Thus the case stands
May 31, 1855.
The one party is a man who by his activity as an author through many years, and by his whole existence as a public personality, gives assurance (guarantees) of being, as not many are, perhaps as no other in this land is, justified in having a word to say about what Christianity is.
The other party is the clergy, which at first was voluble enough, so long as it was a question of this easy thing of taking advantage of the circumstance that there was a deceased man who had to be talked about in order to stir up womankind and children by funeral declamations; but thereupon, when the matter became serious, preserved in print the profoundest silence, but (with the courage of witnesses to the truth) is perhaps in secret all the more chatty.
The attack upon me — for the benefit of the "witnesses to the truth," whose silence is thereby made thoroughly manifest — is conducted by the Copenhagen Post and the Flying Post;65 and the point, the deadly sting, of their attack is that I am called..."Søren."
Only one thing now is lacking, that as a witness to the truth Bishop Martensen too might (if there should be another rumpus, so that the Bishop, "like the boys on New Year's Eve, might think that he saw his chance"66) write an article against me, making the point that I am called "Søren." Then I must sink down, succumb before this power of the truth, which in vain I should strive to resist; for the truth is, my name is Søren.
Beloved Father of mine deceased, to think that thou shouldst become my misfortune! Viewed ideally, I have conquered; I deserved to — but my name is Søren.
But I shall put up with it — O my God, "gladly and thankfully" — put up with the bad temper of impotence. But it is another question whether the Danish people is well served by this labor to make it ridiculous, ridiculous in the eyes of every other nation which learns to know that this is a people among which the only argument used against mind and spirit is...that a man is called "Søren."
So I repeat: "This must be said: by ceasing to take part (if usually thou dost) in the public worship of God, as it now is, thou hast constantly one guilt the less, and that a great one." Whoever thou art, beware; thou surely wilt not come into eternity, if thou dost not take the matter of religion more seriously than by contenting thyself with an optical illusion as thy divine worship and taking part in treating God as a fool. Not for the sake of this life do we have religion, in order to get through this life happily and well, but it is for the sake of the other life. In this other life lies the seriousness of religion. And from the other world is addressed to thee as well as to me the Word of God: "Be not deceived, God will not sjuffer Himself to be mocked." No, He will not suffer Himself to be mocked, He will not endure eternally what He does not by His omnipotence prevent from occurring in time, that under the name of divine worship men get exactly the opposite from that which Christianity is in the New Testament. And the fact that this has come about slowly and sneakingly in the lapse of centuries may excuse but it will not help thee. Above all then, let not thyself be deluded by the priests. Believe me, or merely look an instant, impartially, at the New Testament, and thou wilt see that Christianity did not come into the world in order to assure the priests of a flourishing and agreeable business as their livelihood, and to tranquillize thee in thy natural state; but that, with the renunciation of all things, it came into the world in order by the terrors of eternity to tear thee out of the tranquillity in which thou naturally art.
In what has occurred up to this time there is only one thing which makes me shudder; and I shudder again when I reflect upon what I know, that even when I speak of this I shall not be understood.
What makes me shudder is this. While my life, though it is weak in comparison with the glorious ones who have lived, expresses nevertheless the thought of fighting for eternity with anxiety for the salvation of one's soul, I stand surrounded by contemporaries who at the very most are interested in this as "the public." In a fleeting way a man perhaps allows himself to be gripped by what I say, the next instant he judges it aesthetically, the next instant he reads what is written against me, then he is curious about the outcome, etc., etc.; in short, he is "the public." And not to any one of them does it occur that by being men they are subjected to the same conditions as I am, that they too must expect an accounting of eternity, and that one thing is certain, that eternity is closed to everything which in this life has no will to be more than "the public" — "just like the others." This makes me shudder, that these men are living in the notion that it is I who am in danger, whereas after all, eternally understood, I am much less in danger than they, inasmuch as I am fighting for eternity. And I shudder again when I reflect that this goes on in "Christendom," that these contemporaries therefore are a community of Christians which has 1000 teachers sworn upon the New Testament — and then the truth is that these teachers have no vaguest notion of what Christianity is. This is horrible. It is horrible for me to be in such a degree in the right in what I say, when I say that Christianity does not exist at all, and when I state how this fact hangs together with the preaching of Christianity by the "witnesses to the truth."
Translator's Footnotes
65Referring to an article in the first of these journals, on the date of May 30, which exclaims, "Poor, wretched Søren, that thou shouldst come to such an end!" and to the letter of May 31, which compares the boy Søren to the grown man.
66See the last Article in the Fatherland.