Soren Kierkegaard

one of Mynster’s sermons aloud, thereby demonstrating that “edification is
something quite different from a possible interest motivated by curiosity.”
If he kept to that intention, he would also have taken the opportunity to
say “a couple of words about the useful English custom that requires that
sermons be read from a prepared text (because spontaneous speech can easily
have an intoxicating effect and intoxicate the preacher himself), and about
the beneficial effect of reading someone else’s sermon aloud, which reminds
the speaker that he, too, is being addressed. I would also have said a couple
of edifying words about the significance of Mynster’s sermons for me, some-
thing I inherited from my father.”
He abandoned this idea, however, and decided instead to preach on “my
first, my beloved text, James 1.” This is the text about every good and
perfect gift coming from above, coming down from the Father of Lights,
in whom there is neither change nor shadow of change. Kierkegaard had
used this text as the basis for the second of hisTwo Edifying Discoursesfrom
1843 as well as for the second and third of hisFour Edifying Discourses, also
from 1843, so when he called it his “first” text, it was not without reason.
And when Kierkegaard further termed it his “beloved” text, he was refer-
ring to the particular significance it had had during the period of his engage-
ment. Moreover, he also acknowledged (“I confess it”) that he had
“thought of ‘her’ ” when he chose these very verses from James as the text
for his sermon that Sunday in the Citadel Church—he in fact had enter-
tained the slight hope that Regine might come to the church that day, “if
it would please her to hear me.” On September 3, 1855, when he published
the sermon, titling itThe Unchangingness of God, the brief preface—dated
May 5, its author’s birthday—matter-of-factly told when the sermon had
been delivered. But in theoriginaldraft Kierkegaard had told a different
story, which brushed up against Regine in unmistakably erotic fashion: “I
could call this text my first love—to which, of course, one always returns.”
The thought of Regine in the congregation did not make the sermon
any easier to write: “Beforehand I suffered greatly from every sort of strain,
as is always the case when I have to use my physical person.” In the morning,
prior to his sermon, he prayed to God that something new might be born
in him, and he became preoccupied with the notion that, just as parents
raise their children and lead them to confirmation, the impending religious
service was a sort of confirmation to which he was now being led by his
heavenly Father.
The day after delivering his sermon the thirty-eight-year-old preacher
felt so enfeebled that he promised himself that he would never take the
pulpit again: “It went reasonably well, but my voice was so weak that people
complained about not being able to hear....OnMonday I was so faint