 
 consorted and labored with the poor and lightened their 
 burden, of his having thirsted and hungered after righteous- 
 ness, of his having sought peace and protested against war, 
 and preached the gospel of the wrongfulness of all physical 
 resistance, of his having, though of the oldest nobility, 
 spurned luxury and ease and even money, having regarded 
 these the source of corruption and the root of many of the 
 evils in society. 
 
 Such a person, and one even but half as good as this, 
 should have been entitled to sepulture in the most sacred of 
 Christian cemeteries, and the most eminent of Yet refused chris- 
 priests should have deemed it a privilege to have 
 been permitted to perform the last rites over his mortal 
 remains. So would it have happened among rational people, 
 but so could it not have happened in Russia. There, because 
 he could not subscribe to doctrines and rites and ceremonies 
 for which he found neither scriptural nor rational warrant, 
 priests felt themselves disgraced, and in danger of eternal 
 damnation, even when their names were associated with that 
 of Tolstoy. 
 
30 
 
 A striking illustration of this was given, seven years ago, 
 at the university of Dorpat, at the occasion of the celebration 
 Priest objected to of its hundredth anniversary. In comemmora- 
 'Lda™d'with tion of that event the institution elected as hon- 
 Toistoy's. orary members of the corporation a number of 
 
 Russians distinguished in literature, science and art, one of 
 these was Tolstoy, another was Ivan, the miracle-working 
 priest of Cronstadt, elected to allay the church's indignation 
 at the choice of Tolstoy. Ivan, the priest, refused the honor, 
 and in the following letter to the Rector of the University: 
 
 "Your Excellency— I have read your estimable and respectful 
 letter to me, which is so full of subtle delicacy— I decline absolutely the 
 honor of the membership to which I have been elected. I do not wish to 
 become connected, in any way, with a corporation — however respectable 
 and learned — which, by some lamentable misunderstanding, has put me 
 side by side with that atheist I^eo Tolstoy — the most malignant heretic of 
 our unfortunate age — who, in presumption and arrogance, surpasses all 
 previous heretics of any age. I do not wish to stand beside Antichrist. 
 I am surprised furthermore, to see with what indifference the University 
 Council regards that satanic author, and with what slavishnes it burns 
 
 incense to him." 
 
 IVAN SERGEIBF, 
 Prior and Archpriest of the Cronstadt Cathedral. 
 
 This letter tells of the attitude of the church towards 
 Tolstoy better than any words of mine can tell. And this 
 same Ivan, it is said, approved of the massacre of the petition- 
 ers of St. Petersburg on that memorable White Sunday, and 
 when petititioned to protect the Jews against threatening 
 massacres, treated the appeal with silent contempt. 
 
 It is to be remembered, however, that over and back of the 
 
 Church of Russia stands the government. The Czar is the 
 
 head of the church. Whom the government 
 
 Government hatred 
 
 baokoftiiat of the favors the church favors; whom the government 
 
 church • 
 
 hates, the church hates. The church hated Tol- 
 stoy because the government hated him, and why it hated him 
 we shall be told in the next discourse of this series. 
 
M^ ItBtt to SFnlatog. 
 
 {Coniinued.) 
 A Discourse, at Temple Keneseth Israel, 
 
 BY 
 
 Rabbi Josbph Krauseopp, D. D. 
 
 Philadelphia, January ist, igii. 
 
 Speaking in our last discourse of the church's excommuni- 
 cation of Tolstoy, and of its refusing a resting place to his 
 
 remains in what she calls "consecrated ground," „ 
 
 ° ' Government used 
 
 we said that the Czar is the spiritual as well as '^^""^^ '"■' ^'^■ 
 
 crediting Tolstoy, 
 the temporal head of the Church of Russia, and 
 
 that the hated of the church is yet more the hated of the 
 government. This statement explains what otherwise is diffi- 
 cult to understand, namely, how so good a man as Tolstoy, 
 who, for more than two score years, strove to square his life 
 with the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, could have 
 incurred the hatred of the Russian orthodox Church. The 
 government had far more reason to hate Tolstoy than had the 
 church. Finding it impolitic to proceed directly against him, 
 it availed itself of the church for discrediting Tolstoy in the 
 eyes of the credulous populace. 
 
 Before entering upon a discussion as to why the govern- 
 ment feared Tolstoy, we must first have a glimpse of his earlier 
 years, and briefly follow his heroic self-extrica- Before giving 
 tion from the corruption of the aristocratic society "**''" "''''■ 
 into which he was born, and his gradual rise to the exalted 
 station of greatest reformer in the history of Russia. 
 
 He was born eighty-two years ago of an ancient noble 
 family. His childhood years were spent in the midst of the 
 gay military life of Moscow. Yet more gay and Must hear story oi 
 more corrupt was the society that surrounded *"*"'*■ 
 him during his university life. Experiencing a revulsion of 
 
32 
 
 feeling against the kind of life he was leading, he fled from 
 the university before graduation, returned to his familj' estate 
 at Yasnaya Polyana and took up the life of a farmer. 
 
