vik, in Russia, the Nazarenes in
Austria, Condatier in France, Tervey in Holland, and others, having
placed as their object not external alterations of life, but the closest
fulfilment in themselves of the will of Him who has sent them into life,
will direct all their powers to this realization. Only such people
realizing the Kingdom of God in themselves, in their souls, will
establish, without directly aiming at this purpose, that external Kingdom
of God which every human soul is longing for.

Salvation will come to pass only in this one way and not in any other.
Therefore what is now being done by those who, ruling men, inspire them
with religious and patriotic superstitions, exciting in them
exclusiveness, hatred, and murder, as well as by those who, for the
purpose of freeing men from slavery and oppression, invoke them to
violent external revolution, or think that the acquisition by men of very
much incidental and for the most part unnecessary information will of
itself bring them to a good life--all this, by distracting men from what
alone they need, only removes them further from the possibility of
salvation.

The evil from which the men of the Christian world suffer is that they
have temporarily lost religion.

Some people, having come to see the discord between the existing religion
and the degree of mental and scientific development attained by humanity
at the present time, have decided that in general no religion whatever is
necessary. They live without religion and preach the uselessness of any
religion of whatever kind. Others, holding to that distorted form of the
Christian religion which is now preached, likewise live without religion,
professing empty external forms, which cannot serve as guidance for men.

Yet a religion which answers to the demands of our time does exist and is
known to all men, and in a latent state lives in the hearts of men of the
Christian world. Therefore that this religion should become evident to
and binding upon all men, it is only necessary that educated men--the
leaders of the masses--should understand that religion is necessary to
man, that without religion men cannot live a good life, and that what
they call science cannot replace religion; and that those in power and
who support the old empty forms of religion should understand that what
they support and preach under the form of religion is not only not
religion, but is the chief obstacle to men's appropriating the true