_Renan_ at one time said: “Oh, if we just once might have a

miracle brought before professional scientists! But, alas! this

will never happen!” He borrowed this saying from _Voltaire_, with

the difference that the latter demanded God to perform a miracle

before the Academy of Sciences, as if there were need for miracles

in a physical or chemical laboratory. Those who desire in earnest

to investigate miracles ought to go where they are performed. And

even there, where the eyes can see them, it also takes good will

to acknowledge them. In this respect an interview is instructive

which _Zola_ once had with an editor. The latter asked: “If you

were witness to a miracle, that would occur under strictest

conditions suggested by yourself, would you acknowledge the

miracle? Would you then accept the teachings of the faith?” After

a few moments of serious thought, _Zola_ replied: “I do not know,

but I do not believe I would” (_Bertrin_). On April 7, 1875, there

came to the Belgian sanctuary, Oostacker, a Flemish labourer, by

name _Peter de Rudder_, whose leg had eight years before been

broken below the knee, and who was then suffering from two

suppurating cancerous sores, that had formed at the place of the

fracture and on the foot. He suddenly was entirely cured. The case

was investigated in a most exact way. In 1900 a treatise

concerning the case was published by three physicians. _E.

Wasmann_ had as early as 1900 published a short extract of it in

the “Stimmen aus Maria Laach.” In February, 1907, when, at Berlin,

he delivered his lectures which were followed by a discussion, his

opponents, headed by Prof. _Plate_, did not know of this article.

When they learned of it, some time afterwards, he was put under

the ban because he “had degraded himself to the position of a

charlatan by vouching with his scientific repute for the happening

of a miraculous cure”; and they said “they would fight him in the

same way as they would fight every quack, but as a scientist he

was discarded.” _Plate_ had on the evening of the discussion asked

of the assembled scientists the question: “Have we ever observed

anything like a suspension of the natural laws? The reply to it is

an unconditional ‘we have not’; consequently Theism becomes

inadmissible to the natural scientist.” Here, in the _de Rudder_

case, is found the required instance. But _Plate_ knows, in

advance of any investigation, that it is a fairy tale, believed

without critical examination. And Prof. _Hansemann_, another

opposing speaker of that evening, subsequently sent word to

_Wasmann_ that: “One can pretty well judge what to think of a

natural scientist who publishes such stuff. For this reason I now

declare that I shall never in future, no matter how or where,

enter into discussion of matters of natural science with Mr.

_Wasmann_.” When on a certain occasion _Hegel_ was advised that

some facts did not agree with his philosophical notions, he

replied: “The more pity for the facts.”

The English natural scientist, _W. Thomson_, once said before the British

Society at Edinburgh: “Science is bound by eternal honour to face

fearlessly every problem that can be clearly laid before it.” The equally

famous _Faraday_, in the name of empirical research, demands of its

adherents the determination to stand or to fall with the results of a

direct appeal to the facts in the first place, and with the strict logical

deductions therefrom in the second. In general these principles are

adhered to so long as religious notions are not encountered. But as soon

as these are sighted, the engine is reversed, and all scientific

principles are forgotten.

A science led by this spirit will set out to emancipate man’s moral

conduct of life from God and religion. Indeed, the first postulate of

modern ethics directs that _morality_ must be _independent of religion_.

That God and eternal salvation is the end of man, the ultimate norm of his

moral life, that God’s Command is the ultimate reason of the moral

obligation, and divine sanction its strongest support, it does not want to

acknowledge. Here, too, we find the principle of natural causality in

operation. “As in physics God’s will must not be made to serve as an

explanation, so likewise in the theory of moral phenomena. Both the

natural and the moral world, as they exist, may point beyond themselves to

something transcendental. But we cannot admit the transcendental ... a

scientific explanation will have to be wholly immanent, and

anthropological” (_Paulsen_). According to this approved principle of

ignoration, the supreme aim and law of a morality without religion is

_man_, his earthly happiness, and his culture.

Its aims, according to Prof. _Jodl_, one of its noted champions,

are: “Promotion of moral life, fostering of a refined humanity,

development of a true fellow-feeling, without the religious and

metaphysical notions upon which mankind hitherto has mostly built

its ethical ideals.” _Kant_ was the pioneer here: “In so far as

morality is based on the conception of man as a free, being, it

requires neither the idea of a superior being to make him

cognizant of his duties, nor any motive but the law itself in

order to observe it ... hence morality for its own sake does not

by any means need religion.” This is the viewpoint of the

autonomous man, who is his own law. “From the viewpoint of

authority,” so tells us _E. von Hartmann_, “autonomy does not mean

anything else but that in ethical matters I am for myself the

highest court without appeal.... The God, Who in the beginning

spoke to His children from a fiery cloud ... has descended into

our bosom, and, transformed into our own being, speaks out of us

as a moral autonomy.” _Diis extinctis successit humanitas._

“Although an individual representative of science may be a believer in God

in his private life,” so argues the English philosopher, _W. James_, “at

any rate the times have passed when it could be said that the heavens

announce to science the glory of God, and that the heaven shows the works

of His hands.” The flight from divinity, atheism open or disguised, is the

psychological effect of the liberal principle. Free thought aims to free

man of all authority, it aims at severing from religion his entire

existence, marriage, state, schools, and likewise science. “It is

undeniable,” we hear from the lips of champions of modern man, standing on

the pinnacle of religious liberalism, “that there is a certain

forsakenness in this existence of man, as compared to a life brightened by

the idea of a God,” but that forsakenness is not purchased too dearly, for

“it is the solitude of autonomy, a possession so precious that no price

for it could be too high” (_Carneri_).

Indeed, these modern men use even plainer language: science is applauded

for having at last freed man from God. With _Kant’s_ principle that we

cannot know anything of the supernatural, we are told, there “were thrown

overboard the cosmogonic notions of the Semitic races, notions that have

so severely oppressed our science and religion, and are still oppressing

them.... By this insight an idol is smashed. In a previous chapter I

called the Israelites the worshippers of abstract idols; now, I believe, I

shall be fully understood.” Indeed, we understand. It means: Away with

God. “This German metaphysics frees us from idolatry and reveals to us the

living divinity in our own bosom” (_Chamberlain_).

This is the manner in which this free thought, within science and without,

is fulfilling the earnest admonition of the Psalmist: “Seek ye the Lord

and be strengthened: seek His face evermore” (Ps. civ. 4), and it turns

into irony the words: “This is the generation of them that seek Him, of

them that seek the face of the God of Jacob” (Ps. xxiii. 6).

“I Know not Jesus Christ, His Only Begotten Son, Our Lord.”

Where the thought of independence and of this world enslaves the minds,

and holds them captive in harsh aversion to the supernatural, an objective

judgment on the nature and history of the Christian religion, to say

nothing of the Catholic Church, can hardly be hoped for. What may be

expected is that we will also meet here with a science which, with its

hands held before the eye that fears the light, wards off and combats

everything that is specifically Christian. It is to be feared only that it

will turn light into darkness regarding the view of life, as also the

doctrine and history, of the Christian religion.

Regarding the Christian view of life we need only read the superficial and

yet so arrogant discussions of Christian philosophy, as found in

_Paulsen_, _Wundt_, or _E. von Hartmann_. From this judicial bench the

wisdom of Him, of Whom it is said “And we saw His glory, full of grace and

truth,” we see condemned, if not even treated with subtle ridicule.

Let us for instance take _Paulsen’s_ presentment of the “View of Life

under Christianity.” Whoever reads it, and believes it, to him the

teaching of Jesus Christ can only be, what the Apostle said it was to the

heathens, foolishness. No longer can he have adoration for its Founder,

but rather the pity that one has for an enthusiastic visionary devoid of

any knowledge of the world and men. The wisdom taught by Christ is

distorted into a sombre grimace, while side by side with it the conception

of life of Hellenic paganism is transfigured into a beautiful ideal.

We are told there: “While classical antiquity saw as the task of

life the perfect development of the natural powers and talents of

man, ... Christianity with clear consciousness makes the contrary

the goal of life.” “The cultivation and exercise of intellectual

faculties was of great importance to the Greeks.... Primitive

Christianity looks upon reason and natural cognition with

indifference, even with suspicion and contempt ... indeed, natural

reason and knowledge are an obstacle for the kingdom of God.

Christianity at first was indifferent, even inimical, not only to

philosophy and science, but also to art and poetry. It cuts off

not only sensual but also æsthetical gratification,” because _St.

John_ condemned the gratification of the eyes (which means

something quite different from æsthetical gratification)

Christianity is said to reject “the arts of the Muses and

athletics: they belong to that sowing of the flesh of which the

harvest is perdition.” “What the Christians valued highly was not

erudition and eloquence, but silence. Silence is the first thing

recommended by _Ambrose_” (and he the great and renowned

representative of early Christian eloquence!). There is more: “In

the primitive view the first virtue was valour, especially valour

in war; indeed, in Greek and Latin speech the word ’virtue’ meant

valour; the Christian’s virtue, however, is patience and

endurance. He does not draw the sword; to him are expressly

forbidden not only anger, hatred, and private revenge, but even

litigation.”

In this tendentious strain _Paulsen_ continues, with exaggerations

and misrepresentations that have nothing in common with science.

According to the Greek view, he says, high-mindedness was a great

virtue, but, naturally, the Christian is not allowed to have it;

“the virtue of the Christian is humility,” _i.e._, in _Paulsen’s_

sense low-mindedness; this is “the starting point of

Christianity.” True, the author assures us that Christianity of

to-day is no longer the one he is describing; it has adapted

itself more to the world. But it is sad to have this gloomy,

visionary fanaticism described to us as the one which was taught

by the words of Jesus Himself.

The adherent of this Christianity looks upon governments and their

aims as something essentially foreign to it, even to be an

official “would doubtless have been felt as a contradiction”; but

a sudden change is said to have taken place under _Constantine_.

Earthly joys and benefits, the holy ties of the family, those that

Jesus in person blessed at Cana, they were, according to _St.

Paul_, so we are told, in the spirit of Christ things to avoid and

condemn.

And how are these theological discoveries proven, what sources are

quoted in substantiation? By some arbitrarily selected passages of

the Scriptures, that one must hate father and mother, wife and

child, brother and sister; that the poor in spirit are blessed,

that the lust of the eye is sinful, that evil should not be

resisted; and in quoting these passages all scientific

interpretation is carefully avoided, all the writers who have

amply explained them are ignored. And what the scriptural passages

fail to prove must be demonstrated by some extreme statement

borrowed from _Tertullian_, who is generally prone to

exaggeration. As a matter of course, gloomy Christianity then

seems inferior to the brilliancy of Greek paganism; Christianity

is directly a danger to civilization; it may be good enough for

those tired of life. “The objection has been made that the

fulfilment of this command would destroy our entire civilization.

Most probably this would be the case. But where is it written (in

Holy Writ) that our civilization must be preserved?” We have here

the picture formed of the doctrine of Christ by the world, whereof

the Lord has predicted: the world will hate you. _Paulsen_ admits

frankly: “Whence this hatred? Because the Christian despises that

which to the world is the highest good. There can be no better

reason for hating any one....”

It is easy to understand that one who has for a long time mentally

abandoned his Christian faith, cannot carry in mind its picture as

undistorted as he did in his better days, and as would conform to

reality. But it is reprehensible to exhibit in public this

picture, without having previously and conscientiously examined

the main lines, to see whether they are not caricatures. And they

are caricatures, traced by a hand that is led by the mood of a

secret anti-Christianity.

A treatment identical with that of its view of life is accorded to the

_doctrine and history of the Christian religion_. Not science and

uncorrupted truthfulness, but antipathy, presumption, harsh denial of

everything divine, only too often point the way. Let us listen again to

the author named above, since he knows to express modern thought with a

clearness and precision almost unequalled by any one else.

