EPILOGUE TO THE KREUTZER SONATA

                              by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

                                         1890

                      In the translation by Professor Leo Wiener

                                         1904

                I have received many letters from strangers asking me to

 explain in simple and clear words what I think of the subject of

 the story which I wrote under the title of the *Kreutzer Sonata*.

 I shall try to do so, that is, in a few words to express, so far as

 is possible, the essence of what I had intended to convey by my

 story, and of the conclusions at which one may arrive from it.

                I wanted to say, *in the first place*, that in our society

 there has formed itself a firm conviction, common to all classes

 and supported by the false science, that sexual intercourse is

 necessary for health, and that, since marriage is not always

 possible, sexual intercourse outside of matrimony, which does not

 put men under any other obligations than that of monetary payment,

 is quite natural and worthy of emulation.  this conviction has

 become so general and deep-rooted that parents, by the advice of

 doctors, arrange debauchery for their children; governments, whose

 only meaning consists in the care for the moral well-being of its

 citizens, establish debauchery, that is, regulate a whole class of

 women, who are to perish bodily and morally, in order to satisfy

 the imaginary needs of men, while unmarried men abandon themselves

 to this debauchery with the calmest conscience.

                And so I wanted to say that this is not good, because it is

 not right that for the sake of the health of one class of people it

 should be necessary to ruin the bodies and souls of another class,

 just as it is not right that for the sake of health of one class of

 people it should be necessary to drink the blood of others.

                The natural conclusion from this, it seems to me, is that it

 is not good to submit to this delusion and deception.  And, in

 order not to submit, it is necessary, in the first place, not to

 believe in this immoral doctrine, no matter by what imaginary

 science it may be supported, and in the second, to understand that

 such sexual intercourse, where people free themselves from its

 possible consequences, from children, or shift the whole burden of

 these consequences to the woman, or prevent the possibility of

 childbirth, -- that such sexual intercourse is a transgression of

 the simplest requirement of morality, that it is base, and that,

 therefore, unmarried men, who do not wish to live basely, must not

 do it.

                But, in order to be able to abstain, they must, in addition,

 lead a natural life, not drink, not stuff themselves, not eat mean,

 and not avoid labour (I do not mean gymnastics, nor play, but

 fatiguing labour); they must not permit themselves to think of the

 possibility of intercourse with strange women, just as all men

 exclude the possibility of intercourse between themselves and their

 mothers, sisters, relatives, and the wives of their friends.

                Any man may find a hundred proofs about him that continence is

 possible and less dangerous and injurious to him than non-

 continence.

So much in the first place.

                *Secondly*, that in our society, on account of the current

 view in regard to carnal love as not only a necessary condition of

 health and as a pleasure, but also as a poetical, exalted good of

 life, marital infidelity has become in all strata of society

 (especially among the peasants, thanks to militarism) a most common

 phenomenon.

                I assume that this is not good.  The conclusion which springs

 from it is that one ought not to do it.

                But, in order not to do it, it is necessary for the view in

 regard to carnal love to change.  Men and women ought to be

 educated in their homes and by public opinion to look, before and

 after marriage, on infatuation and the carnal love connected with

 it, not as upon a poetical and exalted condition, such as it is now

 considered to be, but as upon an animal condition, degrading to

 man; it is necessary that the violation of a promise of fidelity,

 given at marriage, should be punished by public opinion certainly

 in no lesser degree than are punished the violations of monetary

 obligations and mercantile frauds, and that it should not be

 extolled, as it is now, in novels, poetry, songs, operas, etc.

                So much in the second place.

                *Thirdly*, that in our society, again on account of the false

 meaning which is ascribed to carnal love, the procreation of

 children has lost its purpose, and, instead of being the aim and

 justification of marital relations, has become a hindrance in the

 pleasant continuation of amatory relations; that, therefore,

 outside of wedlock and in wedlock, there has begun to spread, at

 the advice of the servants of the medical science, the use of means

 depriving women of the possibility of childbirth, or there has

 arisen a custom, a habit (that which had not been before and even

 now is not found in patriarchal peasant families) of continuing the

 conjugal relations during pregnancy and nursing.  I assume that

 this is not good.

