Page 1112 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new interpretation
of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground of
late in Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey Alexandrovitch
to believe in this teaching. Alexey Alexandrovitch, like

Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and others who shared their views,
was completely devoid of vividness of imagination, that
spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions evoked
by the imagination become so vivid that they must needs
be in harmony with other conceptions, and with actual
fact. He saw nothing impossible and inconceivable in the
idea that death, though existing for unbelievers, did not
exist for him, and that, as he was possessed of the most
perfect faith, of the measure of which he was himself the
judge, therefore there was no sin in his soul, and he was
experiencing complete salvation here on earth.
It is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of this
conception of his faith was dimly perceptible to Alexey
Alexandrovitch, and he knew that when, without the
slightest idea that his forgiveness was the action of a higher
power, he had surrendered directly to the feeling of
forgiveness, he had felt more happiness than now when he
was thinking every instant that Christ was in his heart, and
that in signing official papers he was doing His will. But
for Alexey Alexandrovitch it was a necessity to think in

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