It made a painful impression to find in the Christmas number,

1908, of the liberal-theological “Christliche Welt” a posthumous

article by _Fr. Paulsen_: “What think you of Christ: Whose Son is

He?” The article was without doubt one of the last he had written.

It contains the program of modern liberal science. “With the

seventeenth century,” we read there, “begins the reorganization of

the theory of the universe by science. Its general tendency may be

described by the formula: Elimination of the supernatural from the

natural and historical world.” “Consequently, no miracles in

history, no supernatural birth, no resurrection, no revelation, in

fact no interference by the Eternal in temporal events.” Hence,

the man who “thinks scientifically _in this wise_ can have no

doubt that the old ecclesiastical dogma cannot be reconciled with

scientific thought.” This, of course, amounts to a complete

renunciation of positive Christianity.

This scientific thought, in the words of _Baumgarten_, “rejects

any projection of the supernatural into tangible reality”;

especially is “the metaphysical genesis and nature of the Saviour

highly offensive to our ethical consciousness,” even “absolutely

unbearable.” The Christian religion can no longer be permitted to

overtower other religions by its supernaturalness. “The

distinction between a revealed and a natural religion becomes an

impossibility,” says _W. Bousset_. And _Wundt_ declares:

“Christianity, as an ‘absolute’ or a ‘revealed’ religion, would

stand opposed to all other religious development, as an

incommensurable magnitude. This point of view, evidently, cannot

be competent for our speculations.”

Having become the ruling mode of thought, these presumptions determine

from the outset the results to be obtained by “research,” and they force

it to violate its own method, so that it may be dragged along the by-ways

and false ways of a mistaken, philosophical a-priorism, thereby making

freedom of science a mockery. From the abundant material at our disposal

let us take only one example, viz., the _Modern Criticism of the Gospels_.

The Gospels contain many records of facts of a supernatural character, of

miracles and prophecies. That these records are necessarily false is the

first principle of the historical, or critical, method, as it is called.

“As a miracle of itself is unthinkable, so the miracles in the history of

Christianity, and in the Christianity of the New Testament, are likewise

unthinkable. Hence, when miracles are nevertheless narrated, these

narratives must be false, in as far as they report miracles: that is,

either the relation did not happen at all, or, if it did, there was a

sufficient natural explanation”; “the historian must under all

circumstances answer, ‘No,’ to the question whether the report of a

miracle is worthy of belief” (_T. Zeller_). Thus instructed,

“unprejudiced” research proceeds to construct its results of the

investigation of the genuineness, time and date, of the writing of the

Gospels and of the Acts, as well as of their credibility. Let us see how

this is done.

The tradition of the early Church, as well as intrinsic evidence, testify

that the first Gospel was really written by the Apostle _Matthew_, and

this certainly before the destruction of Jerusalem. Liberal-Protestant

criticism, however, assigns its origin to a time after the year 70,

chiefly for two reasons: First, the striking prophecy of the destruction

of Jerusalem, conforming so accurately to the actual event, could have

been written only after the year 70; otherwise it would have amounted to a

real prophecy subsequently fulfilled, a conclusion that cannot be

accepted. The second reason is this: The contents of _St. Matthew’s_

Gospel is already wholly Catholic, hence it must have been written during

a later, Catholic, period. For as there can be no influences from above,

and as everything is evolved in a natural way, the principle must govern:

that the more supernatural and the more dogmas, so much later the period

in question; at first there could have been only a religion of sentiment

without dogma, which gradually developed into Catholic dogmatism. Similar

are the presumptions which direct modern research in respect to the

genuineness of the other Gospels and the Acts. A few proofs:

Prof. _Jülicher_ thinks that, “While we cannot go prior to the

beginning of the second century, because of external testimony, we

cannot on the other hand maintain a later date. The most probable

time for our Gospel is the one shortly before the year 100....”

Why? “Because the ill-fitting feature in the parable of the

wedding feast, that the king in his wrath, because his invitation

had been made light of, sent forth his armies and destroyed those

murderers and burned up their city, could hardly have been

invented before the conflagration of Jerusalem”—a prophecy,

namely, of the coming destruction of Jerusalem cannot be admitted.

“But to my mind, the decisive point is found in the religious

position of _Matthew_. Despite his conservative treatment of

tradition, he already stands quite removed from its spirit; he has

written a Catholic Gospel.... To _Matthew_ the congregation, the

Church, forms the highest court of discipline, being the

administrator of all heavenly goods of salvation; his Gospel

determines who is to rule, who to give laws: in its essential

features the early Catholicism is completed.”

_Jülicher_ arrives at a similar conclusion in his research on _St.

Luke’s_ Gospel: “That _Luke’s_ Gospel was written sometime after

the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., is proven beyond any

doubt, by xxi. 22-24, where the terrible events of the Jewish war

are ‘foretold.’... All arguments in favor of a later date of

writing concerning _Matthew_ hold good also of _Luke_.” Even more

unreserved is _O. Pfleiderer_, until recently a prominent

representative of liberal-Protestant theology at Berlin: “In this

Gospel we find the elements of dogma, morals, the constitution of

the developing Catholic Church. Catholic is its trinitarian

formula of christening, this embryo of the Creed and of the

apostolic symbol. Catholic is its teaching of Christ ... Catholic,

the doctrine of Salvation ... Catholic are the morals ...

Catholic, finally, is the importance attached to _Peter_ as the

foundation of the Church and as the bearer of the power of the

key.” In regard to this latter point _Pfleiderer_ remarks

expressly: “In spite of all attempts of Protestants to mitigate

this passage (Matt. xvi. 17-20) there is no doubt that it contains

the solemn proclamation of _Peter’s_ Primacy.” The unsophisticated

reader thereupon would be likely to deduct: If the oldest Gospel

is already Catholic, then it must be admitted that earliest

Christianity was already Catholic. In so reasoning he might have

rightly concluded, but he would have shown himself little

acquainted with the method of liberal science. This infers

contrariwise: early Christianity must not be Catholic, hence the

Catholic Gospel cannot be so old, it must be the fraudulent

concoction of a later time; “hence the origin of the Gospel of

_Matthew_ is to be put down not before the time of _Hadrian_; in

the fourth century rather than in the third.”

_A. Harnack_ fixes the date of the Gospel at shortly after 70,

because “_Matthew_, as well as _Luke_, are presupposing the

destruction of Jerusalem. This follows with the greatest

probability from Matt. xxii. 7 (the parable of the marriage

feast).” This is to be held also of _Luke’s_ Gospel. “This much

can be concluded without hesitation: that, as now admitted by

almost all critics, _Luke’s_ Gospel presupposes the destruction of

Jerusalem.”

Remarkable is _Harnack’s_ latest attitude towards the Acts; it

shows again that the results of modern biblical criticism are less

the results of historical research than of philosophical

presumptions. In his “Acts of the Apostles” _Harnack_ admits:

“Very weighty observations indicate that the Acts (hence also the

Gospels) were already written at the beginning of the sixties.” In

substantiation he cites not less than six reasons which evidently

prove it: they are based upon the principles of sound historical

criticism. “These are opposed solely by the observation that the

prophecy about the catastrophe of Jerusalem in some striking

points comes near to the actual event, and that the reports about

the Apparition and the legend of the Ascension would be hard to

understand prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. It is hard to

decide.... But it is not difficult to judge on which side the

weightier arguments are” (viz., on the part of the contention for

an earlier date). Yet _Harnack_ is loath to accept the better

scientific reasons: they must suffer correction by presumptions.

He formulates his final decision in the following way: “_Luke_

wrote at the time of _Titus_, or during the earlier time of

_Domitian_ (?), but perhaps (only _perhaps_, in spite of decisive

arguments) already at the beginning of the sixties.” (Recently

_Harnack_ recedes to the time before the destruction of Jerusalem

without, however, acknowledging a divine prophecy of this

catastrophe.) Similar is this theologian’s proof that the fourth

Gospel could not have been written by _John_, the son of

_Zebedee_; because xxi. 20-23 (I will that he tarry till I come)

cannot be a prophecy, but must have been written down after the

death of the favourite disciple. “The section xx. 20-23 obviously

presupposes the death of the beloved disciple; on the other hand

he cannot be left out of the 21st Chapter. This 21st Chapter,

however, shows no other pen than that which had written Chapters

1-20. This proves that the author of Chapter 21, hence the author

of Chapters 1-20, could not have been the son of _Zebedee_, whose

death is there presupposed.” The whole argument again rests upon

the refusal to hold possible a prophecy from the lips of Jesus.

The main reason, however, for disputing the genuineness of the

fourth Gospel, although external tradition and internal criterions

testify to it as the writing of _St. John_, is, because it teaches

so clearly the _divinity of Christ_: and this must be denied.

Significant are, for instance, the words in which _Weizsäcker_

sums up his objections to this gospel: “That the Apostle, the

favorite disciple according to the Gospel, who sat at the table

beside Christ, should have looked upon and represented everything

that he once experienced, as the living together with the

incarnate divine Logos, is rather a puzzle. No power of faith and

no philosophy can be imagined big enough to extinguish the memory

of real life and to replace it by this miraculous image of a

divine being ... of one of the original Apostles, it is

unthinkable. Upon this the decision of this point will always

hinge. Anything else that may be added from the contents of the

Gospel is subordinate.” This means, Christ cannot be admitted to

be a Divine Being—impossible. An eye-witness could not take Him

for it: therefore, this “miraculous picture of a Divine Being”

cannot have been the work of an eye-witness.

Like the _genuineness_ of the Gospels, so is also their _credibility_

beyond a doubt. Two of them are written by Apostles, the two others by

Disciples of the Apostles: they also have all the marks peculiar to

writings of eye or ear witnesses, or of persons who have heard the

narratives directly from the lips of eye-witnesses. Nor would any one

doubt their credibility if they did not report supernatural facts. But,

this being the case, infidel research is bound to arrive at the opposite

result.

The writers were frauds—this was long ago the hypothesis of the

superficial Hamburg Professor, _Samuel Reimarus_, whose “Fragments” were

published by _Lessing_. But even to a _D. F. Strauss_ “such a suspicion

was repulsive.” The Heidelberg Professor, _H. E. Paulus_, sought his

salvation in trying to reduce the reports of miracles to a natural sense,

by doing painful violence to the text: for instance, the Lord did not walk

_upon_ the sea, but only _along_ the sea; the miracle of the wine at Cana

was only a wedding joke. Then came _D. F. Strauss_ (died 1874), and he

tried it in a different way. “If the Gospels are really historical

documents, then the miracle cannot be removed from the life of Jesus.”

Hence, it is to remain? Indeed not! The Gospels must not be accepted as

historical sources. They are products of purposeless poetic legends, the

miracles are garlands of religious myths, gradually twined around the

picture of Jesus. Myths, however, need time for their formation, hence

_Strauss_ fixes the date of the Gospels within the second century. He

openly admits that his hypothesis would fall to the ground if but a single

Gospel has been written in the first century. As a fact, more recent

rationalistic criticism has found itself constrained to drop this

hypothesis. _F. Ch. Baur_ (died 1860) fell back upon the fraud-hypothesis

of a _Reimarus_. It, too, has been laid among the dead. Thus they have

exhausted themselves in the attempt to shake off the burdensome yoke of

truth.

Influenced by _Strauss_, _Baur_, and other German critics, _E. Renan_

(died 1892) wrote his “Life of Jesus,” a frivolous romance. Quite frank

are the words he wrote down in the preface to the thirteenth edition of

his “Vie de Jésus” (1883): “If miracle has any reality, then my book is

nothing but a tissue of errors.... If the miracle and the inspiration of

certain books are real things, then our method is abominable.” But he

silences all doubts by the phrase: “To admit the supernatural is alone

sufficient to place one’s self outside of science.”

