Лекция шестая. Нравственная антропология

The Holy Scripture represents human morality as the darkest; in parts it represents a lot of harsh things that shame a person, but in the overall set it represents something terrible. Thus, about the entire human race without grace and about a significant part of it that has not accepted grace, it says that they are the seed of the devil. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed” (Gen. 3:15). This speaks of the seed of the devil and the seed of Eve. One wife is mentioned here because she alone entered into a conversation with the serpent, and because the entire human race descended from her. The seed of the woman is all of humanity and, moreover, the best part of it is the host of the righteous and their head Jesus Christ. But what is the seed of the serpent? These are his minions - the fallen angels and those people who are led by the spirit of this enemy of God, are seeded with the devil's direction. Therefore, John the Baptist and other prophets call such people brood of vipers, meaning this spiritual viper. The Savior Himself calls them children of the devil. Thus, human nature carries within itself something of the devil, besides the image of God, where the thorn of the devil cannot reach. Even people themselves find a lot of the devil in themselves: they say, for example, the pride of the devil, the thought of the devil, the wickedness of the devil. Damaged human nature is also called “flesh” in the Holy Scriptures (Gen. 6:3). The Savior says: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh” (John 3:6), and the Apostle Paul says: “When I was in the flesh” (Rom. 7:5). What does this mean? Why is the sinfulness and imperfection of human nature called flesh? Because the flesh is indeed something imperfect in a person: the worst person would want to be freed from much of the flesh. On the other hand, because natural man is more devoted to the flesh than to the spirit. Sometimes spiritual powers develop in people who are depraved but have great intelligence; only the flesh is always visible in them: they sometimes enter the spirit only for observation, but live more in the flesh. In some people, with a certain education and upbringing, the flesh is refined almost to the spirit; but the far-sighted can see here the natural coarseness of the flesh. For example, enter the house of a person with intelligence, with taste, with education, according to the world, and you will find traces of flesh everywhere. In the images with which he decorates his house you will find much that is carnal; in his library, the science of culinary art stands above any philosophy. And in rude people this predominance of the flesh reaches extremes; many rich and rude people can hardly breathe from excessive obesity. And if their existence had continued a few years longer than usual; then they would completely become flesh, even physically. The state of a damaged person is also called death. The Savior says: “Leave the dead to bury their dead” (Matthew 8:22). Here He calls carnal people dead. It is not clear that these people about whom the Savior speaks were thin; but He generally calls them that. In this sense, the apostle also titles us: “and... we are dead in sins” (Eph. 2:5). This means that he places himself here in the category of the dead: who after this will exclude himself from this state of deadness? A person is called dead when he is motionless, with his eyes closed, does not see or hear. Sometimes there is a blush on the face of the dead for a while, sometimes even some movement is noticed. And in a natural person one can sometimes notice a lot of fussiness, trouble, even self-sacrifice, but all this is for trifles. His eyes are open, but he sees nothing in spiritual things. Sometimes spiritual objects seem to strike him in the eyes; he comes across them and feels pain, for example, at the grave of his father, wife, brother, and the like; but after this he again remains insensitive. Sometimes vicious, carnal people show some kind of modesty, but without life; their members move when giving alms, building churches and the like; but all this is in motion, as if galvanic. For example, if such a man’s wife dies, he gives several thousand to the church, but in his heart he remains just as vicious. Sometimes corrupt people fall in with good people and borrow from them some good inclinations, but when they are left to their own devices, they again remain motionless idols. A damaged person is also called an “old” person, an ancient person, for he descended from Adam. And at the beginning it was already dilapidated, and now it is completely dilapidated. Human nature, like a tree, has its own layers. And how can botanists know from these layers how old a known tree is; Thus, the heavenly observer recognizes from the growths in human nature the antiquity of its damage. The old dress is fading; the main thread that holds the rags together is still there, but the splendor of the old clothes is no longer there. This dilapidation and readiness to fall apart, this holeiness is noticeable in people - large and small. If anything must be lasting, it is the form of government; but how much work and effort was used, for example in France and England, to strengthen this matter! Several hundred people will gather, spend several days and nights in reasoning and arguing, and form some kind of government; and six months later it fell apart... Everything was so dilapidated! The corruption of natural man is also called “sin living in man”; the expression is significant. Not only does a person sin, sin lives in him, it has become something independent, living, permanent in him, having a personality, like a lord, a legislator. And indeed, if you pay attention to people, you will immediately see that they serve as a dwelling place for sin, that the evil principle has formed its own life in them. This corruption is also called “the law of sin that is in udeh” (Rom. 7:23). Every life has its own law, therefore, the life of sin also has its own law of sin. This law is self-love, and the effects of this law are extremely powerful. A kind of sinful conscience is even formed, so that the sinner immediately sees that his pride is being touched and takes a different direction. For example, in a conversation with a money-lover, give even the slightest hint that you want to talk about non-covetousness, and he will try in advance to prevent your speech. The natural man is also called “the image of a ring” (1 Cor. 15:45–49). It is clear that in this expression the body is primarily meant; but the inside of the soul of a earthly man is also earthly. His mind is ringed, for all his knowledge is taken from perishable things. His mode of activity is also earthly: it is aimed at earthly, corruptible, transient goods, which even now only flicker, and in the future life will not take place at all. Adam made his own image instead of the Divine, and now all his descendants wear this mask. Natural man is also called “spiritual” (1 Cor. 2:14–15). He rarely enters the spirit, but lives by imagination, memory, feelings; he hardly touches spiritual contemplations, God, eternity: he is cold there, he runs away from there. Animals homo in this respect is indeed similar to all animals; some animals (animalia) even surpass it in many ways. The Apostle says that some people work only for the belly, that “their God is the belly” (Phil. 3:19), and all animals constantly work only for the belly. Man is also called “external” (2 Cor. 4:16), as opposed to internal. And the natural man has his own depth; but this is the depth of evil and sin: usually appearance, appearance controls it. Hence a thin person is called empty. He is also called “a child of wrath by nature” (Eph. 2:3), which he created for himself - a child whom the Heavenly Father could not look upon without anger, because this child grows and works in evil. It is also called “the body of sin of the flesh” (Col. 2:11). Our whole body becomes an instrument of sin, its body. Man has hands stretched out to plunder, feet to walk in wicked ways, eyes to look at the temptations of the world, ears to receive blasphemies. Damage is also called “bits... even on the earth” (Col. 3:5), members through which a person strives for hell, where he will actually descend. If you add up all these features, you will get the most terrible image of a person: this is the scroll seen by Ezekiel, “in which is written weeping and pity and grief” (Ezek. 2:10). Let no one think that only Holy Scripture portrays man this way. No, and the man himself does not describe himself better. There are many complaints about this from ancient Greek and Roman writers, and from new ones. So there is no exaggeration in the Holy Scriptures; even it does not yet reveal all our poverty, because it is impossible now to show it to us completely, for the whole world has fallen, and fell long ago and deeply. Therefore, the Church wisely sings: “the only one who knows” the weakness of the human being.” From the descriptions of the natural man found in the Holy Scriptures, it is revealed that his condition is very bad, contrary to the Divine intention and unhappy. In relation to morality, this state is lawless; in relation to feelings - a state of insensibility, death. There has never been an example of any good and well-meaning person rejecting the corruption of human nature: this is the constant voice of all considerate and good people. For example, Socrates in his conversation clearly recognizes the need to purify himself throughout his life; and the view of real life, as a field of purification, is a universal view, and not just a Christian one. In the majority of people, evil reigns decisively: their life is weak, they sleep, and in their sleep they are sometimes not allowed to do evil; but when they come out of this state of sleep, when their will is invested with civil or physical power, then terrible evil comes from them. Christianity has tamed a lot of this evil. Although there are many evil people in it, they are all fewer in comparison with the evil people in the pagan world. For example, look at Asia and its rulers: are they human? Ancient pagan societies present countless imperfections. Terrible atrocities occurred among uneducated peoples. For example, Genghis Khan, having decided to drench the whole world in blood, goes with a countless army, devastates cities and villages, and feasts on the corpses of the slain with his companions. Finally, at the moment of awakening of thought, he says that he is the wrath of God. And in educated societies... What, for example, is Greece? All the disputes and rumors of Athens and Lacedaemon are like a fight between children: they fought and fought until they knocked out each other’s eyes and fell under Macedonian and Roman rule. In Rome it’s the same: for example, in the time of Cicero, the best citizens, the fathers of the fatherland, were killed without mercy. And who ordered the death of Cicero himself? Caesar is the first member of society. Modern times provide even more evidence of human corruption. That is why, despite all efforts, all human codes fall apart and disappear. In France, for example, over the course of seven years there were several constitutions, and all of them were pushed off the stage by Napoleon's foot. Finally, in the whole nature of the world, in many cases traces of an unnatural state are clearly revealed. In the animal kingdom we see the same vices as in people. We ourselves admit that vices - cunning, cruelty, gluttony - are contrary to nature; Therefore, we must admit that in the animal kingdom these phenomena are not natural. Did the Creator really not give animals other food than to torment other animals? We see people neglecting their responsibilities; but some birds, for example the cuckoo and others, throw their children into other people's nests. We see terrible gluttony in animals: for example, some of them give birth and devour what they give birth to (snakes, pigs). We see their selfishness, oblivion of work and services. For example, bees: they feed drones while they need them, and then kill them. We also see cunning: a spider, for example, weaves its webs cunningly in order to grab other insects similar to itself and devour them. Animals are driven by instinct, therefore their instinct is damaged, just as our mind is damaged. In the plant kingdom, unnaturalness is also noticeable, for example, lawless theft: entire families of plants, the so-called aliens, live at the expense of others - through the death of others. Theft from another is seen in the roots of many plants; The suppression of the weak by the strong is also visible in many plants. If you go lower, to the inorganic kingdom - minerals, then, according to the guidance of natural scientists, you can find damage there. Hence the irritability in certain substances, which, when colliding with others, produce explosions and thunder. If we look at our entire earth, it too will present us with a painful state. At the poles she is dead from the cold, and wants to warm herself somewhat with the northern lights; but her experiments somehow fail. In the middle she is sterile from heat. Here she wants to cool herself with terrible storms; but this doesn't help either. And her full life is only in the intervals between the middle and extremes. But maybe others will think that it cannot be otherwise? No, it could have been different. For example, in Siberia there are traces that it was once warm there. In the middle of the earth there are even more transformations. And what most of all proves her depravity is that she is filled with fire inside; she looks like a person covered in artificial sores. Where did this condition begin? From the first person. Man's sin was disobedience to the will of God. And how the will of the entire human race was contained in the will of Adam; then the falling away of the will of Adam from the will of God is adopted by all humanity. In the physical world, everything is held together by the law of gravity: the circle is connected to the center. If something breaks away from here, it will wander around the whole world, and cannot calm down: if the earth loses its relationship to the sun, it will no longer recover by itself. The same is true in the human world in relation to God. Adam's act of sin was the most terrible - it decided the fate of all existence. How does this evil spread? Originally by birth: all humanity was in the loins of Adam. This is clear from experience: a good tree cannot come from a bad tree; a sick father cannot give birth to a healthy son. How is sin born? Sin, as a free action, is not innate, but only the inclination to sin is innate - the source of all sinfulness - and is innate not only to the will, but to the entire being of a person, and with the development of a person’s strength it develops itself. This explains the relationship of the sin of our forefathers to us. Ambrose says: “We are not only born in sins, but we also give birth...” Augustine provides a remarkable example in this regard. He says that he saw two babies taking away their mother's nipples, and when one suckled, the other turned pale with envy. Kant also presents a remarkable experience: he says that there are no two friends, one of whom would not feel secret pleasure when he sees that his friend has fallen into misfortune. He will, of course, regret him, help him, but internally he will rejoice: this is how selfishness has penetrated a person. From this innate evil they explain that holy people who spent several years in exploits, such as Macarius of Egypt or Anthony the Great, suddenly had a serpent in their bosom, some bad thought, against which it was difficult for them to fight. No matter how you treat this evil, it can still regurgitate from time to time. Each person can be a breeding ground for sin, such that it will spread to the whole world. On the other hand, everything external can excite a person to sin, for example, some animals can excite him to cruelty. So Attila, looking at the spider, mercilessly devouring insects, was encouraged to cruelty. Everyone suffers from this sinfulness; no one will come to the middle and say: I am sinless. No matter how proud a person is, he has not yet reached such shamelessness that he does not recognize himself as a sinner. Both kings and subjects say that they are sinners and make sacrifices. So God locked everyone into rebellion in order to bring everyone to public service - to publicly force them to repent; and this is in order to have mercy on everyone. The damage extends to all the abilities and powers of a person: a simple outlook on life serves as a guarantee of this. True, experience also presents something contrary to this. Some people, for example, are kinder by nature, others are more evil. This phenomenon may lead some to the idea that perhaps evil - Adam's inheritance - is not equally shared by all his descendants. But in essence, things are still evil. One may or may not assume this inequality of evil. But if we do not assume this inequality, then how can we explain its signs in experience? Because in people who are outwardly kinder, evil is only hidden further and deeper, but in some cases it can be revealed horribly. That is why they are often surprised how such a kind person suddenly became so evil; cases of such a change are quite frequent. If we assume the inequality of evil, will it be in accordance with the Providence of God? It is necessary, after all, for all people to be either equally good or equally evil, for evil began to flow from Adam through all vehicles and, of necessity, flows in the same measure. There can be two reasons for inequality. Isn't the reason for this the inequality of souls themselves? Is there not the same thing in the human world that exists in the angelic world? In essence, human souls are the same, but in quality they may, perhaps, be different. All people borrowed death from Adam, but the expression of this mortality may not be the same for everyone. However, this reason is unclear and not decisive. Another reason: a person is born directly from his parents; but a number of preceding parents may be one or the other. Humanity, passing through generations, more or less deteriorates. A number of virtuous parents produce virtuous children, and vice versa, a number of vicious parents also produce vicious children. Just there is no need to imagine this chain of parents physically, that is, necessarily connected, for even the most righteous at other moments are almost lower than ordinary sinners; That is why their children, conceived or carried in the womb at such moments, are subject to greater influence of evil and are born bad. And philosophy says: as is the beginning, so is the consequence. But does the evil that came from Adam change? It changes, but this change depends not on nature itself, not on reason, but on religion, on Christianity. In the patriarchs, for example, and in other holy people, Revelation greatly weakened the power of evil. We are now almost unable to judge the effects of original sin historically. Now we cannot even imagine the image of a fallen man who cannot be restored by anything. The entire human race accepted poison, but, so to speak, the poison was reduced at its very initial appearance. It is not at all easier for a person who has inherited less evil; one must look at the