ПСС. Том 71. Письма, 1898

Очень бы вы обрадовали меня, если бы написали мне подробно о жизни духоборов и о вашей жизни, и если бы согласились быть посредниками между духоборами и их друзьями в России, которые желали бы помочь им, но так, чтобы посылаемое доходило до них.

Пожалуйста, примите то, что я пишу вам, с тою же братскою любовью, которую я питаю к вам и во имя которой позволяю себе высказать мое мнение о вашей вере, полагая, что мои суждения, может быть, и пригодятся вам и будут содействовать тому братскому единению, которое составляет цель нашей жизни.

Любящий вас

Лев Толстой.

Впервые опубликовано (два отрывка) в газете «Биржевые ведомости», утренний выпуск, 1908, № 10710 от 17 сентября; полностью в книге В. Д. Бонч-Бруевича «Материалы к истории и изучению русского сектантства и раскола», I, СПб., стр. 71—73.

Гавриил Прокопьевич Меньшенин (1862—1930) — сектант-скопец; в 1898 г. жил в Сибири. См. т. 70.

Ответ на письмо Меньшенина от 19 февраля, в котором он возражал Толстому на его письмо от 31 декабря 1897 г. (см. т. 70) по вопросу о скопчестве.

¹ «Учение двенадцати апостолов» — древний памятник церковной письменности. Толстой пересылал Меньшенину перевод с греческого K. Д. Попова в изд. «Посредник», М. 1898.

67. Дж. Гибсону (G. Gibson).

1898 г. Марта 11. Москва.

My dear friend,

I duly received your letter and magazine, both of which afforded me great pleasure. The first number is very good and I liked all the articles in it. It is quite true, as you say it in your article «The Social Need»¹, and Herron² in his, that a Christian life is quite impossible in the present unchristian organization of society. The contradictions between his surroundings and his convictions are very painful for a man who is sincere in his сhristian faith, and therefore the organization of communities seems to such a man the only means of delivering himself from these contradictions. But this is an illusion. Every community is a small island in the mist of an ocean of unchristian conditions of life, so that the christian relations exist only between members of the colony but outside that must remain unchristian, otherwise the colony would not exist for a moment. And therefore to live in community cannot save a christian from the contradiction between his conscience and his life. I do not mean to say that I do not approve of communities such as your commonwealth, or that I do not think them to be a good thing. On the contrary, I approve of them with all my heart and am very interested in your commonwealth and wish it the greatest success.

I think that every man who can free himself from the conditions of wordly life without breaking the ties of love — love the main principle in the name of which he seeks new forms of life — I think such a man not only must, but naturally join people who have the same beliefs and who try to live up to them. If I were free I would immediately even at my age join such a colony. I only wished to say that the mere forming of communities is not a solution for the christian problem, but is only one of the means of its solution. The revolution that is going on for the attainment of the christian ideal is so enormous, our life is so different from what it ought to be, that for the perfect success of this revolution, for the concordance of conscience and life, is needed the work of all men — men living in communities as well as men of the world living in the most different conditions. This ideal is not so quickly and so simply attained, as we think and wish it. This ideal will be attained only when every

man in the whole world will say: Why should I sell my services and buy yours? If mine are greater than yours I owe them to you, because if there is in the whole world one man who does not think and act by this principle, and who, will take and keep by violence, what he can take from others, no man can live a true christian life, as well in a community as outside it. We cannot be saved separately, we must be saved all together. And this can be attained only through the modification of the conception of life i. e. the faith of all men; and to this end we must work all together — men living in the world as well as men living in communities.

We must all of us remember that we are messengers from the great King — the God of Love with the message of unity and

love between all living beings. And therefore we must not for a minute forget our mission and do all what we thilk useful and agreable for ourselves only so long as it is not in opposition to our mission which is to be accomplished not only by words, but by example and especially by the infection of love.