The newer “historical-critical” school, while having disposed of many

contentions of the old schools, is nevertheless in its research bound just

as energetically by the postulate of conformity to natural laws. The

fourth Gospel is pushed aside: in the others all miraculous occurrences

are expounded away, till the “historically credible core” is reached.

The books of the Old Testament fare even worse, if possible.

“Does Genesis relate history or a legend?” asks Prof. _Gunkel_,

and continues: “this is no longer a question to the historian.”

Well, a legend, then. But how does the historian know this? From

his own pantheistic philosophy, which recognizes no God differing

from this world: “The narratives of Genesis being mostly of a

religious nature, they continuously speak of God. The way,

however, in which narratives speak of God is one of the most

reliable standards to judge whether they are meant historically or

poetically. Here, too, the historian cannot do without a world

philosophy. We believe that God acts in the world as the latent,

hidden motive of all things ... but He never appears to us as an

acting factor _jointly with others_ (the italics are the

author’s), but always as the ultimate cause of all things. Quite

different in many narratives of Genesis. We are able to understand

these narratives of miracles and apparitions as the artlessness of

primitive people, but we refuse to believe them.”

Analogous to Bible-criticism is the research in other branches of

theology. The _origin of Christianity_, this wonderful power which so

suddenly made its appearance in history and speedily vanquished a whole

world, must of course not be a work of Heaven. Hence its origin must be

explained at any cost in a natural way, or “historically,” as they put it.

The religious notions of Christianity must not be conceded a supernatural

certainty over all other religions; and “to understand an event

historically means: to conceive it by its causal connection with the

conditions of a given place and at a certain time of the human life. Hence

science cannot consider such a thing as the appearance of a supernatural

being upon the earth” (_Pfleiderer_).

And then they proceed to show that Christianity is a natural, evolutionary

product of the Israelite religion, of Greek philosophy, of Oriental myths,

and Roman customs. That it is far superior to all these, and that it is

the opposite to them in various ways, is carefully hushed up. The

inadequacy and impossibility of such an explanation is adroitly concealed.

Nor could the Israelite religion of the Old Covenant, according to the

naturalistic principle of liberal theology, have had its origin in

revelation and the prophets; hence it comes from Babylon, as the product

of natural evolution from Oriental myths and customs. Any old and new

analogies, hypotheses, and fancies are good enough then to demonstrate

this as “historical.”

The Truth is not in Them.

We pause here. We might thus continue for a long time; but it is enough.

The patient reader, who has accompanied us on the tedious way to this

point, may begin to feel tired. May he excuse the detailed recital for the

reason that we had to do some extensive reconnoitring, through the

precincts of modern philosophical-religious research, to avoid the

reproach that we were making accusations without furnishing proofs. Our

contention was, that liberal science is trying to shake off the yoke of

religious truth, and to explain it away by its self-made presumptions. We

believe that we have proved our contention.

We are confronted by a science that boasts of monopolizing the spirit of

truthfulness; as a matter of fact, we see that it uses all scientific

devices to shirk the truth and to disguise its effort. In loquacious

protests it rejects the “rigid dogmatism,” the “fixed views,” of the

Christian faith, and it proclaims experience and reason as the sole

criterions of scientific cognition; yet it always stands upon the platform

of rigid presumptions, that are derived from no experience, and which no

reason can prove. It clamours for research free from presumption, and,

without winking an eye, substitutes its own presumption, secretly or

openly. It is _dishonest_.

It promises to preserve for man the highest ideals and blessings for which

his mind is yearning, yet it has no religion and no God. It recalls to

mind the words spoken by _St. Augustine_ of the philosophers whom he had

followed in the false ways of his youth: “They said: truth, and always

truth, and talked much of truth, but it was not in them.... Oh, truth,

truth, how deeply my inmost spirit sighed after thee, while they filled my

ears incessantly with thy bare name and with the palaver of their bulky

volumes.” Free it wants to be, this science. One of its disciples boasted:

“It has taught its disciples to look down without dizziness from the airy

heights of sovereign scepticism. How easy and free one breathes up there!”

Aye, it has made itself free,—from the yoke of unpalatable truth. So much

more firmly is it fettered, not with the holy bonds of belief in God, but

by the more burdensome mental yoke of a disbelief that weakens and blinds

the eyes against the cognition of the higher truth:—and bound by the

chains of public opinion, which threatens anathema to every one who fails

to stop at the border of the natural. Truly free is only the science that

enjoys a clear and free perception for the truth. Unfree is a science that

restrains the mental eye with the blinkers of theophoby. Our age seeks for

the lost happiness of the soul, it seeks longingly God and the

supernatural that have been removed from its sight. But science, so often

its leader, loathingly dodges God, and refuses to fold the hands and pray.

As long as our age does not break with a science that refuses to know a

God and a Saviour, so long will it hopelessly grope about without result,

and look in vain for an escape from the wretched labyrinth of doubt.

Chapter II. The Unscientific Method.

The efforts of liberal science, to remove more and more from its scope the

supernatural powers, show clearly that man may feel the truth to be a

yoke, and that he may attempt to free himself from this yoke by opposing

the truth and by substituting postulates for knowledge. Sceptical,

autonomous subjectivism, the philosophy of liberal free thought, has

changed the nature of human reasoning, and its relation to truth, and

perverted it to its very opposite. No longer is the human mind the vassal

of Queen Truth, as _Plutarch_ put it, but the autocratic ruler who

degrades truth to the position of a servant. Thus liberal freedom of

thought becomes the principle of an unscientific method, because it loses,

by false reasoning and false truth, the first condition of solid and

scientific research; furthermore, by treating the highest questions with

consequent levity, it betrays a lack of earnestness which again renders it

unfit for scientific research in serious matters.

False Reasoning.

“The philosophical thinkers of to-day,” says an admirer of _Kant_, _A.

Sabatier_, “may be divided into two classes, the pre-Kantian and those who

have received their initiation and their philosophical baptism from

_Kant’s_ Critic.”

The Christian philosophy of a _St. Thomas_, which is, as even

representatives of modern philosophy are constrained to admit, “a system

carried out with clear perception and great sagacity” (_Paulsen_),

contains many a principle, the intrinsic merit of which will be fully

appreciated only when contrasted with the experiments of modern

philosophy. An instance is the principle of the old school, that cognition

is the likeness of that which is cognized. Apart from the cognition by

sense, we are given here the only correct principle, coinciding with the

general conviction that reasoning is the mental reproduction of an

objective order of existence, independent of us, even in our conception of

the metaphysical world. Thinking does not create its object, but is a

reproduction of it; it is not a producer, but a painter, who copies the

world with his mental brush within himself, sometimes only in the

indistinct outlines of indefinite conception, often, however, in the sharp

lines of clear cognition.

If, according to its nature, thinking is subject to standards and laws

given it by an objective world, then subjective arbitrariness, a method of

thought which, while pretending to be a free producer of truth, yet

determines it according to necessity or desire; and, even more so, a

method of thought which feels itself justified to hold an opinion upon the

same question in one way to-day, and another and entirely opposite one

to-morrow, is wholly incomprehensible: just as incomprehensible as if a

draughtsman, attempting to draw a true picture of St. Peter’s Church,

would not follow the reality but prefer to draw the picture at random,

according to his fancy and mood.

We have stated these fundamental principles already at the beginning of

our book, we have also set forth how greatly liberal freedom of thought is

lacking the first presumption of any proper science, namely, the clear

perception that there is an objective truth in philosophical-religious

questions, to which we must submit, there, in fact, most of all.

No! We also want autonomy of thought, especially in questions of

metaphysics, where, anyway, there can only be postulates! so shouted

_Kant_ to the modern world on the threshold of the nineteenth century.

There are no stable truths, everything is relative and changing, adds the

modern theory of evolution. At last there is freedom for thought and

research, freedom from the yoke of absolute truth! Behold the aberrations

of an unbridled rush for freedom which moves the world of to-day. This

unruly hankering for a freer existence than allowed by their nature and

position, makes unbearable to many modern children of man the idea of iron

laws of truth and marked boundaries of thought. Revelling in the

consciousness of their sovereign personality, they want to measure all

things by their individuality, even religion, philosophy, truth, and

ethics. Only that what is created and experienced by them within the

sanctuary of their personality, only what is made important and legitimate

by their sentiment, is truth and of value to them. _Autonomism_ thus

changes unnoticeably into _individualism_; the own individuality, in its

peculiar inclinations, moods, and humours, its exigencies and egotistical

aims, its infirmities and diseases—they have, under the name of

_individual reason_, become the law of thinking and reasoning.

Without Knowledge of the Human Nature.

“Varied, according to character, are the demands made by heart and mind,”

assures us a representative of modern philosophy, “corresponding to them

is the image of the world to which the individual turns by inner

necessity. He may waver hither and thither, uncertain as to himself; at

last, however, his innermost tendency of life will prevail and press him

into the view of the world corresponding to his individuality. Upon its

further development worldly and local influences will play a very

important part. But the deciding factor in giving the direction is

personality.” “And,” continues Prof. _Adickes_, “the sharper and more

one-sided a character type is brought to expression, the more it will be

urged into a certain metaphysical or religious tendency, and this man will

find no rest, nor feel himself at home in the world, until he has found

the view of life that fits him. Nor does man assemble his metaphysics with

discrimination on the grounds of logical necessity, choosing here,

rejecting there, but it grows within himself by that inner compulsion

identical with true freedom.” Hence, not unselfish yielding to truth, no,

the inclinations of heart and mind, the “personality” must form the view

of the world. Let every type of character therefore develop itself sharply

and one-sidedly, let every one get the view of the world corresponding to

himself, without regard to objective truth and logical necessity. This

precisely is the “true freedom.” “For when is a man more free, than when

he chooses and does—without any compulsion, even resisting compulsion—what

his innermost soul is urging him to choose and do? How could he be more

true to himself, more like himself?” With such a freedom “the outer

compulsion” of an absolute truth, to say nothing of the duty to believe,

will not agree. “The core of one’s very being,” so _Harnack_ informs us,

“should be grasped in its depths, and the soul should only know its own

needs and the way indicated by it to gratify them.” “According to my

character,” says _Adickes_ again, “is the world reflected within myself by

intrinsic necessity just as my creed represents it, and no opponent is

able to shake my position by arguments of reason or by empirical facts.”

Hence it is not only true, as has been known from the beginning, that the

inclinations of the heart are trying to prevail upon reason to urge their

desires, and to oppose what displeases them, and that reason must beware

of the heart—no, inclination and character are now directly called upon to

shape our religion and view of the world. Every type of man, every period,

may construct its own philosophical system, or, if this is beyond it, at

least its own ideas; it may also shape its own Christianity, according to

its experience. As the individual chooses his clothes, and puts his

individuality into them, in like manner may the individual put on the view

of life that fits him.

These principles represent the apostasy from objective truth, and, at the

same time, the apostasy from the _principles of true science_: their first

demand, the proper understanding of truth, is perverted into its very

opposite. A necessary quality of scientific research is exactness;

exactness, however, demands most conscientious cleaving to truth; scale

and measure are its instruments. The reverse of exactness is to cast away

scale and measure, to turn eye and ear, not toward reality, but toward

one’s self, so as to observe personal wishes and inclinations, and then

shape the results of the “research” accordingly. This may be a method of

freedom, but it cannot be the method of science. The very thing that true

research would eliminate in the first place, viz., to have the decision

influenced by hobbies and moods, is most important in the method of

individualism; objectiveness, deemed by true science the highest

requirement, is to that method the least one: what true science first of

all insists on, namely, to prove that which is claimed, this method knows

but little of. It recalls the method of the gourmet who selects that which

gratifies his taste: it may be likened to the dandy picking frock-coat and

trousers that suit his whim. True research, with a firm hand at the helm,

aims to direct its craft so as to discover new coasts, or at least a new

island; the exploring done by liberal research is like casting off the

rudder to be tossed by the waves, for its task is only to hold to the

course which the waving billows of individual life give to it. True

science, finally, seeks for serious results, able to withstand criticism:

the research by individualism produces results which, as individualism

itself confesses, must not be taken seriously. They are the subjective

achievements of amateurs, creations of fashion, cut to the pattern of the

ruling principle: _nihil nisi quod modernum est_. A science that professes

such a method is beyond a doubt unfit to play a beneficial part in the

endeavour of mankind.