consequences, not at the source. A great inclination towards evil is a kind of talent given for processing. Whoever is given a greater evil as an inheritance can therefore defeat this evil. Complaining about this would mean the same as complaining to a warrior or commander, who was ordered by his superiors to go to a dangerous place for battle, knowing that he would come out with success. And at the trial less will be required of such a person, and a better crown is prepared for him. The Lord of the Harvest will, so to speak, be glad if a few fruits grow on this wild land, although less than on another land. However, it seems more correct not to assume this inequality of evil. People who are good by nature, if they are not satisfied with worldly morality, which is not far off, but want to live according to the rules of the Spirit of God, they will find something to work on in their hearts. Experience shows that the natural kindness of such people is expressed for the most part only in worldly love, in helpfulness, but is almost never revealed in true selflessness. Considering human nature in parts, we discover damage in each of them. The Holy Scriptures find different parts in man; in its entirety it represents him as consisting of soul, body and spirit. “And may the God of peace himself sanctify you, perfect (in all things): and may your spirit and soul and body be kept perfect at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23). These words of the apostle represent the most complete description of man. Elsewhere in Scripture there is no such distinction; it speaks either of two opposite parts - soul and body, or of only two higher ones - soul and spirit; or about two opposites - spirit and body. This is because a person is usually divided into two sides - internal and external, and that in a person the spirit and soul are, as it were, fused into one, and a great opposition appears in him between the spirit and the body - visible and invisible. But the tripartite nature of the human composition has always made itself felt. Thus, in ancient times, philosophers, in addition to the spirit and body, ascribed a soul to man and called it the animal, irritable, ruling soul (Plato, Aristotle and others). In modern times, psychologists have easily resolved this ancient question about the composition of a person - they turned to the commonly used division into soul and body. But those who delved deeper into the nature of man even now admit spirit and soul in man. In this case, it is only necessary to note that the spirit is usually called that part that in psychology is called the highest cognitive and moral ability - the highest pure mind and rational will with their principles; and by soul they mean what is known in logicians under the name of reason, and in moral philosophy - under the name of the lower will. But the main feature is that in our spiritual being we need to distinguish two sides: ours and not ours. Ours is freedom; not ours, inviolable for us - these are the laws of the mind, its moral and theoretical ideas; we look only at them, conform to them, but cannot change them. This is the realm of the spirit - something inaccessible, Divine. This is why in Scripture our spirit is presented as something else good: it could not be damaged much, because it serves as a connection between God and us. Yet other parts of man are too corrupt. There is nothing to say about the depravity of the body. Even in ancient times they said that the source of moral evil lies in the body, that it is the product of an evil principle, that the perfection of man lies in moving away from the body. All pious people who wanted to soar to heaven felt that the body was a burden for them. The soul consists of reason, will and heart, and all these abilities according to Scripture are bad. Experience shows this. The mind, even an educated one, in reasoning about higher objects lives, so to speak, in sophistry, harbors doubts, builds syllogisms like fortresses against the immortality of the soul, against the truths of faith. The will is mostly low, the heart is unclean. Almost all the activities of worldly, everyday people consist of cunning, deceit, and deception. It would be more fitting for the soul to strive for the spirit, but meanwhile it is in constant struggle and opposition with it. The goal of her aspirations is to move the spirit and remain one with the body. In philosophical systems, for the most part, they try to establish empiricism, reject ideas, behead a person, and brutalize him. Therefore, Holy Scripture condemns the soul to great and severe penance; and worldly wisdom, although in a mute but firm voice, says that the lower will must submit to the higher: this is the same as in the language of Scripture it is said about the destruction of the soul, about taking away its life. Finally, in the spirit, Holy Scripture finds a kind of defilement. It tells us to try to acquire a contrite spirit and a renewed heart. The spirit has become hard, petrified, while it is intended to be a connection between man and God, and therefore must be, as it were, through, soft; he became insensitive to receiving sensations from above and to communicating them to other human abilities. Some letters of the law remained on him, but as if on stone; and therefore it needs to be melted down, remade, as artists do with some deteriorated tools. We have already said that according to Scripture, all mental faculties are bad, that is, sick, unclean, damaged. And indeed, it speaks of the heart, for example, as the source of all evil. It says that snakes nest in it, that evil thoughts come from it, therefore it advises how you can guard your “heart, for from these come the belly” (Prov. 4:23). Even in the antediluvian world, this outcome showed itself in all its wickedness (Gen. 6:5); and now, if you look at human thoughts, most of them will turn out to be evil. Apparently, a person sometimes turns his thoughts not to evil, but to good; but if we pay attention to his goals, means, etc., we will see evil here too. A merchant, for example, is thinking about the successful completion of a well-known trade - there seems to be nothing bad about it. Then he thinks about building a house for himself - and this does not seem evil. But the evil lies in why he is doing all this and how he will use it all later. Further, the Holy Scripture ascribes darkness to the human mind, and uncleanness to the will; He also attributes vanity to the mind, to conscience - dead affairs, and so on. It is impossible not to pay attention here to the fact that the heart and feeling are called the source of everything in a person in the Holy Scriptures. Apparently, this name is a consequence of a sensual view (anthropomorphism) on the subject; but in fact the reason for this is deeper. The basis of mental movements and actions is not the mind, not the will, but feeling. The feeling is combined in the heart; the heart sees, hears, feels rather than other abilities; a thought, beginning in the mind, passes through the heart and appears in the form of wishes. Paying attention to the human mind, we find that for entire millions of people it is occupied with absolutely trivial matters. For example, whole millions of people are tied to the land - farmers. Of course, we will not humiliate this work, now the most natural and necessary: ​​in the Gospel, Jesus Christ Himself took many parables from the fields; only the people who practice this art do not always take advantage of its lessons. Nomadic peoples are engaged in catching animals; from there their language is the language of these animals. The concepts of merchants and industrialists have been removed from those objects that are in their hands. Even people with lofty minds have very few unearthly concepts. Hence, when worldly writers begin to talk about spiritual subjects, they babble like a baby and sometimes admit that this cannot be understood. But is this how it should be by nature? Man has a higher ability, which if it were well revealed, then man would not die and humiliate himself as he does now. Every person loves himself extremely, but often forgets about his present and future state. Everyone knows that he will certainly die, but what will happen to his soul - how many have tried to find out? We are so little disposed towards spiritual subjects!.. In general, rudeness is noticeable in the way people perceive spiritual objects: they represent everything heavenly in a carnal way. Instead of seeing carnal objects in the spirit, in the light, they, so to speak, drag everything spiritual to the earth, direct it to their mortal forms. A striking example of this is seen in the condition of some of the apostles. They were surrounded by wonderful events and guided by the Divine Mentor; but whereas in His word everything carnal is spiritualized, in their words everything spiritual is grounded, for example, in their petition to sit at the right hand and left side of Jesus Christ. The Holy Scripture calls this state covered. This veil is our flesh, which, according to Solomon, burdens the soul. People do not at all place the goal of knowledge in heaven: such a distance is not for them. The most lofty goal for philosophers and poets is to live in posterity, to gain fame among their contemporaries, and for their successes to be known in heaven, earthly wise men do not think about this, and cannot. But not many people set themselves this goal, which in their opinion is lofty; and most of them are limited to immediate benefits, such as the sale of their works - the love of money. The faculty of judgment consists of comparing two things or concepts. It borrows the matter of comparisons from impressions that are either stored in memory or strike it at a given time. But even this ability in people is erroneous and weak, because it compares two things without knowing how. This inability is constantly expressed, for example, in the comparison of the temporal with the eternal, the Divine with the human, and in the preference of the latter to the former. In the life of Jesus Christ, we see that the Jews, for example, compared Him as a teacher with their teachers, while He was completely holy, and in the Pharisees, their teachers, the righteousness was mostly counterfeit. That is why they held on to their teachers and rejected Jesus Christ. That is why Jesus Christ more than once told them: “Judge righteous judgment, do not look at the faces” (John 7:24). That is why the Evangelist John, at the end of his Gospel, as if trying to give himself an account of why the Jews did not believe in the Son of God, turns to prophecy and says (John 12:38) that they did not believe; then Isaiah says: “God has made you blind... “their hearts...” In the moral life of a person, the same ability to judge sensibly is noticeable. Natural man not only falls himself, but wants to drag others down with him, wants his delusions to become common. If someone does not share any prejudice with such a person, then he considers him completely incapable of judging. In its direction, the ability to judge usually tends to go where it should not. The closest thing to a person is to delve into himself; This is why a court was established within it, but natural man does not like to sit in this court; his case is almost decided that he is good and right, and therefore he exercises his ability to judge more in judgment over others, and even in judgment over God. Listen to the general conversation, to the general gossip: the stupidest people become witty in judging the goals and motives of certain actions of others. In people engaged in science, the desire is most evident to judge the judgments of God. There is a well-known example that one philosopher condemned God for allegedly creating the world poorly, and said that he himself would have created it much more perfectly. Anyone who carefully read people's writings about nature or the world could notice that people for the most part approach the world not as a Divine creation: they walk inside this huge building and leave it, sometimes without even once remembering that there is an Owner in it. They look at things as existing in themselves, they do not see the Creator in nature; and sometimes things themselves, having, so to speak, lost patience with this coldness of man, push wise men onto the true path. Despite the great desire to judge everything, when the truth appears, a person seems to lack judgment; he does not know what to do in this case, and misses such phenomena. For example, in the life of Jesus Christ, how many took advantage of His appearance and miracles? In these cases, a person’s mind becomes inert and, as it were, motionless. Ignorance or some kind of prejudice is one of the favorite principles on which the mind calms down in such cases. Preach, for example, the faith of the Mohammedans: whole thousands, without reasoning, will answer you with one voice: so our fathers believed, so we will believe. And where better to judge if not here? The faculty of inference suffers from the same disease. The Apostle says about the pagans that they “have become futile in their own thoughts” (Rom. 1:21). Διαλογισμος, used in this place by the apostle, means the same as inference. How vain these thoughts are, even without the complaint of Holy Scripture, can be seen from experience. Philosophy gave birth to many skeptics and sophists in ancient times. On the one hand, these people show pride in overthrowing all previous systems; on the other hand, they hesitate in the most pathetic way, questioning everything. What kind of pleasant activity is this, what kind of gratifying exercise? At the same time, they also imagined the funniest things in their logical toys - and all these absurdities were produced by excessive hope in their own reasoning... In the modern world, this disease has produced the same results. It is enough to point to one system of Fichte. As a result of such experiences, not only “The Lord knows that the thoughts of man are vanity” (Ps. 93:11), but people themselves begin to see this. Therefore, one clever philosopher recently said at the end of his work that logic, if we give it absolute value and importance, est scientia non veratatis, sed errorum. And Carpe has the idea that logic is only an instrumentum of truth, and does not give the truth itself. How many misconceptions arise when truth is demanded from logic! That is why Scripture directly says that “an obstinate mind separates from God” (Wis. 1:3) (at your leisure it is useful to read the work of Shad: De libertate mentis humanae; it shows how philosophers fell into error, relying on their syllogistics). After this, if you ascend to the very top of human abilities - to the mind; even there there will not be much that is gratifying for the researcher of human nature. Scripture says that in man there is a light that enlightens every person coming into the world, that is, the mind, and that this light remains with a person throughout his life; but at the same time it says that this light is sometimes eclipsed. The entire first chapter of Romans consists of complaints about this (Rom. 1:21–32). Experience, for its part, testifies that the ideas of the mind, those universal concepts considered the seeds of all truths, are now so deeply hidden and suppressed that many people, even thinking ones, do not recognize their existence at all. For example, how many philosophers were there before Plato discovered the ideal world? And although all these philosophers had ideas, as did Plato; but they did not introduce themselves to them; That’s why they turned to the elements of the world: air, fire, earth, water... After long-term experiments, they finally began to dig up these ideas, so to speak, purify them, and peer into their meaning; but even here there was some controversy. Some said that they were innate, others that they were accidentally formed in the soul. And when philosophers appeared who admired them, invited them to follow them, and spent their entire lives trying to convert people to ideas, not many followed their path. And the very followers of Plato perverted faith in his ideas: after such an idealist as Plato, after many centuries it is strange to meet any English moralists who provide material principles of morality; even after such an experience they could not rise to ideas and base their science on them! The ideas of God, freedom and peace, which lie deep in the soul, if put into action, produce good fruit, but in the entire history of philosophical systems we see that only Kant reached these ideas; and he dwelled only on their fundamental dignity. These ideas cannot be completely damaged: they are remnants of the image of God; only they are muffled and suppressed by the laboratory of reason, by the multitude of memory stores, by the figurative memory of the imagination. Another lower principle is the beginning of reason, or syllogisms. They also flow from the mind, but are given to the mind, so to speak, for its use; these are the beginnings of unity, reasons, excluded middle, contradictions and the like. These principles are not spoiled, they retained their strength; but in their use there is more evil than good. Thus, for example, the principle of unity, by which the entire mental world is held together, being applied to God, produced pantheism (one and all), excluding actual plurality; when applied to the material world, it gives crude materialism; when applied to the mental world, it gives idealism (there is only one spiritual; therefore, everything sensual and visible is a ghost, a dream). The beginning of cause makes the world eternal, for it represents the world in a continuous relationship of causes and actions. For better information about these principles, you can read Kant's antinomies - how to defend one truth on both sides. Kant did not penetrate the secret of this error. Hegel showed where it comes from. This comes precisely from the fact that there are higher principles in our soul, and the result of this is that the area of ​​reason is completely opposite to the area of ​​the mind. It is good that this was learned when it was also learned that logic is a lower region: but if this had been known before, great harm would have occurred. Finally, the fruits of the mind show that this tree of life is damaged; and judging without any bias, one can philosophically come to the truth that the fruits of the tree of knowledge are nothing more than death in different forms. There is no need to condemn all philosophers; you just need to distinguish between what is theirs and what is not theirs. Some of them wrote well; reassured humanity about the future; but they acted this way because they followed syllogistics less than others and reasoned under the influence of Revelation. This is Jacobi's philosophy. Others of them were directly guided by Holy Scripture. But what happened to those who directly followed their mind? They preached either doubt or indifferentism in different tunes, and many clearly went against everything sacred. The mental world today presents a curious phenomenon. This Babylonian pillar (philosophical systems) has already been built high, carried beyond the clouds, and still the builders are trying to rise higher, where it is difficult to breathe from the cold; therefore, some of them hurry to get down from this height and warm themselves by the fire of Revelation. Now we have