at the sky. It had grown very dark, and there was not a cloud in the south where he was looking. The clouds were all in the opposite quarter. From time to time it would lighten, and the distant thunder would be heard. Levin listened to the drops of rain falling rhythmically from the lindens, and looked at the stars and then at the Milky Way. Whenever the lightning flashed, then not only the Milky Way but also the bright stars would disappear from his vision; but by the time the thunder sounded they would reappear in their places as if a careful hand had readjusted them in the firmament.
"Well, now what is it that troubles me?" Levin asked himself, already beginning to feel that a resolution of his doubts, though it had not yet become a matter of knowledge, was ready in his soul.
"Yes, there is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which are made known to the world through Revelation, and of which I am conscious as existing in myself, and in the recognition of them I am in spite of myself, willingly or unwillingly, united with other men into one brotherhood of believers, which is called the Church.
"Yes; but are Hebrews, Confucians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, in the same relation?" he asked himself, recurring to the dilemma which had seemed so portentous to him. "Can these hundreds of millions of men be deprived of the greatest of blessings, of that which alone gives a meaning to life?"
He paused, but immediately recovered his train of thought.
"What am I asking myself?"
"I am questioning the relation of the various forms of human belief to Divinity. I am questioning the relation of God to the whole universe, with all its nebulae. But what am I doing? And at the moment when knowledge, sure, though inaccessible to reason, is revealed to me, shall I still persist in dragging in logic?"
"Do I not know that the stars do not move?" said he, noticing the change that had taken place in the position