 This impetuous flight, and a later one of which we shall 
 hear presently, may throw some light, upon his last flight, a 
 few weeks ago, v/hich came to a pathetic end, and of which 
 we shall speak in our next discourse. 
 
 Five years long he lived the life of a peasant, when a 
 call to arms landed him on the battlefields of the Crimea, 
 His early glory and where he soon won distinction for heroic service, 
 shame. -g^^ ^^^ dissoluteness of campaign-life soon dis- 
 
 closed that the Tartar in him was not yet dead. He returned 
 to the debaucheries of his former years, and, according to his 
 own confession, with all the greater zest, because of the double 
 glory that had come to him, that of a distinguished soldier 
 and of a brilliant author. He had taken to story-writing, and 
 displayed in it a talent that made success instantaneous. He 
 became the lion of his day, and was courted by high and low. 
 And the greater his glory the more unrestrained grew his 
 libertinism.* 
 
 But there were lucid intervals, now and then, during 
 
 which he held up to himself the lofty ideals of his former 
 
 peasant life, and bitterly he denounced himself, 
 His reform. 
 
 and even portrayed himself unsparingly in the 
 character-sketches of some of his novels. His better self 
 acquired mastery at last ; he threw off the yoke that had held 
 him fast to the corrupt society of his day, and for the second 
 time he fled to his estate. 
 
 He himself told of the circumstance that led to that flight. 
 He had attended a ball at the home of a prominent nobleman, 
 and passed the night in dancing and feasting, leaving his 
 peasant-coachman waiting for him outside, in an open sleigh, 
 in a bitter cold night. When at four in the morning he wished 
 
 * See his book "My Confession." 
 
33 
 
 to return home, he found the coachman seeminglj' frozen 
 dead, and it required several hours of strenuous effort to 
 restore him to consciousness and to save his life. "Why," 
 he asked himself, "should I, a rich, young aristocrat, who 
 has done nothing for society, spend the night amid warmth 
 and luxuries and feastings, while this peasant who represents 
 the class that has built our cities, given us our food and cloth- 
 ing and other necessities, be kept outside to freeze?" He 
 resolved, then and there, to dedicate the remainder of his life 
 to the righting of this and other wrongs. And he kept his 
 promise. 
 
 How strong an impression this incident made upon him 
 may be gathered from an indirect allusion to it, in his novel 
 "Master and Man,'' published some two score years later. 
 
 It was discouraging work at first. The people whom he 
 desired to benefit had no faith in him. They could not con- 
 ceive of an aristocrat, to whom the serfs had been consecrates life 
 no more than worms to be trod upon, becoming '° Peasant, 
 suddenly interested in their welfare. There were long spells 
 of utter disheartenment. A number of times he found himself 
 at the brink of suicide. He sought relief and diversion in 
 travel, but returned more convinced than ever of the corrup- 
 tions and evils of society, of the tyranny of the classes and of 
 the sufferings of the masses. 
 
 Marriage opened at last a new vista of life to him. Aided 
 and stimulated by his cultured and companionable wife he 
 entered upon his reform work by directing a powerful search- 
 light on the goings-on among the high and the low, in a 
 series of novels that secured for him at once rank among the 
 greatest novelists of his age. 
 
 In the second discourse of this series, I spoke of his having 
 deprecated his novels, and of his having expressed his prefer- 
 ence for his ethical and religious and sociological Aided by his 
 
 writiriQS 
 
 and economical and political writings. I ven- 
 
34 
 
 tured to say to him that but for his uovels he would have 
 gotten but comparatively few people to look into his other 
 writings, that his fiction had secured a world-wide audience, 
 that they contained many of the teachings of his other books, 
 and that the public swallows a moral pill easiest when offered 
 in the form of a novel. To which he replied "Most readers 
 swallow the sugar-coating and leave the pill untouched, or, if 
 they swallow it, it remains unassimilated." 
 
 And he was right. I have heard much criticism of Tol- 
 stoy's novels. Some find him too realistic, too plain spoken, 
 His novels even coarse. A certain magazine that had begun 
 
 eriiisized. publishing his "Resurrectio7i" was obliged to 
 
 discontinue the story, because of complaints by many of its 
 readers. It was a sad commentary, not on the morals of the 
 writer but on the lack of morals, or on the false modesty, of 
 the readers, for that novel has been declared by eminent critics 
 to be "the greatest and most moral novel ever written." 
 Others again value his realism for whatever spice they might 
 find therein, little heeding the serious purpose for which the 
 story was written. 
 
