he began by studying the doctrine of the Orthodox Church, of which he was a member.[1] In order to become more intimately a part of that body he submitted for three years to all its ceremonies; confessing himself, communicating; not presuming to judge such matters as shocked him, inventing explanations for what he found obscure or incomprehensible, uniting himself, through and in their faith, with all those whom he loved, whether living or dead, and always cherishing the hope that at a certain moment “love would open to him the gates of truth.” But it was all useless: his reason and his heart revolted. Such ceremonies as baptism and communion appeared to him scandalous. When he was forced to repeat that the host was the true body and true blood of Christ, “he felt as though a knife were plunged into his heart.” But it was not the dogmas which raised between the Church and himself an insurmountable wall, but the practical questions, and in especial two: the hateful and mutual intolerance of the Churches[2] and the sanction, formal or tacit, of homicide: of war and of capital punishment.
So he broke loose, and the rupture was the more violent in that for three years he had suppressed his faculty of thought. He walked delicately no
