What I believe; "My religion," by Leo Tolstoy details from bookadda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ... and he himself is caught in the web of his own weaving; his whole teaching is reduced to naught. This is why, 1900 years after Jesus taught, I was placed in the strange position of having to search for the meaning of his teaching as for something new. Yet in reality I made no discovery. I did no more than all do who are true seekers of God and His law. I perceived the existence of this eternal law in the midst of the confusion which men have called by its name. CHAPTER VI THE NEW COMMANDMENTS And thus, when I understood the law of Jesus to be the law of Jesus, and not that of Moses and Jesus; when I understood that it distinctly denies the law of Moses, the Gospels were to me no longer a heap of obscure and fragmentary contradictions; they formed in my mind a single indivisible whole, from which stood forth complete the grand principles of the teaching of Jesus expressed in five simple and clear commandments (Matt. v. 21-48) accessible to all men, but which to me had hitherto been a sealed book. Through all the Gospels run the commandments of Jesus and our obligations to obey them. All theologians speak of the commandments of Jesus, but what they were I had hitherto not known. To me it had seemed that they consisted in loving God and our neighbour as ourselves. I had not seen that this could not be called the commandment of Jesus, because it is the commandment of the old Mosaic law. The words (Matt. v. 19), "Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven," I had thought referred to the commandments of Moses. It had never entered my head that the verses (Matt, v....