I asked him why we should not unite on those main points on which we could agree, and leave the rest for each to decide as he pleases. My collocutor agreed with my thoughts, but told me that such concessions would bring reproach on the spiritual authorities for deserting the faith of our forefathers, and this would produce a split; and the vocation of the spiritual authorities is to safeguard in all its purity the Greco-Russian Orthodox faith inherited from our forefathers.
And I understood it all. I am seeking a faith, the power of life; and they are seeking the best way to fulfil before men certain human obligations.... And I noticed what is done in the name of religion, and was horrified; and I almost entirely abjured Orthodoxy.
The second relation of the Church to a question of life, was with regard to war and executions.
At that time Russia was at war. And Russians, in the name of Christian love, began to kill their fellow-men. It was impossible not to think about this, and not to see that killing is an evil, repugnant to the first principles of any faith. Yet they prayed in the churches for the success of our arms, and the teachers of the faith acknowledged killing to be an act resulting from the faith. And besides the murders during the war, I saw during the disturbances which followed the war, Church dignitaries and teachers and monks of the lesser and stricter Orders, who approved the killing of helpless erring youths. And I took note of all that is done by men who profess Christianity, and I was horrified.
And I ceased to doubt, and became fully convinced that not all was true in the religion I had joined. Formerly I should have said that it was all false; but I could not say so now, for I had felt its truth and had lived by it. But I no longer doubted that there is in it much that is false. And though among the peasants there was less admixture of what repelled me, still I saw that in their belief also, falsehood was mixed with the truth.
But where did the truth and where did the falsehood come from? Both the falsehood and the truth were contained in the so-called holy tradition and Scriptures. Both the falsehood and the truth had been handed down by what is called the Church.
And whether I liked to or not, I was brought to the study and investigation of these writings and traditions—which till now I had been so afraid to investigate.
And I turned to the examination of that same theology which I had once rejected with such contempt.... On it religious doctrine rests, or at least with it the only knowledge of the meaning of life that I have found, is inseparably connected.... I shall not seek the explanation of everything. I know that the explanation of everything, like the commencement of everything, must be concealed in infinity. But I wish to understand in a way which will bring me to what is inevitably inexplicable. I wish to recognise anything that is inexplicable, as being so, not because the demands of my reason are wrong (they are right, and apart from them I can understand nothing), but because I recognise the limits of my intellect. I wish to understand in such a way that everything that is inexplicable shall present itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable, and not as being something I am under an arbitrary obligation to believe. I must find what is true and what is false, and must disentangle the one from the other. I am setting to work upon this task. What of falsehood I find in the teaching, and what I find of truth, and to what conclusions I come, will form the following parts of this work, which if it be worth it, and if any one wants it, will probably some day be printed somewhere.
These closing words in which Tolstoy expresses the hope that his work 'will probably some day be printed somewhere,' are a reminder of the difficulties and dangers that had to be encountered in Russia by any man who set out to challenge the authority of the Orthodox Church, whose affairs were managed by the Holy Synod, presided over by a Procurator able to call on the secular powers to enforce his decisions.