                It is not good to use means preventive of childbirth, in the

 first place, because people are thus relieved of cares and labours

 in regard to children, who serve as a redemption of carnal love,

 and, in the second, because it comes very near to the act which is

 most repulsive to a human conscience, to murder.  Nor is non-

 continence during pregnancy and nursing good, because it is

 destructive of the physical, and still more of the mental, powers

 of woman.  The conclusion which springs from this is that it is not

 good to do it.  But, in order not to do it, it must be understood

 that continence, which forms a necessary condition of human dignity

 in the single state, is still more binding in marriage.

                So much in the third place.

                *Fourthly*, that in our society, where children appear as a

 hindrance to enjoyment, or as an unfortunate accident, or as a

 peculiar kind of enjoyment, when there are borne a predetermined

 number of them, these children are brought up, not in conformity

 with the problems of human existence, with which they will be

 confronted as sensible and loving beings, but only in conformity

 with those pleasures which they may afford their parents.  In

 consequence of this, the children of human beings are brought up

 like the young of animals, so that the chief problem of the parents

 does not consist in preparing them for an activity which would be

 worthy of man, but (in which view the parents are supported by the

 false science called medicine) in feeding them as well as possible,

 in increasing their stature, in making them clean, white, beautiful

 (if this is not done in the lower classes, the fault is that of

 circumstances, for the view there held is the same).  In these

 pampered children, as in all overfed animals, there is early

 developed an unnatural and insuperable sensuality, which is the

 cause of terrible suffering for these children in their youth.  The

 attire, the reading, the shows, the music, the dances, the sweet

 food, the whole circumstance of life, from the pictures on the

 boxes to the novels, stories, and poems, -- everything still more

 fans this sensuality, and in consequence of this, the most terrible

 sexual vices and diseases become the usual conditions of the

 bringing up of children of both sexes, and frequently remain so

 through manhood.

                I assume that this is not good.  The conclusion which may be

 drawn from it is that we must stop bringing up the children of men

 like the young of animals, and that other aims must be kept in view

 in the bringing up of children besides a beautiful, well-kept body.

                So much for the fourth place.

                *Fifthly*, that in our society infatuation between a young man

 and a young woman, which has, after all, carnal love at its base,

 has been exalted into the highest poetical aim of human tendencies,

 to which all the art and poetry of our society bear witness.  The

 best part of young people's lives are passed, by men, in

 discovering and taking possession of the best objects of love in

 the form of love-affairs or of marriage, and by women and girls, in

 alluring and drawing men into love-affairs or marriage.

                Thus the best powers of people are wasted not only on

 unproductive, but even on dangerous, work.  From this originates

 the greater part of the senseless luxury of our life; from this

 comes the indolence of men and the shamelessness of women, who do

 not disdain the fashions which are borrowed from notoriously

 debauched women, and which lay bare and accentuate the parts of the

 body that provoke sensuality.

                I assume that this is not good.

                It is not good because the attainment of the aim of being

 united in wedlock or of being outside of wedlock with the object of

 love, however much extolled by poetry it may be, is unworthy of

 man, just as the aim of obtaining sweet and superabundant food,

 which presents itself to many as the highest good, is unworthy of

 man.

                The conclusion to which we may arrive from this is that we

 must cease thinking that carnal love is something peculiarly

 exalted; we must come to understand that the aim which is worthy of

 man is to serve humanity, his country, science, or art (let alone

 serving God), whatever it may be, as long as it is worthy of man,

 and that this aim is not attained through a union with the object

 of love in wedlock or outside of wedlock, but that, on the

 contrary, infatuation and union with the object of love (however

 much the opposite may be attempted to be proved in poetry and

 prose) never makes the attainment of the aim which is worthy of man

 any easier, but always impedes it.

                So much in the fifth place.

                These are the essentials which I wished to express, and which,

 I think, I have expressed in my story.  It seemed to me that there

 might be a difference of opinion as to how the evil to which these

 propositions point may be mended, but that it was impossible not to

 admit their truth.  It seemed to me that it was not possible to

 deny the truth of these propositions, in the first place, because

 they are entirely in agreement with the progress of humanity, which

 has always marched from looseness of morals to an ever increasing

 chastity, and with the moral consciousness of society, with our

 conscience, which always condemns looseness of morals and values

 chastity; and, in the second place, because these propositions are

 the inevitable deductions from the teaching of the Gospel, which we

 profess, or, at least, even though it be only unconsciously, assume

 as the basis for our ideas of morality.

                But it has turned out quite differently.

