Short and sharp
1.
Christianity is capable of being perfected (it is perfectible) ; it advances; now perfection has been attained. What was striven after as the ideal, but which even the first age could only approximately attain, the ideal that the Christians are a nation of priests, that has now been perfectly attained, especially in Protestantism, more especially in Denmark.
That is to say, in case what we call a priest is what it really is to be a priest...then we are all priests.
2.
In the magnificent cathedral the Honorable and Right Reverend Geheime-General-Ober-Hof-Prädikant, the elect favorite of the fashionable world, appears before an elect company and preaches with emotion upon the text he himself elected: "God hath elected the base things of the world, and the things that are despised" — and nobody laughs.
3.
When a man has a toothache the world says, "Poor man"; when a man's wife is unfaithful to him the world says, "Poor man"; when a man is in financial embarrassment the world says, "Poor man" — when it pleased God in the form of a lowly servant to suffer in this world the world says, "Poor man"; when an Apostle with a divine commission has the honor to suffer for the truth the world says, "Poor man" ——poor world!
4.
"Had the Apostle Paul any official position?" No, Paul had no official position. "Did he then earn much money in other ways?" No, he didn't earn money in any way. "Was he at least married?" No, he was not married. "But then really Paul is not a serious man." No, Paul is not a serious man.
5.
It is related of a Swedish priest35 that, profoundly disturbed by the sight of the effect his address produced upon the auditors, who were dissolved in tears, he said soothingly, "Children, do not weep; the whole thing might be a lie."
Why does the priest say that no more? No need to, we know it — we're all priests.
But in spite of that we well may weep; both his and our tears may be in no way hypocritical, but well-meaning, genuinc.as in the theater.
6.
When paganism was in dissolution there were a lot of priests, called augurs. Of them it is reported that one augur could not look at another without smiling.36
In "Christendom" before long no one can see a priest, or indeed no man look at another, without smiling — but indeed we are all of us priests, too.
7.
Is this the same teaching, when Christ says to the rich young man, "Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the poor"; and when the priest says, "Sell all that thou hast and...give it to me"?
8.
Geniuses are like a thunderstorm:37 they go against the wind, terrify people, cleanse the air.
The Established Church has invented sundry lightning-conductors.
And it succeeded. Yes indeed, it suceeded; it succeeded in making the next thunderstorm all the more serious.
9.
One cannot live off of nothing. This one hears so often, especially from priests.
And precisely the priests perform this trick: Christianity actually does not exist — yet they live off of it.
Translator's Footnote
35In the fifteenth century this story was told of a friar at Naples, who on Good Friday had harrowed the congregation by his description of the Lord's Passion, and seeing them in tears had tried to comfort them by the reflection that "all this was a long time ago, so let us hope it is not true."
36Cicero (De divinatione, ii, 24, 51) recalls a saying of Cato the Elder, that he could not understand how the haruspes (priests who followed the Etruscan tradition of divining the future by inspecting the entrails of slain beasts) could look at one another without smiling.
37This is what he affirmed in criticizing Hans Christian Andersen's book for representing that genius was a delicate thing which must be coddled.