almost reached the limits of human knowledge. Previously they thought that, having reached these limits, they would learn something more than God Himself does not know; but when they got there they saw that there was not an end there, that there was an impenetrable abyss; That’s why we decided that in addition to our mental world, there is also a higher, Divine world, still inaccessible to us. The same thing happened to philosophers as sometimes happens to small children who, living from birth in one place, think that, for example, ten miles from their place of residence, where the visible horizon ends, the end of the whole world. And philosophers previously thought that their absolutes were above everything, but now they are beginning to see that these absolutes are only sublime images of the mind, and God is above all these images. Therefore, one must expect Revelation from Him alone in order to find out who He is. There is much in conscience that is theoretical; it prescribes the law, carries out judgment, but its subject is action; she judges not about things, but about actions, about the actions of people as prescribed by the law. Hand in hand with it goes evidence of these actions and together with rewards or punishments; and therefore it is already something practical. Its activity is three-part, and can be compared with inference. The first part - what to do - is like a big package; the second produces a consequence over the action, saying that the action was done, and done freely: this is a minor premise; the third compares the action with the law and deduces rewards or punishments from this: this is the conclusion. But conscience legislates badly, testifies incorrectly, and gives false verdicts. Meanwhile, it is something that is most indelibly preserved in a person: the most vicious person has some conscience; Only there is a conscience that is sometimes wavering, sometimes completely mistaken; calling bitter things sweet and sweet things bitter. If conscience were preserved in all its purity, then it would soon see the truth. When legislating, conscience sometimes remains silent, or pronounces a law in favor of vice, and neglects the law of truth. When she testifies, she testifies mostly falsely. The judgment also does not work correctly: the righteous often do not feel pleasure within themselves, and sinners do not feel remorse. The sense of a natural person is as corrupted as other abilities. The human spirit can be called a huge pillar, the height of which reaches God. The feeling is extended everywhere along the height of this pillar: there is a feeling of the Divine - an instrument that receives the influence of the spiritual world; there is an instrument that accepts the attack of average objects, such as truth, goodness and beauty; There is, finally, a lower feeling, addressed to low, coarse objects. Corruption of feelings can be seen at all these three degrees. How rare and dark is the feeling of the spiritual world! How spoiled is the average feeling! There is nothing to say about the latter. Will. The spring of the will is the desire, which strives to embrace everything that enters the soul and unite with it. And how boundless is this desire for union! Nothing in the world can satisfy him (this idea was developed by Metropolitan Philaret in the word for the consecration of the church, from the text: since Thy village is beloved...). The will of a natural person has almost no pure desires, especially spiritual ones: it, as the apostle says, decays in delightful lusts. The will mostly chooses the worst means to achieve the desired objects. For example, what means did ancient and modern states not use to prevail? And people call the worst diplomats geniuses! Love . In the innocent man there was only love, but there was no dislike or disgust, for his soul was turned to God, in Whom there is nothing worthy of dislike. But when man fell away from God and fell into the lower, sensual world; then some objects began to seem pleasant to him, others unpleasant: hence love bifurcated into love and hatred. Love, according to the Apostle Paul, has its height, depth and breadth (Eph. 3:18–19); The ailments of the human soul are also commensurate with this dimension: the height of love corresponds to pride, the breadth corresponds to greed, and the depth corresponds to voluptuousness; hence the expression: immersed in sensual pleasures. According to the apostle, voluptuousness is so fatal that the lover of voluptuousness is as if dead alive (1 Tim. 5:6). Voluptuous people eat a lot to live, but it turns out the opposite. Experience shows that many sensualists become burdensome to themselves. How is covetousness formed? This passion begins, as it were, legitimately in the heart. At first, apparently, only satisfaction of necessary needs, and then passion. Concern for the future, especially among parents, also turns into the passion of covetousness. In all the actions of the proud, the sin of the devil is more or less repeated. If we contrast these bad inclinations with good ones, will any virtues emerge, and what kind? They will come out. The opposite of voluptuousness is abstinence or dispassion; covetousness - generosity, or love of poverty; pride - humility. But won’t vices come from here too? If these virtues cross their boundaries, then vices will also come out. Abstinence can turn into foolish self-mortification; humility - into baseness, generosity - into wastefulness. So, it is false that virtue now stands in the middle; now everything is perverted. If a person stands in the middle, then evil will certainly pull him to its side; and therefore a person always needs to go somewhat beyond the middle to the side of good. We looked at love gone bad; but in a natural person there is still dislike – for oneself, one’s neighbors and God. Self-dislike is expressed by despondency or boredom and turns into despair; This feeling possesses a person even during joyful festivities and public entertainments. The desert saints and the Church itself warn people against despondency; in a well-known prayer it reads: “don’t give me the spirit of idleness, despondency.” Dejection is harmful at the beginning, because it makes a person inactive and lethargic, but it can sometimes end in suicide. Dislike for others is expressed by coldness towards them, and sometimes reaches the point of hatred and outright enmity, encroaching not only on the deprivation of the physical life of another, but also on the deprivation of eternal salvation, if possible. The types of this dislike are: anger is a temporary passion, and hatred is a permanent passion. The Apostle John expresses himself very strongly on this subject: “If you do not love your brother,” he says, “he remains in death. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (1 Jn. 3:14–15); Consequently, the one who does not love deprives himself of life and another, because, in fact, if the life of the heart constitutes love, then the lack of love produces death. Dislike for God is expressed by coldness towards religion, towards the Church, and, to the highest degree, obvious enmity against God. How many would rejoice if it were proved to them that there is no God!.. Freedom. Considering humanity in general, we will not discover much freedom in it; and this freedom is like a bad judge, who, although he sits on the judge’s chair, anyone can bribe him and, at his own discretion, turn the scales of justice in his hands. Therefore, a skilled psychologist, knowing a person, can determine the course and essence of his actions several times in advance. So, you need to regain freedom in yourself; it needs to be developed and strengthened. Willpower. There is little desire and choice of good in humanity, but even less fulfillment of it. For many, their whole life is spent in good endeavors, with good intentions; but there is no business. Why is this? Because our will is powerless. However, this is still partly good, for what would happen to a person if, in such a state, he still had a strong will? Now, if good is fulfilled slowly, then evil often remains unfulfilled; but what would happen then - with a strong will? The most important reason for the powerlessness of the will, due to the strength of the general disorder of a person in the fall, is the effect of evil spirits on it. Imagination. Imagination stands in the soul on the boundaries between the physical and spiritual worlds; it constitutes the line through which material objects become spiritual, and spiritual objects become material. Take away freedom and a person will be left without morality; take away the imagination - and the entire circle of knowledge, desires and feelings will disappear. The corruption of the imagination is as follows. a) In his powerlessness. The strongest imagination in the present state is, so to speak, the floundering of a baby in comparison with the actions of the husband. That is why it cannot imagine some objects. For example, eternity, God, the spiritual world are objects that it either does not imagine at all, or represents in crude forms. b) In images of the imagination. They are mostly monstrous, although sometimes they contain lofty objects, such as ancient theogonies (myths about the origin of gods personifying the elemental forces of nature), myths and so on. c) Imagination acts with incredible speed - and this speed is harmful to a natural person: the images of the imagination, being a crowd, so to speak, push each other and crush a person. The will can be turned from evil to good in one minute, but the imagination cannot. This is where the beginning and causes of prolonged mental warfare in great ascetics comes from: everything in them is reconciled with God; imagination alone is at war against everything. Therefore, you especially need to take care of your imagination; for often the basest images take root in him and sit in him. True, these images can be expelled from there; but what is it worth? For the greatest ascetics, the fight against them cost extraordinary efforts. Therefore, not being in a certain place, not hearing certain words, not seeing certain objects is very useful, because often one glance at an object decides the fate of a person for an entire eternity. d) Excess is another kind of corruption of the imagination and another of its shortcomings. By collecting many objects, the imagination burdens the soul with them, or it clings to one object, and with it alone occupies the entire soul. As in the body: where there is pain, there are all feelings; so it is in the soul: where the beloved object is, there are all its strengths. Hence the enthusiasm: it can be either civil or artistic, most often religious, for the objects of religion in themselves are capable of inflaming the soul. Sometimes this heat goes away soon, and in this case it is useful; but sometimes it continues for a long time, and then it is called fanaticism, which is the same enthusiasm, only long-lasting. e) Imagination is, finally, the door where the devil enters. No ability will let him into the soul; only imagination is his friend. From the lives of the saints it is clear that the devil somehow puts images into the soul: either he imagines old ones, or he draws new ones. This means that an evil person is an instrument of the devil: he becomes such friends with the devil that this one, as it were, inhabits him and becomes, as it were, the incarnate devil. So, imagination is a very important ability in moral terms. The appetite is sensual. It is not akin to man and is a consequence of the fall. Food is not natural to man, for the Apostle Paul says that in the future life God will abolish both meat and belly (1 Cor. 6:13). Why did God order us to eat from all the fruits of paradise? This was necessary for the test: and if a person had resisted the test, then he would not have needed the fruits of paradise, for it is not natural for the image of God to depend on the tree. However, even if this appetite was innocent before, now it is very guilty in its actions. For what do the earth and the sea work for? For the womb. This is a real work of incorruptibility. The womb has now become precisely a god for people: all the abilities of the soul and body are directed to one womb. And with what difficulty it is satisfied! How much blood of animals and people was shed for the womb! It would be more natural for man, as the highest, to nourish everything; and now man feeds himself with everything. Let it be so among the wild; otherwise we see the same thing among the educated. Passion. They are called passio (suffering) in Latin. The very word suffering shows that they are not natural to man. Questions from moralists and psychologists about curbing passions have long existed. Of course, it is necessary to curb and tame what is bad in them; but there is also something good in them. Anger, for example, is sometimes necessary; but the disorder it produces in the soul, excitement, increased desire, and so on, is bad. How can we call here what in passion cannot be called passion? We do not have a word for this, because there is no deed: a person never keeps within boundaries, but suddenly turns into passion. Such retention within boundaries will occur in the future life. Angels also have strong aspirations, but these are not passions, for these aspirations are proportionate to their strengths. The Gospel says that the Savior Himself was angry; but it was not passion, but was only called by the name of passion, since we have no other word for it. Destroy everything that is bad in the passions; leave the rest that remains (and hardly anything can remain in the present state of a person) - and it will no longer be passion. Language or the world of words in the human soul is also an important aspect. He makes a person immortal on earth; and what happened over thousands of years is known to us only through words, language. But now this word is spoiled. Adam barely managed to call the animals an uncorrupted word. This word must be creative by nature. Not to mention Jesus Christ, we see that the word worked miracles among people. But these are only hints of his true strength. It is not such in itself as it is now. Experiments show that it consists of physical fire, and when a person speaks, this fire remains in the air. This shows what harm comes from rotten words. A corrupted word hinders the development of the mind; many words destroys memory; wrong words make thoughts wrong; seductive words seduce the heart. The corruption of the tongue occurred even when Eve spoke to the serpent for the first time, and not during the pandemonium. However, some perfection still remains in the word. Clairvoyants even now speak mostly sublimely, in rhymes. In even simple dreams, a person sometimes speaks in a language unknown to him; but in dreams this happens very often—almost usually. This shows that a person, if necessary, can suddenly be given a language. In the future life everything will be ready for a person; only morality will be required from himself. Body. There is a legend that the body in its primitive state was luminous. Among the saints, this luminosity also began in this life. The nakedness that Moses attributes to the first people is quite significant. All people's temperaments are spoiled. Physiologists find blood, nerve and brain systems in humans; and all these systems are not what they should be, so that physiologists, inferring from the present state of the human body to the body of Adam, deny his immortality. Man's body now dominates his soul; the soul depends on the body, and the body on the elements; therefore, the soul is subordinate to the whole world. Floors. The corruption of nature is expressed differently in a man, and differently in a woman. Christianity introduced the unity of both sexes, saying: “there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28); in the East, even now the female sex is in slavery. In heaven itself, the wife is subordinate to her husband. Illnesses during childbirth, melancholy, hysteria and other physical and mental illnesses predominantly dominate the female sex. Age is also subject to a kind of deterioration, which is already too noticeable. The baby still lives without a mind; the young man is too languid and carried away by curiosity; the husband is tormented by desires, enterprises, plans; old man - inactivity. External relations. Enlightenment itself has its harms and benefits. Public education is in some respects better and more beneficial, and in some respects worse and more harmful than home education. The treatment of people also causes great harm to a person. “I am never less of a man,” someone said, “than when I return from the company of people.” Moreover, every state or class of people, having some advantages, also has many disadvantages. We will re-read them if possible. The shortcomings inherent in the clergy, to which their very title in some way predisposes them, are the following. 1) Coldness and indifference to sacred things. This comes from frequent handling of these things. Just as the courtiers, often speaking to the sovereign, become less reverent towards him, and those living at a distance from him have extraordinary respect and reverence for him, so the common people are much more reverent towards sacred things than the altar servers. 2) The clergy look at the altar with almost the same eyes as a merchant looks at his shop, a farmer at his field: others turn sacred service into a trade that feeds them, and therefore do not care so much about sacred services as about income. Of course, those serving the altar share with the altar, and for the clergy this is the only source of food, but we must remember that if they do not chase too much after income, but do their work with all reverence and diligence, then the flock itself will not leave them in poverty. 3) Dissatisfaction with one’s lot, and hence the grumbling. True, this lot is unenviable, but it is not the worst and poorest. To be content with it, you need to more often imagine the ideal of the shepherd of the Church of Christ; one must turn to the example of the apostles, and even some of the newest missionaries, who preached the Gospel of Christ not only without the usual reward, but often with the obvious danger of persecution, oppression and violent death. 