                Nobody, it is true, directly disputes the proposition that

 debauchery should not be practiced, either before or after

 marriage, that it is wrong artificially to destroy childbirth, that

 children are not to be made playthings, and that amatory union

 ought not to be placed higher than anything else, -- in short,

 nobody denies that chastity is better than looseness of morals.

 But they say:  "If the single state is better than wedlock, then

 people ought evidently to do that which is better.  But, if people

 do that, then the human race will come to an end, and therefore the

 destruction of the human race cannot be its ideal."  Yet, not to

 mention the fact that the destruction of the human race is not a

 new conception for the people of this world, being a dogma of faith

 with the religious people and for the scientific men an inevitable

 deduction from the observations in regard to the sun's congealment,

 -- there is in this expression a great, wide-spread, and old

 misunderstanding.  They say:  "If people will reach the ideal of

 complete chastity, they will be destroyed, and therefore the ideal

 is wrong."  But those who say so purposely or unwittingly mix up

 two different things, -- a precept and an ideal.

                Chastity is not a rule or a precept, but an ideal, or, more

 correctly, one of its conditions.  An ideal is only then an ideal

 when its realization is possible in the idea only, in thought, when

 it presents itself as attainable only at infinity, and when,

 therefore, the approach to it is infinite.  If an ideal were not

 only attainable, but we could imagine its realization, it would

 cease to be an ideal.  Such is Christ's ideal, the establishment of

 the kingdom of God upon earth, -- an ideal which had been foretold

 even by the prophets when they said that the time would come when

 the people would be instructed by God, when the swords would be

 forged into ploughshares and the spears into sickles, when the lion

 would lie with the lamb, when all the creatures would be united in

 love.  The whole meaning of human life consists in a motion toward

 this ideal, and therefore the striving after the Christian ideal,

 in all its entirety, and after chastity, as one of the conditions

 of this ideal, not only does not exclude the possibility of life,

 but, on the contrary, the absence of this Christian ideal would

 destroy all movement forward and, consequently, all possibility of

 life.

                The reflection that the human race would come to an end if

 people should with all their power tend toward chastity resembles

 that other reflection which might be made (and it is made), that

 the human race will perish if people, instead of struggling for

 existence, should with all their power tend to the realization of

 love for their neighbour, for their enemies, for all living beings.

 Such reflections spring from the inability to distinguish between

 two rules of moral guidance.

                Just as there are two ways for indicating the road to a

 traveller, even thus there are two ways for moral guidance in the

 case of a man who is seeking the truth.  One way consists in

 indicating to the man the objects which he will come across, and

 then he is guided by these objects.

                The other way consists in giving the man the direction by the

 compass, which he is carrying with him, and on which he observes

 the one immutable direction, and, consequently, every deflection

 from it.

                The first way of moral guidance is the way of external

 definitions, of rules:  man is given definite tokens of acts which

 he must perform and which not.

                "Observe the Sabbath, be circumcised, do not steal, drink no

 intoxicating drink, kill no living being, give the tithe to the

 poor, make your ablutions, and pray five times a day," and so

 forth, -- such are the injunctions of external religious teachings,

 -- of the Brahmanical, Buddhistic, Mohammedan, Hebrew, and the

 ecclesiastic falsely called Christian.

                The other way is to indicate to man unattainable perfection,

 the striving after which man is cognizant of:  man has pointed out

 to him the ideal, in relation to which he is at any time able to

 see the degree of his divergence from it. 

                "Love God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with

 all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself. -- Be ye perfect, even

 as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect."

                Such is the teaching of Christ.

                The verification of the execution of external religious tenets

 is the coincidence of the acts with the injunctions of these

 tenets, and this coincidence is possible.

                the verification of the execution of Christ's teaching is the

 consciousness of the degree of its non-correspondence with the

 ideal perfection.  (the degree of approximation is not visible;

 what is visible is the deflection from perfection.)

                A man who professes an external law is a man who is standing

 in the light of a lamp which is attached to a post.  He is standing

 in the light of this lamp, he sees the light, and he has no other

 place to go to.  A man who professes the teaching of Christ is like

 a man carrying a lamp before him on a more or less long pole:  the

 light is always before him; it always incites him to follow it, and

 continually opens up in front of him a new illuminated space which

 draws him on.

                The Pharisee thanks God for executing everything.

