Anna Karenina - Part 7

"But a man may feel himself unworthy sometimes to rise to that

height," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, conscious of hypocrisy in

admitting this religious height, but at the same time unable to

bring himself to acknowledge his free-thinking views before a

person who, by a single word to Pomorsky, might procure him the

coveted appointment.

"That is, you mean that sin keeps him back?" said Lidia Ivanovna.

"But that is a false idea. There is no sin for believers, their

sin has been atoned for. _Pardon,_" she added, looking at the

footman, who came in again with another letter. She read it and

gave a verbal answer: "Tomorrow at the Grand Duchess's, say."

"For the believer sin is not," she went on.

"Yes, but faith without works is dead," said Stepan Arkadyevitch,

recalling the phrase from the catechism, and only by his smile

clinging to his independence.

"There you have it--from the epistle of St. James," said Alexey

Alexandrovitch, addressing Lidia Ivanovna, with a certain

reproachfulness in his tone. It was unmistakably a subject they

had discussed more than once before. "What harm has been done by

the false interpretation of that passage! Nothing holds men back

from belief like that misinterpretation. 'I have not works, so I

cannot believe,' though all the while that is not said. But the

very opposite is said."

"Striving for God, saving the soul by fasting," said Countess

Lidia Ivanovna, with disgusted contempt, "those are the crude

ideas of our monks.... Yet that is nowhere said. It is far

simpler and easier," she added, looking at Oblonsky with the same

encouraging smile with which at court she encouraged youthful

maids of honor, disconcerted by the new surroundings of the

court.

"We are saved by Christ who suffered for us. We are saved by

faith," Alexey Alexandrovitch chimed in, with a glance of

approval at her words.

_"Vous comprenez l'anglais?"_ asked Lidia Ivanovna, and receiving

a reply in the affirmative, she got up and began looking through

a shelf of books.

"I want to read him 'Safe and Happy,' or 'Under the Wing,'" she

said, looking inquiringly at Karenin. And finding the book, and

sitting down again in her place, she opened it. "It's very

short. In it is described the way by which faith can be reached,

and the happiness, above all earthly bliss, with which it fills

the soul. The believer cannot be unhappy because he is not

alone. But you will see." She was just settling herself to read

when the footman came in again. "Madame Borozdina? Tell her,

tomorrow at two o'clock. Yes," she said, putting her finger in

the place in the book, and gazing before her with her fine

pensive eyes, "that is how true faith acts. You know Marie

Sanina? You know about her trouble? She lost her only child.

She was in despair. And what happened? She found this

comforter, and she thanks God now for the death of her child.

Such is the happiness faith brings!"