“Tolstoy came to the conclusion that a coarse deceit had been palmed upon the world when these words were held by civil society to be compatible with war, courts of justice, capital punishment, divorce, oaths, national prejudice, and indeed with most of the institutions of civil and social life. He now believes that the Kingdom of God would come if all men kept these five commandments, … 1. Live in peace with all men; 2. Be pure; 3. Take no oaths; 4. Never resist evil; 5. Renounce national distinctions. …
“Most of the Bible does not seem to him to reflect the spirit of Christ at all, though it has been brought into artificial and unwarrantable connection with it. Hence he rejects the chief doctrines of the church: that of the Atonement by blood, that of the Trinity, that of the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles … and believes himself to be the immediate disciple of Christ alone.
“Is this interpretation of Christ a true one?” he asks. “Are all men bound, or is any man bound, to act as this great writer has done?”
One just hopes that in reply to this essential question, which alone could have urged the man to write an article on the book, he will say that this interpretation of Christ’s teaching is correct, or that it is not correct, and so will prove why, and will give another, a correct interpretation to the words which I interpret incorrectly. But nothing of the kind is done. Farrar only expresses his conviction that, “though actuated by the noblest sincerity, Count Tolstoy has been misled by partial and one-sided interpretations of the meaning of the Gospel and the mind and will of Christ.”