 At best, few people understand the meaning of a novel in 
 such a country as Russia, where free press, free pulpit, free plat- 
 Few know meaning form and free speech are unknown, where the 
 of novel in Russia. ^^^^1:^^^ attempts to do the work of all of these, 
 
 under the guise of fiction, the only form of literature that has 
 a chance to pass the eye of the censor. Whole systems of polit- 
 ical and social and moral reform are crowded between the 
 covers of a novel, which, if published in any other form of 
 literature, would condemn the author to life-long imprison- 
 ment in the Siberian mines. The novelist in Russia does not 
 look upon himself as an entertainer nor as a money-maker, 
 neither is he looked upon as such. He is the prophet, the 
 leader, the teacher, the tribune of the people, the liberator — 
 the emancipation of the Russian serfs, for instance, was entirely 
 
35 
 
 due to the novel. He has serious work to do, and he does 
 it seriously. His eye is not upon rhetoric nor upon aesthetics, 
 but upon the evil he has to uproot, on the corruption he has 
 to expose, on the reform he has to institute, on the philosophy 
 of life he has to unfold, and to do that means the production 
 of a novel like "Anna KarS^iina" or of a play like "The 
 Power of Darkness." He speaks not to English or American 
 puritans, but to Russians, whose receptivity of strong, plain 
 speech is healthier than ours. 
 
 Such a novelist was Tolstoy. His fiction is as powerful 
 as is the art of the Pre-Raphaelites. It is all sincerity. Noth- 
 ing escapes him. What the X-Ray does in the spoke as a proph- 
 physical world that his penetrating eye does in «« and reformer, 
 the field of morals. He sees the sin through a thousand layers 
 of pretense and hypocrisy, and he describes it as he sees it. 
 Disagreeable as are some of the subjects of which he treats, 
 there is not a line that may not be read without a blush by the 
 pure-minded. I^ike a surgeon, who cuts into the sore for 
 the purpose of letting out the poison, he lays bare the wrongs 
 and rottenness of church and government for the purpose 
 of affecting the needed cure. As a prophet he speaks the 
 language of prophets. As a reformer he tells the truth as 
 reformers tell it, unvarnished and ungarnished. He spares 
 others as little as he spared himself in his book ' 'My Confes- 
 sion." He wants others to do as he has done, to subject the 
 lusts and appetites and greeds to the rule of conscience, if the 
 kingdom of God is ever to be established on earth. 
 
 Radical in his reform propositions from the first, he 
 attracted attention at once. The world was amazed at the 
 daring of his thought and at the plainness of his opposed by 
 speech, and hailed him as a new prophet. The a""'""'"^"'- 
 government, however, looked upon him as a revolutionist, 
 and gave him clearly to understand that he would be silenced 
 if he did not change his views and style of writing. Instead 
 
36 
 
 of complying with its wish, he became all the more daring in 
 thought and all the plainer in speech. The humblest peasant 
 could understand as clearly as the shrewdest diplomat what 
 he was after. And it was not long before the government was 
 after him. The publication and sale of certain of his books 
 were prohibited. They were read all the more outside of 
 Russia, and by the thousands of copies v/ithin Russia. And 
 the more they were read the larger loomed his world-fame, 
 till he became too large for banishment or prison, for fortress 
 .or Siberian mine. 
 
 With all the fiery zeal of an ancient Jev/ish prophet, he 
 
 challenged the government to do its worst, "to tighten the 
 
 well-soaped noose about his throat " as it tight- 
 
 Challenged 
 
 government to do ened it about the throats of thousands of better 
 men than any that are in the service of the auto- 
 crat or of his hirelings, the bureaucrats. Theirs was a 
 government, he said, by might not by right, by gallows and 
 knout, not by law. 
 
 He demanded the abolition of the throne and of capital 
 punishment, the disbanding of the army, and the discontinu- 
 His political ance of trial by court-martial. He demanded 
 
 demands. liberty of speech and freedom of conscience. 
 
 He demanded the surrender to the people of lands and rights 
 that justly belonged to them, and scathingly he denounced 
 those who wasted in riotousness what had been painfully 
 gotten together with the heart's blood of the laboring-people. 
 He denounced the government for its cruelty toward the Jews, 
 and charged it with having instigated the massacres of them. 
 He held the government responsible for every misfortune that 
 befell the country — war, famine, pestilence, intense poverty, 
 hopeless misery, appalling ignorance. In burning words he 
 charged the slaughter of tens of thousands of husbands and 
 fathers and sons, in the Japanese war, to the greed of the mighty. 
 He depicted the Duma as the laughing stock of the world, as 
 
37 
 
 composed of people so stupid as not even to recognize what 
 fools they were making of themselves. In his ' 'Resurrection' ' 
 he held up to the view of the world Russia's courts of law, 
 and her iniquitous prison-system, the blocking of justice, the 
 shocking judicial indifference and laxities in cases involving 
 life-long sentences to penal servitude, the ' 'lives that are shed 
 like water upon the ground" during the transport to Siberia, 
 and the crimes and rebellions that are systematically bred by 
 such crying injustice. 
 
 I<ittle wonder that the government had no love for Tolstoy, 
 and that it suppressed publication after publication of his, and 
 maintained a special corps of censors and spies to watch him. 
 I^ittle wonder that it prohibited demonstrations of sorrow at 
 the announcement of his death, and made use of the church 
 as a cat's paw for holding him up as the Anti-Christ, and 
 arch-fiend, as the enemy of the Czar, Church and people.* 
 
 Plain and fearless as was his speech to the government it 
 was yet more so to the people. Not a wrong in society, 
 public or private, which he did not know, and His demands of 
 which he did not castigate as only he knew *''° '""''■''■ 
 how to castigate. lyouder and louder, as he grew older, he 
 preached the Law of God against the law of degenerate 
 society. Art and science, commerce and industry were to him 
 as nothing in comparison with the Moral I^aw, without which 
 he saw no future for mankind. 
 
