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. That God had died for me as
my Saviour,--I could not understand what it meant; it was an idea that
conveyed nothing to me.
And I wondered whether the inhabitants of another planet would be able
to understand how on the Earth that which was contrary to all reason
was considered the highest truth.