True Christians / Many Christians
The interest of Christianity, what it wants, is — true Christians.
The egoism of the priesthood, both for pecuniary advantage and for the sake of power, stands in relation to — many Christians.
"And that's very easily done, it's nothing at all: let's get hold of the children, then each child is given a drop of water on the head — then he is a Christian. If a portion of them don't even get their drop, it comes to the same thing, if only they imagine they got it, and imagine consequently that they are Christians. So in a very short time we have more Christians than there are herring in the herring season, Christians by the millions, and then, by the power of money as well, we are the greatest power the world has ever seen. That thing about eternity is definitely the cleverest of all inventions, when it gets into the right hands, the hands of practical people; for the Founder, unpractical as he was, had a wrong notion of what Christianity is."
No, rather than this let us stick to what by comparison is angelic purity, though the State punishes it with the penitentiary; let us stick to enriching ourselves by counterfeiting the custom-house stamps or by using abusively the marks of celebrated factories! But to become a power and to win the earthly by the use of a false label with reference to that which was served by suffering unto the end, to the utmost, to the point of being forsaken by God, to use a false label with reference to that cause which He in dying upon the cross entrusted to human honesty evinced by imitation, and then to do this unmoved by the thought that it was Love which suffered, and Love which in dying entrusted its cause to human honesty, and unmoved by the thought that there would be millions of men who in this way would be swindled out of the highest and holiest, would be swindled by being made to believe that they were Christians. No, this is horrible. It is true, generally speaking, that the greatness of a crime, its meanness, its wide ramifications, inflames the policeman, gives him increased zeal; but there is a limit, and if the crime exceeds that, the policeman may well have the experience, like a man in a swoon, of grasping for something to support him, desiring to escape and find in tears relief from what he had never before experienced.
So then this accounts for the millions of Christians, the Christian states, kingdoms, lands, a Christian world. But this is only the first half of the criminal story; we come now to the refinement. The refinement is unique in its genre, altogether without analogy; for those who enrich themselves by counterfeiting the custom-house stamps or the marks of celebrated factories at least do not lay claim to be regarded as the most faithful friends of the custom-house or of those factories. This is reserved to the Christian counterfeiters. That zeal, the zeal of egoism, for making many Christians in a way which is precisely the most repugnant to Christianity in its inmost heart, that zeal is bedizened as true Christian zeal and jealously for the spread of the doctrine, as though it were Christianity one were serving in this way and not rather Christianity one was betraying by serving oneself. Nevertheless this egoistic zeal was by falsification stamped as Christian zeal, these counterfeiters claimed to be regarded as the most faithful friends of Christianity. And those unfortunate millions who were cheated out of their money and misused as a physical power, while as a recompense they were cheated out of the eternal by being put off with some sort of galimatias — these millions worshiped and adored the Christian counterfeiters as the true servants of Christianity.
There are pranks of a child, a boy, which are punished by a box on the ear; and it would be pronounced madness if for such a prank the father or teacher were to require the child to be punished by a sentence to the penitentiary for life. On the other hand, in the case of crimes which the State reasonably punishes by a life sentence to the penitentiary, it would be pronounced madness to think that they would be expiated by a box on the ear. But what we never hear a word about in our days, in these Christian states and lands, where all priests are witnesses to the truth, is that there are crimes with respect to which (on other grounds than in the case of the child) it would be a sort of madness to apply the punishment of the penitentiary for life, because here again the punishment would bear no proportion to the crime. The longer I live, the clearer it becomes to me that the real crimes are not punished in this world. The child's prank is punished; but that after all is not really a crime. The State punishes crimes; but the real crimes, in comparison with which the crimes the State punishes can hardly be called crimes, are not punished... in Time.