Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The Gospel in Brief / Prologue


The Gospel in Brief
by Leo Tolstoy

(translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude)
(from Wikisource http://en.wikisource.org)

Prologue




Jesus Christ's announcement replaced the belief in an external God by an understanding of life.

THE announcement of welfare by Jesus Christ, the son of God.

The announcement of welfare consists in this, that all men who believe that they are the sons of God obtain true life. The understanding of life is at the basis and the beginning of all. The understanding of life is God. And by the announcement of Jesus it has become the basis and beginning of all things.

All things have come to life by understanding, and without it nothing can live. Understanding gives true life. Understanding is the light of truth, and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot extinguish it.

The true light has always existed in the world and enlightens every man who is born in the world. It was in the world, and the world only lived because it had that light of understanding.

But the world did not retain it. He came unto his own, and his own retained him not.

Only those who understood the enlightenment were able to become like him because they believed in his reality. Those who believed that life lies in the understanding became no longer sons of the flesh, but sons of understanding.

And the understanding of life, in the person of Jesus Christ, manifested itself in the flesh, and we understood his meaning to be that the son of understanding, man in the flesh, of one nature with the Father the source of life, is such as the Father, the source of life.

The teaching of Jesus is the full and true faith, for by fulfilling the teaching of Jesus we understand a new faith instead of the former. Moses gave us a law, but we received the true faith through Jesus Christ.

      No one has seen God or will ever see God, only his son, who is in the Father, has shown us the path of life.

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