Page:Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard.djvu/37

 "The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air"; "Sickness Unto Death" (with the sub-title "A Christian Psychological Exposition"); "Two Religious Treatises"; "The High Priest, the Publican, the Sinner"; "Three Discourses on the Occasion of Communion on Friday."

In the course of these reflections it had become increasingly clear to Kierkegaard that the self-constituted representative of Christ — the Church or, to mention only the organization he was intimately acquainted with, the Danish State Church — had succeeded in becoming a purely worldly organization whose representatives, far from striving to follow Christ, had made life quite comfortable for themselves; retort to which was presently made that by thus stressing "contemporaneousness" with its aspects of suffering and persecution, Kierkegaard had both exceeded the accepted teaching of the Church and staked the attainment of Christianity so high as to drive all existing forms of it ad absurdum.

In his Indövelse i Christendom "Preparation for a Christian Life" and the somber Til Selvprövelse "For a Self-Examination" Kierkegaard returns to the attack with a powerful re-examination of the whole question as to how far modern Christianity corresponds to that of the Founder. Simply, but with grandiose power, he works out in concrete instances the conception of "contemporaneousness" gained in the "Final Postscript"; at the same time demonstrating to all who have eyes to see, the axiomatic connection between the doctrine of Propitiation and Christ's life in debasement; that Christianity consists in absolutely dying to the world; and that the Christianity which does not live up to this is but a travesty on Christianity. We may think what we please about this counsel of perfection, and judge what we may about the rather arbitrary choice of Scripture passages on which Kierkegaard builds: no serious reader, no sincere Christian can escape the searching of heart sure to follow this tremendous arraignment of humanity false to its divine leader. There is nothing more impressive in all modern literature than the gallery of "opinions" voiced by those