                The rich youth also executes everything from his childhood,

 and he cannot understand what may be wanting to him.  Nor can they

 think otherwise:  there is not in front of them that toward which

 they may continue to strive.  The tithe has been delivered, the

 Sabbath has been kept, the parents are respected, there is no

 adultery, not theft, no murder.  What else shall it be?  But in him

 who professes the Christian teaching the attainment of any new

 round of perfection incites the necessity of stepping on the next

 round, from which a still higher round is perceived, and so on

 without end.  He who professes Christ's Law is always in the

 position of the publican.  He always feels himself imperfect, not

 seeing the road behind him, which he has passed, but only the road

 in front of him, which he has not yet travelled upon and which he

 must pass over.

                In this consists the difference between the teaching of Christ

 and all other religious teachings, -- a difference consisting not

 in the difference of demands, but in the difference of the way of

 guiding men.  Christ gave no definitions of life.  He never

 established any institutions, he never established marriage.  But

 people who do not understand the peculiarities of Christ's

 teaching, who are accustomed to external tenets, and who wish to

 feel themselves in the right, as does the Pharisee, contrary to the

 whole spirit of Christ's teaching, -- have out of the letter made

 an external teaching of rules, and have substituted this teaching

 for Christ's true teaching of the ideal.

                The church teachings, which call themselves Christian, have in

 all manifestations of life substituted for Christ's teaching and

 ideal the external injunctions and rules which are contrary to the

 spirit of the teaching.  This has been done in reference to

 government, courts, armies, churches, divine service; this has also

 been done in reference to marriage.  Disregarding the fact that

 Christ nowhere established marriage, -- on the contrary, whenever

 he mentioned an external rule it was to oppose it ("Forsake thy

 wife and follow me"), -- the church teachings, which call

 themselves Christian, have established marriage as a Christian

 institution, that is, they have established external observances

 which make sexual love sinless and entirely lawful for a Christian.

                Since in the true Christian teaching there are no foundations

 for the institution of marriage, the result has been that people of

 our world have departed from one shore without landing on the

 other, that is, they do not believe, in reality, in the church

 definitions of marriage, feeling that this institution has no

 foundation in the Christian teaching, and at the same time not

 seeing before them Christ's ideal, which is concealed by the church

 doctrine, -- the striving after complete chastity, they are left

 without any guidance in relation to marriage.  From this comes the

 seemingly strange phenomenon that with the Jews, Mohammedans,

 Lamaists, and others, who profess religious teachings of a much

 lower order than the Christian, but who possess precise external

 injunctions in regard to marriage, the family principle and

 conjugal fidelity are incomparably more firmly rooted than with the

 so-called Christians.

                They have definite concubinage, and polygamy, and polyandry,

 limited by certain restrictions.  But with us there is complete

 looseness, -- there is concubinage, and polygamy, and polyandry,

 not subject to any limitations, and concealed under the aspect of

 supposed monogamy.

                Only because over a small part of the persons united the

 clergy performs a certain ceremony, called church marriage, people

 of our world naively or hypocritically imagine that they are living

 in matrimony.

                There cannot be and never has been such a thing as Christian

 marriage, just as there has not been and cannot be a Christian

 divine service (Matt. vi. 5-12; John iv. 21), nor any Christian

 teachers and fathers (Matt. xxiii. 8-10), nor Christian property,

 nor army, nor courts, nor state.

                Thus the early Christians always understood it.

                The Christian's ideal is love of God and his neighbour, self-

 renunciation in order to serve God and his neighbour; carnal love,

 marriage, means serving oneself, and therefore is, in any case, a

 hindrance in the service of God and men, and, consequently, from

 the Christian point of view, a fall, a sin.

                Entering into matrimony cannot cooperate with the service of

 God and men even in that case when those who enter into marriage

 have in view the continuation of the human race.  Rather than enter

 into marriage in order to procreate children, it would be much

 simpler for such people to sustain and save the lives of those

 millions of children who are perishing around us through want of

 material, not to say of spiritual, food.

                Only then could a Christian enter into marriage without the

 consciousness of a fall, a sin, if he saw and knew all the existing

 lives of children to be secure.

                We may reject the teaching of Christ, that teaching which

 permeates all our life and upon which all our morality is based,

 but, if we accept this teaching, we cannot fail to acknowledge that

 it points out the ideal of complete chastity.

