Lördagsord (igen) av Tolstoj

One of the reasons is, that believers as well as unbelievers are perfectly sure that they long ago understood the doctrine of Christ so completely, unquestionably and finally, that it can have no other meaning but the one which they attribute to it. That is because the tradition of this false conception has been handed down for ages - and therefore its misconception.

The most powerful stream of water cannot add one single drop to a vessel that is already full. 

 [...]

At the present time Christianity is conceived by those who profess the doctrines of the Church as a supernatural, miraculous revelation of all that is expressed in the Credo; while unbelievers look upon it as an affair of the past, a manifestation of the demand of humanity for a belief in the supernatural, as an historical fact, which has found its fullest expression in Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism, and which has for us no vital meaning. For the believers the real significance of the doctrine is concealed by the Church; for the unbelievers it is hidden by science.