DIVINE AND HUMAN: And Other Stories.(Review)(Brief Article)

LEO TOLSTOY, TRANS. BY PETER SEKIRIN, FOREWORD BY ALEXANDER NIKOLIUKIN. Zondervan, $19.99 (208p) ISBN 0-310-22367-9

These 16 selections from Tolstoy's final eclectic collection of tales titled The Sunday Reading Stories represent the Russian novelist's turn away from the troubling human condition in Anna Karenina toward a growing pre-occupation with moral issues. Some are brief vignettes, like "The Archangel Gabriel," "The Repentant Sinner" and "The Son of a Thief," in which a prospective juror disqualifies himself because be cannot sit in judgment on a thief when his own father committed the same crime. Several of the stories are adaptations-- "Stones," from a fable …