                The Gospel says clearly and without any possibility of

 misinterpretation, in the first place, that a married man must not

 be divorced from his wife, in order to take another, and that he

 must live with the one with whom he as come together (Matt. v. 28-

 29), and, in the third place, that for an unmarried man it is

 better not to marry at all, that is, to be absolutely chaste (Matt.

 xix. 10-12).

                Many, very many people will regard these thoughts as strange

 and even contradictory.  They really are contradictory, but not

 among themselves.  These thoughts are contradictory to our whole

 life, and involuntarily the doubt arises who is right:  these

 thoughts, or the lives of missions of people and my own?  I

 experienced the same feeling in the highest degree, as I arrived at

 the convictions which I am expounding here:  I had not in the least

 expected that the progress of my thoughts would bring me to what it

 has.  I was terrified at my deductions and wished not to believe

 them, but it was impossible not to believe.  However much these

 deductions contradict the whole structure of our life, however much

 they contradict that which I thought and expressed before, I was

 compelled to acknowledge them.

                "All these are general reflections, which may be just.  But

 they refer to the teaching of Christ and are obligatory for those

 who profess it; but life is life, and it is impossible, by pointing

 out Christ's unattainable ideal, to leave people in one of the most

 burning and common questions, which produces most misery, with

 nothing but this ideal and without any guidance whatsoever.

                "A young, impassioned man will at first be carried away by the

 ideal; then he will not be able to endure it and will break loose,

 and, not knowing, nor acknowledging any rules, he will fall into

 complete debauchery!"

                Thus they reason usually.

                "Christ's ideal is unattainable, therefore it cannot serve us

 as a guide of life; we may speak and dream of it, but it is not

 applicable to life, and therefore we must abandon it.  We need, not

 an ideal, but a rule, a guidance, which shall be according to our

 strength, according to the mean average of the moral powers of our

 society:  an honourable church marriage, or even one which is not

 entirely honourable, where one of the parties entering into

 matrimony, as the man with us, has already come together with many

 individuals of the other sex, or at least marriage with the

 possibility of divorce, or civil marriage, or (proceeding in the

 same path) a Japanese marriage, for a definite time, -- why may we

 not also reach the houses of prostitution?"

                They say that this is better than street debauchery.  The

 trouble is that, having allowed ourselves to degrade the ideal in

 accordance with our weakness, we are unable to find the limit at

 which to stop.

                But this reflection is false from the start:  first of all it

 is a false supposition that the ideal of infinite perfection cannot

 be a guidance for life, and that, looking at it, it is necessary to

 dismiss it with a motion of the hand, saying that it is useless to

 me because I can never attain it, or to degrade the ideal to the

 level on which my weakness wants to stand.

                To reflect in this manner is the same as though a navigator

 should say:  "Since I cannot go in the directing indicated by the

 compass, I shall throw away the compass or cease looking at it,

 that is, I will abandon the ideal or will fasten the needle of the

 compass to the place which at a given moment will correspond to the

 direction of my vessel, that is, I will degrade the ideal in

 accordance with my weakness."

                The ideal of perfection which Christ has given us is not a

 dream or a subject for rhetorical sermons, but a most necessary,

 most accessible guide of moral life for man, just as the compass is

 a necessary and accessible implement guiding the navigator; all

 that is necessary is to believe in the one as in the other.  In

 whatever situation a man may be, the teaching about the ideal,

 given by Christ, is sufficient in order to obtain the safest

 indication of those acts which one may and which one may not

 perform.  But it is necessary completely to believe in this

 teaching, this one teaching, and to stop believing in any other,

 just as it is necessary for the navigator to believe in the

 compass, and to stop looking at and being guided by what he sees on

 both sides.  One must know how to be guided by the Christian

 teaching, how to be guided by the compass, and for this it is most

 important to understand one's position, and to be able not to be

 afraid precisely to indicate one's own deflection from the one,

 ideal direction.  No matter on what round man may stand, there is

 always a possibility of his approaching this ideal, and no position

 of his can be such that he should be able to say that he has

 attained it and no longer can strive after a greater approximation.

                Such is the striving of man after the Christian ideal in

 general and after chastity in particular.  If the most varied

 positions of people, from innocent childhood until marriage, when

 continence is not practiced, were to be considered in respect to

 the sexual question, then at every stage between these two

 positions the teaching of Christ, with its ideal which it puts

 forward, will always serve as a clear and definite guide to what

 man ought and ought not to do at every one of these stages.

