That the task has a double direction
When Christianity came into the world the task was simply to proclaim Christianity. The same is the case wherever Christianity is introduced into a country the religion of which is not Christianity.
In "Christendom" the situation is a different one. What we have before us is not Christianity but a prodigious illusion, and the people are not pagans but live in the blissful conceit that they are Christians. So if in this situation Christianity is to be introduced, first of all the illusion must be disposed of. But since this vain conceit, this illusion, is to the effect that they are Christians, it looks indeed as if introducing Christianity were taking Christianity away from men. Nevertheless this is the first thing to do, the illusion must go.
This is the task; but the task has a double direction.
It is in the direction of seeing what can be done by way of clarifying men's concepts, teaching them, moving them by means of the ideals, bringing them by pathos into a state of suffering, stirring them up by the gadfly-sting of irony, derision, sarcasm, etc., etc.
There would be no further task, were it not that this illusion, the fact that men imagine they are Christians, is connected with an enormously big illusion which has a purely external side, the illusion that Christianity and State have been amalgamated, in the fact that the State introduces 1000 functionaries who by the instinct of self-preservation have an interest in not letting men learn to know what Christianity is and that they in fact are not Christians. For the very existence of these priests is an untruth. Being completely, secularized and in the service of the State (royal functionaries, persons of social position, making a career), they obviously could not very well tell the congregation what Christianity is, for to say this would mean resigning their posts.
Now this illusion is of a different sort from the first one mentioned which had to do with men's conceptions, the ensnarement of the individuals in the conceit that they were Christians. In the case of this latter illusion one must go to work in another fashion, for the State has the power to do away with it. This then is the other side of the task: to labor in the direction of getting the State to do away with it.
If I were to liken this task to anything, I would say that it resembles the therapeutic treatment of a psychic patient. One must work on psychic lines, says the physician; but it does not follow from this that there may be nothing to do physically.
From what is here set forth there ensues something I must urge upon the reader — and I hope he will bear with me if I do not do as authors commonly do, do not bow and scrape before the reader because I want his money and regard his judgment as the final judgment.
What I would urge upon the reader is, that he will not confine himself to reading the particular number of the Instant through, but as each number contains several articles, I urge him to make himself acquainted with the contents by a first cursory reading, and to read later each several article for itself.