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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: hermitage, when he prayed for purity, humility, and love, and how
it seemed to him then that God heard his prayers. He had
retained his purity and had chopped off his finger. And he
lifted the shrivelled stump of that finger to his lips and kissed
it. It seemed to him now that he had been humble then when he
had always seemed loathsome to himself on account of his
sinfulness; and when he remembered the tender feelings with which
he had then met an old man who was bringing a drunken soldier to
him to ask alms; and how he had received HER, it seemed to him
that he had then possessed love also. But now? And he asked
himself whether he loved anyone, whether he loved Sofya Ivanovna,
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