 The sanctity of the marriage tie, the sobriety and industry 
 
 of the husband, the domesticity of the wife, were among the 
 
 most constant of his themes. He loathed the „.^,,^„^ ^^^p^^,. 
 
 self -exhibiting society woman; in his eyes she ing marriage and 
 
 " society, 
 
 was no better than the street-woman. Great to 
 
 him was the womanly woman, greater the domestic wife, 
 
 greatest of all the mother, and so many more times greater 
 
 the more times she was mother, f 
 
 *See his essay "Church and State." 
 
 tSee his essays "Man and JVoman, Their Respective Functions;" and "The 
 Mother," aijd his book "What To Do?" 
 
38 
 
 The sad lot of the poor and the riotous extravagances oi 
 
 the rich were constantly recurrent subjects of discussion with 
 
 him. "We speak of the abolition of slavery," 
 His views respect- - 
 
 ing isbop and said he, " but we have abolished only the word, 
 
 the poor are enslaved as much as ever. We need 
 a new emancipation, the emancipation of the rich from the 
 tyranny of their money, from the thraldom of the false view 
 of themselves and of society. With what right do men speak 
 of the aboHtion of slavery, when every time they look into the 
 mirror they see a slave-driver, when they live in idleness, and 
 fatten on the heart's blood of the down-trodden, when they 
 indulge their stomachs with the choicest of dainties, and wrap 
 their bodies in silks and broad cloths and furs, while those, 
 whose slavish toil provides these luxuries and comforts, have 
 not enough food to keep body and soul together, nor enough 
 of raiment and shelter to keep from freezing ? ' ' 
 
 In an article, published a few years ago in the North 
 American Review, Tolstoy spoke of a group of peasants stand- 
 ing aside to let a picknicking party of rich folks drive by. 
 One of the ladies' hats "has cost more than the horse with 
 which the peasant plows the field," and for the gentleman's 
 riding stick has been paid a week's v/ages of an underground 
 workman. "Everywhere, two or three men in a thousand 
 live so that, doing nothing for themselves, they eat and drink 
 in one week what would have fed hundreds for a year; they 
 wear garments costing thousands of dollars; they live in pal- 
 aces, where thousands of workmen could have been housed; 
 and they spend upon their caprices the fruits of thousands and 
 tens of thousands of workingdays. The others, sleepless and 
 unfed, labor beyond their strength, ruining their moral and 
 physical health for the benefit of these few chosen ones." It 
 is natural that the rich should not object to this arrangement, 
 said he, the surprising thing is that the poor take it so com- 
 placently. "Why do all these men, strong in physical vigor, 
 
39 
 
 and in the habit of labor — the enormous majority of humanity 
 — why do they submit to and obey a handful of feeble men, 
 generally incapable of anything?" Tolstoy finds the answer 
 very simple. It is because the minority have money, and the 
 workingmen need the money to feed their families. Millions 
 of workingmen submit "because one man has usurped 
 the factory, another the land, and a third the taxes collected 
 from the workmen. "Were the millions, who now slave for 
 the rich, to get their food from the soil, the rich, to keep alive, 
 would be obliged to raise their own food, and the double 
 redemption would have begun. It is because the number of 
 workers who produce the prime necessities of life is diminish- 
 ing that the number of those who use luxuries is increasing. 
 Under such conditions, the health of society, wrote he, is as 
 little possible as is the health of that person, whose body is 
 continually growing heavier in weight, and his legs are con- 
 tinually growing thinner and weaker. When the support 
 vanishes the body must fall.* 
 
 As a bitter opponent of violent measures, he saw but 
 one way for righting the wrongs of society, and that is in 
 the well-to-do descending to the lowly and start- „. „ ^ 
 
 " His Remedy. 
 
 ing life anew with them on a common level, and 
 rising with them step by step to the higher planes. And to 
 prevent a relapse to the old iniquitous state, he advocated 
 the eradication of capital, which he held responsible for many 
 of the inequalities and tyrannies and miseries of society. Let 
 the rich, said he, convert their money into land and parcel it out 
 among the poor, and claim for themselves no more than an 
 equal share with the others. Merely wishing the poor well, and 
 yet continuing the old state of affairs, is like sitting on a man's 
 neck and crushing him down, yet all the time assuring him 
 and others that we are sorry for him, and wish to ease his 
 condition by every means in our power except by getting off 
 
 * see also his book "IVhat To Do f " and his essay " The Russian Revolution." 
 
