The Light Shines in Darkness

At a country estate, a family gathering turns into a fierce reckoning over faith, duty, and the cost of conscience. Nicholas Ivánovich Sarýntsov has abandoned conventional religion for a radical reading of the Gospels, alarming his wife Mary, her sister Alexandra, and the rest of the household with his reckless generosity, refusal to punish peasants, and indifference to property, military service, and social convention. His transformation, sparked by grief and illness, has led him to read the Gospels obsessively, consult clergy and hermits, and reject the Church's authority in favor of reason, conscience, and Christ's call to self-sacrifice. As relatives argue with him and a priest, the drama sharpens into a larger conflict between institutional religion and personal conviction, practical order and moral idealism. Meanwhile, Mary bears the strain of raising seven children alone, and the family's daily life continues amid telegrams, visitors, errands, and half-formed romantic possibilities. Nicholas's beliefs are tested in the village, where he confronts the brutal reality of peasant poverty and the human cost of a system built on labor, ownership, and inequality. What begins as a domestic dispute becomes a searching, emotionally charged drama about compassion, responsibility, and the struggle to live by truth. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.