Do not say: but it is not claimed that religion and view of life are

matters of scientific research: on the contrary, they are always

distinguished from science. It is true, this is not infrequently claimed.

But it is also known how energetically just these matters are appropriated

by science. Is it not exactly this sphere in which free research is to be

active? Is it not its aim to construct a “scientific view of the world,”

as opposed to the Christian belief? Is there not the conviction that

science has already carried much light and enlightenment into this very

sphere, that it has upset the old tenets of faith?

And what an amount of _ignorance of human nature_ underlies these

principles! It is the same complete misconception that has always

characterized liberalism, and which it has also manifested in economical

matters. There, too, it demanded boundless freedom for all economic

sources, ignoring man’s disordered inclinations that will work disorder

and destruction if not restrained by laws. In a similar manner they dream

that man, if left to the unrestrained influence of his personality, will

soar without fail to the heights of the pure truth. They know no longer

the maxim once engraved by the wisdom of the ancient world upon Delphi’s

sanctuary: “Know thyself”! They no longer know the beguiling and benumbing

influence exerted upon reason by inclination, how it fetters the mind.

_Amor premit oculos_, says Quintilian. The thing we like, we desire to

establish as true; favourable arguments are decisive, counter arguments

are ignored or belittled, inclinations guide the observation, determine

the books and sources drawn from. If we meet with something unsympathetic,

something that interferes with the liberties we have grown fond of, it

takes a rare degree of unselfishness to love the painful truth more than

one’s self. It is easy to leave cool reason in control in mathematical

speculations: they seldom affect the heart; quite different, however, in

questions of philosophy and religion that often have vexatious

consequences.

We have to concede that _D. F. Strauss_ was right when he wrote:

“He who writes about the Rulers of Nineveh or the Pharaohs of

Egypt, may pursue a purely historical interest: but Christianity

is a power so alive, and the question of what occurred at its

origin is involved in such vast consequences for the immediate

present, that the inquirer would have to be dull-witted to be

interested only in a purely historical way in the solution of

these questions.” But we must also regret that this personal

interest has misled him, for one, into pernicious ways.

In view of the frequent assurances of the noted historian, _Th.

Mommsen_, that he hates the sight of old Christian inscriptions(9)

we may perhaps welcome it in the interest of history that he

refrained from writing the fourth volume of his Roman history,

wherein the Origin of Christianity was to be treated. One of his

biographers asserts that the downfall of paganism through

Christianity was a fact not to _Mommsen’s_ liking, that “a

description of the decomposition of all things ancient, and the

substitution therefor of the Nazarene spirit would not have been a

labour of love.”(10) And again, when we see the well-known

historian of philosophy, _F. Ueberweg_, in a letter to _F. A.

Lange_, denouncing from the bitterness of his heart “the miserable

beggar-principle of Christianity,” and the “surrendering of

independence and of personal honour in favour of a servile

submission to the master, who is made a Messiah, nay, even the

incarnate _Son of God_,” then we may well dread the historical

objectivity of a man of such notions in writing about the religion

of Jesus Christ.

With reference to the chief subject of psychology, the noted

psychologist, _W. James_, writes with utmost frankness: “The soul

is an entity, and truly one of the worst kind, a scholastic one,

and something said to be destined for salvation or perdition. As

far as I am concerned, I must frankly admit that the antipathy

against the particular soul I find myself burdened with, is an old

hardness of heart, which I cannot account for, not even to myself.

I will admit that the formal disposition of the question in

dispute would come to an end, if the existence of souls could be

used for an explanatory principle. I admit the soul would be a

means of unification, whereas the working of the brain, or ideas,

show no harmonizing efficacy, no matter how thoroughly

synchronical they be. Yet, despite these admissions, I never

resort in my psychologizing to the soul.”

If we read such statement, if, in addition, we remember the

popular-philosophical science of men like _Haeckel_, particularly perhaps

the literature which he recommends for information about Christianity, and

of which he himself makes use; if we have read _Schopenhauer_,

_Nietzsche_, or the “Philosophy of Races” of a _Chamberlain_,—we can no

longer be at a loss what to think of the “rule of reason” and of the

“search for pure truth.” Observe, also, the restless haste of those who,

having turned their back upon the Catholic Church, now proceed to attack

her, observe their agitated work and incitement, how they rummage and

ransack the nooks and corners of the history of the Church in quest of

refuse and filth, and if the find is not sufficient how they even help it

along by forgery, all this to demonstrate to the world that the grandest

fact in history is really absurdity and filth;—then one will understand

what instincts may be found there to guide “reason and science.” How even

sexual impulses are trying to shape their own ethics we shall not examine

here. _F. W. Foerster_ relates: “I once heard a moral pervert expound his

ethical and religious notions; they were nothing but the reflection of his

perverse impulses. But he thought them to be the result of his reasoning.”

Is there not known in these days the inherited disorder of the human heart

as characterized by the Apostle in the words: “But I see another law in my

members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the

law of sin (Rom. vii. 23)”? The Ancients knew it. The wisdom of _Plato_

knew it, who speaks of the “pricks of sin, sunk into man, coming from an

old, unexpiated offence, giving birth to wickedness.” The wise _Cicero_

knew of it: “Nature has bestowed upon us but a few sparks of knowledge,

which, corrupted by bad habits and errors, we soon extinguish, with the

result that the light of nature does nowhere appear in its clearness and

brightness.” Truth is often disagreeable to nature. And if not subdued and

ruled by strong discipline, nature proceeds to oppose the truth. Only to

lofty self-discipline and purity of morals is reserved the privilege of

facing the highest truths with a calm eye. “Blessed are the pure in heart,

for they shall see God.”

Mental Bondage.

Of this wisdom the admirer of liberal freedom knows little. Instead of

distinguishing the good from the evil in man, of unfolding his inner

kernel, the pure spirit, and making it rule; instead of demanding, like

_Pythagoras_, discipline as a preparatory school for wisdom, he has

learned from _Rousseau_, the master of modern Liberalism, that everything

in man is good. Depravity of nature, original sin, are unsympathetic

things to his ear. Even _Goethe_ wrote to _Herder_, when _Kant_ had in his

religious philosophy found a radical Evil in man: “After it has taken

_Kant_ a lifetime to clean his philosophical gown of many filthy

prejudices, he now outrageously slabbers it with the stain of the radical

Evil, so that Christians, too, may be enticed to come and kiss the seam.”

Instead of exhorting for a redemption from internal fetters, as the sages

of all ages did, the principle of wisdom now proposed is to quietly let

individuality develop, with all its inclinations. They call this freedom.

Is it not the freedom whereof the slave of sensuality avails himself to

form his theory of life? It, too, “grows up in man with that inner

compulsion which is identical with true freedom” (_Adickes_).

Freedom this may be. But _only external freedom_, the only freedom they

often know. They are unaware that they forfeit thereby the real, the inner

freedom. “Thou aimest at free heights,” admonishes even the most impetuous

herald of freedom, “thy soul is athirst for stars. But also thy wicked

impulses are athirst for freedom. Thy wild hounds want to be free, they

bark joyfully in their kennel when thy spirit essays to throw open all

dungeons.”(11) They think to be free and speak of the self-assurance of

individual reason, and they cannot see that the mind is in the fetters of

bondage.

Else how is it that the atheistic free science, considered in general,

arrives with infallible regularity at results that obviously tend to a

morally loose conduct of life? How is it, that it tries throughout to

shirk the acceptance of a personal God, and is at home only in open or

disguised atheism? that it so persistently avoids the acceptance of

anything supernatural? Why does it in its researches never arrive at

theism, which has as much foundation at least as pantheism and atheism?

Why does it, nearly without exception, deny or ignore the personal

immortality of the soul and a Beyond; why does it never reach the opposite

result which, in intrinsic evidence, ranks at least on a par with it? Why

is it not admitted, that the will is free and strictly responsible for its

acts, although this fact is borne out by the obvious experience and

testimony of mankind? Why does it so regularly arrive at the conclusion

that the Christian religion has become untenable, and needs development;

that its ethics, too, must be reformed, more especially in sexual matters?

Why does it not defend the duty to believe, but reject it persistently? A

striking fact! The matters in question here concern truths that impose

sacrifices upon man, whereas their opposites have connections of intimate

friendship with unpurged impulses. It may be noted also that this same

science, that announces to the world these results of research, meets with

the boisterous applause from the elements that belong to the morally

inferior part of mankind.

_St. Augustine_ prays: “Redeem me, O God, from the throng of

thoughts, which I feel so painfully within my soul, which feels

lowly in Thy presence, which is fleeing to Thy mercy. Grant me

that I may not give my assent to them; that I may disapprove of

them, even if they seek to delight me, and that I may not stay

with them in sleepiness. May they not have the power to insinuate

themselves into my works; may I be protected from them in my

resolution, may my conscience be protected by Thy keeping.” It is

the realization of the want of freedom of the human reason, the

only way to the liberation from the fetters of our own

imperfection. He, who has seriously begun to take up the struggle

with his inner disorders, will, by his own experience, pray as

_St. Augustine_ prayed.

Recognizing this fact, man will try to rise above himself, to cleave to a

superior Power and Wisdom, who, in purer heights, untouched by human

passions, holds aloft the truth, in order to rise thereby above his own

bondage; he will understand the necessity of an authority clothed with

divine power and dignity, so that it may hold in unvanquished hands the

ideal against all onslaughts of human passions. He will without difficulty

find this power in the religion of Jesus Christ and in His Church: in Him,

who could not be accused of sin, who by His Cross has achieved the highest

triumph over flesh and sin, who has surrounded His Church with the bright

throng of saints. And if he sees this religion and Church an object of

persecution, he will behold in it the signature of its truth. For truth is

a yoke despised by sensualism and pride, and the spiritual power that

contends for purity and truth will be hated.

Without Earnestness.

The regrettable conception of truth proper to the modern freedom of

thought, leads to that flippancy with which our time is prone to treat the

highest questions. Why conscientiousness and anxious care? All that is

needed is to form one’s personal views; there is no certain, generally

valid, truth in religious matters. Hence there is often in this sphere of

scientific research a method wholly different from that in use anywhere

else. In history, philology, natural science, there is a striving for

exactness, but in these matters exact reasoning is replaced only too often

by discretionary reasoning, by loose forming of ideas; in the very domain

which has ever pre-eminently been called the province of the wisdom of

life, there is now in vogue the method of flippancy.

True wisdom is convinced that reason has not been given to man to grope in

the dark in respect to the most momentous questions of life; that reason,

though limited and liable to err, is given him to find the truth. True

wisdom knows its difficulties when the matter in quest is metaphysical

truth: it knows how, in this case, more than in any other, reason is

exposed to the influence of inclinations from within, and to the power of

error and of public opinion from without; that in these matters, least of

all, reason is not in the habit of taking the truth by assault. True,

there are intuitions, and inspiration by genius—they have their rights,

but they are the exceptions. The ordinary, and only safe, way is to

advance cautiously, by discoursive thinking, from cognition to cognition,

otherwise there is danger of a sudden fall from the steep path.