4° 
 
 his back. Or it is like entering an orchard, and barring the 
 door behind, and gathering its fruit for ourselves, and wishing 
 others might have as much yet continuing to keep the door 
 barred and gathering for ourselves alone.* 
 
 If we really wish to see the lot of the poor improved, said 
 he, we must not look for a miracle to effect it nor trust to some 
 future age to bring it about. We must do it ourselves, and 
 we must do it now. Arid we must do it at the cost of self- 
 sacrifice. If people really wish to improve the condition of 
 their brother men, and not merely their own, they must be 
 ready not only to alter the way of life to which they are accus- 
 tomed, but they must be ready for an intense struggle with 
 themselves and their families." f 
 
 Society will never be at peace, said he, until man will 
 have learned the service of sacrifice. And man will never be 
 happy until he will have learned to find his happiness in 
 making others happy. J 
 
 * See his book " What To Do ?" and his essay "Money." 
 
 t " The Slavery of Our Times."" 
 
 X "Cossacks."" ""Christ's Christianity,"" 
 
Itatt to (Fnlaloy. 
 
 ( Concluded. ) 
 A Discourse, at Templb Keneseth Israei., 
 
 BY 
 
 Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, D. D. 
 
 Philadelphia, January 8th, 1911. 
 
 The world was amazed, a few weeks ago, at the news 
 that Tolstoy had fled from his family and home, with the 
 resolve to retire to some wilderness, there to Tolstoy's fatal 
 await his end. Guesses as to the cause were *''°'''" 
 many, and the opinion was quite general that extreme old age 
 had affected his reason. 
 
 I could not subscribe to this conclusion, neither could I 
 see anything strange in his sudden departure. I knew of a 
 number of similar flights in his life, and the 
 
 Explained in light 
 
 reasons for them, and, therefore, I was little of last article of 
 surprised. And as to suspecting him of failing 
 mentality, I had but a short time before read the latest of his 
 writings, entitled ''Three Days in a Village," in which I had 
 seen no sign of a lessening of his power of mind and heart and 
 soul. And it is obvious that the Russian government, like- 
 wise, saw no lessening of his mentality, for it promptly sup- 
 pressed the publication of it. An enterprising newspaper man, 
 however, succeeded in forwarding a copy to our country, 
 which enterprise not only rescued for us the last of Tolstoy's 
 writings but also furnished us an explanation of his sudden 
 and fatal flight. 
 
 The article, a comparatively short one, was divided into 
 three parts, each a heart-rending recital of mis- Divided into three 
 eries in villages neighboring the count's estate. ''*''*'• 
 
42 
 
 The first part deals with wayfaring men. From six to 
 
 twelve of them visit these villages daily in search of bread and 
 
 clothes, of work and shelter. Some are blind or 
 
 First pari 
 
 described peasant lame, Some sick or feeble, some are very old or 
 very young, some are maimed or crippled, drag- 
 ging with them hideous memories of the recent Japanese war. 
 Many of them are ignorant and filthy, but some of them are 
 intelligent and revolutionary, who look upon the prosperous 
 as thieves, and ask for their share of the coined blood pressed 
 from the hearts of the poor and down-trodden. To keep these 
 unceasing streams of wayfaring paupers from becoming a 
 government charge, they are parcelled out by the authorities 
 among the poor and helpless peasantry, good care being taken 
 that they are not loaded upon the landlords, merchants or 
 priests. The wickedness of this course is fully intelligible 
 only to those who have some conception of the indescribable 
 poverty and misery of Russian peasants. Stripped of almost 
 all by taxation and by landlord oppression and by priest and 
 constable extortion, many of them have scarcely food and 
 room enough for themselves and cattle, scarcely clothes enough . 
 to cover their nakedness, no money with which to buy the 
 absolutely necessary farming-implements, or to keep their 
 wretched hovels from toppling over their heads. And yet, 
 notwithstanding their appalling misery, Tolstoy saw their 
 hearts go out in pity to these wandering paupers, and reli- 
 giously dividing their crust with those yet more unfortunate 
 than they, not knowing how soon they themselves might be 
 in a similarly wretched plight. 
 
 The second part of the article bears the sub-title "Living 
 
 and Dying." Upon entering the village accompanied by his 
 
 physician, the count was entreated for aid by a 
 
 Second part •' 
 
 described peasant woman. Upon inquiry he learned that her hus- 
 band had been drafted into the army, and that 
 the family was starving. Upon asking the village authority 
 
43 
 
 why the law had been violated in taking from a family its sole 
 supporter, he was told that the husband's brother was quite 
 capable of supporting the family. Next he met a little orphan 
 girl twelve years old, who was the head of a family of five 
 children. Her father had been killed in a mine; her mother 
 had dropped dead from exhaustion, a few weeks after; poor but 
 kind-hearted neighbors kept their eyes on the children, whilst 
 the oldest went about begging the means for their support. 
 In another hovel he found a man in his death-throes with 
 pneumonia. The room was damp and cold ; there was no fuel 
 for the stove; no food, no medicine, no mattress, no pillow, 
 for the dying man. 
 
