Page:Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard.djvu/211

 only my time is. That which you are contemporaneous with, that is reality for you. Thus every person has the choice to be contemporaneous with the age in which he is living and also with one other period, with that of Christ's life here on earth; for Christ's life on earth, or Sacred History, stands by itself, outside of history.

History you may read and hear about as a matter of the past. Within its realm you can, if you so care, judge actions by their results. But in Christ's life here on earth there is nothing past. It did not wait for the assistance of any subsequent results in its own time, 1800 years ago; neither does it now. Historic Christianity is sheer moonshine and un‑Christian muddle‑headedness. For those true Christians who in every generation live a life contemporaneous with that of Christ have nothing whatsoever to do with Christians of the preceding generation, but all the more with their contemporary, Christ. His life here on earth attends every generation, and every generation severally, as Sacred History; his life on earth is eternal contemporaneousness. For this reason all learned lecturing about Christianity, which has its haunt and hiding‑place in the assumption that Christianity is something which belongs to the past and to the 1800 years of history, this lecturing is the most unChristian of heresies, as every one would readily recognize if he but tried to imagine the generation contemporeanous with Christ as lecturing! No, we must ever keep in mind that every generation (of the faithful) is contemporaneous with him.

If you cannot master yourself so as to make yourself contemporaneous with him and thus become a Christian; or if he cannot, as your contemporary, draw you to himself, then you will never be a Christian. You may, if you please honor, praise, thank, and with all worldly goods reward him who deludes you into thinking that you are a Christian; nevertheless he deceives you. You may count yourself happy that you were not contemporaneous with one who dared to assert this; or you may be exasperated to madness by the torment, like that of the gadfly, of being contemporaneous