4) Intemperance, resulting from the fact that clergy often happen to enter into such relations with their parishioners in which the latter consider it their duty to treat them. Therefore, some priests do very well who, upon entering into this rank and fully realizing its importance, vow to never drink hot drinks and abstain from voluptuousness. At first, of course, the parishioners will not like this; but later, having seen in their priest an example of sobriety and abstinence, they will feel special love and respect for him, and will try to imitate him themselves. To correct all these shortcomings, priests can be recommended, as a suitable remedy, to reflect on the height and importance of their title and ministry, to vividly imagine that they are the successors of the apostles and, in a sense, are likened in their rank and office to Jesus Christ Himself. What are the disadvantages of the so-called noble class? The predominant spirit of this class is the spirit of advantage. Accustomed to receiving special rights and privileges in civil societies, people of this class think that in the area of ​​faith they have also acquired some privileges, that for them there are some exceptions to Christian morality, and therefore they allow themselves to abolish some decrees of the Christian Church, they want to subordinate even the very rites and church services to their own views. Some mistresses, too carried away by the spirit of advantages, cannot even imagine being in heaven with their maids. In general, this class is cold towards religion, does not respect the altar servers, despises other lower civil classes, treats its servants cruelly, and indulges in excessive luxury and lust. Such people should note that the Christian religion equally imposes responsibilities on superiors and inferiors and makes no distinction in the matter of salvation between slaves and masters. What are the disadvantages of the merchant class? The spirit of this class is the spirit of buying and selling; It transfers this same spirit to the realm of religion - it thinks that one can acquire salvation through large contributions, large offerings to the church, luxurious memorials after death, and the like, without trying in the least to correct one’s morals. Of course, such rich contributions and donations to the Church must be approved; but at the same time it must be instilled that this alone cannot acquire salvation, but that one must at the same time strive for purity of heart. Moreover, it is sometimes necessary to instill, only very prudently, that the Church does not need unnecessary decorations, that simplicity and neatness are appropriate for her, especially when there are churches of God not made by hands (people) who have a greater need for help than churches made by hands, and to encourage them to supply the poor and needy with everything they need. Moreover, the disadvantage of this society is lying, deceit, selling bad goods for good ones, instability in words, breaking oaths, and the like. Finally, among the distinctive shortcomings of this class one can also include excessive luxury and voluptuousness, which is too concerned about pleasing the belly and sensuality in general. What shortcomings are especially characteristic of the simple class of people, the rabble? The spirit of these people is the spirit of physical work. They also bring this spirit into religion, and therefore they think of acquiring the Kingdom of Heaven through physical exploits alone, for example, frequent going to church, many bows, long and exhausting journeys to holy places, kneeling and the like. Of course, this is good, but it is necessary to instill in such people that this alone is not enough for salvation, that they need to pay more attention to the improvement and elevation of the spirit. In addition, the common people, due to their lack of education and rudeness, are filled with many gross prejudices and superstitions. But on the other hand, he is free from many vices, for example, pride, luxury, deception, characteristic of the upper classes - much more frank, more inclined to religion and more capable of correction. What are the disadvantages of society or the class of scientists? These people live mostly in the area of ​​the mind, and not in the area of ​​the heart and faith, and therefore they always almost doubt the dogmas of the Christian religion, they love to argue about the subjects of salvation: they consider themselves smart people, and therefore despise other uneducated ones; Many church institutions explain them in their own way and do not want to implement them; They are mostly attached to some earthly activities, for example, to the earth, to animals, plants and the like. Such people should note that, with all their intelligence, they do not understand much in religion, and therefore they must humble themselves and captivate their minds into the obedience of faith, since most of their knowledge is insignificant and vain. For example, what will all the research of botanists, all the discoveries of mineralogists, zoologists, geologists, and doctors serve after the grave? Lying in the coffin, they will have to throw away all their scientific works and experiments on this earth, like old notebooks, not at all needed for the future life, where even the most uneducated person in this world will compare with them in knowledge. What shortcomings are noted in the class of civil officials? Mainly, selfishness and - for this - unrighteousness. People of this class often acquit the guilty person as a result of many and various calculations. Of course, the main cause of this evil is the poverty of this class; but what can excuse does not justify at all. Disadvantages of the military rank: some kind of coarsening of the sense of humanity, bestiality, cruelty, indifference to death, carelessness regarding the future state beyond the grave, robbery, predation, ambition, and the like. This class could more easily acquire salvation than others, for soldiers who die on the battlefield for the faith and the Fatherland are, in a sense, martyrs, and it is not in vain that the Church especially prays for the entire Orthodox army; only this glory they mostly lose. A Christian warrior, even in war and battle itself, can be a true Christian: he must and can spare a defenseless enemy, not touch other people’s property, destroy people less with the sword, and save more, if possible. An excellent opportunity to teach soldiers true Christian tactics seems especially to regimental priests. Are there any similarities between spiritual and physical illnesses? Eat; namely: physical illnesses are generally divided by physical physicians into permanent and periodic or temporary. The same division can be allowed in mental illness. Some of them constantly live in the soul and move it all towards evil, for example, the main sinful inclinations: ambition, greed and voluptuousness; others are born in the soul from time to time and dispose it to one or another bad action. Moreover, according to their degree, bodily diseases are divided into curable and incurable. It's the same with mental illness. Some of them are so old, so deeply rooted in the human heart, that in no way can they be cured; others, on the contrary, especially at the beginning, when using certain spiritual medicines, can easily be driven away. Further, bodily diseases are further divided into external and internal. The first ones open in some wounds and scabs on the body, and the last ones are still hidden inside it - they have not been discovered. The same thing happens with mental illness. Some of them have already been revealed in vile and depraved acts; others still lurk in the depths of the soul, consisting of bad thoughts, feelings, wishes that have not passed on to the outside. In addition, bodily diseases are either contagious or non-contagious, or at least less contagious. And some mental illnesses are so sticky that they immediately impart their poison to other persons who come into contact with the patient; others do not spill, or at least do not spill their poison so noticeably and not in such quantities on others. Physical illnesses occur either from weakness of bodily strength - exhaustion, or from tension, increased action of the body's forces. The same is the source of mental illnesses: some of them are due in their existence to a lack of mental strength, for example, despondency, carelessness and similar weaknesses; others were born from the tense state of these forces, for example, fanaticism, pride, despair, bitterness and the like. Finally, physical illnesses, by their origin, are generally classified into two types - illnesses arising from cold and those arising from heat. In accordance with this, mental illnesses are born either from inner cold, for example, insensitivity, composure to everything sacred and good; or from heat, such as enthusiasm or jealousy beyond reason, worldly love in its various criminal forms, and so on. An illness of the body can have a great effect on the state of the soul - it produces despondency, melancholy, and inactivity; and vice versa, mental illness can have a great impact on the body - it produces dryness, pallor, and gloominess in appearance. But can the health of the body act to cure mental illness? To resolve this issue, it is necessary to note in advance that mental illness is certainly connected with illness of the body - sin produces disorder even in the human body; but there are sometimes cases when a mental illness seems to precede a physical illness, that is, a person sometimes suddenly falls into some kind of mental weakness, so that the body does not yet have time, so to speak, to become upset. In this case, physical health, if they manage to maintain it, can greatly contribute to the recovery of the soul itself. Conversely, health or a morally good and calm state of mind has an extraordinary influence on the well-being of the body. That is why doctors always try to put their patients in a calm and cheerful mood, to remove everything unpleasant from them, and advise them to have fun, be distracted, and talk with others. Various medicines can be used both to cure physical illnesses and to cure mental illnesses. Doctors are generally guided by two systems: allopathy and homeopathy. The first system prescribes healing with medicines of all kinds, mostly against a known disease: for example, if a person has a cold, then he is given a medicine that warms or warms up; if he feels any weakening, then he is given strengthening medications. Homeopathy consists of treating with similar drugs, and, moreover, in the most reduced form. In this case, for the most part, they act only on the imagination, for example, if a person suffers from a fever, then they also give him medications to warm him up. Mental illnesses can be healed in the same way. Sometimes a medicine must be taken that is completely opposite to the disease: for example, if a person is suffering from pride, then he must be instilled with humility; suffers from voluptuousness, he needs to be instilled in moderation and abstinence, and the like. And sometimes it is useful, or even more useful, to heal with medicines that have, so to speak, sympathy with diseases; that is, a person is infected, for example, with hatred and malice, and he should be instilled with hatred and malice, only not against people, but against sin and the devil; a person is sick with ambition - he should be disposed to glory, only not worldly, fleeting, but spiritual, heavenly, eternal. This remedy was used by God Himself to heal and restore fallen humanity. A man fell from pride, having listened to the deception of the devil, who told him: “You will be like gods” (Gen. 3:5). God will bless, so to speak, this pride of man and Himself promises him likeness to God, if only he will live virtuously and use all the means used by the Redeemer for his salvation. There is also a method of healing bodily diseases, the so-called sidermatic (from δερμα - skin). It is used when, for some reason, known medications cannot be given to the patient orally, and therefore the same medications that should have been taken orally are administered to the patient from the outside, under the skin. This method is based on the fact that our outer skin and our inner stomach are one and the same. The stomach is closed skin, and the skin is a developed stomach. In the same way, it is sometimes useful to heal mental illness. If it is impossible to give medicine internally - to act on the heart, on the conscience, then it must act on the external side, using either some kind of punishment, penance, or some kind of image that touches and shakes the soul of the sinner. A person does not stand in one position, but goes through different states and degrees, both in evil and in good. The Holy Scriptures generally divide people into two kinds - good and evil. Actually, this is how it should be. We still have a third kind of people - neither good nor bad; but before God there is no such average state, for He sees the hearts and secret motives of human actions. Therefore, the passage from the Apocalypse (Rev. 3:15) does not contradict this: it speaks here in our language. To the preacher all classes or conditions of men may be the subject of the word. You can also divide the human race into four categories: 1) people who have a bad heart but a good appearance: these are hypocrites; 2) those who have a good heart, but a bad appearance: these are dreamers - those who are jealous, but not out of reason, like Saul once; 3) for others, great vices are combined with certain virtues: thus, murderers, among their atrocities, are sometimes generous; 4) some have bad actions combined with good qualities. This is the division in relation to the mixing of good with evil. In relation to salvation, the following states are distinguished: 1) the state of ignorance and related carelessness; 2) hypocrisy or deception of oneself and others; 3) bitterness; 4) despair. In a state of ignorance the need for salvation is not felt. In hypocrisy, this need is felt, but it is thought that it is satisfied. In bitterness, every thought about salvation is stubbornly and deliberately driven away. In despair, although the need for salvation is felt, it is assumed to be impossible. Ignorance is characteristic of the entire human race, for reason fell first, and the fall of reason is already darkness. The pagans could not drive away their ignorance, and that is why mythologies arose among them; even the mind itself and the schools could not enlighten a person. What did Rome and Greece do for this? Almost nothing. Christians themselves are subject to this state in the essence of real life: how much time and effort farming alone now takes from a person!.. A person has no time at all to think about the education of reason. Therefore, many Christians live without rules, haphazardly, without thinking, like “wordless” (2 Pet. 2:12. Ps. 48:13). What can we say now, for example, about the pagans living in central Africa? Their truth is so hidden, their conscience is so lulled, and the duty of the law is so silent that they perish “lawlessly” (Rom. 2:12). However, even such people still have some flickering of the light of truth, and they will be condemned at the trial, according to the words of the Apostle Paul, for not taking advantage of this light. Carelessness is sometimes closely connected with ignorance, sometimes not, for even in the light one may not walk in the light. For example, another person relies on the prayers of some saint, on giving alms, going to church, but he himself lives carelessly. The rule of this state is: “go the way you are going.” In this state those who lived before the flood perished and some will perish before the Last Judgment (Matthew 24:38). A very typical example of carelessness is Esau (Gen. 25:34). Christians are promised to sit with God on the throne; but they, like Esau, eat carelessly and willingly renounce this honor. Carelessness can be gross and subtle. The food of carelessness is the hope of someday improving; Such an example is provided by Felix, who said to the Apostle Paul: “Now go your way, having taken time to call you...” (Acts 24:25). Often conscience reminds people of salvation, but they reassure themselves with delay; sometimes conscience comes to the point that it considers salvation impossible, or very difficult (Matthew 25:24). Sometimes a careless person feeds on the idea that he is Orthodox and not a heretic. This is how the Old Believer covers up his shortcomings by performing his rituals. The very merits of Jesus Christ sometimes lie at the head of carelessness. The shepherd must excite and enlighten the careless. For enlightenment, not much is needed: you just need to present the main tenets of Christianity. It takes a lot to change nature, which has already, so to speak, decayed. For this, at least some education of the mind is needed in the careless: otherwise the birds will eat the sown teaching (peck it, fill the goiter. - Ed.). But is it possible to educate all commoners?! Therefore, it is necessary to act at least on conscience, which among the common people is very capable of accepting impressions; for example, talking about death, about heaven, about judgment, and so on. So, in ignorance, a person does not know how and what to do for salvation; in carelessness - he does not do it, although he knows how and what to do. Hypocrisy. Nature itself, which has spots and a natural desire for perfection, disposes a person to hypocrisy: hence people have a tendency to hide the bad and show the good. And this is not always a sin, but sometimes prudence, so that the brother will not be tempted. On the contrary, boasting about one’s vices is an extreme vice. God Himself makes clothing for Adam to cover his nakedness. But if people do not mean this in order not to seduce their brother, but only to boast, then this is already a vice. So a person doubles in his fall! Prudent secrecy is commendable: it is necessary for this life, but it differs from hypocrisy in that, hiding shortcomings, it thinks about correcting them, while hypocrisy does not think about this. Hypocrisy probably begins with this prudence: repeated more than once, it finally gives birth to hypocrisy. Therefore, one must prudently, so to speak, observe prudence. When hypocrisy develops and grows in a person, it already has a strong influence on all his activities (Matthew 23:1-39). It is not intentional, rarely intentional; in some cases it can be diabolical, that is, when external piety is used precisely only to gain some place or position, or, even worse, to cover up some vile and terrible deeds. Judas (John 12:4-6) is a hypocrite when the hearts of others are touched by tenderness, reproaches Jesus Christ and Mary for the fact that she spent unnecessary expenses, and He allowed this great waste. Closely related to hypocrisy is self-delusion: this is a state in which a person does not deceive others, but himself, when, that is, he considers himself good, although in reality he is not. It can be both coarse and subtle. Rough things happen when, for example, a person, going only to church, reading the Holy Scriptures, and meanwhile, not trying to correct himself, considers himself already good; and subtle things happen even among spiritual people, great ascetics, such as Zosima, who was shamed by Mary of Egypt. Here we can cite the example of Isaac of Pechersk, who, after great fasting, prayer, and suffering, was deceived and fell, also Anthony the Great, Macarius, Paul of Thebes; and almost all the great ascetics were close to this state. Bitterness. It consists of a strong habit of evil, so that good becomes hostile to the bitter. This name is taken from the property of some bodies, which, the longer they are sick, the more coarse and stony they become, so that fire and iron no longer affect them. Holy Scripture calls this state “petrification” (Eph. 4:18). An example of this is Pharaoh (Rom. 9:17). The more God punished him, the worse he became, and with each execution he stepped a step lower in evil, and from ten plagues a ladder of evils was compiled for him. This state is already the highest degree of sinfulness. Not everyone achieves it, but only great sinners, and then not entirely, but in one particular vice. Signs of this condition are insensitivity and repeated repetition of the same vice. Despair. This state is not permanent; it is temporary and brief. Despair consists of hopelessness