The Wenatchee daily world. [volume] (Wenatchee, Wash.) 1905-1971, 1910-11-24
Peter McGill Gives Reasons
for Russian Love of
Great Writer.

The great Russian, Tolstoy, passed
away Tuesday. with these words of
self-abnegation upon his lips:
There are millions of people suf-
fering every moment, why waste so
much sympathy upon me?"
This was the last utterance of
this star-souled man of genius, and
it helps to explain his lofty charac-
| ter
Tolstoy was a real Christian. In
stead of babbling about Christianity
| he sought 10 make the precepts of
| Christ a living, actual vital force in
the affairs of men. Instead of pratt
Ting about the sermon on the Mount
and apologizing for it he really be-
| lieved in it. Instead of transform
! ing the stern metaphor of the rich
man and the camel and the needle S
eye into pretty little flower of
| Eastern speech, he accepted it as an
everlasting truth. Not that he was
| opposed 10 wealth acquired by indus
| try and the expenditure of energy in
Il condition Of economic freedom
he was no more opposed to wealth
SO acquired than was his Master.
Eut he was unalterably opposed to
unearned wealth-to the wealth that
| IS acquired in the sweat of some
! fellow mans face. And against all
| institutions and lesalized forms OF
plumber that automatically enrich
one man at the expense of other
men. he turned all the forces of his
marvellous genius, all the batteries
/ of his righteous scorn and indigna-
| ton. Because his church and the
church of his fathers sought to turn,
and did turn, the forms and express
sions of religion into props and bull
warks of tyranny; and perverted
even the name and teachings of the
| Carpenters Son into supports of So
cial njustice-used that great name
! and these lofty teachings to safe
guard the pomp of Cease" and JUS
tify the greed of Dives-he openly
opposed the church. For this he
was communicated. But the
churches are queer institutions and
do remarkable things when the
rights of humanity happen to run
counter to the rights of property.
Maybe some of my good clerical
friends can explain this.
Ignorant and flippant editorial
writer's on powerful metropolitan
journals have ridiculed this great
man. High salaried clergymen who
can see nothing but the plumage and
always forget the dying bird. have
denounced him to fashionable con-
gregations as "a fomentor of disorder,
yet they neither weakened his influ-
ence nor checked the spread of his
lofty doctrines. Such Is the power
of truth. &
What then did he stand for? For
the rights of humanity as against
the alleged rights of special privi-
| lege. He did not believe. that the
machinery of government should be
! directed to enable9t the strong to heap
up wealth so much as to preventing
the weak from being crowded to the
wall. At every point he sought to
restrain the selfish greed that every
where, If left unchecked will differ
entiate men into lord and serf; mill
lionaire and tramp, master and I'M
| derpaid hireling. He believed in a
God of the living as well as of the
dead-a god of the market-place as
we'll as of ,the fashionable church;
God whose judgments wait not
another world for execution. but
where His immutable DEGREES will,
in this life, give happiness to those
that heed them and bring misery
upon those that ignore them. He
taught that the actions of men bear
fruit in this world, that though on