A boy of fifteen! Now, if it were a matter of 10 dollars, his father would probably say: "No, my boy, I can't let you have all that money, you are still too green for that." But for a matter touching his eternal salvation where the point is to assume, with all the seriousness one's personality is capable of, and as a personality, responsibility for what certainly could not in any profounder sense be called serious--when a child is bound by a vow: for that the age of fifteen is excellently fitting. Excellently fitting. Oh yes if, as was remarked above, divine worship serves a double purpose, viz., to render God ridiculous in a very adroit manner--if you may call it so--and to furnish the occasion for graceful family celebrations. In that case it is indeed excellently fitting, as everything is on that occasion; as is, likewise, the customary biblical lesson for the day which, you will remember, begins: "Then the same day at evening, when the doors were shut[9]"--and this text is particularly suitable to a Confirmation Sunday. One is truly edified when hearing a clergyman read it on a Confirmation Sunday. As is easily perceived, then, the confirmation ceremony is still worse nonsense than the baptism of infants, just because confirmation pretends to supply what was lacking at the baptism, viz., a real personality capable of making a vow in a matter touching one's eternal salvation. In another sense this nonsense is, to be sure, ingenious enough, as serving the self-interest of the clergy who understand full well that if the decision concerning a man's religion were reserved until he had reached maturity (which were the only Christian, as well as the only sensible, way), many might possess character enough to refuse to become Christians by an act of hypocrisy. For this reason "the clergyman" seeks to gain control of men in their infancy and their youth, so that they would find it difficult, upon reaching a more mature age, to break a "sacred" vow dating, to be sure, from one's boyhood, but which would, perhaps, still be a serious enough matter to many a one. Hence the clergy take hold of the infants, the youths, and receive sacred promises and the like from them. And what that man of God, "the clergyman," does, why, that is, of course, a God-fearing action. Else, analogy might, perhaps, demand that to the ordinance forbidding the sale of spirituous liquors to minors there should be added one forbidding the taking of solemn vows concerning one's eternal salvation from--boys; which ordinance would look toward preventing the clergy, who themselves are perjurers, from working--in order to salve their own consciences--from working toward the greatest conceivable shipwreck which is, to make all society become perjured; for letting boys of fifteen bind themselves in a matter touching their eternal salvation is a measure which is precisely calculated to have that effect.