What the echo answers
July 9.
Folios and folios have been written to show again and again how one is to recognize what true Christianity is.
This can be done in a far simpler way.
Nature is...acoustic. Only heed what the echo answers, and thou shalt know at once what is what.
So when in this world one preaches Christianity in such a way that the echo answers: "Glorious, profound, serious-minded Christian, thou shouldst be exalted to princely rank," etc., know then that this signifies his preaching of Christianity is, Christianly, a base lie. It is not absolutely certain that he who walks with fetters on his legs is a criminal, for there are instances when the civil magistrate has condemned an innocent man; but it is eternally certain that he who — by preaching Christianity! — wins all things earthly is a liar, a deceiver, who at one point or another has falsified the doctrine, which by God has been so designed, in such a militant relation to this world, that it is eternally impossible to preach what Christianity is in truth without having to suffer in this world, to be repudiated, hated, cursed.
When one preaches Christianity in such a way that the echo answers, "He is mad," know then that this signifies that there are considerable elements of truth in his preaching, without its being, however, the Christianity of the New Testament. He may have hit the mark; but presumably he does not press hard enough, either by his oral preaching or by the preaching of his life, so that, Christianly speaking, he glides over too easily, his preaching after all is not the Christianity of the New Testament.
But when one preaches Christianity in such a way that the echo answers, "Away with that man from the earth, he does not deserve to live," know then that this is the Christianity of the New Testament. Without change since the time of our Lord Jesus Christ, capital punishment is the penalty for preaching Christianity as it truly is: hating oneself to love God; hating oneself to hate everything in which one's life consists, everything to which one clings, for the sake of which one selfishly would desire to have God's aid to get it, or to console one that one did not get it, console one for the loss of it — without any change capital punishment is the penalty for preaching this in character. Preaching this in character; for if the preacher (doing what our age regards as the far greater thing) plays at being objective, so that his life expresses precisely the opposite of this, then we get forms of the interesting, and the interesting never arouses persecution; on the contrary, all characterlessness is pleasing to this world.
But the merit of "Christendom" is, that by the aid of the doctrine that Christianity is perfectible it has transformed Christianity into worldliness. This was the first lie: to transform Christianity into worldliness. The second lie then is: that the world has now become tolerant, has made progress, for the fact that persecution no longer takes place — the fact is that there is nothing to persecute.
Oh, yes, Christianity is perfectible! and it is steadily going forward! Christianity came into the world and found it lost in earthly desire and endeavor. Christianity then taught...renunciation. But, said "Christendom," Christianity is perfectible; we cannot stop here, renunciation is a moment of transition, we must go further, must go on...Hurrah for profit! What a refinement! Paganism was worldliness prior to renunciation; the worldliness of Christendom claims to be higher than renunciation, which it regards as one-sidedness.