The third (Matt. 33-37), that man should never bind himself by oath.

The fourth (Matt. 38-42), that man should not only not demand an eye for an eye, but when struck on one cheek should hold out the other, should forgive an offence and bear it humbly, and never refuse the service others demand of him.

The fifth (Matt. 43-48), that man should not only not hate his enemy and not fight him, but love him, help him, serve him.

Nekhludoff sat staring at the lamp and his heart stood still.  Recalling the monstrous confusion of the life we lead, he distinctly saw what that life could be if men were brought up to obey these rules, and rapture such as he had long not felt filled his soul, just as if after long days of weariness and suffering he had suddenly found ease and freedom.

He did not sleep all night, and as it happens to many and many a man who reads the Gospels he understood for the first time the full meaning of the words read so often before but passed by unnoticed.  He imbibed all these necessary, important and joyful revelations as a sponge imbibes water.  And all he read seemed so familiar and seemed to confirm, to form into a conception, what he had known long ago, but had never realised and never quite believed.  Now he realised and believed it, and not only realised and believed that if men would obey these laws they would obtain the highest blessing they can attain to, he also realised and believed that the only duty of every man is to fulfil these laws; that in this lies the only reasonable meaning of life, that every stepping aside from these laws is a mistake which is immediately followed by retribution.  This flowed from the whole of the teaching, and was most strongly and clearly illustrated in the parable of the vineyard.

The husbandman imagined that the vineyard in which they were sent to work for their master was their own, that all that was in was made for them, and that their business was to enjoy life in this vineyard, forgetting the Master and killing all those who reminded them of his existence.  “Are we do not doing the same,” Nekhludoff thought, “when we imagine ourselves to be masters of our lives, and that life is given us for enjoyment?  This evidently is an incongruity.  We were sent here by some one’s will and for some reason.  And we have concluded that we live only for our own joy, and of course we feel unhappy as labourers do when not fulfilling their Master’s orders.  The Master’s will is expressed in these commandments.  If men will only fulfil these laws, the Kingdom of Heaven will be established on earth, and men will receive the greatest good that they can attain to.

“’Seek ye first the Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’

“And so here it is, the business of my life.  Scarcely have I finished one and another has commenced.”  And a perfectly new life dawned that night for Nekhludoff, not because he had entered into new conditions of life, but because everything he did after that night had a new and quite different significance than before.  How this new period of his life will end time alone will prove.