for salvation, to which an awakened conscience brings a person; and conscience in this case no longer illuminates him so much as blinds him. In this state are those who do not believe in a future life; and for the most part depraved people do not believe in it. Despair, which comes from the consciousness of many sins, sometimes ends in suicide, as in Judas. Even glorious ascetics sometimes approached the depths of despair, due to the depth of humility, due to which they considered themselves the greatest sinners, unworthy of the slightest mercy of God. In Christianity, despair should appear less often, for Christians should be sure that there is no sin that overcomes God's mercy; but the devil knows how to block this light from human eyes. In despair, it is useful to announce to others the dangerous state of your soul. In addition to these types of sinfulness, several others could be imagined; but they are already too fractional, and arise mainly from these states. Yet these conditions have one common root: it is innate corruption. In some people this root develops very early and quickly; For some, goodness is revealed just as early and quickly. Hence they ask whether people are born good and evil. We saw a man as if in a scroll shown by God to Ezekiel, in which it was written: “mourning and pity and grief” (Ezek. 2:10). This grief is even more revealed in man’s powerlessness to correct himself. The Holy Scriptures speak in many places about the struggle of the spirit with the flesh. It represents the coming of Jesus Christ as a means to reconcile these warring parties. The law of the flesh before the coming of Christ only indicated good, but did not give strength to fulfill it; the flesh suppressed the spirit. Jesus Christ took upon Himself the flesh in order to use it Himself to heal man. He accepted it with all natural weaknesses, except sin, for he was in the likeness of the body of sin. This similarity consisted of suffering, death, and so on. He sacrificed this weak flesh for the weaknesses and sins that it committed, and therefore the same thing was done in all humanity, that the weakness of the flesh, or its weaknesses, ceased through Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:1-7). Man's powerlessness is well compared to death (Eph. 2:5). A dead man has everything except life and soul. So in natural man there is the image of God, only it is perverted - there are, as it were, arms, legs, eyes, but all this is just a ghost; he seems to be wise, kind and strong; but this is only a deception of feelings. Man did not have any means to get out of the sinful state, for if they had existed, they would have been used, and the Heavenly Father would not have given His Son for this and would not have shed a single drop of His blood. It is clear from Scripture that God immediately after the fall began to heal man; His grace was always at work even before Jesus Christ. It is surprising, therefore, why few have corrected themselves and are correcting themselves. If there are kind people in the world, what kind of kindness is this? The best of them complain about their imperfections, although the crowd of people crowns them with praise and places them in heaven. The best of people admit that the ideal of truth is not known to them, that the goal of their aspirations is too far away. Someone now seems kind, but only for this life, for his position. But he is still too far from his final goal. How could a natural man correct his mind and will after the terrible discord that occurred between him and the law? By what ideal would he begin to correct himself? Man, according to Plato, now stands upside down, and therefore all objects seem perverted to him. We consider powerlessness in a moral sense - in relation to the will. Could a pagan correct his will? No, for it has countless, incomprehensible sides. Now we cannot fully imagine our fall: for this we need to know how we stood before the fall. A person's weakness is best shown by his healing. Death or the dissolution of a person into parts is the first means of healing him: from here it is revealed how deeply a person has fallen. There are two sides to man: freedom and nature; but both are incorrigible. Freedom does not change nature, and nature does not change freedom, for its essence lies in the fact that it is a law unto itself. Yes, even if a person corrected present evil, he cannot correct and reward the evil of the past, nor can he return the good that was omitted. And this is very important: the lack of goodness makes itself noticeable everywhere; every part of it must be done, and the slightest omission has enormous consequences. For us, this shortcoming is unimportant and almost unnoticeable, because we do not count the amount of good; but there is a Counter, with whom every loss is considered important and is noted. The importance of our fall, in addition to death, is also proven by the incarnation of the Son of God and His death, for He also had to allow decay in His own composition in order to heal us. The possibility of correction may seem easy at times; and how many different means philosophers have proposed, how many theories they have outlined for the restoration of man! But when we get down to the business of healing, we will see something completely different, and in order to prove the absurdity and insignificance of philosophical theories about this subject, all we have to do is force these wise men to apply their theories to practice. The human heart is the bark around which flowers grow, but stir the flowers and snakes will crawl out. Whoever wants to be good must convince himself that he is vicious; just as someone wants to be wise, “let it happen,” according to the word of the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 3:18). From the previous one it is clear that God alone can lead a person out of a sinful state. All people can and must get out of this state for their own good; but this truth is forgotten by many. It seems to them that this is not necessary, and therefore they live as they lived before. However, even the half-world in which a person now finds himself is enough to see the need for correction. For this you need to look: a) at yourself. Each thing is only good when it stands in its place; a slight deviation from it makes her thin; so the deviation of the soul from the law makes it corrupt. These dislocations, ulcers and deviations of the soul are now, due to the shell of the body, not clearly visible; but after the destruction of the body they will appear clearly. The same thing happens to a patient who is given opium: having awakened, he sees all his poverty and pain, b) On God. Man always depends on God, no matter how much he deviates from Him, even if he takes the krill and retires to the edge of the world. This dependence causes a person either heaven or hell, the former during a good life, the latter during a bad life. The feeling of dependence is now very weak in us, so that we sometimes forget it. What will happen when memory, mind, imagination are occupied by God? This will be a cross for our thoughts, desires, passions, but a saving cross for us! c) To the world. When we look at him, he gives us lessons to be kind. The law that binds man to creatures as members of a family is blessedness and holiness. Violation of this harmony is accompanied by loss of light and breath, which oppresses a person and causes pain. This disharmony is already visible. Why, for example, does a villain love darkness, and a sensualist begin to love food that has already spoiled? Isn't this a clear sign of separation of the soul from the world and nature? However, all this is now not so noticeable to us because of the body; but with death this barrier will be destroyed. Everything in nature is directed against the disturber of the order of nature, for he himself is against everything, even against God. The fire that threatens the Holy Scriptures was prepared from the beginning of the world. The lake of fire will be made up of the remnants of an uncorrected, indignant world, that is, God did not create hell, but people themselves will create it with their sins. From all this it is clear how difficult it is to escape from goodness. How does a sinful person become a child of God? This subject is incomprehensible; God has his own system of conversion for every sinner. But the Holy Scripture shows us here one great royal road. It speaks about three subjects: 1) about grace, 2) about the heart, 3) about the way the first acts on the second. We have seen that people stand at different degrees of sinfulness. From what state of sin is it possible to transition to a state of grace? Holy Scripture promises such a transition from all states. However, there are expressions in it that seem to speak of the impossibility of transitioning to a state of grace. These are the expressions: a) about sin against the Holy Spirit; b) about sin leading to death; c) the impossibility of renewing those who have fallen away. But these expressions are vague. If we assume that they really speak about the impossibility of salvation, then who will convince himself or another that his sin is not precisely the kind that can no longer be forgiven? Who will calm your troubled conscience? The second reason that does not allow one to see in these expressions the idea that some sins cannot be forgiven is the importance and universality of the merits of Jesus Christ. He died for everyone and everything, which is why it is strange to imagine such a sin that would be stronger than God’s mercy. This idea is refuted by the fact that the famous sinner himself no longer wants his own salvation; but this is just a subterfuge. Let us turn to these very expressions. a) “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven by man: but whoever blasphemes against the Spirit will not be forgiven by man: whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the age to come” (Matthew 12:31–32). Here you need to pay attention to the incident on which these words were spoken. Jesus Christ cast out the demon. This miracle aroused the attention of the people so much that everyone almost considered Him to be the Messiah. But the Pharisees, out of envy, not being able to deny the miracle, decided to attribute it to Beelzebub (Matthew 12:24). “This one will not cast out demons except Beelzebub, the princes of demons”: a terrible measure of envy! Just as heaven could not give another sign - a clear miracle, so hell could not hurt Jesus Christ with anything so much as this slander. Jesus Christ had to make a defense, although for the people, and so He says (Matthew 12:25, 27): “every kingdom that is divided into itself will be desolate... And if I cast out demons because of Beelzebub, who will your sons cast out?” The Jews had people who cast out demons, namely the disciples of the Pharisees. For this, according to Josephus, they prayed, smoked, gave water to those possessed by demons to drink, and so on, and managed to do so. And no wonder: they did this in the name of Jehovah. Moreover, those who cast out demons were for the most part pious ascetics, and they often even received the gift of prophecy. Be that as it may, only their exorcism was thought of with respect. That is why Jesus Christ refers to them and asks the Pharisees: why don’t you think so about Me? Ask your disciples whether it is possible to cast out a demon with a demon, and they will tell you the opposite, they will condemn you. Therefore, you must confess that the Messiah has approached - “the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28). He further explains this approximation by a comparison taken from the siege of the fortress. And I, He says, have overcome the evil spirits; for otherwise Beelzebub would not have allowed anyone to bind his servants; he is clearly not with Me; therefore, on Me: his gain is My loss, and vice versa. This is the end of protection. Further, the Savior reveals the dangerous state of the Pharisees and cites the saying we are examining: “all sin and blasphemy... and whoever speaks a word” (Matthew 12:31, 32). What is blasphemy here, and what is this word against the Son of Man? Here Jesus Christ separates Himself as a man from the power of God, for at that time they did not yet know about His Divinity. Therefore, “blasphemy” refers to His Divinity, and “word” refers to Him as the Son of Man, as a man. This “word” is His reproach from the Pharisees: “a poisoner, a wine drinker, a publican and a sinner” (Matthew 11:19) and so on. But the blasphemy against the Spirit, by which Jesus Christ cast out demons, consisted in the fact that the Pharisees attributed the action of the power of God to Beelzebub. This sin can often be repeated even now even in the form in which it was among the Pharisees; all Jews are still in this sin, with the only difference that these latter were not witnesses to the miracles of Jesus Christ, like the first. This sin may be repeated in other ways. Perform a miracle, the Forerunner, Paul or someone else, only by the power of God - and if anyone rejects this miracle, then he is clearly repeating this sin or the blasphemy of the Pharisees. Why is this sin so important and dangerous? He discovered in the minds of the Pharisees a complete perversion of the laws of judgment, in the heart - a petrification of feeling that could equal heaven with earth, in the conscience - deep silence; that is why he entails such punishment. What does it mean: “will not let go”? Does this mean: “will never let go”, or just: “will hardly let go”? Some accept it in the latter meaning, on the grounds that there are similar passages in Holy Scripture where the same expressions are found. Thus, Jesus Christ, having spoken about the impossibility of a rich man entering the Kingdom of Heaven, immediately limited His word when he noticed the mistake of the disciples. This opinion, by the way, is held by Chrysostom and Isidore Pelusiot (see their opinions in Kalmet). Why is it added: “neither in this age nor in the next”? Among the Pharisees, sins were divided into different degrees, just like the commandments. Some sins, they said, are erased by fasting and almsgiving, others by the ritual law, others by general cleansing; and some will never be forgiven, except in the next century, at the coming of the Messiah. The Messiah himself cannot forgive other sins, such as, for example, the sin of falling away from Judaism to idolatry. In order to show the Pharisees the importance of their sin, Jesus Christ used their expression. So, this expression does not deny the universal possibility of salvation. The blasphemy it speaks of, like any other sin in general, only damages a person’s future bliss and stops him on his path to perfection, but does not destroy him forever. There are other sins similar in importance to it; but Jesus Christ had no occasion to speak about them. As for, finally, the expression: blasphemy against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but not against the Holy Spirit; then this is Hebraism. In our opinion, it would be necessary to say: blasphemy against the Son of Man is less guilty, but against the Holy Spirit more; but the Jews have no degrees of comparison. b) Another place – 1 John. 5:16. “There is a sin unto death...” What kind of sin is this? Some consider this sin to be similar to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit; others understand this passage to be about intercession for criminals before the pagan government, which sometimes punished the criminal with death. But it’s better to think this way: verse 14 speaks of the boldness of the children of God, as a result of which God gives them everything in the name of Jesus Christ (1 John 5:14). All Christians can have this boldness. Obviously, a lot is promised. It was necessary to give a measure to this promise: it is proposed. Ask, says the apostle, for the unimportant sins of your neighbors; and for important sins, do not dare to ask God - leave your petition. For such sins, the whole Church and Jesus Christ Himself intercede, as He promised. In the primal Church, private sins were atoned for by private prayers, and common sins were atoned for by common ones. In the book of Leviticus all sins are counted, which includes the sin of death. John borrowed from this book an expression familiar to his disciples. However, this measure laid down by the Apostle is not unconditional. If love flared up strongly in someone, he might exceed this measure. Paul prayed for the Jews. Moses and others decided to spend their entire lives praying for others, and achieved their goal. But there are few such people. This is why John gives the rule to his disciples. c) Third place – Heb. 6:4–9. The Apostle, explaining to the Jews the dignity of the person and teachings of Jesus Christ, spoke about Melchizedek; but fearing that they will not understand him, he reproaches them for their lack of knowledge and encourages them to strive for higher degrees of knowledge, and most of all warns them against going back. “It is impossible,” he says, “for those who have been enlightened by the One and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have been partakers of the Holy Spirit... and those who have fallen away, can again be renewed to repentance... For the earth, having drunk the rain that descends upon her in multitudes and giving birth to the former good... receives a blessing from God: but the bearer of thorns and thistles is indecent and there are oaths nearby...” What kind of falling away is this? Clearly a falling away from the faith. The Apostle saw that some Jews were forced by disasters and persecutions to fall away from the faith; therefore, he tries in every possible way to warn the faithful against this. What does it mean: “renew to repentance”? That is, through baptism, for baptism is renewal: next time, he says, you can no longer be baptized. Why? Because a Jew, who has fallen away from the Christian faith back to the Jews, recognizes Jesus Christ as a deceiver, and himself deceived for a time, and denounces all Christianity with slander and ridicule before the Jews, in order to again earn mercy from them. But is it possible to “receive” these fallen away into Christianity? It is possible through repentance. But if the word “renew” does not mean baptism; then by the word “impossible” we must mean - extremely difficult, as the further words of the apostle show, where the one who has fallen away is compared to a barren land. This land is only close to damnation, but not yet cursed; So a person who has fallen away is close to destruction, but is not completely destroyed. If anyone is not satisfied with these thoughts, let him remember those passages of Holy Scripture that indiscriminately invite everyone to repentance and promise forgiveness to everyone. So, although the conversion of the sinner depends on grace, it also depends on the sinner, and even at the very beginning, for otherwise everyone would be converted. What depends on grace and what depends on man—the Holy Scripture seems to hide this from us. Yes, we cannot know this theoretically: this will tell everyone his heart, his spirit, and teach what he should do when converting. But a person cannot convey this knowledge to others, as can be seen from the fact that not one of the holy people described his conversion in detail. The Holy Scripture itself speaks about this neither