In the early Christian ages this insight led to careful cultivation and

application of certain methodical means of thinking and terms of

expressions, to definitions, distinctions, and forms of syllogism, with

that “insulting lucidity,” in the words of a modern philosopher, which

gives to them the stamp of scrupulousness. The same insight into the

cognitive weakness of reason leads to the noble union between science and

modesty.

What, however, do we see in modern philosophic-religious thinking? Often

unsolidity, with hardly a remnant of the principles of the serious pursuit

of knowledge.

The autonomous freethinker of these days lacks chiefly humility and

modesty. The ancient Sage of Samos once declined the name of “sage,”

saying that God alone is wise, while man must be content to be

wisdom-loving (φιλόσοφος). Not always so the sages of modern times.

_Kant_ believed of his system: “Critical philosophy must be

convinced that there is not in store for it a change of opinions,

no improvement nor possibly a differently formed system, but that

the system of criticism, resting on a fully assured basis, will be

established forever, indispensable for all coming ages to the

highest aims of mankind.” _Hegel_, in turn, was no less convinced

of the indispensability of his doctrine. In the summer term of

1820 he began his lectures with the words: “I would say with

Christ: I teach the truth, and I am the truth.” Yet, to

_Schopenhauer_ _Hegel’s_ philosophy is nonsense, humbug, and

worse. _Schopenhauer_ knew better, and was convinced that he had

lifted the veil of truth higher than any mortal before him; he

claimed that he had written paragraphs “which may be taken to have

been inspired by the Holy Ghost.” Shortly before his death he

wrote: “My curse upon any one, who in reprinting my works shall

knowingly make a change; be it but a sentence, or a word, a

syllable or a punctuation point.” _Nietzsche_ held: “I have given

to the world the most profound book in its possession.” To the

eyes of this philosophy, modesty and humility are no longer

virtues. _B. Spinoza_, a leader in later philosophy, states

expressly: “Humility is no virtue; it does not spring from reason.

It is a sadness, springing from the fact that man becomes aware of

his impotence.”

An arrogant mind is not capable of finding the higher truth with

certainty; conscientious obedience to truth, unselfish abstention from

asserting one’s ego, and one’s pet opinion, can dwell only in the humble

mind. Here applies what _St. Augustine_ said of the Neoplatonists: “To

acquiesce in truth you need humility, which, however, is very difficult to

instil into your minds.”(12)

When God’s authority steps before scientists and earnestly demands faith,

they will talk excitedly about their human dignity that does not permit

them to believe; about reason being their court of last resort that must

not know of submission; and if the Church, in the name of God, steps

before them, they become abusive.

Men who have scarcely outgrown their minority often feel it incumbent upon

themselves to furnish humanity with new thought and to discard the old.

_D. F. Strauss_, a young under-master of twenty-seven years, writes his

“Life of Jesus, critically analyzed” (1835); he tells the Christian world

that everything it has hitherto held sacred is a delusion and a snare; he

feels the vocation to “replace the old, obsolete, supernatural, method of

contemplating the history of Jesus with a new one,” which changes all

divine deeds into myths. Hardly out of knickerbockers and kilts, they feel

experienced enough to come forth with novel and unheard-of propositions on

the highest problems. In business and office, as in public service,

sober-mindedness and maturity are demanded; but to work out the ultimate

questions of humanity, inexperience and lack of the deeper knowledge of

life do not disqualify in our time. If _Schiller’s_ complaint of the

Kantians of his time was that, “What they have scarcely learned to-day,

they want to teach to-morrow,” what is to be said of those who teach even

before they have learned? And what superficial thinking do we meet in the

philosophy of the day! Lacking all solid training, they proceed to

construct new systems, or at least fragments of them. As regards their

competence, one is often tempted to quote the harsh words of a modern

writer: “I believe _Schopenhauer_ would have formed a better opinion of

the human intellect, had he paid less attention to authors and

newspaper-writers, and more to the common sense evinced by men in their

work and business” (_Paulsen_).

It would be highly instructive to take a longer journey through the realm

of modern philosophy, in so far as it touches upon questions concerning

the theory of the world, or even liberal Protestant theology, so as to

subject to a searching criticism the untenable notions and attempts at

demonstration even of acknowledged representatives of this science,

whereby they generally do away with God and miracles, the soul and

immortality, freedom of the will, the divine moral laws, the Gospel, the

divinity of Christ, and so much more, and show what they offer in place of

all this. It would disclose an enormous lack of scientific method: instead

of assured results they offer questionable, even untenable theories; in

place of proofs, emphatical assertions, imperatives, catch phrases; or

else arguments which under the simplest test will prove miscarriages of

logic. These philosophers vault ditches and boundaries with ease, and

derive full gratification from imperfect and warped ideas. Of course,

exactness in philosophical thinking is not a fruit to be plucked while out

taking a walk; it is the product of serious mental work, of sterling

philosophical training, which, alas, is wanting to-day in large circles of

scientists.

As an instance, we point to the method described in a previous chapter, by

which all supernatural factors are rejected by the arbitrary postulate of

“exclusively natural causation,” without valid proofs, based only upon the

arbitrary decision of so-called modern science—in the gravest matter an

unscientific process that cannot be outdone.

Another instructive instance, of serious matters treated with levity, is

furnished in the unscrupulous way in which the Catholic Church, her

teaching, institutions, and history, are passed upon in judgment by those

having neither knowledge nor fairness.

Without Reverence.

True wisdom accepts advice and guidance. It feels reverence for sacred and

venerable traditions, for the convictions of mankind on the great

questions of life, and greater reverence still for an authority of faith

that has received from God its warrant to be the teacher of mankind, and

which has stood the test of time. True wisdom is convinced that continuity

in human thinking and in knowledge is necessary. Life is short, and gives

to the individual hardly time to attain mental maturity. Philosophy, and

this is the matter before us at present,—philosophy can never be the work

of a single person; it is the achievement of centuries; succeeding

generations, with searching eye and careful hand, building further upon

the achievement for which past ages have laid the foundations. By nailing

together beams and boards the individual may erect a house good enough for

a short time to serve his sports and pleasures; and if wrecked by the

first storm, it may be replaced by another. But the building of massive

and towering cathedrals that last for ages required the work of

generations. And only skilful and experienced hands may do the work; haste

is out of place here. The ancient sages of Greece, _Plato_, _Pythagoras_,

and _Aristotle_, had this reverence for the philosophical and religious

traditions of the past. These representatives of true wisdom did not

consider philosophy and theology as the product of individual sagacity,

they did not attempt to be free rulers in the realm of thought; on the

contrary, they looked upon wisdom as the patrimony of the past, which it

was their duty to preserve.

They pointed to their venerable traditions, however meagre they

were. “Our forefathers,” says _Plato_, “who were better than we

are, and stood nearer to the gods than we, have handed down to us

this revelation.”(13) That the testimony of the great sages, to

the effect that the most essential elements of their philosophy

had their origin in religious traditions, is based upon truth and

not on fancy has been proven by _O. Willmann_, whose knowledge of

ancient civilization was very extensive, in his monumental

“History of Idealism.” Delhi, the home of mysteries, the

generations of priests in ancient Egypt, the doctrinal traditions

of the Chaldeans, the Magi of Medes and Persians, and the wisdom

of the Brahmins of ancient India are witnesses to the fact. “The

Ancients were correct,” says _Willmann_, “in tracing their

philosophy to earliest traditions ... they knew what they owed to

their forefathers better than we do. They direct our astonished

eyes to a very ancient reality, to a towering remoteness of living

thought.” This fact is very much against the taste of our

times.... An inherited wisdom, springing from an original

revelation, adapted to the nations, shining with renewed

brightness in true philosophy, is quite the opposite to a

philosophy that seeks the source of mental life only in isolated

thinking; that thinks its success to be conditioned upon

unprepossession; that holds the refutation of tradition to be the

test of its strength.

Unfortunately this latter view is widespread in our time. Research is

often directed, not by reverence for the wisdom inherited from many

Christian centuries, but by the mania, unwise and fatal alike, of seeking

new paths. “Love of truth,” so we are told, “is what urges on the great

leaders of humanity, the prophets and reformers, to seek new and untrodden

paths of life. ‘Plus ultra’ is the rallying-cry of these pathfinders of

the future, who are clearing the way for the mental life of mankind. No

authority can restrain them, no prejudice, however holy: they are

following the light which has dawned upon their soul” (_Paulsen_).

And a multitude discover this light in their souls, and join the prophets

and pathfinders! Everybody goes abroad looking for untrodden paths; from

all directions comes the cry: Here and there, to the right, to the left,

is the right way! Do we not only too often see self-willed and

self-satisfied thinkers, whose shortsighted conceit gets within the four

walls of their study puffed up against God and religion, offer us for holy

truth the fanciful products of their narrow brains? Do we not see, only

too often, champions of shallow reasoning, without discipline of thought

and without ethical maturity, recommending their undigested efforts as the

wisdom of the world? Youthful thinkers there are in numbers, each of whom

claims that he at last has succeeded in solving the world riddle; they

offer us new theories of the world, new ideas on ethics, on law and

theology, for a few dollars per copy or less. The holy abode of truth has

become the campus for saunterers, each eager to displace the other so that

he may be sole proprietor, or at least a respected partner. Day by day new

solutions of “problems,” “vital questions,” or at least “outlines” of

them; new “views of the world”; new forms of religion and of Christianity

for the “modern man”; “reforms” of marriage and of sexual ethics, and so

on. Truth had not been discovered until the newcomer puts his pen to the

paper. Every one is free to join in. Yea, more, he may not only join in,

but lash those who do not applaud him. According to this notion, nothing

has a right to exist, no “sacred prejudice” may be claimed once this

self-appointed representative of science takes the field for “research.”

Behold the Christian truth, it has stood the test of centuries: but it

cannot resist these scientific freebooters, they rush over it with banners

flying.

Severe speech would here be in order. A painful spectacle, these doings of

modern thought in the sacred precincts of truth. “Put off the shoes from

thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground,” we imagine

to hear; yet this sanctuary of truth has been made a profane place of

bartering.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

While still a pagan, but moved by his desire for truth, the philosopher

_Justin_ went to the schools of his day to seek the solution of his doubts

and queries. First he turned to a Stoic, but as he taught nothing of God,

_Justin_ was unsatisfied. He next went to a Peripatetic teacher, then to a

Pythagorean, but failed to find what he desired. The Platonist at last

gave him something. Walking alone along the beach, and musing over

_Plato’s_ principles, he met an old man who referred him to the truth of

Christianity, to the Prophets and the Apostles: “They alone have seen the

truth and proclaimed it unto man, they were afraid of no one, knew no

fear; yielded to no opinion; filled with the Holy Ghost, they spoke only

what they saw and heard. The Scriptures are still extant, and he who takes

them up will find in them a treasure of information about principles and

ultimate things, and all else the philosopher must know, if he believes

them.”(14) And _Justin_ found truth and peace, and bowed to the yoke of

the doctrine of Jesus Christ.

What a striking contrast between this serious love of truth in the days of

passing heathendom, and the uncontrolled thinking of so many in our

Christian age! To them truth is no longer a sacred treasure, a yoke to be

assumed in reverence; it has become the plaything of their impressions and

inclinations. Indeed, they consider it a burden to accept the old

Christian truth, with which they meet on all their ways.

Chapter III. The Bitter Fruit.

The Vocation of Science.

