Church, says that the misfortunes of men come less from their ignorance of the true God than from their faith in false gods. This is equally true in regard to men's individual duties. Their misfortunes and crimes result not so much from igorance of real duty as from admitting false ideas of duty, and from not regarding as their sole duty that which is highest and most clearly established.
Bondareff affirms that the crimes and misfortunes of men result from their accepting as sacred duties precepts that are frivolous and hurtful, while they forget and conceal from themselves and others that which is incontestably the first and most important of duties, and which is contained in the first chapter of Holy Scripture: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou knead bread."[1]
- ↑ Tolstoï and Bondareff thus render this verse of Genesis as better expressing the idea of manual labor. It is usually translated, "In the sweat of thy face shalt shou eat bread." We give a passage translated by Reuss from the Hebrew text: "And the Eternal God said: Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shalt it bring forth to thee, and thou
was not its founder. (E. Strachlin, Encyclopedia of Religious Science.)
The best known of his works of that period, the Diatessaron, must have been a harmony of the four Gospels of which Eusebius speaks without having seen it. Tatian composed this to expunge from the canonical text the genealogies and other passages which make the Saviour belong to the race of David in the flesh.
