Imagine a hospital. The patients are dying off like so many flies.
The methods are changed, now this way, now that: of no avail! What
may be the cause? The cause lies in the building--the whole
building is tainted. The patients are put down as having died,
the one of this, the other of that, disease, but strictly speaking
this is not true; for they all died from the taint which is in the
building.
The same is true in religion. That religious conditions are
wretched, and that people in respect of their religion are in
a wretched condition, nothing is more certain. So one ventures
the opinion that if we could but have a new hymn-book; and another,
if we could but have a new service-book; and a third, if we could
but have a musical service, etc., etc.--that then matters would
mend.
In vain; for the fault lies in the edifice. The whole ramshackle
pile of a State Church which has not been aired, spiritually
speaking, in times out of mind--the air in it has developed
a taint. And therefore religious life has become diseased or
has died out; alas, for precisely that which the worldly mind
regards as health is, in a Christian sense, disease--just as,
vice versa, that which is healthy in a Christian sense, is regarded
as diseased from a worldly point of view.
Then let the ramshackle pile collapse, get it out of the way,
close all these shops and booths which are the only ones which
are excepted from the strict Sunday regulations, forbid this
official double-dealing, put them out of commission, and provide
for them, for all these quacks:--even though it is true that
the royally attested physician is the acceptable one, and he
who is not so attested is a quack: in Christianity it is just
the reverse; that is, the royally attested teacher is the quack,
is a quack by the very fact that he is royally attested--and
let us worship God again in simplicity, instead of making a
fool of him in splendid edifices; let us be in earnest again
and stop playing; for a Christianity preached by royal officials
who are payed and insured by the state and who use the police
against the others, such a Christianity bears about the same
relation to the Christianity of the New Testament as swimming
with the help of a cork-belt or a bladder does to swimming alone--it
is mere play.
Yes, let that come about. What Christianity needs is not the
stifling protection of the state--ah no, it needs fresh air,
it needs persecution and--the protection of God. The state does
only mischief in averting persecution and surely is not the
medium through which God's protection can be conducted. Whatever
you do, save Christianity from the state, for with its protection
it overlies Christianity like a fat woman overlying her child
with her carcass, beside teaching Christianity the most abominable
bad habits--as, e.g., to use the police force and to call that
Christianity.