Science is, and ever was, an influential factor operating upon the

thought, aims, and actions of man. Hence science must remain conscious of

its vocation. First of all it is to hold aloft and preserve the _spiritual

possessions of mankind_. True, science must also progress; but progress

means growth, which presupposes the preservation of what has been received

from of old. This applies pre-eminently to the philosophical-religious

patrimony of the past; no error could be more fatal than to presume that

each generation must start from the beginning, that the foundations, which

have safely supported human life for centuries, must be obsolete because

human nature is suddenly considered changed.

What are these foundations? They are the tested religious and moral

convictions of mankind, and, for our nations particularly, the divine

tenets of Christianity, that have been their highest ideals for centuries,

and have produced serenity and a high standard of morality. If science

aims to be the principle of conservation and not of destruction, it must

look upon the safeguarding of those possessions of the nations as its

sacred task. Indeed, it would perform this task but poorly were it to

waste this patrimony piece by piece, or to shatter it with wicked fist,

instead of respecting and honouring it, or to set fire to the sanctuary

where mankind hitherto has dwelled in peace and happiness. A science of

this kind would not only cease to be a bulwark for the mental life of

mankind, but turn into a positive danger.

In as far as it follows the principles of liberal freedom of research,

present-day science does present this danger. This cannot be denied, the

facts speak too plainly. By its very nature it _must_ become such danger.

For it recognizes no belief, neither in God nor in the Church; no dogmas,

no “prejudices,” no traditions, however sacred, are to be respected; it is

fundamental unbelief, the principle of opposition to the Christian

religion. Its autonomous Subject emancipates himself from the yoke of

objective truth which he cannot procreate free out of himself. It

confesses the principle that there are neither truths nor values that

endure; _plus ultra!_ always new ideas! _Quieta movere_, hitherto the

watchword of unwisdom, is this science’s maxim. And liberal freedom of

research is what its nature compels it to be. Can it do any more than it

has done, to prove itself a principle of mental pauperism? We shall not

demand a list of the things it has thrown aside and shattered. Let us

rather ask, _what it has left whole_ of the sacred institutions of truth,

inherited from a Christian past. Alas, it has cast off and denied

everything; it has lost not only the things a Christian age has treasured,

but even those a higher paganism had revered. Let us examine this sad work

of negation and annihilation. It is a more melancholy spectacle than any

war of extermination that was ever waged against Europe’s Christian

civilization by a people bent on trampling down every flower of Christian

culture, and on razing every castle to the ground.

Are We Still Christians?

This was the question proposed some scores of years ago by _D. Strauss_ to

himself, and to those of his mind. With this question we will begin. To

our forefathers, especially of the German nation, nothing was more sacred

than the Christian religion; no people like the German has absorbed it so

fully, has been so permeated with it. But now, wherever liberal

science—here especially modern Protestant theology that brings liberal

freedom of research into full application—wherever it has made the

Christian religion a subject of its study, one treasure after another has

been lost; of the whole of Christendom nothing remains but an empty name

and a formal homage, reminding of the courtesy paid to deposed rulers.

In the first place, there has been dropped the fundamental thesis of the

_divinity of Christ_, whereupon rests the entire structure of

Christianity. Man’s modern emancipation from everything supernatural has

been accomplished also with respect to the person of Christ: the man

Christ is divested of His divinity and of everything miraculous; His birth

by the virgin, His miracles and prophecies, His resurrection and

ascension, once the subjects of exalting feasts, have fallen a victim to

unbelieving science. It is true, they exert themselves to keep His person

in view, they want the purely human Jesus to hold His old position of God

and man in the believing consciousness, to conceal the mental

pauperization. But this trick is failing more and more. The Son of God

sees Himself gradually placed among the great men of history; we are

becoming accustomed to find in the “Biographies of Celebrated Men,” among

“Religious Educators,” side by side with _Confucius_, _Buddha_,

_Augustine_, _Mohammed_, _Luther_, _Kant_, and _Goethe_, also the name of

Jesus. The lustre of the past belief in His divinity is paling. In the

eyes of unbelieving science He has ceased to be the infallible,

all-surpassing Authority, and the basis of the faith. The teaching of

Jesus has become the subject of an analyzing and eliminating criticism,

and whenever deemed advisable His authority is simply ignored; He was

human, affected by the views and errors of His age.

Thus they know, as does _H. Gunkel_, that “Jesus and the Apostles

evidently have taken those narratives (the miracles of Genesis) to

be reality and not poetry”; “the men of the New Testament on such

questions take no particular attitude but share the (erroneous)

opinions of their times.” They also know “that in regard to

persons possessed with demons Jesus shared the erroneous notions

of his time” (_Braun_), and _Fr. Delitzsch_ informs us that it was

“particularly a Babylonian superstition,” in consequence of which

“the belief in demons and devils assumed such importance in the

imagination of Jesus of Nazareth and of his Galilean disciples.”

Thus the word is fulfilled literally: “He is a sign which will be

contradicted.”

No one knows really _who Jesus was_. His person is the football of

opinions. “If any one desiring reliable information, as to who Jesus

Christ was, and what message He brought, should consult the literature of

the day, he would find buzzing round him contradictory voices.... Taken

all in all, the impression made by these contradicting opinions is

depressing: the confusion seems past hope,” admits Prof. _Harnack_.

Also _E. V. Hartmann_ remarks: “Thus, according to some, Jesus was

a poet, to others a mystic visionary, a third sees in him the

militant hero for freedom and human dignity, to a fourth he was

the organizer of a new Church and of an ecclesiastical system of

ethics, to a fifth the rationalistic reformer ... to the eleventh

a naturalistic pantheist like _Giordano Bruno_, to the twelfth a

superman on the order of _Nietzsche’s_ Zarathustra....” A chaos of

opinions agreeing only in the one aim of rejecting His divinity.

_A. Schweitzer_, himself a representative of liberal Protestant

research, says, “Nothing is more negative than the result of the

research concerning the life of Jesus.” And knowing Jesus’s person

no longer, they no longer know anything certain about His

teaching, as is clear from the above. According to _I.

Wellhausen_, from the “unsufficient fragments at hand we can get

but a scanty conception of the doctrine of Jesus.”—The fathers

were rich, the children have grown poor. _Dissipaverunt

substantiam suam!_

To many even the _existence of Jesus_ has become doubtful; and

this not only to men of an irreligious propaganda, like Prof. _A.

Drews_, who, carried away by the corroding tendency of a radical

age, journeyed from town to town in order to proclaim, in the

twentieth century of Christian reckoning, the scientific discovery

of the “Myth of Christ”; but even to others the existence of Jesus

has become doubtful or at least valueless. The task now is to do

away entirely with the person of Jesus, and to solve the problem

of preserving a Christian faith without a Christ. In this sense

Prof. _M. Rade_ writes: “Serious and gifted men having asserted

that Jesus never existed (or, what amounts to the same, that, if

He ever lived, nothing is known of Him; hence, His existence is of

no historical importance), we dogmatists almost have to be

grateful to them for having helped us to put a very concrete

question no longer in general terms: how does religious certainty

face historical criticism? but quite specifically: how does

religious certainty (of the Christian) regard the

historic-scientific possibility of the non-existence of the

historical Jesus?” They frankly assert that they could entirely

forego the person of Christ. Thus Prof. _P. W. Schmiedel_

declares: “My innermost religious conviction would not suffer

injury were I to be convinced to-day that Jesus never lived.... I

would know that I could not lose the measure of piety that has

become my property long since, even if I cannot derive it any

longer from Jesus.” “Neither does my piety require me to see in

Jesus an absolutely perfect type, nor would it disturb me were I

to find someone else actually surpassing Him, which undoubtedly is

the case in some respects.” For him to whom Christ is no longer

God but a man and capable of error, His person and existence have

necessarily lost their value.

Thus we have arrived at a _Christianity without a Christ_. As yet the

person of the Lord is usually surrounded by a halo: it is the after-effect

of a faithful past, the last rays of a setting sun. That this last

glimmer, too, will pale and give way to darkness is but a question of

time, when with more honesty expression will be given to the conclusion

necessarily arrived at. If Christ is not what He claimed to be, God and

Messiah, then the belief in His being the Son of God and the Messiah, in

His right to abrogate the religion of the Old Testament and to found a new

religion, commanding its acceptance under penalty of damnation—all this

can be nothing but the result of religious fanaticism and mental

derangement. And science is, in all seriousness, preparing to turn into

this direction.

It is true, many are hesitating to draw these fearful conclusions

and to utter them; arriving at this point, they cautiously stop:

so _Harnack_. “How Jesus could arrive at the consciousness of His

unique relation to God as His Son, how He became conscious of His

power as well as of the obligation and task involved in this

power, that is His secret, and no psychology will ever disclose

it.... Here, all research must halt.” It is the silence of

embarrassment, but equally of unscientific method. Having arrived

at untenable conclusions, when question upon question is

impetuously suggested, they stop suddenly and have nothing to say

but a vague word about inscrutableness.

But there are those who actually speak the word so horrible to a

Christian heart: Jesus was demented, a subject for pathology.

_Strauss_ indicated this cautiously: “One who expects to return

after his death in a manner in which no human being had ever

returned, he is to us ... not exactly a lunatic, but a great

visionary.” Others speak more plainly. _Holtzmann’s_ answer to the

question: Was Jesus an Ecstatic, is an emphatic: “Yes, He was.”

_De Loosten_ considers him insane. _E. Rasmussen_ thinks Him an

epileptic, but grants to physicians the right to reckon him among

paranoiacs or lunatics. To _A. Jülicher_ Jesus is a visionary, “a

mystic, not satisfied to dream of his ideals, but who lived with

them, worked with them, even saw them tangibly before his eyes,

deceiving himself and others.” Thus the supernatural has become

madness; Jesus Christ, for whose divinity the martyrs went to

their death, wears now, before the forum of a false science,

Herod’s cloak of foolishness.

With the fall of this fundamental dogma there must necessarily fall all

other specific truths of Christianity, and they have fallen. The Holy

Writ, once the work of the Holy Ghost, has now become a book like the

Indian Vedda, to some perhaps even more unreliable; original sin,

Redemption and grace, the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments, have

been dropped or changed into symbols, of which every one may think what he

pleases. They have tried to make Christianity “acceptable to our times,”

to “bring it nearer to the modern idea.” There is really nothing left to

offend modern man, nothing that could get in conflict with any idea. The

essence of Christianity is depreciated and emptied until it has become

only a vague sentiment, without thought; a few names, without ideas.

“Christianity as a Gospel,” so teaches _Harnack_, “has but one aim: to

find the living God, that every individual may find Him as his God,

gaining strength and joy and peace. How it attains this aim through the

centuries, whether with the Coefficient of the Jewish or the Greek, of

flight from the world or of civilization, of Gnosticism or

Agnosticism—this all is of secondary consideration.” Of secondary

consideration it is, then, whether one is convinced of the existence of

God or whether he doubts with the agnostics, whether he believes in a

personal God or not. To-day even the pantheist who does not acknowledge a

Creator of Heaven and Earth may be a Christian; and so can he who no

longer believes in personal immortality and in a hereafter; for, we are

informed, “this religion is above the contrasts of here and the beyond, of

life and death, of Reason and Ecstatics, of Judaism and Hellenism”

(_Harnack_). Thus there is no thought which could not be made to agree

with this despoiled Christianity. For, we are told further, “much less

does the Gospel presuppose, or is joined to, a fixed theory of nature—not

even in a negative sense could this be asserted” (_Harnack_). Materialism

and Spiritualism, Theism and Pantheism, Belief or Negation of Creation,

everything will harmonize with a Christianity thus degraded to a thing

without character or principle.(15)

All that is left is a word of love, of a kind Father, of filiation to God,

and union with God: words robbed of their true meaning; a shell without a

kernel, ruins with the name “Christianity” still inscribed thereon,

telling of a house that once stood here, wherein the fathers dwelt, but

long since vacated by their children. _Dissipaverunt substantiam suam!_

As to God and divine filiation, everybody is welcome to his own

interpretation. He may form with _O. Pfleiderer_ the

“Neoprotestantism” which, “after breaking with all ecclesiastical

dogmas, recalled to mind the truths of the Christian religion,

hidden beneath the surface of these dogmas, in order to realize,

more purely and more perfectly than ever before, the truth of

God’s incarnation in the new forms of autonomous thought and of

the moral life of human society.” Christianity and God—the symbols

of autonomous man! Or he may follow _Bousset_, to whom nature is

God, and in this way combines harmoniously Christianity and

Atheism. “This is the forceful evolution of Christian religion,”

says he, “the notion of redemption, the Dogma of the divinity of

Christ, the trinity, the idea of satisfaction and sacrifice,

miracles, the old conception of revelation—all these we see

carried off by this wave of progress.” “What is left? Timid people

may think: a wreck. But to our pleasant surprise we found stated

at many points in our inquiry: what is left is the simple Gospel

of Jesus.” And what does this simplified Gospel contain? “Of

course we cannot simply accept in full the Gospel of Jesus....

