Page:Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard.djvu/234

 the same day at evening, when the doors were shut" — and this text is particularly suitable to a Confirmation Sunday. One is truly edified when hearing a clergyman read it on a Confirmation Sunday.

As is easily perceived, then, the confirmation ceremony is still worse nonsense than the baptism of infants, just because confirmation pretends to supply what was lacking at the baptism, viz., a real personality capable of making a vow in a matter touching one's eternal salvation. In another sense this nonsense is, to be sure, ingenious enough, as serving the self-interest of the clergy who understand full well that if the decision concerning a man's religion were reserved until he had reached maturity (which were the only Christian, as well as the only sensible, way), many might possess character enough to refuse to become Christians by an act of hypocrisy. For this reason "the clergyman' seeks to gain control of men in their infancy and their youth, so that they would find it difficult, upon reaching a more mature age, to break a "sacred" vow dating, to be sure, from one's boyhood, but which would, perhaps, still be a serious enough matter to many a one. Hence the clergy take hold of the infants, the youths, and receive sacred promises and the like from them. And what that man of God, "the clergyman," does, why, that is, of course, a God-fearing action. Else, analogy might, perhaps, demand that to the ordinance forbidding the sale of spirituous liquors to minors there should be added one forbidding the taking of solemn vows concerning one's eternal salvation from—boys; which ordinance would look toward preventing the clergy, who themselves are perjurors, from working— in order to salve their own consciences—from working toward the greatest conceivable shipwreck which is, to make all society become perjured; for letting boys of fifteen bind themselves in a matter touching their eternal salvation is a measure which is precisely calculated to have that effect.

The ceremony of confirmation is, then, in itself a worse