[Illustration: L’AVENIR]
Christ or Odin?
You cannot well conceive a science, whether it be mathematics,
or architecture, or philosophy, without its axioms, dogmas, or
first principles. Without them there is no basis on which to raise
the superstructure. So it is with the science of religion. Take
Christianity: if it is to be taught scientifically, it must start with
the most tremendous dogma, the Divinity of Christ. Either Christ was or
He was not what He claimed to be. If He was not, you must shout with
the Sanhedrim: “Crucify Him!” If He was, you must sing with the Church:
“Come, adore Him.” One thing is certain, you cannot be indifferent to
His claim or to Him; you must either hate Him and His creed, like the
Prussian warring Superman, or love Him and it, like England’s Crusading
Kings.
The cartoon before us is the finished picture which I can trace from
its first rough sketch in the hands of Kant, through its different
stages of development in the schools of Hegel, of Schopenhauer, of
Strauss, till it was ready for its final touches in the hands of
Nietzsche. In fancy I see it hung, on the line, in the Prussian
picture-gallery under the direction of War Lords, whose boasted aim
it is that the world shall be governed only by Prussian Kultur and
Prussian Religion.
The fatal mistake made by the Teutonic race in the past was, we are
told, the adoption of Roman culture and Roman religion. Germany once
submitted to an alien God and to an alien creed. She, the mistress
of the earth, the mightiest of the mighty, and the most Kultured of
the Kultured, had actually once worshipped “an uncultured peasant
Galilean,” and made profession of “His slave morality.”
Now they had altogether done with Christ, the Nazarene. The shout had
gone forth: “We will not have this Man to rule over us.” In the future
no gods but Thor and Odin shall rule the “world-dominating race.”
Prussia seemed to think the world’s need to-day was the religion, not
of Virtue, but of Valour. “In a day now long fled was heard the cry:
‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,’ but to-day
there shall go forth the word: ‘Blessed are the valiant, for they shall
make the earth their throne.’ In the past ye heard it said: ‘Blessed
are the poor in spirit,’ but now I say to you: ‘Blessed are the great
in soul, for they shall enter into Valhalla.’ Again, in the dark ages
it was said to you: ‘Blessed are the peace-makers,’ but now in the
blaze of day I say unto you: ‘Blessed are the war-makers, for they
shall be called, if not the children of Jahve, the children of Odin,
who is greater than Jahve.’” For those who want more of this mad jargon
on the same lines let me refer them to the late Professor Cramb’s book
on Germany and England.
With this cartoon before me, I am driven to fear that when the war
is done there will rise up in Germany a louder and stronger cry
against the Christianity of Christ than ever was attempted after the
Franco-Prussian War. The “man of blood and iron,” the man with the
mailed fist and the iron heel, I much apprehend, will not be satisfied
with tearing down the emblem of the physical Body of Christ, but to
slake his bloodthirsty spirit he will want to go on to belabour His
Mystical Body no less. God avert it!