clearly nor completely. The work of salvation in the Holy Scriptures is called, firstly, turning from idols to God, from paganism to Christianity. Before conversion, a person looks in one direction, but after conversion, he looks in a completely different direction. The pagan obviously looks not at heaven, but at the world, at the mind, as a means to knowledge, at the body, as a means to adultery, - he looks at hell, - at what is useful, pleasant, but in a perverted or illegal form. But the Christian looks at the unseen, like Paul and Moses. Looking at a Christian, you think that his gaze is directed somewhere and at something - that it is always as if there is someone else with him, a stranger. Conversion can happen in a “blink.” One minute sometimes reveals a new, unfamiliar world: before, the sinner looked, for example, to the west and saw this and that; now suddenly he turns to the east and sees something else. Secondly, salvation is also called “rebirth.” What is a person in the womb? He has members, movement, life. But what kind of person is this? Having been born, he is already something completely different; in relation to his previous state, he was already dead. And the same thing happens in the moral world. The sinner has everything, but lacks the main thing - spiritual life. His rebirth, “re-being” consists in the granting of this life - in a complete change of his entire being. If we previously had a wrong concept about something, then we need to rebuild the very foundation of the mind, because otherwise the mind will again begin to construct its false thoughts. If the water in the source is bad, then neither flowers nor various fragrances will correct it until we reach the very source, to the very vein and clear it. The action of grace on the human heart is as necessary as the action of the sun on the earth. Isn’t that why in common parlance the sun serves as a symbol of grace? Seeing good, clear weather, the villager says: “What grace!” Thirdly, salvation is called "dream arousal." This name expresses both speed of action and ease. An awakened person moves in a moment from one world to another, from the world of dreams to the world of reality. It’s the same here: what other people consider to be reality, a true Christian considers to be dreams. The sleepy one has everything, but no real life; and the sinner has everything external, but does not have spiritual life. A sleepy person can move his limbs, even speak, but all this happens unconsciously and not clearly; so is the life of the unregenerate. A person sometimes spends the whole night in delirium; Likewise, a sinner sometimes spends his whole life in moral delirium. But sometimes in one minute a person leaves hell for heaven, just as a sleepy person wakes up in one minute. But just as you can wake up quickly, you can also quickly fall asleep. From this it is clear that even a great righteous person can fall from heaven to hell in one minute. Fourthly, salvation or conversion is also called revival. The name itself shows a lot. You need to put a soul into a dead man, and into a sinner you need to put a new heart or soul, as a driving and controlling principle. This soul is replaced by Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, who act in such a way that the soul of a Christian behind Them no longer seems to recognize itself: “I live as no one, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). In all these names there is one thought - about change. They all demand that the old be abandoned and the new accepted. A child, having been born, should never again breathe the same air that it breathed in the womb; so is the regenerated sinner... The essence of this change is death, without which there is no life. Therefore, those people who died to Christ have everything new. They sell as if they buy, and vice versa; What others value, they consider to be loss; whatever makes others sad, they are consoled. From here they become hated and often despised in society and even in the family. It is not surprising if they leave the civil order and are incapable of civil service, for they are led by Providence in other ways; there is no law for them anymore. Therefore, we must judge them carefully (1 Cor. 2:14, 15). So, conversion is a change produced by God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, renewing a person completely - in mind, feeling and will. This change is carried out from above and secretly. But there is something obvious about it. Firstly, something must precede it: freedom is certainly required. The sinner sleeps before conversion: he must be awakened. The Scriptures call this action pushing and stirring. What is this excitement? In paying attention to the sky, even for a moment, it is necessary for a person to look back at least once, to wake up at least once and see who is knocking at the door. The need for this stimulation is evident from the fact that the sinner’s sleep is deep: he sleeps like a lion, and who will awaken him except grace? The world does not awaken him, but puts him to sleep even more. The ignorant sleeps, for there is darkness around him; the sensual man sleeps, for he is covered with soft things; even people who are good by nature sleep - either like children, having no idea about Christianity, or like men lulled to sleep by self-delusion, considering themselves good for the world and the world for themselves, especially if all their affairs are going well. Has anyone awakened by themselves from this dream? They themselves awaken from bodily sleep; but the property of the soul is not like this: the more it sleeps, the deeper it falls asleep. Won't a person's conscience awaken? Yes, she will awaken; but this action of conscience is already a gift of God. So, God alone can awaken a person. He uses various means for this, both natural and supernatural. Various means of gracious stimulation of the soul are possible. 1) Miraculous, what were the excitements of Paul, Pharaoh, Eli, David and Saul. Many of them are also known from church history: the agitation of Blessed Augustine, Constantine the Great. And in modern times there are examples of conversion - through visions, significant dreams, and sometimes directly through miracles. For example, Metropolitan Plato was inspired to improve himself in virtue by a vision of Sergius of Radonezh in a dream. And in the Kyiv Lavra there is now a man to whom St. Nicholas appeared in the middle of the day in all his bishop’s vestments. But such excitement cannot be frequent, for God has many other means. 2) Semi-miraculous, such as: a dream, a confluence of amazing circumstances, salvation from inevitable troubles - from robbers, slander, blasphemous execution and others. 3) Natural, and these are more often than all others. However, for the converted they become supernatural. The convert always remembers them... These means are given to almost every person special - their own. So, for example, what is more natural than a leaf falling from a tree? But one was converted by this simple phenomenon and became a saint. What's more natural than a hair falling off a head? But someone was also converted by this: the words of Jesus Christ about this shocked him and surprised him - how God cares about such a small thing. Sometimes one word spoken at the right time can convert a person. This is how one rich man, infected with drunkenness, was converted in St. Petersburg. Sometimes all these means work together, as in the life of Mary of Egypt: this voice that called her across the Jordan, this icon that did not allow her to come to him, and this journey to Jerusalem!.. Many turned after serious illnesses, especially after fainting and freezing. One doctor in the local Lavra, being sick, turned with prayer to Saint Mitrofan and fell asleep; When he woke up, he felt healthy and completely changed his life. Sometimes dreams turn around. Andrei the Holy Fool was converted by a dream. Melania the Roman had a bad mother, but a virtuous father; the father died badly, but the mother died well, calmly. She decided to live like her mother, but was admonished by a vision of hell and fire. The usual means of conversion is worship, and especially the Sacraments. One Egyptian hermit, having heard the words of the Gospel (Matthew 19:21), went and sold all his property and gave it to the poor. Sometimes a sermon works the same way. Louis XIV, listening to Massillon's sermons, was always dissatisfied with himself. Sometimes reading Scripture at home greatly contributes to moral improvement. Looking at icons and sacred paintings can also convert a person. Vladimir the Great, as you know, was converted by the painting of the Last Judgment. Also, being present at the death of another can arouse many useful and holy feelings. Our priests and doctors can especially enjoy this benefit. Pavel the Simple was converted by the infidelity of his wife. One young man was in love with a girl who was filled with heavenly love; Having learned that the young man was especially captivated by her eyes, she gouged them out for herself and thereby enlightened and converted the young man. One Abba fell into the hands of robbers, who forced him to drink wine; he drank and with this obedience converted the robber. One slave, sent by his mistress for the relics of the martyrs, laughingly said to her: what if they bring my body to you? And indeed, in the place of martyrs he himself was martyred for confessing Jesus Christ. Conversation and friendship with good people can also be a means of turning to spiritual life: such people have some kind of internal effect on the hearts of those who contact them. Hence the evil cannot be in company with the good; and if someone seeks communication with good people, then this is a clear sign of a turn to goodness. These kinds of suggestions of grace are addressed to private people; but there are also general ones, addressed to entire nations, such as: persecution, migration of peoples in modern times - fragmentation of churches. In our times, 1812 has excited many. For Germany, the appearance of Napoleon was a source of excitement; for France - the revolution and the death of Louis on the scaffold; for all of Europe - deprivation of sovereigns of thrones, rights, conspiracies, riots. Diseases, such as cholera, turn many to the right path. The prophet has a passage where diseases are presented as asking God to devastate the universe. And indeed, these messengers of heaven appeared in turn to punish and admonish people. But people often wake up and fall asleep again. Therefore, their excitations are repeated several times. But for the excitement to have power; a person needs to be attentive to him and to himself. Otherwise, all excitement will remain in vain, just as it remained in Pharaoh. True, excitement seems unpleasant, because a person always sees himself spoiled by excitement. Moreover, when excited, you need to take a path that you haven’t walked before: it requires effort. But grace, knowing this disposition of the human heart, repeats its excitement. Even with all this, a person tries to fall asleep or drown out this call with joy, distraction, etc., not realizing that melancholy and despondency are calls from above. Others understand this call, turn to themselves, decide to improve; but after an hour they are forgotten again. True agitation has as its goal the conversion of the sinner. But what is conversion? Its essence is known only to God and, perhaps, to the Angels. Because something is happening here again. According to the word of God, conversion consists of a person’s determination to become a child of God from a child of the devil. Is it really just determination? Such a subtle foundation of the entire moral world?.. Does that mean salvation is easy? Yes. But what does it take to decide? Perhaps a thousand times you can decide; but all these will be false determinations. True determination comes once. It is expressed in three forms: firstly, in the present it arouses faith in the Redeemer; secondly, in relation to the future - the intention to live differently, thirdly, in relation to the past - repentance. Repentance is expressed in different ways; sometimes with quiet sadness for God all my life. Therefore, the joy and joy of those who repent are combined with trembling and tears. In others, this sadness is so strong that they consider themselves monsters. However, this sadness is dissolved by the joyful consciousness of the dignity of a holy life. Faith destroys all opinion about itself and requires the help of Jesus Christ. The determination to live better gives a person a completely different direction, the opposite of the previous one. Repentance can be either strong or quiet. The strong sometimes reach despair and even produce severe illnesses. Thus, penitents sometimes cry even in large gatherings, exclaim loudly, appear as if mad, and violate the obligations of decency and duty; Such a person sometimes needs to seek help from doctors. But for the most part, repentance is quiet. For grace does not suddenly show everyone the depths of hell and sin. Many give the first type of repentance an advantage over the latter and say that that is the only true repentance that reaches despair (as Fenelon and others thought). But this opinion is not entirely fair, since despair is close to destruction, and the devil easily takes advantage of it. Therefore, the Holy Scriptures nowhere require it. Faith in the merits of Jesus Christ during conversion is necessary. For, leaving the old, you need to take on the new; where is it? Obviously not in a person. When tearing your heart away from sin, you need to place something else in it. What is this? Jesus Christ. How can He be in us? Not in words, not in memory, not in desire only, but in reality. You need to feel His presence, His life, His breath. This is, so to speak, the conception of Christ in the soul of a believer. With the continuation of the life of the convert by Jesus Christ, the one conceived grows, strengthens and reaches the point where one dominates in a person, as in the Apostle Paul. Scripture often compares this to physical birth. The wife feels something different in herself when she conceives. The convert also feels something dual within himself - his life and another principle - Jesus Christ. This duality is first of all noticed by the feeling, then by the mind; to some, finally, Jesus Christ even appears in a visible image, like Macarius the Great. What is the sign of a valid conversion? Life change. The sinner may seem to have changed; but it's fake. True change happens completely and forever. However, this is a general and external sign, and the most specific sign of conversion is internal - the coexistence of Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity. They ask: can the convert indicate the time of his conversion? They say that it can, because the transition from a sinful life to a spiritual life is too noticeable, and not to notice it would mean to be too inattentive. But the edges of this transition are invisible. A convert may sometimes recall that fasting, or illness, or the death of someone close to him, or some other incident, destroyed any passion in him; but he cannot accurately determine the beginning of this extermination. Conversion cannot be unknown especially to terrible sinners who are converted swiftly; and also for those who, although they do not have great fractures, are surrounded by special circumstances. For example, if a frivolous and careless person converts after some sad event - after the death of his wife and so on, then he cannot help but notice the beginning of his conversion. The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15ff) does not express all moral states: there is no despair or bitterness in it. In general, here is an example of a man who is clearly sinful and sensual. This can be seen from the incident in which Jesus Christ spoke this parable. The Pharisees reproach Jesus Christ for dealing with obvious sinners, fornicators, publicans; Jesus Christ, wanting to let them know that these people were also capable of conversion, told them a parable. It can be divided into four parts. Verse 12 – The son wants to live according to his own will. The sinner really controls himself. The thought of God and His law is forgotten by him. No matter what he does, he never copes with the will of the Father: he would be surprised if someone asked him whether the Father agreed with his actions and intentions. “Give...” God gives everything, regardless of how someone uses it. Verse 13. – “When I departed...” There is a natural departure, for example, according to the apostle, “in the body” (2 Cor. 5:6); but that is, a sinful departure, due to which a person completely forgets God, so that there is no place in his soul where to place the image of God. “The country of the distance” is the world; although he is close to God, for the power of the Divine is revealed in him (Rom. 1:31), but he is the far side of man's abuse. "Waste..." The best spiritual gifts spoil and disappear; they notice that the most intelligent but depraved person, if he lived for a long time, would eventually become completely insane. Verse 14 – “I will waste everything...” Indeed, sinful people literally waste everything. But it happens that their external wealth remains, but their internal wealth is worn out; for example, the strength of the mind and body disappears from voluptuousness and extravagance. Verse 15. - “And he clung to...” It would be better if at least now the sinner turned to God; but he falls into an even worse state. Verse 16. – Having even become a shepherd of the dumb, he wants to live here as before. Having become accustomed to the great dimensions of sensuality, here too he wants to create an object of luxury out of nothing - out of a face. Verse 17. – “Coming in himself...” This is what sinners lack. They live outside themselves mechanically. Their thoughts and feelings, according to Solomon, wander throughout the world. However, sometimes they want to collect their thoughts, but for what? For the same reason that thoughts are wasted. That is why grace tries to turn them to itself, and when they feel it, they themselves seek grace. “Koliko as a mercenary...” Having felt himself, the sinner compares his previous state with his present. Was he really a righteous son before? A feeling of innocence and bliss is settled in a person, and childhood in general seems to be an innocent age, especially if the time of this age passed peacefully, in the circle of a kind mother, friends, and teachers. History shows that many were turned to the path of goodness by the memory of pious mothers. Moreover, in everyone’s conscience there is a feeling of bliss, although dark, but often strong. It tells everyone that these evils would not happen to you if you yourself did not do evil. Looking at nature can also remind a person of the bliss he would enjoy if he were kind. Hence, poets envy the fate of birds, flowers, and so on. They write this as if joking, but their heart guides their pen. All creatures of nature are, as it were, mercenaries from whom the bread of the Heavenly Father is abundant without care. Man feels himself assigned to something higher than the creatures of nature; but he immediately realizes that his vices have placed him below them. Not before these thoughts can the thought of the Redeemer be born. “I am extremely poor,” says the sinner, “but faith says that God came down from heaven for me: how can I then perish in vices?! No doubt it is because I did not turn to God.” Verse 18 – “I rise up and go...” Here the true determination is to go to the Father. It does not consist of mere words and intentions. Verses 18 and 19 express the humility that is found in converted sinners. They are always ready to sneak into the house of God rather than sit on the throne of depravity. Verse 20. “And he got up and went...” It is said that he himself got up and went; but Jesus Christ sometimes says that “no one will come to the Father except by Me” (John 14:6). Indeed, much in the matter of salvation depends on God; but something also from a person. Let a person have all the respiratory organs; but if he does not want to breathe, he may die. - “His father saw him, and he was pleased...” This disposition of the Father is very comforting for sinners; only they notice it, and it is it that draws them into the arms of the Father: before they lived without God, but now they see directly His action on themselves, and because of this their humility increases even more. What should a true Christian be like? And in what properties and virtues is his Christian life manifested? A Christian is called: 1) Spiritual, for, firstly, he is born of the Spirit; lives by the highest part of his nature - the spirit, he abolishes the soul, and crucifies the body; secondly, his deeds are spiritual; and thirdly, he communicates with the spiritual world. 