                What are a pure young man and girl to do?  To keep themselves

 pure against temptations, and, in order that they may be able to

 give all their strength to the service of God and men, to strive

 after a greater and greater chastity of thoughts and desires.

                What are a young man and girl to do, who have fallen a prey to

 temptations, whose thoughts are absorbed in indefinite love or in

 love for a certain individual, and who thus have lost a certain

 portion of their ability to serve God and men?  Again the same:

 not to allow themselves to fall, knowing that such weakness will

 not free them from temptation, but will only strengthen it, and to

 continue to strive after greater and greater chastity in order to

 be able the more fully to serve God and men.

                What are people to do if they have not come out victorious

 from the struggle and have fallen?  To look upon their fall not as

 a lawful enjoyment, as people now do, when it is justified by the

 ceremony of marriage, not as an accidental enjoyment which may be

 repeated with others, not as a misfortune if the fall has been

 committed with an inferior person and without the ceremony, but to

 look upon this first fall as the only one, and upon themselves as

 having entered upon an indissoluble marriage.

                This entering into marriage, with the consequences springing

 from it, the birth of children, determines for those who have

 entered into matrimony a new, more limited form of serving God and

 men.  Before marriage man could serve God and men directly, in most

 varied forms, but his entering into matrimony limits his field of

 action and demands of him the bringing up and education of the

 progeny arising from marriage, the future servants of God and men.

                What are a man and a woman to do, who are living in wedlock

 and performing the limited service of God and men, by means of

 bringing up and educating their children, as befits their position?

                Again the same:  to strive together after liberation from

 temptation, after self-purification, and cessation of sin, by

 exchanging the relations which impede the general and particular

 service of God and men, by exchanging carnal love for the pure

 relations of brother and sister.

                Therefore it is not true that we are not able to be guided by

 Christ's ideal because it is so high, so perfect, and so

 unattainable.  We cannot be guided by it only because we are lying

 to ourselves and deceiving ourselves.

                When we say that we must have more realizable rules than

 Christ's ideal, or else we, without reaching Christ's ideal, shall

 fall into debauchery, we do not mean by this that Christ's ideal is

 too high for us, but that we do not believe in it and that we do

 not wish to determine our acts by this ideal.

                When we say that having once fallen we become subject to

 debauchery, we only say by this that we have decided in advance

 that a fall with an inferior individual is not a sin, but a

 pastime, an infatuation, which need not be mended by what we call

 marriage.  But if we understood that the fall is a sin which must

 and can be redeemed only by the indissolubility of marriage and all

 the activity which springs from the education of children born in

 wedlock, then the fall could in no way be the cause of becoming

 debauched.

                This would, in reality, be the same as though a farmer should

 not consider as a sowing that sowing which gave him no crop, but,

 sowing in a second and third place, should regard as real sowing

 that which was successful.  It is obvious that that man would ruin

 much land and seed, and would never learn to sow properly.  Make

 chastity your ideal, consider every fall, of any person, with any

 person, as the only marriage, indissoluble through life, and it

 will become clear that the guidance given by Christ is not only

 sufficient but also the only possible.

                "Man is weak, -- he must receive a task which is according to

 his strength," say people.  This amounts to saying:  "My hands are

 weak and I cannot draw a straight line, that is, one which is the

 shortest distance between two points, and therefore, in order to

 make it easier for myself, though wishing to draw a straight line,

 I will take a curved or a broken line as my guide."  The weaker my

 hand is, the more perfect must my guide be.

                It is not right, having come to know the Christian teaching of

 the ideal, to act as though we did not know it, and to substitute

 external definitions for it.  The Christian teaching of the ideal

 is open to humanity because it can guide it at its present age.

 Humanity has passed out from external religious injunctions, and

 nobody believes in them.

                The Christian doctrine of the ideal is the only one which can

 guide humanity.  We must not, we should not substitute external

 rules for the ideal of Christ, but this ideal must be kept firmly

 before us in all its purity, and, above everything else, we must

 believe in it.

                To him who was navigating near the shore it was possible to

 say:  "Watch that elevation, promontory, tower," and so forth.

                But a time came when the navigators passed away from the

 shore, and their guides could be and must be only the unattainable

 luminaries and the compass which points out the direction.  Both

 are given to us.