Men of God are that hidden salt which conserves the world, for the things of the world are conserved only in so far as the Divine salt does not lose its power.  “But if the salt has lost its savor, with what can it be salted?  It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden underfoot by men…  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”  As for us, we are persecuted when God gives the tempter the power to persecute, but when He does not wish to subject us to sufferings, we enjoy wonderful peace even in this world which hates us, and we rely on the protection of Him who said, “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”

Celsus also says, “It is impossible that all the inhabitants of Asia, Europe, and Libya, Greeks as well as barbarians, should follow one and the same law.  To think so,” he says, “means to understand nothing.”  But we say that not only is it possible, but that the day will come when all reasonable beings will unite under one law.  For the Word or Reason will subdue all reasonable beings and transform them into its own perfection.

There are bodily diseases and wounds that no doctoring can cure, but it is not so with the ailments of the soul.  There is no evil the cure of which is impossible for supreme Reason, which is God.  Origen, Against Celsus

I feel the force stirring within me, which in time will reform the world.  It does not push or obtrude, but I am conscious of it drawing gently and irresistibly at my vitals.  And I see that as I am attracted, so I begin unaccountably to attract others.

I draw them and they in turn draw me, and we recognize a tendency to group ourselves anew.  Get in touch with the great central magnet, and you will yourself become a magnet.  And as more and more of us find our bearings and exert our powers, gradually the new world will take shape.  We become indeed legislators of the divine law, receiving it from God Himself, and human laws shrink and dry up before us.

I asked the force within my soul, “Who are you?” And it answered and said, “I am Love, the Lord of Heaven, and I would be called Love, the Lord of Earth.  I am the mightiest of all the heavenly hosts, and I have come to create the state that is to be.”  Ernest Crosby, Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable

One can say with certainty that the kingdom of God has come to us when the principle of the gradual transformation of the church faith into a universal rational religion is found openly established anywhere, though the complete realization of that kingdom may still be infinitely far from us – for this principle, like a developing and then multiplying germ, already contains all which must enlighten and take possession of the world.

In the life of the universe a thousand years are as one day.  We must labor patiently for this realization, and wait for it.  Kant

When I speak to you about God, do not think that I am speaking to you about some object made of gold or silver.  The God of whom I speak, you feel in your soul.  You bear Him in yourself, and by your impure thoughts and loathsome acts you defile His image in your soul.  You refrain from doing anything that is unseemly in the presence of a golden idol, which you regard as God, but in the presence of that God who sees and hears all that is within you, you do not even blush when you yield yourself to your disgusting thoughts and actions.

If only we remembered that God in us is the witness of all that we do and think, we should cease to sin, and God would constantly abide in us.  Let us then remember God, and think and talk of Him as often as possible.  Epictetus

“But how about the enemies who are attacking us?”

“Love your enemies and you will have none,” is said in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.  And this answer is not mere words, as those may imagine who are accustomed to think that the injunction to love one’s enemies is something rhetorical and signifies not what it says but something else.  It is the indication of a very clear and definite activity and of its consequences.

To love one’s enemies – the Japanese, the Chinese, “those yellow people” towards whom erring men are now trying to excite our hatred – to love them does not mean to kill them in order to have a right to poison them with opium, as was done by the English[6]; or to kill them in order to seize their land, as was done by the French, the Russians, and the Germans; or to bury them alive as punishment for injuring roads, or to tie them together by their hair and drown them in the Amur, as the Russians did.

“A disciple is not above his master…  It is enough for a disciple that he is as his master.”

To love the “yellow people,” whom we call our foes, does not mean teaching them, under the name of Christianity, absurd superstitions about the fall of man, redemption, resurrection, and so on.  It does not mean teaching them the art of deceiving and killing people, but teaching them justice, unselfishness, compassion, and love, and that not in words but by the example of our own good lives.

But what have we done, and are we doing to them? 

If we did indeed love our enemies, if even now we began to love our enemies the Japanese, we should have no enemy,

So, strange as it may appear to people occupied with military plans and preparations, diplomatic considerations, administrative, financial, and economic measures, revolutionary and socialistic sermons, and various unnecessary sciences, by which they think to free mankind from its calamities.  The delivery of man, not only from the calamities of war, but from all his self-inflicted ills, will be effected, not through emperors or kings instituting peace unions, not by those who would dethrone kings or limit them by constitutions, not by replacing monarchies with republics, not by peace conferences, not by the accomplishment of socialistic programs, not by victories or defeats on land or sea, not by libraries or universities, and not by those futile mental exercises which are now called science, but only by there being more and more of those simple men like the Doukhobors, Drozhín, and Olkhovík in Russia, the Nazarenes in Austria, Condatier in France, Tervey in Holland, and others who set themselves the aim, not of external alterations of life, but of their own most faithful fulfillment of the will of Him who sent them into life, and direct all their powers to that fulfillment.  Only such people, realizing the Kingdom of God in themselves, in their souls, will without aiming directly at that purpose, establish that external Kingdom of God which every human soul desires.

Salvation will come about only in this one way and not by any other.  And what is now being done by those who, ruling others, instill into them religious and patriotic superstitions, exciting them to exclusiveness, hatred, and murder – as well as by those who provoke men to violent external revolution to free them from enslavement and oppression, or think that the acquisition of very much incidental, and for the most part unnecessary, knowledge will of itself bring men to a good life – all this, distracting men from what alone they need, merely removes them farther from the possibility of salvation.

The evil from which people of the Christian world suffer is that they are deprived of true religion.

Some people, convinced of the discord between existing religion and the state of mental, scientific development attained by humanity in our time, have decided in general that no religion whatever is necessary.  They live without religion and preach the uselessness of any religion whatever.  Others, holding to the distorted form of the Christian religion that is now preached, also live without religion, professing empty external forms that cannot serve as guidance for men’s lives.

Yet a religion which answers to the demands of our time exists, is known to all men, and lives in a latent state in the hearts of men of the Christian world.  For this religion to become evident to and binding upon all men, it is only necessary that educated men – the leaders of the masses – should understand that religion is necessary to man, that men cannot live good lives without religion, and that what they call science cannot replace religion.  And men in power who support the old empty forms of religion should understand that what they support and preach as religion is not only not religion, but is the chief obstacle to people’s assimilating the true religion, which they already know and which alone can save them from their miseries.

The only true means of man’s salvation consists in merely ceasing to do what hinders men from making the true religion, which lives in their consciousness, their own.

[6] Translator’s note – “The public conscience was wounded by a war with China in 1839 on its refusal to allow the smuggling of opium into its dominions.”  J. R. Green,  A Short History of the English People