2) Resurrected; for before he was dead. Although he had previously done something good, but since there was no life inside him, these good actions of his were lifeless. The sinner has no consciousness that he has been redeemed, purified, and created for good works; That’s why some of his good deeds are only fragments, like spiritual monsters, similar to those that are sometimes born in the physical world without some members. 3) Still a son of light. All Christians are called sons of light (Eph. 5:8). In what respect? Sometimes it is as if sin gives light: thus, Adam, through sin, learned what he did not know before; truth lives mostly in the wilderness and obscurity, and lies triumph; virtue is unknown, but vice shines. But this is a perversion of the order of things, and by nature it should be the other way around. For a Christian is a child of the Father of lights; he has within him Christ, Who is the Light of the world. Moreover, he also has his own light - conscience, shining in the righteous. Finally, the actions of the righteous are light (Matthew 5:14–16). 4) It is called new, because, firstly, it receives a new beginning of life; secondly, he is different than he was before; and everything is called new that has become different from what it was before; thirdly, it is powerful and strong. 5) Internal. The sinner is an external man, and the regenerate is an internal man. There are always, as it were, two people in a sinner, for he is always a hypocrite and wants to appear to be something other than what he really is. And in the righteous there are two people - internal and external. The first is himself; and the external one is the one whom he wants to satisfy. The inner man lives by the spirit, and the outer by the flesh. 6) It is also said that Christ lives in a regenerated man. This is the main feature of the new man, although in theological systems it is sometimes omitted. Jesus Christ is called Teacher, King and High Priest. But where does He now reveal these positions of His, if not in the heart? Our soul is created in the image of God, and this image is Jesus Christ. What is a person made of? The Word of God divides it into soul, spirit and body. Therefore, you need to think that the spirit and soul are whole, special parts, just like the body. The Holy Scripture assimilates renewal to all these parts of man. It is clear how the spirit and soul can be renewed, but how is the body renewed? It is renewed by being refined and made incorruptible in ascetics. The source of this renewal is the spirit living in him. Experience shows that the heart and conscience are more renewed than the mind and will. A converted person may still remain unlearned, but his feelings become rich and resemble a spiritual instinct. The reborn man is enlightened. Is that really true? Will this happen in the future life? No, this still happens in this life. The sources of this enlightenment and together the best producers are the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ and His Church (1 John 2:27; John 14:23). How great is this enlightenment? “Everything is known,” says the apostle, that is, the enlightened know everything they need and even more; they know something that even scientists do not know; especially they know well everything related to salvation. The method of enlightenment is mysterious. However, converts are able to understand the breath of the Holy Spirit and distinguish it from the breath of another spirit. Generally speaking, these people are more enlightened than others. Some fathers, completely unscientific, described certain phenomena of the soul in such a way that our current psychology should learn from them. The mind is the keeper of various concepts and knowledge: in an ordinary person, although it (that is, the mind) expands, it remains the same in its essence; and in the reborn it expands with concepts and is healed internally. The consequence of this healing is that the mind, as a material force, is electrified, so to speak, by grace - another force, and then acts quickly, clearly, knows the internal composition of things, which knowledge our metaphysics is looking for, but does not find; that is, the mind here reaches the level at which it stood with Adam before the fall... Our mind is rearranged, says Macarius the Great, like glass in a pipe, and therefore represents things in a wrong form. Grace alone can put him in his place. From this it is clear why the Holy Scripture calls this light life (2 Cor. 3:7–17). Even pagan philosophers (for example Plato) said that our knowledge is acquired by remembering what was already known. An example of this can be seen in the life of St. Isaac of Pechersk, who, after temptation, forgot everything he had done before - even walking, talking and eating. The regenerate man is selfless. What does it mean? What do we usually reject? What we don't need is unpleasant and interferes with our goal. But having rejected all this, you can choose something else instead. This other thing is love for God. But it happens that people deny themselves, but do not graft themselves onto God. Can a natural person be selfless? There is also a part of self-denial in him: but he lacks its fullness, that is, he rejects himself for himself, like the Stoics. Sometimes he completely rejects himself; but gives nothing in return. In general, in natural man there is no source of all good things - God; and without this all labor is in vain. Self-love is expressed in three types, and self-sacrifice in three: humility, non-covetousness and abstinence. Self-love degenerates into despondency in the midst of sorrows, and self-sacrifice in the midst of sorrows is expressed by joy and joy (2 Cor. 4:8–10, 6:10). Is a natural person capable of this? No. The Spirit of God alone can produce such self-sacrifice. This only explains how another ascetic lives for eighty years with one thought about God and eternity. Examples of this can be seen in Abraham (Gen. 13:8–11). Isaac (Gen. 26:19–27), Moses (Heb. 11:24–26) and other righteous people. In general, all holy people, rejecting everything earthly, hoped for the heavenly, preferring the invisible to the visible. Why did Diogenes despise everything? For a childish whim or an empty idea. Is it any wonder that the saints brought so many miraculous things into life, even more than the Angels, as one father notes? For the Angels are already perfected in goodness; and man in the midst of hell sets up a throne for God. Are there degrees to selflessness? At first there is, but in itself, in its full form, it has no degrees, for if at least something remains with a person, it means that he does not have complete self-sacrifice. That is why the Apostle says that it is necessary to “put off the old man” (Col. 3:9); he knew that a person cannot suddenly shed his rough skin - an old man; for it has grown to the body. From here follows the need to exercise oneself in voluntary self-sacrifice, for for the most part it is forced. Everything in the world is adapted for self-sacrifice: you just have to not let go of opportunities for self-sacrifice. In addition to ordinary cases, one must invent one’s own cases of self-sacrifice, for this is more valuable. The end of everything is that a person can no longer help but bear his cross: it constitutes sweet food for him. There are people who are by nature disposed to deprivation, and there are also those who are ready to endure a lot from others, but do not deny themselves anything. The highest example of selflessness is Jesus Christ. For we reject the low, worthless, and accept the high, Divine; and He is the opposite. Did Jesus Christ have all types of hardship? He had humility (Phil. 2:6-8); had non-covetousness (2 Cor. 8:9); He showed abstinence in a forty-day fast, in night and day vigils, when he taught. What is humility? In humility of heart, thoughts and desires. One cannot exist without the other - internal without external - cannot exist. However, a person at a high level cannot express as much humility in his appearance as he has in his heart. What is non-covetousness? A Christian needs to acquire what is necessary for his life and for the lives of others: he may even want to get rich in order to enrich others - the poor. What is his selflessness? In the freedom of the heart from things: a Christian must be ready - both to own things and to be deprived of them. “In everything and in all skill,” says the apostle (Phil. 4:12), “and be filled and hungry, and have abundance and be deprived.” What is abstinence? The flesh requires care from everyone, and from some even more. The strictest hermits warmed the body and tried to make it healthy (Eph. 5:29). Even some pleasure of the flesh is allowed (1 Tim. 5:23). So, Macarius of Egypt fasted strictly, but when a guest came to him, he treated him and drank with him, for which he later took it out on himself. What is pleasing the flesh? The very word “please” shows this; for we please when we forestall someone’s desires, fulfill them without reasoning, take care of someone to the point of fatigue: we please the flesh when we already care too much about it—when the womb becomes, as it were, our god. The virtue of self-sacrifice is difficult in the present state of our heart; but that's because we don't deal with it. And if we had been doing it since childhood, it would have been more difficult not to do it. It is more difficult for an ascetic to fulfill his own will than the will of God. But a person who is naturally self-sacrificing suffers a lot from pride. Since the world itself requires a person to experience self-sacrifice, then whoever follows the path of nature, the suffering of self-sacrifice is easy. Just as a stone that is processed and polished by a machine, although it loses something, but gains in brilliance, so is a self-denying person. But what happens to a stone if it jumps out of its place? The machine will crush him... People have prejudices against selflessness. So, people agree that you need to be patient, but not always, otherwise, they say, it will be bestial patience. What then? If a person endured like cattle, would that be bad? Isn’t it in the Holy Scripture itself that a man is sent to an ant, a bee, and others for teaching? They say that a person in excessive selflessness loses his senses. But is it really a humiliation for a person if he crosses the line of nature? But is this combined with human dignity? Without a doubt, together: this is the dignity of a person, to be above everything, not to be embarrassed by anything: here is precisely the feeling of greatness and nobility (Mordecai did not bow to Haman alone, while everyone bowed). The peasant class is closest to self-sacrifice: their very name shows that they are close to the Cross, if not always under it. However, their self-sacrifice is more external; The shepherd of the Church must try to cultivate inner selflessness in them. But all classes and conditions more or less bear the cross of self-sacrifice. “For,” says Fenelon, “God makes for people crosses of iron, straw, gold, which are equally painful for everyone. Just as a lead cross appears to a beggar, so gold or straw appears to a rich man. A beggar hopes to lighten his cross with the compassion of others, but a nobleman must fear consolation itself. While the world applauds the rich, God crucifies them in a significant way. How does selflessness begin? First, people seem to expose a person, deprive him of estates, honors and pleasures; and then God Himself sends experiences of inner self-sacrifice. Here our self is already suffering: arrows fly into the very center of our soul. Here the soul is not aware of anything of its own; here it is in the same state as the soul of Jesus Christ, “sorrowful unto death” (Mark 14:34). The last shirt here is taken off a person, and all the previous riches were not as expensive for a person as this shirt. Here the whole depth of the soul is revealed, all the abomination of sins, hitherto hidden under the flowers of pride, is exposed. The Lord does not leave the soul until He makes it flexible. She must remain silent whenever one word could justify her, - speak when it seems unnecessary to her; to stand at a height and fall down, to appear stupid when you would like to appear smart.” What's the best way to self-sacrifice? One is mental, which consists in when a person is convinced that sooner or later, everything needs to have self-sacrifice. How to do this? – Think about whether it is possible to live forever by your own will. If not, then it means that it must be agreed with the will of everyone - God. One devil tried to make his will the focus of the whole world. Another way is practical. The firmest belief in the need for self-sacrifice remains empty unless it is put into practice. If you want to eat, deny yourself; if you want to read a harmful book, refuse; if you want to drink, wait for half an hour, and then the will will pacify and become more obedient. There are good examples of this in Prolog. From the heritage of Adam, let us turn to the heritage of Jesus Christ - to love. Love is essential for a Christian. But there is a prejudice regarding it that is most harmful to life. What is love? We love visible and invisible things, such as people, things, truth and virtue. Does all this go to God? He is above all this. Therefore, love for Him should be above all. Consequently, as Kant says, we cannot have love for God. But shouldn’t we love Him? Why do we love Him least of all? In order to love, you need to see, but we do not see God. This is where the fraud comes from. Instead of God, they love what surrounds Him - the fragmented features of His image, and not Himself as He is, while one must love Him whole, as He appears in the whole world. And this is the love that aesthetics is looking for, selfless love, involuntarily amazing. How to move from love for the world to love for God? Man, even in the natural state, loves God in various objects of the world, but loves only His fragmented features; and therefore, in fact, he has not love, but hatred of God. In this case, he is proud, and he hates everything that is contrary to his pride. What is this, contrary to pride? God and all that is good. The transition from this love, or, more correctly, dislike, to true love is gradual. The middle of it is when a person both works for God and somewhat pleases himself, or works for God out of fear and necessity. When does love for God begin? When a person sees the perfection of God - ignoti nulla cupido. But it’s not science that helps here; love is born itself, without science. How can a person see the image of God when he has no image? The fragmented parts of the image of God in the world must be turned into one, into a whole picture. Therefore, the whole world and everything beautiful in it must come between God and man. And if science could be of any use to man; then precisely if they revealed to him the whole world from the side of its perfections, and showed that all these perfections of the world constitute only a drop in the ocean of the greatness of the Divine nature. Then a person would no longer love anything except God, just as someone who has seen Raphael’s paintings is no longer captivated by others. So, peace is the first means of acquiring love for God. Another remedy is Christianity. Here God revealed even more of His perfections, which can arouse love for Him. Jesus Christ contains all the perfections that can touch a person’s heart with love. Our heart loves its own kind. We do not see God, but Jesus Christ appears to us in the form of a man. But this love also passes through many degrees until it reaches that height where a person reaches self-forgetfulness, loves only for the sake of loving. Signs of love for God can be removed from earthly love. A lover loves things that remind him of the person he loves. In relation to love for God, such things are the world, people and the Holy Scriptures. With what pleasure and thirst do spouses, friends, parents from children or vice versa re-read mutual letters; with the same pleasure, a person who loves God rereads the word of God as a letter from His Heavenly Father. The thought of the presence of God is also a favorite thought for those who love God: a son is not burdened to think about his beloved father. A person who loves God is ready to endure everything for Him, to hate His enemies and be friends with those who love Him, just as a person who loves a person is ready for all this for him. Finally, we must arouse love for God with the best and simplest concepts about Him. It is often said that God is the purest, wisest, infinite Spirit, and the like. But can such concepts arouse love for God? The Apostle John gives the best concept of God when he says that “God is loving,” and love for Him includes love for one’s neighbor (1 John 4:16, 20). For after God there is nothing higher and better than man. Even love for lower creatures is not sinful, for the image of God is imprinted in them, and therefore, to rebel against this love means to rebel against God. You just need to give this love a good direction. With the renewal of man, the bonds of the flesh, the world and the devil fall away. This freedom was promised by Jesus Christ to the Jews (John 8:34–42). Having acquired it, a Christian fears God alone and no one else. He seems to be independent in the world. The renewed will of a person has the power to fulfill his desires and intentions. The natural will wants to seize everything for itself, it will never say: enough; but she is weak and cannot always achieve what she strives for. The renewed will desires little, but if it desires something, it can achieve it. She desires to serve her neighbors, and she does; desires to have a clear conscience, and has; in a word, she desires everything necessary, useful and accessible. The willpower of a regenerated person is