Is the State justified, Christianly, in misleading the people, or in misleading their judgment as to what Christianity is?
When we talk of the merely human, and leave the divine (Christianity) out of account, the situation is this: the State is the highest instance of authority, it is humanly the highest authority.
The people as a whole and the individuals among them live therefore in the assurance that everything which bears a special mark of being legalized, sanctioned, authorized by the State, everything which in a monarchical state is marked "royal," is to be regarded as something more than the same thing without this adjective which by the intervention of the State provides an assurance (guarantee) that here is something one can rely upon, something one has to respect.
Thus it is the people live, and it is desirable that they should live in this assurance; for this serves to make quiet and tranquil subjects who place their trust confidently in the State. But then the people live in such a way that from morning to night the individual gets an impression of this, all his thinking is ingrafted with the notion of what is royal, what is authorized by the State. Even in the least important concerns this way of thinking intrudes; business and professional men think that by getting permission to use the adjective "royal" they count for more than those who do not have this adjective.
Let us now turn to Christianity. It is the divine, and that instance of the divine which precisely because it truly is the divine would not at any price be a kingdom of this world; on the contrary, it would that the Christian might venture life and blood to prevent it from becoming a kingdom of this world.
Nevertheless the State takes it upon itself to introduce 1000 royal functionaries under the guise of teachers of Christianity.
Christianly, how misleading! The people, as was said, live and breathe in the thought that what is royally authorized is something more, more than what is not royally authorized. Then the people apply the notion to this instance also, have more respect for a royally authorized teacher of Christianity than for one who is not that, and then again with regard to the royally authorized teachers they have more respect in proportion as they are distinguished by the State, have higher rank, more orders of knighthood, bigger incomes.
What a fundamental confusion! In the same sense as one speaks of murdering a language, this is murdering Christianity, turning it round about, standing it on its head, or in a polite fashion shuffling it out. Under the color of Christianity the people live as pagans!
No, inasmuch as Christianity is the antithesis to the kingdoms of this world, is heterogeneous, not to be royally authorized is the truer thing. So to be royally authorized may be more easy, comfortable, convenient..for the priest; but Christianly it is a discommendation, precisely in the degree that, according to the State's order of precedence, one is in a higher station, has more orders, a bigger income.