Excerpt from The Greater Parables of Tolstoy: With Interpretations as Told to His Congregation

After the manner of the Galilean and his learners, the preacher gave these Parables and Interpretations to his congregation, on successive Sunday evenings, substantially as afterwards written out and here printed. He offers them now as one suggestion towards that stronger and wider use of its opportunities the modern pulpit is feeling after.

How far they express the preacher's own views does not concern the present purpose, which is to accurately condense and faithfully expound the stories. He has taken no liberties with his author, but whilst compelled to entirely pass over multitudes of incidents, he has stated and summarised the most important with painstaking fidelity, and adhered with absolute veracity to the course of the narratives. Neither has he wilfully tampered with his authors message, but, scrupulously ignoring the assents or dissents of his own mind, has anxiously endeavoured to set forth the ideas he believed to be in the mind of Tolstoy. The interpreter is less likely to have misled his readers, since he has for many years been a sympathetic student of, and in general agreement with, the writings of the greatest of modern Christians.

It is with the greater boldness, therefore, that as a summary of Tolstoy's social and ethical ideas, and as a simple and beguiling introduction to the voluminous writings themselves, the preacher offers these Parables and their Interpretations.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.