Once upon a time there was a rich man; he ordered from  abroad at an  exorbitant price a pair of faultless and highbred horses which  he would use for his own pleasure and for the pleasure of driving them himself. Then something like a year or two passed.  Anyone who previously had known these horses would not have been able to recognize  them again. Their eyes had become dull and drowsy, their gait lacked style and decision, they couldn't bear anything, they couldn't hold out, they hardly could drive four miles without having to stop on the way , sometimes they came to a standstill while he sat and drove his best;  besides that, they had acquired all sorts of vices and bad habits, and in spite of the fact that they had of course over- abundance of food, they were falling off from day to day.  Then he had the King's coachman called. He drove them for a month--in the whole land there was not a pair of steeds that held their heads so proudly, whose glance was so fiery, whose gait was so handsome, no other pair of horses that could hold out so long, though it were to trot for more than a score of miles at a stretch without stopping.  How came this about?  It is easy to see--the owner, who without being a coachman gave himself  out to be a coachman, drove them according to the horses' understanding of what it is to drive;  the royal coachman drove them according to the coachman's understanding  of what it is to drive.
         So it is with us men.  Oh, when I think of myself and of the countless men I have learnt to know, I have often said sorrowfully to myself:  Here are enough talents and powers and capacities--but the coachman is lacking.
         Through the course of long ages and from generation to generation we men have been driven (to stick to the figure of speech) according to the horses' understanding of what it is to drive, we have been governed, brought up, educated according to man's conception of what it is to be a man.  Behold what it is that we lack; loftiness, and what follows in turn from this, that we can endure so little, impatiently resort at once to the means of the instant, and in our impatience are determined to see straightway the reward of our labour, which just for this reason loses its best qualities.
         Once it was otherwise. There was a time when it pleased the Deity (if I may venture to say so) to be Himself  the coachman;  and He drove the horses according to the coachman's understanding of what it is to drive. And what man was not capable of then!  Think of the text for today (Pentecost).  There sat  twelve men, all belonging  to the class we call common people.  They had seen Him they adored as God, their Lord and Master, crucified...These twelve men were required to re-create the world--and that with the most terrible handicap, viz. against its will....
         It was Christianity  that had to be put over. In a sense they were men like us--but they were well driven, indeed they were well driven!
 
    (Story by Soren Kierkegaard)