Gladly do I forgive the church of Russia many an outrage or blunder she has perpetrated or permitted to be perpetrated, for the one good act she has performed—that of refusing Tolstoy sepulture in what she is pleased to call "consecrated ground." She thus obliged him to designate as his last resting-place a spot that was one of the dearest on earth to him, a spot that was intimately associated with his life's philosophy, a spot located within a confine wherein he ruled more mightily and more exaltedly than any Czar that ever wielded scepter in vast Russia, where he wrote those epochal books of his which are destined some day to become of the basal elements of the religion of the future.
No Czarian funeral more solemn than Tolstoy's.
And even though no priest was nigh when the last rites over his remains were performed, there were present, besides his family, those who were more sacred in his eyes than priests or metropolitan, more honorable than even the Procurator of the Holy Synod—his dearly beloved peasants. It was these who followed him to his last resting place. It was these who sang the mortuary hymn Everlasting Memory, at his open grave. It was these, the "orphaned peasantry," as they called themselves because of his death, who gave his burial a distinction such as no Czarian funeral procession had ever enjoyed, notwithstanding ecclesiastical pomp or military display. It was these whose labors and outlook he had sought to soften and to brighten, who delivered the briefest and most eloquent eulogy that has, perhaps, ever been spoken: "His heart has burst because of his unbounded love for humanity. The light of the world is extinguished."
In spite of herself church has made a saint of him.
In refusing religious sepulture to the holiest man in Russia, the Greek orthodox church performed the crowning feat in her long series of stupidities. And yet, by that act she did, in despite of herself, the very thing she did not wish to see done. Like Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust who, in response to the question who he is, says: "Ich bin ein Theil von jener Kraft, die stets das Böse will, und stets das Gute schafft," so did she prove herself the power that sought the evil and yet performed the good. By her act of intolerance she gave a new saint to Russia, and perhaps the only one she has. By it she furnished a sanctuary to that country, one that may be destined to make a Mecca of Yasnaya Polyana, one that may be more piously sought in the future, and by larger numbers, than any shrine or sanctuary of her own creation. By that act she shed a halo of immortal glory around the head of him whom she sought to cover with infamy.
Has two ways of making saints.
The church has two ways of conferring saintships, a lesser and a higher one. The lesser distinction she confers upon lesser luminaries, generally upon those made famous by myth or legend for great endurance in fasting or penance, or for conquering imaginary devils, for working fancied miracles, or for displaying fiendish cruelty in persecuting and exterminating heretics. The higher distinction she confers generally at the stake or on the gallows, within prison walls or in the torture chamber, upon men of great minds or great hearts, upon lovers of truth and fearless enunciators of it, upon men who because of their love of humanity defy the power that interdicts God's greatest gift to man: the right to think and the right to believe and speak in accordance with the canons of reason and with the dictates of conscience.
Still makes of intolerance an act of piety.