visible from many places in Scripture (2 Cor. 10:5, Matt. 17:20, James 5:17, Eph. 6:12, Josh. 10:12, John 14:12). It manifested itself primarily in miracles that saints performed with prayer, and sometimes without it, even without consciousness or intention. This power is in some way natural to the soul of a regenerated person: everyone who is faithful, as a son of God, is, as it were, a miracle worker by nature. The final fruit of renewal is union with God. This is a subject that is scary to talk about without experiencing it. Where is the basis of this unity - in nature, or in grace? Grace serves to restore unity, and nature serves to restore unity. Man by nature must be one with God: in the world there must be one mind, one will, one consciousness. And now a person considers those moments to be blissful, in which he forgets himself and drowns in God. But this unity was dissolved through the fall. Man put himself at the center of everything. The same thing happened here as with the bush: both the fire and the bush were one; but the fire disappeared, but the bush remained. Therefore, Jesus Christ revealed what was in Adam, and even more, for Adam would have been perfect after the experience that was given to him, but which he could not endure; and Jesus Christ showed everything perfect that man must develop throughout all eternity. His union with us is both moral and physical, accomplished through the Eucharist. The proportion of separation from God in Adam and union with Him in Jesus Christ is correct. First God unites with the spirit of man (1 Cor. 6:17), then with the body (1 Cor. 6:19). On the part of God, Jesus Christ (John 14:20) is united with man - by His Divine nature (Col. 3:3) and humanity (Eph. 6:23). For as the humanity of Adam is distributed to all; so the humanity of Jesus Christ is given to everyone - through the Eucharist. And through Jesus Christ, God the Father and the Holy Spirit are united with man (John 14:23). Thus, sin caused an abundance of grace, did more to man than what was given to him in the person of Adam. Union with God is accomplished through Baptism and is completed through the holy life of a person. The means to this unity are self-sacrifice, love of God, and in general everything that pleases God. This subject, in the language of the apostle, is a mystery (Eph. 5:32), equal to the creation of man and his renewal. The Holy Scripture explains this matter by comparisons, firstly, of a branch with a tree: a dry branch is connected with a vine by the law of cohesion; secondly, the heads with the body (Eph. 1:22–23). The Church is the Body of Jesus Christ and even all humanity is His Body, for the Church must embrace all humanity: they must have a common movement and feeling. In the natural state of people, feelings are separated, so that when one suffers, the other rejoices; but it should be so that when one suffers, the other suffers with him, and vice versa - when one rejoices, the other would rejoice. Is this possible? Very. And now the thought of one soul is often repeated in another. This unity was often manifested in the souls of the saints, for they often knew the thoughts and feelings of others. Even ordinary people have this unity: the death of a friend or close relative sometimes brings pain and sadness to the soul of the most distant friend or relative. If our personality were destroyed in this unity, then we would be like mirrors, of which one transmits the object of a thousand other mirrors without changing its essence. Jesus Christ is the focus of this unity. Our current state, called natural, is the most unnatural. A split with God and with each other hangs on a tree like a dry branch, without drawing the juice out of it. Not only does man lack a sense of unity with God, but he even needs to prove the existence of God; This action will be tolerated for the time being, but there will be a time when these branches will fall away by themselves. Just as rotten members in the body fall away when the whole body becomes stronger, so in the Church rotten members only last for a while (the feeling of pain and sorrow of Jesus Christ Himself still holds them), but when the Church becomes a healthy body, they will fall away. What is the essence of a Christian’s unity with God? In the immersion of our consciousness in God, in the disintegration of the circle of our self, in oblivion of ourselves. Now the person says: “I’ll think about it,” “I’ll reconsider,” “I’ll do it.” And then he will say the opposite: “God will do everything,” but he will not even think about himself. The effects of this unity must be great. This unity will increase in eternity to all those perfections that were in Jesus Christ, with the exception of some of His special relationships, for example, Savior, Intercessor, and so on. This will happen, we say, in eternity. But even here on earth there were people to whom the Church adopted the name of God-bearing. This is the unity about which the Church sings and in which the entire Trinity Unity operates in sacred mystery. The fruits of this unity, according to the Holy Scriptures, are inexpressible joy, the peace of God, or peace that surpasses all understanding; for in God only the soul finds its peace. This is the essence of man and all creation, this is the only thing needed! But do even good people think about this? For the most part, people limit themselves only to the fulfillment of certain virtues and do not extend further. Unity with God is so high, so terrible, and man is so low, small and meager, that people seem ashamed to think and talk about him. But the Apostle had such, perhaps, unworthy disciples, but he boldly calls them what they should be (Eph. 3:6). How is the imagination renewed? It represents and lives in the invisible and eternal; uses pure, non-seductive comparisons; characterized by simplicity. So it is updated in both the view and the view image. Previously, we noticed how important the imagination is in the composition of the human spirit; but its importance is especially visible in holy people who live an inner life. Working on the imagination is exactly what is called smart doing. What tools are there for this work? First, the Presentation of the Death and Cross of Jesus Christ. Imprinted in the imagination, the Cross of Christ expels unclean images from there. It just needs to hit the soul hard. Secondly, the image of each person's death also cools the imagination. Everyone has experienced that at the grave he becomes morally better. Thirdly, prayer helps to renew the imagination, for it generally cleanses the soul. Renewal of the imagination is very necessary, for the connection of the soul with the visible world will one day be interrupted: what then will nourish the soul if not imagination? If it is unclean, then the soul will be unclean. A renewed memory forgets all its good things, but remembers only its vices: “I will take away my sin before me,” says David (Ps. 50:5). Sensual wishes are also updated. The body usually argues with the spirit. But when the spirit wins, then the body strives for God. “My soul thirsts for You, since my flesh multiplies for You,” says David (Ps. 62:2). Through frequent repetition of prayers, the spirit and body acquire the habit of prayer; and even if the spirit forgot about prayer, the body will remind it with the ability to bow. From here the body endures such fastings, such needs that the ascetics became higher than the Angels. Even people who live in luxury, but are renewed, make their flesh more moderate, spend less on their bodies, and so on. For example, great generals, ministers, and kings sometimes forgot the body for the needs of the soul. In such people the grossest needs of the body are sanctified; for whether they eat or drink, they are always with God, as if they receive food and drink from His hands. Therefore, when others move away from God, they draw closer to Him. But something miraculous even happens here. Pampered and luxurious people also love food that begins to spoil. Caligula loved the tufts of roosters, and isn’t this a sign of pride and majesty? Some people like to eat only certain organs of animals, and this shows the moral state of their soul. But saints eat milk, which expresses innocence, fruits, which express something moral, and the like. Therefore, only the brevity of life did not destroy their appetite; and if they had lived the life of Adam, then perhaps they would have reached the point of non-eating (there are even now examples that people can go without eating for several days; the air itself has nutrient particles and feeds them). The senses are also renewed; for their belly for sin is destroyed. The eye of a renewed man sees no evil; the ear does not hear anything rotten. In return for this, the saints had their inner eyes and ears opened, which are suppressed by our flesh. With these eyes Stephen saw Jesus Christ, Peter saw the shroud, Gehazi, Elisha's servant, saw the army. The body receives new temperaments, which are amazingly expressed by the members of the body of Christ, which is the Church. Sex is destroyed in renewal only on its bad side, and in heaven it will be completely destroyed. States and relationships are also renewed, for everywhere everyone builds up another with love. The very relationship between master and slave, which is clearly unnatural, is equalized by grace, so that the slave sometimes becomes a mentor to the master. So, Paul deliberately sent the runaway slave Onesimus to his master Philemon, and not only does not consider him a slave, but a beloved brother, older than Philemon himself (Phil. 1:16), since he is already more experienced in Christianity. Finally, Christianity renews everything around the Christian. For example, the attitude of a Christian towards animals is completely different from the attitude of a natural person. It is true that philosophy has prescribed a law regarding the treatment of animals; but she gave no incentive to fulfill her law. And for Christians this is very clear. Thus, Macarius of Alexandria healed a hyena puppy, and when she brought him the skin of the beast in gratitude, he forbade her to attack animals. The most soulless things surrounding a Christian take on a different appearance. Hence Pavlov's scarves themselves had the power of healing. We believe that the sick person's thing infects us; Why doesn’t a pure thing - a holy man - sanctify us? Why will evil be stronger than good? In the regenerated, as in the sinners, different conditions can be noticed. These states are for the most part opposite to the sinful states already known to us. Thus, the state of ignorance is replaced among the reborn with knowledge and dark faith (for some are led on a bright path, while others are led by blind faith). Carelessness gives way to spiritual wakefulness. Hypocrisy is opposed here to foolishness; self-delusion - humility or crying about sins; to despair - hope; to bitterness – softness, or some kind of tenderness. It is also possible to divide the moral states of the reborn according to the strength of the soul. There are people in whom, throughout their lives, predominantly feelings are expressed. The characteristics of these people are the same as those of ordinary people with feelings: abundance of love, simplicity, tenderness, sociability, and so on. Others predominantly have a bright, teaching mind. Some saints are not rich in feeling and intelligence; but they do a lot - they strive, they work. This is the positive side of the regenerated soul; but there were saints who were heralds of the terrible judgments of God, in which the violent side of human nature was perfected. So, Elijah waged war against evil all his life, and therefore was taken alive to heaven in a chariot of fire. Athanasius the Great, called Mlat, struggled with unbelief all his life. This is the negative side of the regenerated soul; here love seems to be hidden, and only anger and rage appear. Sometimes a Christian feels his perfection in the spirit, but at the same time he also feels the actions of the flesh; feels the perfection of his intentions, but also weakness in fulfilling them, and thus remains imperfect until the end of his life. Hence his abuse of his enemies. The first enemy is the flesh; but the stronger enemy is the spirit, for sometimes the flesh flees the battlefield, but the spirit remains. The second enemy is the devil, who acts mediocrely and directly. In the first case, he uses everything external; and in the latter he himself acts internally. So he attacks primarily those experienced in spiritual life, like Macarius, Anthony and others; to allow such an enemy to attack directly the infants in the faith would be terrible. How does it affect thoughts? Macarius once saw in church how the devil tempted the brethren with various ideas; and when he later asked the brethren what they were thinking about, it turned out that they were thinking precisely about those objects with which the devil tempted them, and which he seemed to depict before their eyes. Why does the devil attack a person? To satisfy your ego. What is this for? In order to, having gained control over man, use him as a means to master the whole world. The devil is clearly the opposite of Jesus Christ, and - how does He take possession of a person physically and morally; so he possesses a person not only morally, but also physically. From this point of view, man is an important prey for him, for he will remain his prey for all eternity. The leader of man in spiritual warfare is Jesus Christ, and after Him is the Guardian Angel, whom we very often forget; finally, the saints help us in battle with their example, their instructions, and their prayers. The weapons of spiritual warfare are described in detail by the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians (Eph. 6:11–17). First of all, “truth” is used; for the devil is the father of lies. Truth is the same truth, only in action. The world itself recognizes this weapon, for no enemies will approach this armor. The devil sows lies and enmity everywhere; and Christians must sow peace and harmony everywhere. The property of a shield is to reflect blows; and “faith” has the same property, for it looks into the distance - into the future, and lack of faith itself falls under the arrow. The “helmet of salvation” is the thought of salvation. Whoever has this constant thought, his head is, as it were, covered with a helmet. “The sword of the Spirit... is the word of God”; This sword was used by the Savior Himself when he struck the devil who tempted Him in the desert. But all this is only “equipment” for war, and the very way to wage war consists, firstly, in vigilance over oneself (1 Pet. 5:8). The devil never sleeps, and man must never sleep. Secondly, it is not to despise the enemy, no matter how small he may be. Thirdly, to avoid dangerous cases where you can lose something. Fourthly, in relationship with Jesus Christ through prayer and the word of God. What kind of war should be - defensive or offensive? Is it possible to go at the enemy even when he does not want to fight? The question is difficult. The Holy Scripture generally commands to fight, and the life of the ascetics shows that they waged an offensive war. Thus, Macarius of Alexandria deliberately went to famous places to fight with spirits and defeated them. But such a war can only be waged by experienced people; otherwise pride may suddenly be born, which is death for a Christian. Defeating enemies is possible for a Christian, but he should not be sad and embarrassed if he does not defeat them, for with this sadness he can provide new food for the devil. This war also requires effort, for without effort even the experienced ones fall. Thus, Macarius was once troubled by a thought that prompted him to go to Rome to cast out demons; noticing that this thought was from the evil one, he lay down with half of his body in the cell, and half outside it, and said to the spirits: “Draw me if you want, but I will not go.” For the most part, enemies (whom, as a rule, experienced warriors fight) manifest themselves in thoughts; and these enemies, in terrible moments, for example, during the consecration of the Mysteries at the liturgy, blaspheme. However, this is not charged to a Christian if these thoughts come against his will (see John Climacus on inexplicable thoughts). What is the means to complete victory? Self-sacrifice in all forms or eradication of pride in the soul. You can fight both privately (defeating every bad thought) and in general (eradicating pride). In the most difficult moments of battle, one must turn to God with Peter’s prayer: save me - I am perishing! The consequence of warfare should be growth in spiritual life. The Holy Scripture divides these ages into three types: infant, youth and man. The growth of the body itself guarantees their possibility. But aren't there even more ages? There must be; and if not here, then in the future life. Properties of ages, a) Spiritual infants have a desire to argue (1 Cor. 1:10), are subject to the weakness of being blown away (carried away) by “every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14). They love to read the word of God, to be present in church, in society with people experienced in spiritual life, in a word - like children, they always love to have milk in their mouths, and to be guided more by their feelings than by their minds. Therefore, now they adhere to this teaching, and tomorrow to another, and are ready to stretch out their hands to anything, even harmful ones. True, they do not forget Jesus Christ at all, like the children of their mother; but it is still bad if they stretch out their hand to any person or object that flatters them in some way. The Apostle Paul calls them carnal, for the feeling is close to the flesh; and in life they are carnal; love luxury. b) During adolescence, strength and meaning are learned. Young men already know their relationship to God and others, and feel the strength to fulfill their responsibilities and overcome obstacles along the way. What they most need is to fight and fall. The child does not fall because he is carried, the husband does not fall because he has already been tempted by long teaching; and the young man is constantly subject to falling. c) “Solid food” and knowledge to distinguish good from evil are appropriate for manhood (Heb. 5:12). The limit of spiritual life is the measure of the age of Jesus Christ - a measure that cannot be measured by anything. So, this limit is in the likeness of Jesus Christ; but what is this comparison? “That they may be one, just as we are,” says Jesus Christ (John 17:22). What is this unity? This limit is, says Climacus, if a Christian abstains from everything until famine, sacrifices his life for Jesus Christ, does not think anything about himself, but takes notice of the evil one and his tricks; for a royal diadem is not made from one stone. You can also divide the ages, firstly, into purification, for a sinner who turns to God is not pure; secondly, sanctification and, thirdly, union with God (see East Phil. about the part of the church). You can also create a division of ages on the basis that the love of the soul is directed towards the world. Therefore, she needs: a) a return to herself; b) staying within oneself, combined with active purification of oneself; c) connection with God. You might be interested in: