The Non-Believer will in
this case only hardly, for the sake of impersonal Truth, make up his
mind to the step which the God-fearing man will take actuated by his
passionate fear of offending God.
Thus was I tossed backwards and forwards in my reflections.
XVIII.
What I dreaded most was that if I reached a recognition of the truth, a
lack of courage would prevent me decisively making it my own. Courage
was needed, as much to undertake the burdens entailed by being a
Christian as to undertake those entailed by being a Pantheist. When
thinking of Christianity, I drew a sharp distinction between the
cowardice that shrunk from renunciation and the doubt that placed under
discussion the very question as to whether renunciation were duty. And
it was clear to me that, on the road which led to Christianity, doubt
must be overcome before cowardice--not the contrary, as Kierkegaard
maintains in his _For Self-Examination_, where he says that none of
the martyrs doubted.
But my doubt would not be overcome. Kierkegaard had declared that it was
only to the consciousness of sin that Christianity was not horror or
madness. For me it was sometimes both. I concluded therefrom that I had
no consciousness of sin, and found this idea confirmed when I looked
into my own heart. For however violently at this period I reproached
myself and condemned my failings, they were always in my eyes weaknesses
that ought to be combatted, or defects that could be remedied, never
sins that necessitated forgiveness, and for the obtaining of this
forgiveness, a Saviour.
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