Chapter 5

CONTRADICTION BETWEEN OUR LIFE AND OUR CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.

Men Think they can Accept Christianity without Altering their
Life--Pagan Conception of Life does not Correspond with Present
Stage of Development of Humanity, and Christian Conception
Alone Can Accord with it--Christian Conception of Life not yet
Understood by Men, but the Progress of Life itself will Lead
them Inevitably to Adopt it--The Requirements of a New Theory
of Life Always Seem Incomprehensible, Mystic, and Supernatural
--So Seem the Requirements of the Christian Theory of Life to
the Majority of Men--The Absorption of the Christian Conception
of Life will Inevitably be Brought About as the Result of
Material and Spiritual Causes--The Fact of Men Knowing the
Requirements of the Higher View of Life, and yet Continuing to
Preserve Inferior Organizations of Life, Leads to
Contradictions and Sufferings which Embitter Existence and Must
Result in its Transformation--The Contradictions of our Life--
The Economic Contradiction and the Suffering Induced by it for
Rich and Poor Alike--The Political Contradiction and the
Sufferings Induced by Obedience to the Laws of the State--The
International Contradiction and the Recognition of it by
Contemporaries: Komarovsky, Ferri, Booth, Passy, Lawson,
Wilson, Bartlett, Defourney, Moneta--The Striking Character of
the Military Contradiction.

There are many reasons why Christ's teaching is not understood.
One reason is that people suppose they have understood it when
they have decided, as the Churchmen do, that it was revealed by
supernatural means, or when they have studied, as the scientific
men do, the external forms in which it has been manifested.
Another reason is the mistaken notion that it is impracticable,
and ought to be replaced by the doctrine of love for humanity.
But the principal reason, which is the source of all the other
mistaken ideas about it, is the notion that Christianity is a
doctrine which can be accepted or rejected without any change of
life.

Men who are used to the existing order of things, who like it and
dread its being changed, try to take the doctrine as a collection
of revelations and rules which one can accept without their
modifying one's life. While Christ's teaching is not only a
doctrine which gives rules which a man must follow, it unfolds a
new meaning in life, and defines a whole world of human activity
quite different from all that has preceded it and appropriate to
the period on which man is entering.

The life of humanity changes and advances, like the life of the
individual, by stages, and every stage has a theory of life
appropriate to it, which is inevitably absorbed by men. Those who
do not absorb it consciously,