There is the internal and the external. The external and

non-essential includes the judgment of the world, angels,

miracles, inspiration, and other things.” All this may be

disregarded. “But even the essentials, the internal of the Gospel

cannot be simply subscribed to. They must be interpreted.” What,

then, is this essential, this internal of the Gospel, and what is

its interpretation? “The belief of the Gospel in the personal

heavenly Father; to this we hold fast with all our strength. But

we carry this belief in God into our modern thought.” And what

becomes then of “God”? “To us, God is no longer the kind Father

above the starry skies. God is the Infinite, Omnipotent, who is

active in the immense universe, in infiniteness of time and space,

in infinitely small and in infinitely large things. He is the God

whose garb is the iron law of nature which hides Him from the

human eye by a compact, impenetrable veil.” We see the belief of

the Gospel has dwindled down to atheistic Monism.

As early as 1874 _Ed. von Hartmann_, in his book “Die

Selbstzersetzung des Christentums,” came to the conclusion that

“liberal Protestantism has in no sense the right to claim a place

within Christendom.” In a later book his keen examination

demonstrates how the speculation of liberal Protestantism has

changed the Christian religion step by step into pantheism: “Not a

single point in the doctrine of the Church is spared by this

upheaval of principle, every dogma is formally turned into its

very opposite, in order to make its religious idea conform to the

tenet of divine immanence.”

This is called the development of Christianity. It is this

“religious progress,” the same “free Christianity,” that they are

now trying to promote by international congresses. The invitation

to the “World’s Congress for free Christianity and religious

progress” at Berlin, in 1910, was signed by more than 130 German

professors, including 47 theologians. We have here the development

of the dying into the lifeless corpse, the progress of the strong

castle into a dilapidated ruin, the advance of the rich man to

beggary.

We began our inquiry with the question proposed some years ago by _D.

Strauss_ to his brethren-in-spirit: Are we still Christians? We may now

quote the answer, which he gives at the conclusion of his own

investigation: “Now, I think, we are through. And the result? the reply to

my question?—must I state it explicitly? Very well; my conviction is, that

if we do not want to make excuses, if we do not want to shift and shuffle

and quibble, if yes is to be yes, and no to remain no, in short, if we

desire to speak like honest, sincere men, we must confess: we are no

longer Christians.”

This is the bitter fruit of autonomous freedom of thinking, which,

declining any guidance by faith, recognizes no other judge of truth than

individual reason, with all the license and the hidden inclinations that

rule it. Protestantism has adopted this freedom of research as its

principle; in consistently applying it, Protestantism has completely

denatured the Christian religion. If anything can prove irrefutably the

monstrosity and cultural incapacity of modern freedom of research, it is

the fate of Protestantism. Any one capable of seriously judging serious

things must realize here how pernicious this freedom is for the human

mind.

Reduced to Beggary.

But the loss is even greater. The better class of paganism still clung to

the general notion of an existing personal God, of a future life, of a

reward after death; it was convinced of the existence of an immortal soul

and a future reward, of the necessity of religion, of immutable standards

for morals and thought. Has liberal science at least been able to preserve

this essential property of a higher paganism? Alas, no! It has lost nearly

everything.

No longer has it a personal God. While belief in God may still survive in

the hearts of many representatives of this science, it has vanished from

science itself. It begs to be excused from accepting any solution of

questions, if God is a factor in the solution. The opinion prevails that

_Kant_ has forever shattered all rational demonstrations of the existence

of God. Yet _Kant_ permits this existence as a “postulate,” which,

according to _Strauss_, “may be regarded as the attic room, where God who

has been retired from His office may be decently sheltered and employed.”

But now He has been given notice to quit even this refuge. There must be

nothing left of Him but His venerable name, which is appropriated by the

new apostasy in the guise of pantheism or a masked materialism. Monism is

the joint name for it: this is the modern “belief in God.” In days gone by

it was frankly called “atheism.”

This disappearance of the old belief in God is noted with

satisfaction by modern science: “It is true,” says _Paulsen_, “the

belief in gods ... is dying out, and will never be resurrected.

Nor is there an essential difference whether many or only one of

these beings are assumed. A monotheism which looks upon God as an

individual being and lets him occasionally interfere in the world

as in something separate from and foreign to him, such a

monotheism is essentially not different from polytheism. If one

should insist on such conception of theism, then, of course, it

will be difficult to contradict those who maintain that science

must lead to atheism.”

Therefore God, as a personal being, is dead, and will never come to life

again. While there is an enormous exaggeration in these words, they

nevertheless glaringly characterize the ideas of the science of which

_Paulsen_ is the mouthpiece. It does not want directly to give up the name

of God; it serves as a mask to conceal the uncanny features of pantheism

and materialism.

“The universe,” we hear often and in many variations, “is the

expression of a uniform, original principle, which may be termed

God, Nature, primitive force, or anything else, and which appears

to man in manifold forms of energy, like matter, light, warmth,

electricity, chemical energy, or psychical process.... These

fundamental ideas of monism are by no means ‘atheistic.’ Many

monists in spite of assertions to the contrary believe in a

supreme divine principle, which penetrates the whole world, living

and operating in everything. Of course, if God is taken to mean a

being who exists outside of the world ... then it is true we are

atheists” (_Plate_). We have already seen that one can even be a

Protestant theologian and yet be satisfied with a “God” of this

description.

In the place of God has stepped _man_, with his advanced civilization,

radiant in the divine aureole of the absolute as its highest incarnation.

But what has liberal research done even to him? According to the Christian

idea, man bears the stamp of God on his forehead: “after My image I have

created thee”; in his breast he carries a spiritual soul, endowed with

freedom and immortality—_gloria et honore coronasti eum_. Liberal science

pretends to uplift and exalt man; but in reality it strips him of his

adornments, one after the other. He is no longer a creature of God because

this would contradict science. His birthplace and the home of his

childhood are no longer in Paradise, but in the jungles of Africa, among

the animals, whose descendent man is now said to be. Liberal science,

almost without exception, denies the freedom of will which raises man high

above the beast, and as a rule it calls such freedom an “illusion”: of a

substantial soul, of immortality, of an ultimate possession of God after

death, it frequently, if not always, knows nothing.

Let us take up a handbook of modern _Psychology_ of this kind,

Wundt’s, for instance. We see at a glance that it is a very

learned work. The thirty lectures inform us in minute

investigations of the various methods and resources of

psychological research. The reader has reached the twentieth

lecture, and he asks, how about the soul? The title of the book

states that the chapters would treat of the human soul, but so far

not a word has been said about it. But there are ten lectures

more; he continues to turn over the leaves of the book. He finds

beautiful things said about expression and emotions, about

instincts in animal and man, about spontaneous actions and other

things. At last, the third before the last page of the book, there

arises the question, what about the soul, and what does the reader

learn? “Our soul is nothing else, but the sum total of our

perception, our feeling and our will.” The conviction he held

hitherto, that he possessed a substantial, immortal soul, which

remains through changing conceptions and sentiments, he sees

rejected as “fiction.” The reader learns that, though he may still

use the term “soul,” he has no real soul, much less a spiritual

soul, least of all an immortal soul. In its stead he is treated to

some learned statements about muscular sensations and such things,

by way of compensation. _Jodl_, too, speaks of the “illusions,

based upon the old theories about the soul,” and he rejects the

dualistic psychology which “mistook an abstract thought, the soul,

for a real being, for an immaterial substance”; and which defended

this notion “with worthless reasons.”

It is manifest that, together with the substantial soul,

immortality is also disposed of. True, here too the word is

cautiously retained; but by immortality is now understood

perpetuation in the human race, in the ideas of posterity, in

“objective spirit,” in the “imperishable value of ethical

possessions,” for which the individual has laboured. Some fine

words are said about it, as roses are used to cover a grave. Yet,

it is only the immortality of the barrel of Regulus, or the

Gordian knot in history, the immortality of which the printers’

press may partake in the effect of the books it prints. To quote

_Jodl_ again: “The fact of the objective spirit, together with the

organic connection of the generations to one another, form the

scientific reality of what appears in popular, mythological tenets

of faith as the idea of personal immortality ... and which has

been defended by the dualistic psychology with worthless, invalid

arguments.” The refutation of these arguments does not bother him.

“A refutation of these scholastic arguments is as little needed as

a refutation of the belief in the miracles and demons of former

centuries is needed by a man standing on the ground of modern

natural science.” This reminds one of _Haeckel’s_ method. The

latter nevertheless found it worth while in his “Weltraetsel” to

dispose in thirteen lines of six such arguments, and then to

assure the reader that “All these and similar arguments have

fallen to the ground.” That the matter in question is an idea that

has been the foundation of Christian civilization and ethics for

thousands of years, that has led millions to holiness; an idea,

indeed, that has been the common property of all nations at all

times—this seems to count for very little.

This technique of a superficial speculation, which, devoid of

piety, casts everything overboard, finds no trouble in disposing

of the entire _spiritual world_. “No one is capable,” says _Jodl_

again, “of imagining a purely spiritual reality.” This is disposed

of. “Since the war between the Aristotle-scholastic and the

mechanical method has been waged, spiritual powers have never

played any other part in the explanation of the world than that of

an unknown quantity in equations of a higher degree, which,

unsolvable by methods hitherto prevalent, are only awaiting the

superior master and a new technique (_sic_) in order to disappear”

(p. 77 _seq._).

With the denial of a personal God and of the immortality of the soul, true

_religion_ is abandoned. Of course, there is much said and written about

religion in our days: the scientific literature about it has grown to

tremendous proportions—to say nothing of newspapers, novels, and plays.

One might welcome this as a proof that this world will never entirely

satisfy the human heart. But it is also a sign that religion is no longer

a secure possession, but has become a problem—that it has been lost. Even

on the part of free-thought it is not denied that “only unhappy times will

permit the existence of religious problems; and that this problem is the

utterance of mental discord.” Yet they do not want to forego religion

entirely, for they feel that irreligion is tantamount to degeneration. But

what has become of religion? It has been degraded to a vague sentiment and

longing, without religious truths and duties, a plaything for pastime.

For _Schleiermacher_ religion is a feeling of simple dependence,

though no one knows upon whom he is dependent: according to

_Wundt_ religion consists in “man serving infinite purposes,

together with his finite purposes, the ultimate fulfilment whereof

remains hidden to his eye,” which probably means something, but I

do not know what. _Haeckel_ calls his materialism the religion of

the true, good, and beautiful; _Jodl_ even thinks, “As the realm

of science is the real, and the realm of art the possible, so the

realm of religion is the impossible.” Religion having been

degraded to such a level, it is no longer astonishing that

religion is attributed even to animals, and in the words of _E.

von Hartmann_, “we cannot help attributing a religious character,

as far as the animal is concerned, to the relation between the

intelligent domestic animals and their masters.”

