Work tirelessly. If, as you are going to sleep at night, you remember: “I did not do what I ought to have done,” arise at once and do it. If you are surrounded by spiteful and callous people who do not want to listen to you, fall down before them and ask their forgiveness, for the guilt is yours, too, that they do not want to listen to you. And if you cannot speak with the embittered, serve them silently and in humility, never losing hope. And if everyone abandons you and drives you out by force, then, when you are left alone, fall down on the earth and kiss it and water it with your tears, and the earth will bring forth fruit from your tears, even though no one has seen or heard you in your solitude. Have faith to the end, even if it should happen that all on earth are corrupted and you alone remain faithful: make your offering even so, and praise God, you who are the only one left. And if there are two of you who come together thus, there is already a whole world, a world of living love; embrace each other in tenderness and give praise to the Lord: for his truth has been made full, if only in the two of you.

If you yourself have sinned, and are sorrowful even unto death for your sins, or for your sudden sin, rejoice for the other, rejoice for the righteous one, rejoice that though you have sinned, he still is righteous and has not sinned.

If the wickedness of people arouses indignation and insurmountable grief in you, to the point that you desire to revenge yourself upon the wicked, fear that feeling most of all; go at once and seek torments for yourself, as if you yourself were guilty of their wickedness. Take these torments upon yourself and suffer them, and your heart will be eased, and you will understand that you, too, are guilty, for you might have shone to the wicked, even like the only sinless One,^[218] but you did not. If you had shone, your light would have lighted the way for others, and the one who did wickedness would perhaps not have done so in your light. And even if you do shine, but see that people are not saved even with your light, remain steadfast, and do not doubt the power of the heavenly light; believe that if they are not saved now, they will be saved later. And if they are not saved, their sons will be saved, for your light will not die, even when you are dead. The righteous man departs, but his light remains. People are always saved after the death of him who saved them. The generation of men does not welcome its prophets and kills them, but men love their martyrs and venerate those they have tortured to death. Your work is for the whole, your deed is for the future. Never seek a reward, for great is your reward on earth without that: your spiritual joy, which only the righteous obtain. Nor should you fear the noble and powerful, but be wise and ever gracious. Know measure, know the time, learn these things. When you are alone, pray. Love to throw yourself down on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it, tirelessly, insatiably, love all men, love all things, seek this rapture and ecstasy. Water the earth with the tears of your joy, and love those tears. Do not be ashamed of this ecstasy, treasure it, for it is a gift from God, a great gift, and it is not given to many, but to those who are chosen.

(i) Of Hell and Hell Fire: A Mystical Discourse

Fathers and teachers, I ask myself: “What is hell?” And I answer thus: “The suffering of being no longer able to love.”^[219] Once in infinite existence, measured neither by time nor by space, a certain spiritual being, through his appearance on earth, was granted the ability to say to himself: “I am and I love.” Once, once only, he was given a moment of active, living love, and for that he was given earthly life with its times and seasons. And what then? This fortunate being rejected the invaluable gift, did not value it, did not love it, looked upon it with scorn, and was left unmoved by it. This being, having departed the earth, sees Abraham’s bosom, and talks with Abraham, as is shown us in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus,^[220] and he beholds paradise, and could rise up to the Lord, but his torment is precisely to rise up to the Lord without having loved, to touch those who loved him—him who disdained their love. For he sees clearly and says to himself: “Now I have knowledge, and though I thirst to love, there will be no great deed in my love, no sacrifice, for my earthly life is over, and Abraham will not come with a drop of living water ( that is, with a renewed gift of the former life, earthly and active) to cool the flame of the thirst for spiritual love that is burning me now, since I scorned it on earth; life is over, and time will be no more!^[221] Though I would gladly give my life for others, it is not possible now, for the life I could have sacrificed for love is gone, and there is now an abyss between that life and this existence.” People speak of the material flames of hell. I do not explore this mystery, and I fear it, but I think that if there were material flames, truly people would be glad to have them, for, as I fancy, in material torment they might forget, at least for a moment, their far more terrible spiritual torment. And yet it is impossible to take this spiritual torment from them, for this torment is not external but is within them. And were it possible to take it from them, then, I think, their unhappiness would be even greater because of it. For though the righteous would forgive them from paradise, seeing their torments, and call them to themselves, loving them boundlessly, they would thereby only increase their torments, for they would arouse in them an even stronger flame of thirst for reciprocal, active, and grateful love, which is no longer possible. Nevertheless, in the timidity of my heart I think that the very awareness of this impossibility would serve in the end to relieve them, for, having accepted the love of the righteous together with the impossibility of requiting it, in this obedience and act of humility they would attain at last to a certain image, as it were, of the active love they scorned on earth, and an action somewhat similar to it ... I regret, my brothers and friends, that I cannot express it clearly. But woe to those who have destroyed themselves on earth, woe to the suicides! I think there can be no one unhappier than they. We are told that it is a sin to pray to God for them, and outwardly the Church rejects them, as it were, but in the secret of my soul I think that one may pray for them as well.^[222]Christ will not be angered by love. Within myself, all my life, I have prayed for them, I confess it to you, fathers and teachers, and still pray every day.

Oh, there are those who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite of their certain knowledge and contemplation of irrefutable truth; there are terrible ones, wholly in communion with Satan and his proud spirit. For them hell is voluntary and insatiable, they are sufferers by their own will. For they have cursed themselves by cursing God and life. They feed on their wicked pride, as if a hungry man in the desert were to start sucking his own blood from his body.^[223] But they are insatiable unto ages of ages, and reject forgiveness, and curse God who calls to them. They cannot look upon the living God without hatred, and demand that there be no God of life, that God destroy himself and all his creation. And they will burn eternally in the fire of their wrath, thirsting for death and nonexistence. But they will not find death. . .

Here ends the manuscript of Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov. I repeat: it is incomplete and fragmentary. The biographical information, for example, embraces only the elder’s early youth. From his homilies and opinions, much that had apparently been said at different times and for various reasons is brought together, as if into a single whole. What was said by the elder in those last hours proper of his life is not all precisely outlined, but only a notion is given of the spirit and nature of that conversation as compared with what Alexei Fyodorovich’s manuscript contains from earlier homilies. The elder’s death indeed came quite unexpectedly. For though all who had gathered around him on that last evening fully realized that his death was near, still it was impossible to imagine that it would come so suddenly; on the contrary, his friends, as I have already observed, seeing him apparently so cheerful and talkative that night, were even convinced that there had been a noticeable improvement in his health, be it only for a short time. Even five minutes before the end, as they told later with surprise, it was impossible to foresee anything. He suddenly seemed to feel a most acute pain in his chest, turned pale, and pressed his hands firmly to his heart. They all rose from their seats and rushed towards him; but he—suffering, but still looking at them with a smile—silently lowered himself from his armchair to the floor and knelt, then bowed down with his face to the ground, stretched out his arms, and, as if in joyful ecstasy, kissing the earth and praying (as he himself taught), quietly and joyfully gave up his soul to God. The news of his death spread immediately through the hermitage and reached the monastery. Those closest to the newly departed, and those whose duty it was by rank, began to prepare his body according to the ancient rite, and all the brothers gathered in the church. And still before dawn, as rumor later had it, the news about the newly departed reached town. By morning almost the whole town was talking of the event, and a multitude of townspeople poured into the monastery. But we shall speak of that in the next book, and here shall only add beforehand that the day was not yet over when something occurred that was so unexpected for everyone, and so strange, disturbing, and bewildering, as it were, from the impression it made within the monastery and in town, that even now, after so many years, a very vivid memory of that day, so disturbing for many, is still preserved in our town . . .