There Are Two Gods
[Boston]: Firefly Press, 2009. Broadside (16 by 12 inches), single leaf of wove paper with a deckled edge, printed in red-and-black. Gentle curl to lower right corner. Fine. Item #1672
"THE GOD WHOM PEOPLE FORGET—THE GOD WHOM WE ALL HAVE TO SERVE—EXISTS AND IS THE PRIME CAUSE OF OUR EXISTENCE AND OF ALL THAT WE PERCEIVE"
"There are Two Gods"—a broadside quotation of Leo Tolstoy—one of 100 copies printed at the Firefly Press for an Arts-and-Crafts Show at Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"There are two Gods, there is the God that people generally believe in — a God who has to serve them. This God does not exist. But the God whom people forget — the God whom we all have to serve — exists and is the prime cause of our existence and of all that we perceive."
In his middle years, Tolstoy withdrew for a time from writing novels and devoted himself to an effort to find the meaning of life. His writings on Christian ethics from this period "deserve a permanent, if humble place in the religious literature of mankind. Whereas men are accustomed to believe that Christ came to bless their personal lives, Tolstoy writes, the fact is that Christ tells us that our personal lives cannot be saved. Man must have a faith to live by, yet there are, says Tolstoy, two rival faiths. One is faith in the possibility of personal life, both here and hereafter. This is the faith professed by the Church and the secular culture, in spite of what the world's wisest men have said about the vanity of this way of life. The other faith starts with the recognition that our personal lives are perishable and demands that, forsaking our illusory goals, we obey the will of God and devote ourselves to the well-being of humanity. This is the faith Christ taught" (Frank N. Magill).
This "occasional" broadside was printed by John Kristensen in Perpetua type for the "Art on the Pews" crafts show at Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in November 2009. "Though trained as an architectural historian, John Kristensen found his calling in printing and has for more than 30 years been the proprietor of Boston’s Firefly Press, a commercial letterpress printing office and type foundry, the goal of which has been to apply the craft of true letterpress printing and the virtues of traditional typography to the needs and circumstances of the present day. His work has led him to study and his study to teaching, his chief interest being Boston and New England printing and printers of the turn of the twentieth century. He calls himself 'the world’s last D.B. Updike wannabee'" (rarebookschool.org). See Leo Tolstoy. A Confession; The Gospel in Brief'; and What I Believe (1961); Frank N. Magill. Masterpieces of Christian Literature.
Price: $50.00