Understanding the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Leo Tolstoy

Selections from four major compositions, along with a biography and analysis, provide the reader Leo Tolstoy’s Christian humanist philosophy, from children to adults, and a History of the Tolstoyan Movement. CHRIST’S TEACHING FOR CHILDREN, Tolstoy wanted a Sunday School level summary of the Gospels in a lesson by lesson forma,.to be taught at his school for the peasant children at Yasnaya Polyana. The Gospels are covered in chronological order into 52 chapters, one chapter per week to be studied over the year. A PATH FOR LIFE, intended for adults. He discusses the sins and temptations of a person’s individual life, those of family, society and state, and the means to restore it to correlate with Christ’s teaching, and for goodness and benevolence to reign. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING is more personal in nature. He deals with Russian religion, society and state, and proposes a return to the Gospel to cure all of the ills that plague it. ABOUT LIFE discussed human nature and a person's dilemma in the search for a spiritual life. These compositions were composed over the final years of his life and provide a summary of the Gospel and its application as a resolution for all of life’s issues. The volume concludes with some of Tolstoy’s aphorisms from his other compositions, and a History of the Tolstoyan Movement.