 Saddened by what he had seen and heard the count drove 
 home. In front of his house he saw a carpeted sleigh, drawn 
 by magnificent horses, driven by a coachman 
 
 •^ ° Contrasted with 
 
 attired in heavy fur-coat and cap. It was the extravagance in 
 
 his own family. 
 
 conveyance of the count's son, who had come on 
 a visit to his father. There were ten at the table, who par- 
 took of a dinner of four courses, spiced by two kinds of wine. 
 Two butlers were in attendance, and costly flowers were on 
 the table. "Whence came these orchids?" asked the son, 
 to which the mother replied that they had come all the way 
 from St. Petersburg. " They cost a ruble and a half a piece," 
 said the son, adding that at a recent concert the whole stage 
 was smothered with orchids. Another at the table talked of 
 a Uttle recreation trip to Italy, but thought it troublesome to 
 be dbliged to spend thirty-nine hours in an express train, and 
 regretted that aviation had not proceeded far enough to make 
 possible a trip to Italy in shorter time. The count contrasted 
 these table sights and sounds with those he had seen and heard 
 in the village in the course of the day, and he left the table 
 even sadder than he was when he came to it. 
 
 The third part of the article deals with the taxation of the 
 villagers. From one old peasant the tax collectors took his 
 
44 
 
 samovar — the brass kettle for making tea — as 
 Third part _ 
 
 described peasant indispensible to a Russian as a stove is to us, 
 oppression. „ , . , , ■, , r 
 
 From another, a widow, they took a sheep; trom 
 
 another they took a cow, and so on. One poor woman offered 
 him some linen at the price of two rubles, the amount she 
 needed for taxes, saying that, if she failed to make the sale, 
 they will seize not only the linen but also her chickens, her 
 only means of support. That women pliaiy so large a part in 
 these taxations is due to so many of the men having been 
 killed in the Japanese war, or serving in the army. Upon 
 remonstrating with the village authorities, he was told that 
 they were sorry for the poor people, but helpless, that they 
 had received instructions from headquarters to be unsparing 
 in the discharge of their duty. Upon visiting the district chief 
 he was made clearly to recognize that back of his severity lay 
 his ambition for promotion as a reliable, immovable govern- 
 ment official. 
 
 Little wonder, that the government suppressed the publi- 
 cation of this last of Tolstoy's writings. I^ittle wonder, that 
 the three days spent amid the miseries of the 
 
 Feli tliat all liis ^ 
 
 labors iiad been villagers Saddened his heart beyond endurance. 
 And Still less wonder, that the government's 
 responsibility for it, and the world's indifference to it, even 
 his own family's, drove him to despair, ripened in him the 
 resolve to retire to some wilderness, where the soul would no 
 longer be harrowed by the sight of human outrages and 
 sufferings. 
 
 In the midst of such miseries as he saw, he must have 
 felt that the more than half a century of unceasing labors 
 in behalf of the poor and down-trodden, all his renunciations 
 and sacrifices had all been in vain. He must have felt that 
 the lot of the peasant was as bad as ever, that the government 
 was as cruel as before, that all his writings and all his plead- 
 ings for a more equitable division of God's gifts had failed to 
 
45 
 
 make the slightest impression upon the people, judging by the 
 
 extravagances within his own family, seeing four courses of 
 
 delicacies on his own table, at a single meal, two kinds of 
 
 wine, costly orchids, when, at but a short distance away, men 
 
 and women, even children, working infinitely harder than any 
 
 of his own family, deserving infinitely more than any who 
 
 lord it over them, were literally starving for the want of the 
 
 necessities of life, were dying in agony for the want of medical 
 
 care and ordinary comforts, had their last possession taken 
 
 from them by pitiless tax-collectors for the support of a vast 
 
 army of soldiers and officials, for the maintenance of a costly 
 
 and an oppressive autocracy. 
 
 Even as far back as 1894, when he was sixteen years 
 
 younger than he was at the time of his flight, even then I 
 
 noted in my conversations with him an under- 
 Noted Ills dlscon- 
 
 current of deep sorrow when dwelling on the tent when in con- 
 . . , , versatlon with him. 
 
 sufterings of the people, an occasional outburst 
 
 of impatience at the slowness of progress, and now and then 
 a cry of despair, an utter hopelessness of ever seeing a state of 
 society different from what it was. 
 
 What seemed to vex him most was seeing the very people 
 Ti?ho were responsible for these wrongs and outrages consider- 
 ing themselves religious, and branding as infa- 
 
 *> o > o Those responsible 
 
 mous such a man as he whose sole cry was for forwrongs charged 
 
 him with irreligion. 
 
 justice and right. "Because they mumble so 
 many prayers a day," said he to me, when speaking of 
 Pobdiedonostzief, " and cross themselves so many times, and 
 fast so many days in the year, they consider themselves 
 Christian, as for the rest of their conduct, one finds it difficult 
 to believe that they had ever heard of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 of the Golden Rule or of the Mosaic command ''Thou shall love 
 thy neighbor as thyself." Asking me for an explanation of 
 Reform Judaism, and telling him that is was founded upon an 
 emphasis on the spirit of religion rather than on its forms, he 
 
46 
 
 replied that it would not be tolerated in Russia, that the mere 
 words Reform and Spirit were quite sufficient to condemn it. 
 The government knows that they who seek the Spirit also 
 seek the Truth, and it is afraid that Truth will overthrow 
 autocracy and hierarchy, blind obedience and stupid ceremony, 
 and will set men free. 
 
