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naturally all be united.
PRIEST. And how are the people to be guided--without any really definite
truth?
NICHOLAS IVĂNOVICH. That's what is terrible! Each one of us has to
save his own soul, and has to do God's work himself, but instead of
that we busy ourselves saving other people and teaching them. And
what do we teach them? We teach them now, at the end of the nineteenth
century, that God created the world in six days, then caused a flood,
and put all the animals in an ark, and all the rest of the horrors and
nonsense of the Old Testament. And then that Christ ordered everyone to
be baptized with water; and we make them believe in all the absurdity
and meanness of an Atonement essential to salvation; and then that he
rose up into the heavens which do not really exist, and there sat down
at the right hand of the Father. We have got used to all this, but
really it is dreadful! A child, fresh and ready to receive all that is
good and true, asks us what the world is, and what its laws are; and we,
instead of revealing to him the teaching of love and truth that has been
given to us, carefully ram into his head all sorts of horrible
absurdities and meannesses, ascribing them all to God. Is that not
terrible? It is as great a crime as man can commit. And we--you and your
Church--do this! Forgive me!
PRIEST. Yes, if one looks at Christ's teaching from a rationalistic
point of view, it is so.
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