 There are many things in connection with Tolstoy which 
 
 Russia of the future will wish to see expunged from the pages 
 
 of its history, and chief of these will be its having 
 
 Few men had 
 
 studied religion branded him as infamously irreligious. Few men 
 as mucii as he. , , . , ,. . i t-> 
 
 have been as genuinely religious as he. ±<ew 
 
 men have given religion as much thought as he. Few men 
 
 have written on religious subjects as much as he. 
 
 He studied the Scriptures in the original languages, and 
 
 carefully he read Church doctrine and dogmatic theology, 
 
 and the more he read the firmer became his con- 
 Rebelled against 
 
 aduiteration of viction that Christ's Christianity was quite a dif- 
 ferent thing from Church Chtistianity. He re- 
 jected the latter, and fervently he espoused the former. 
 Three-fourth of what passes for Christianity, he said, has 
 no historical nor logical nor spiritual v/arrant. He saw how 
 its fundamental principle, the equality of all men as sons of 
 God, had been perverted to give the classes the right to enslave 
 the masses. He saw how a divine being had been made of Jesus, 
 and how this enabled the church to say that living the life he 
 lived, and practicing the precepts he preached was impossible 
 for human beings. He had read in the Scriptures not to resist 
 evil, and yet had been taught the soldier's trade, the art of 
 killing. The army to which he had belonged was called ' 'The 
 Christophile Army," and it was sent forth with a Christian 
 benediction. One day, he said, he was reading in Hebrew, 
 with a Rabbi, the fifth chapter of Matthew. After nearly 
 every verse the Rabbi said " This is in the Old Testament or 
 in the Talmud," and showed me the corresponding passages. 
 
47 
 
 When we reached the words " Resist no evil," the Rabbi did 
 not say "This is in the Talmud," but he asked "Do the 
 Christians obey this command? Do they turn the other 
 cheek?" "I had nothing to say in reply," said Tolstoy, 
 "for at that particular time, Christians, far from turning the 
 other cheek, were smiting the Jews upon both cheeks. I saw 
 the support the church gave to persecutions and to the death 
 penalty, and my soul cried out against it." 
 
 And his mind rebelled, he said and wrote, against the 
 mythology which was paraded as theology, such teachings as 
 the immaculate conception, the heaven opening and the angels 
 singing, Christ's flying through the air and into the sky, and 
 seating himself at the right hand of God. He denounced as 
 blasphemous such teachings as that by partaking of the Sacra- 
 ment God's body becomes assimilated with that of man, or that 
 of God being three Gods in one, being still angry at man for the 
 sin of Adam, and sending His only son on earth to be crucified 
 so that by the son's blood the father's wrath may be appeased. 
 He regarded as unworthy even of heathens such teachings as 
 that salvation for sin depended on being baptized, and that 
 God will visit eternal punishment on those who do not believe 
 in His divinely begotten son. He professed a sincere belief in 
 God as the author of all existence, and as the source of all 
 love. He believed that death meant a new and higher birth. 
 He believed that God's will was most clearly expressed in the 
 teachings of the man Jesus, whom to consider and pray to as 
 God he regarded as blasphemous. 
 
 He compressed the teachings of Jesus into the following 
 
 commandments: I. "Do not be angry. II. Do not lust. 
 
 III. Do not give away the control of your future ^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 actions by taking oaths. IV. Do not resist evil, religion into five 
 
 commandments. 
 V. Do not withhold love from any one. These 
 
 five commandments he developed into a comprehensive moral 
 
48 
 
 philosopliy, and by it he conscientiously endeavored to guide 
 
 his life and thought.* 
 
 And for that strong and simple faith of his, which is 
 
 destined, in the not distant future, to inaugurate an era in the 
 
 religious world similar to that which Luther 
 Was indebted for 
 
 his faith to inaugurated four centuries earlier in Germany, 
 
 peasants. , . , , , . ■■-> • ^i 
 
 he was indebted to the peasants. During the 
 libertine life of his early years, he had lost the little faith that 
 had been taught him in his childhood. He had returned to 
 his estate an avowed atheist, and as such had he continued for 
 some time, until, one day, he inquired into what it was that 
 made the wretchedly poor and ignorant and hard-working 
 peasants contented with their lot, resigned to their fate, bear- 
 ing hardships and sufferings unmurmeringly, and looking 
 happily forward to the end. He found it in their faith. 
 ' ' Surely, ' ' said he, ' ' a state of mind that can do so much for 
 the poor is worth having by all." And he devoted himself to 
 a diligent study of their religion. He found it burdened with 
 foreign accretions, contaminated with a putrid mass that had 
 been gathered during centuries of darkness and superstition, 
 adulterated with all kinds of conscious and unconscious inven- 
 tions. Stripping away the foreign and putrid and false, he 
 alighted upon a rational, satisfying faith, the faith which he 
 believed to have been that of the Rabbi of Nazareth, and, 
 henceforth, consecrated his life to the propagation of it. 
 
 And more yet than what the peasants gave to him he 
 gave to them in return. He gave them himself, and, in the 
 Gave them his life end, he Sacrificed even his life for them. He 
 and laborin return. ^^^^^ ^^^^ down-trodden Serfs, he endeavored 
 to make free men of them. He found them cowed and bowed, 
 he taught them to walk and stand erect. He found them 
 unbefriended, he became a brother to them. He found them 
 
 • See his books "My Confession," "My Religion; " and Aylmer Maude's The Life 
 of Tolstoy. 
 
49 
 
 wretchedly poor, he renounced pleasure and treasure, luxury 
 and ease, to lessen as much as he could the distance between 
 them and himself. He dressed as they dressed, and labored 
 as they labored, and, as far as permitted, ate the kind of food 
 they ate. He found them stalking in darkness, he brightened 
 their way for them. He found them ignorant and at the 
 mercy of priest and government official, he became their advo- 
 cate, dared to brave an all-powerful autocracy in the defense 
 of their rights. He started schools for them. He gave up 
 writing for the thousands of select readers that he might write 
 for the millions of illiterate peasants and other laborers. He 
 wrote special booklets for them, and sold them at a loss, at 
 one-half cent a copy, stories, legends, symbolical tales, moral 
 plays and religious tracts, all fitted for their minds and 
 stations, and intended to deepen in them the law of love and 
 right. 
 
 To have sacrificed and renounced and dared as much and 
 as long as he had, and, in the end, to find what he found, in 
 his three days observation of village miseries Died believing he 
 and outrages, was more than his great heart '**" *""*''■ 
 could stand. It broke. He was eighty-two years old. He 
 could no longer continue the fight. He could no longer look 
 upon the suffering of the unfortunates, nor upon the wrongs 
 of the world, nor upon the extravagances even within his own 
 family. He regarded his whole life-work a dismal failure. 
 He knew of no other balm for his bleeding heart than flight 
 from the world to some secluded spot, there, as a hermit, to 
 await the end, which he knew was not far distant. Truly 
 pathetic were his farewell lines to his wife: 
 
 "I cannot continue longer to live a life of ease and luxury while 
 others starve and suffer. Like many other old men, I retire from the 
 world to await my end in solitude. I ask that you do not seek my 
 place of sojourn, and that you do not come to it if it be discovered. 
 I beg forgiveness for the grief that I may cause you," 
 
5° 
 
 He was not the first of the world's great reformers and 
 lovers of humanity to lose heart and to experience spells of 
 Characteristic of despair. Moses and Elijah and Jesus and others 
 great reformers. ^^^ ^j^^.^. ^^^^^ ^^ agony, and prayed that the 
 
 end might come, and deliver them from their hopeless labors. 
 
 And many who, like Tolstoy, closed their eyes in the belief 
 
 that they had utterly failed loomed large in subsequent ages 
 
 among the greatest of the world's benefactors. 
 
 Tolstoy has not failed. He succeeded better than he 
 
 knew. His pathetic death revealed the vast number of fol- 
 
 succeeded belter lowers he had in his own country and in all parts 
 than he knew. ^^ ^j^^ ^^^.j^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ ^^ inquire, he 
 
 might have known it before his death. He could have seen 
 it from the fact that more books of his were sold than of all 
 other Russian authors combined. He could have seen it in the 
 vast crowds that gathered all along the line, to catch a glimpse 
 of him, when on his journey, a few years ago, to the Crimea, 
 in search of health. He could have seen it in the deputations 
 of sympathizers that waited upon him, and in the streams of 
 congratulatory letters and telegrams that rushed in upon him — 
 till suppressed — after his excommunication. He could have 
 seen it in the Tolstoyan societies among the students of almost 
 all the Russian universities and among other bodies. He 
 could have seen it among the considerable number of landlords, 
 who made conscientious efforts at following his life, and at 
 adopting his mode of dealing with peasants and laborers. 
 Were the yoke of autocracy removed, there would arise in 
 Russia an army of Tolstoyans as vast and mighty as the host 
 which Ezekiel in his vision saw in the valley of dry bones. 
 
 The religion of Russia of the future will be largely that 
 
 which Tolstoy lived and taught, and it will be the religion of 
 
 a large part of the rest of the world. Time's 
 
 Religion of future 
 
 will be largely sifting process will eliminate whatever is unten- 
 able in his system of moral and social and eco- 
 
51 
 
 nomic philosophy, which sprang more from a flaming heart 
 than from a cool, calculating mind. He had neither the time 
 nor the inclination to work out a synthetic philosophy. He 
 wrote as the spirit moved him, and whenever it moved him, 
 the keynote of all his writing having been, as he said to me, 
 "the hastening of the day when men will dwell together in 
 the bonds of love, and sin and suffering will be no more." 
 
 There are in the Tolstoyan system of religion the elements 
 of the long-dreamed of universal creed. It will take time for 
 the rooting of it. Mormonism and Dowieism spring up, like 
 Jonah's gourd, and pass away as speedily as they came. A 
 system as rational and radical as that of Tolstoy requires an 
 age for germination. But, once it takes root, it takes root 
 forever; once it blossoms, it blossoms for eternity. 
 
PnMications of Rabbi Josepb Kranskopf, D. D. 
 
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