What, finally, has become of the old standard of _morals_? A modern

philosopher may answer the question.

_Fouillée_ writes: “In our day, far more so than thirty years ago,

morality itself, its reality, its necessity and usefulness, is in

the balance.... I have read with much concern how my

contemporaries are at fundamental variance in this respect, and

how they contradict one another. I have tried to form an opinion

of all these different opinions. Shall I say it? I have found in

the province of morals a confusion of ideas and sentiments to an

extent that it seemed impossible to me to illustrate thoroughly

what might be termed contemporaneous sophistry” (Le Moralisme de

Kant, etc.).

Where is left now to liberal science a single remnant of those great

truths on which mankind has hitherto lived, and which it needs for

existence? There was a God—but He is gone. There was a life to come, and a

supernatural world; they are lost. Man had a soul, endowed with freedom,

spirituality, and immortality; he has it no longer. He had fixed

principles of reasoning and laws of morals; they are gone. He possessed

Christ, full of grace and truth, he possessed redemption and a Church;

everything is lost. Burnt to the ground is the homestead. In the blank

voids, that cheerful casements were, sits despair; man stands at the grave

of all that fortune gave!

The names alone have survived; now and then they speak of God and

religion, of Christianity and faith, immortality and freedom; but the

words are false, pretending a possession that is lost long since. They are

patches from a grand dress, once worn by our ancestors; ruins of the

ancestral house that the children have lost. They are still cherished as

the memories of better times. People thus acknowledge the irreparable

forfeiture which those names denote, without realizing how they pronounce

their own condemnation by having destroyed these possessions.(16)

_Dissipaverunt substantiam suam._

The son came to his father. In his heedless anxiety for freedom he would

leave the father’s house, to get away from restraining discipline and

dependence. “Father, give me the portion of the goods that falleth to me.”

And he departed into a far country. Soon he had spent all and had nothing

to appease his hunger.

Despairing of Truth.

These, then, are the achievements liberal research can boast of in the

fields of philosophy and religion: Negations and again negations; temples

and altars it has destroyed, sacred images it has broken, pillars it has

knocked down. Free from Christianity, free from God, free from the life to

come and the supernatural, free from authority and faith—it is rich in

freedom and negation. But what does it offer in place of all the things it

has destroyed? What spiritual goods does it show to the expectant eyes of

its confiding followers? The most hopeless things imaginable, namely,

despair of all higher truth, mental confusion, and decay. One other brief

glance at the consequences and we shall be competent to judge of the

fitness of liberal freedom of thought for the civilization of mankind.

As far as it is inspired by philosophy, modern science confesses the

principle: “No objective truth can be positively known, at least not in

metaphysics”; restless doubt is the lot of the searching intellect. We

have amplified this elsewhere in these pages. This result of the modern

doctrine of cognition is not infrequently boasted of. It was good enough,

say they, for the ancients to live in the silly belief of possessing

eternal truth; they were simple and unsuspecting; we know there is in

store for man only doubt and everlasting struggle for truth.

“We confess that we do not know whether there are for mankind as a

whole, and for the individual, tasks and goals that extend beyond

this earthly existence” (_Jodl_). “There is no scientific

philosophy of generally recognized standard, but only in the form

of various experiments for the purpose of defining and expressing

the harmony and the idea of the active principle; consequently

there cannot be a final philosophy, it must be ready at all times

to revise any point that previously seemed to have been

established” (_Paulsen_). “Only to dogmatism,” says another, “are

the various theories of the world contradictory; to science they

are hypotheses of equal value, which, as they are all limited, may

exist side by side, the theistic as well as the atheistic, the

dualistic, the monistic, and whatever their names may be. Man, who

conceives these hypotheses, is master over them all and makes use

of them, here of one, there of another, according to the kind of

the problem he is occupied with at the time. Thus, he is

independent of any view of the world” (_L. von Sybel_). Again we

are told: “There has been formulated a free variety of

metaphysical systems, none of them demonstrable.... Is it our

task, perhaps, to select the true one? This would be an odd

superstition; this metaphysical anarchy is teaching, as obviously

as possible, the relativity of all metaphysical systems” (_W.

Dilthey_). Therefore, nothing but impressions and opinions, and

not the truth; indeed, for the cognition of transcendental,

metaphysical truths, they often have only words of disdain.

“The fact should be emphasized,” says _G. Spicker_, “that

philosophy really is devoid of any higher ideal; that, through its

doubt of the objective cognizability of things above us, outside

and inside of us, it has fallen prey to scepticism, even if

philosophers do not admit it and try to evade the issue with the

phrase ‘theory of cognition.’ ”

A science cannot sink to a lower level than by the admission that it has

nothing to offer and nothing to accomplish. It is tantamount to

bankruptcy. This science undertakes to nourish the human mind, but offers

stones instead of bread; it wants to uplift and to instruct, and confesses

that it has nothing to tell. _Amphora coepit institui, currente rota

urceus exit._ In the beginning a proud consciousness and the promise to be

everything to mankind; at the end mental pauperism and scepticism, a

caricature of science.

This, then, is the terminal at which the free-thought of subjectivism has

arrived: the loss of truth, without which man’s mind wanders restlessly

and without a goal. That is the penalty for gambling boldly with human

perception, the retribution for rebelling against the rights of truth and

for the vainglorious arrogance of the intellect, which would draw only

from its own cisterns the water of life, while alone those lying deep in

the Divine may offer him the eternal fountains of objective truth.

Scepticism is gnawing at the mental life of the world. A scepticism

cloaked with the names of criticism and research, and of positivism and

empiric knowledge, but which, nevertheless, remains what it is, an ominous

demon, liberated from the grave into which has been lowered the Christian

spiritual life, the spirit of darkness now pervading the world.

In All Directions of the Compass.

They have lost their way, puzzled by mazes and perplexed with error they

are in hopeless confusion; a correlative of individualistic thinking. If

the absolute subject and his experiences of life are the self-appointed

court of last resort, the result must be anarchy and not accord. This is

manifest; moreover, it is frankly admitted by the spokesmen of

freethought.

This anarchy is described in vivid words by Prof. _Paulsen_,

recently the indefatigable champion of freest thought: “We no

longer have a Protestant philosophy, in the sense of a standard

system. _Hegel’s_ philosophy was the last to occupy such a

position. Anarchy rules ever since. The attempted rally around the

name of _Kant_ failed to put an end to the prevalent anarchy, or

to the division into small fractions and individualisms. Then

there is the mental neurasthenia of our times, the absolute lack

of ideas, especially noticeable among so-called educated

people.... Billboard art has found a counterpart in

billboard-philosophy. Here, there, and everywhere we meet the cry:

here is the saviour, the secret ruler, the magic doctor, who cures

all ills of our diseased age.... After a while, the mob has again

dispersed and the thing is forgotten” (“Philosophia Militans”).

“There is no uniform philosophic theory of the world, such as we,

at least to a certain extent, used to have,” says _Paulsen_

elsewhere, “the latest ideas are diverging in all directions of

the compass.” When one buildeth up, and another pulleth down, what

profit have they but the labour? (Ecclus. xxxiv. 28). “We have no

metaphysics nowadays,” says _R. Eucken_ in the same strain, “and

there are not a few who are proud of it. They only would have the

right to be so if our philosophy were in excellent shape, if, even

without metaphysics, firm convictions ruled our life and actions,

if great aims held us together and lifted us above the smallness

of the merely human. The fact is an unlimited discordance, a

pitiful insecurity in all matters of principle, a defencelessness

against the petty human, and soullessness accompanied by

superabounding exterior manifestation of life.”

This is the status of modern philosophy and also of liberal, Protestant,

theology. Of views of the world, of notions and forms of Christianity, of

ideas, essays and contributions to them, there is choice in abundance.

Here, materialistic Monism is proclaimed, warranted to solve all riddles.

There, spiritualistic Pantheism is retailed in endless varieties. Yonder,

Agnosticism is strutting: no longer philosophy, but facts and reality, is

its slogan. Then comes the long procession of ethical views of life:

“Contemplations of life; theories of human existence surround us and court

us in plenty; the coincidence of ample historical learning with active

reflection induces manifold combinations, and makes it easy for the

individual to draw pictures of this kind according to circumstance and

mood; and so we see individual philosophies whirling about promiscuously,

winning and losing the favour of the day, and shifting and transmuting

themselves in kaleidoscopic change” (_Eucken_). _Hegel_, although he

lectured with great assurance on his own system, lamented: “Every

philosophy comes forth with the pretension to refute not only the

preceding philosophy, but to remedy its defects, to have at last found the

right thing.” But past experience shows, that to this philosophy, too, the

passage from Holy Writ is applicable: “Behold, the feet that will carry

thee away are already at the threshold.” Indeed, often it has come to pass

that these philosophers themselves bury their ideas, preparatory to

entering another camp. Consider the changes that men like _Kant_,

_Fichte_, _Schelling_, _Strauss_, _Nietzsche_, have essayed in the short

course of a few decades, and we are justified in assuming that they would

again have changed their last ideas had death not interfered.

Now and then such confusion of opinions is considered an advantage, the

advantage of fertility. To be sure, it is fertility,—the fertility of

fruitless attempts, of errors, and of fancies, the fertility of disorder

and chaos. If this fertility be a cause of pride for science, then

mathematics, physics, astronomy, and other exact sciences, are indeed to

be pitied for having to forego this fertility of philosophy, and the

privilege of being an arena for contradictory views.

Without Peace and without Joy.

After the hopeless shipwreck of the modern, godless thought, can we wonder

at meeting frequently the despondency of _pessimism_? Is not pessimism the

first born of scepticism? At the close of the nineteenth century we read,

again and again, in reviews of the past and forecasts of the future, how

the modern world stands perplexed before the riddles of life, confessing

in pessimistic mood that it is dissatisfied and unhappy to the depth of

its soul. With proud self-consciousness, boasting of knowledge and power

of intellect, they had entered the nineteenth century, praising themselves

in the words: How great, O man, thou standest at the century’s close, with

palm of victory in thy hand, the fittest son of time! With heads bowed in

shame these same representatives of modern thought make their exit from

the same century.

Of the number that voiced this sentiment we quote but one, Prof.

_R. Eucken_, who wrote: “The greatness of the work is beyond

doubt. This work more and more opens up and conquers the world,

unfolds our powers, enriches our life, it leads us in quick

victorious marches from triumph to triumph.... Thus, it is true,

our desired objects have been attained, but they disclosed other

things than we expected: the more our powers and ideas are

attracted by the work, the more we must realize the neglect of the

inner man and of his unappeased, ardent longing for happiness.

Doubts spring up concerning the entire work; we must ask whether

the new civilization be not too much a development of bare force,

and too little a cultivation of the being, whether because of our

strenuous attention to surroundings, the problems of innermost man

are not neglected. There is also noticeable a sad lack in moral

power: we feel powerless against selfish interests and

overwhelming passions: mankind is more and more dividing itself

into hostile sects and parties. And such doubts arouse to renewed

vigour the old, eternal problems, which faithfully accompany our

evolution through all its stages. Former times did not finally

solve them, (?) but they were, at least to a degree, mollified and

quieted. But now they are here again unmitigated and unobscured.

The enigmatical of human existence is impressed upon us with

unchecked strength, the darkness concerning the Whence and

Whither, the dismal power of blind necessity, accident and sorrow

in our fate, the low and vulgar in the human soul, the difficult

complications of the social body: all unite in the question: Has

our existence any real sense or value? Is it not torn asunder to

an extent that we shall be denied truth and peace for ever?...

Hence it is readily understood why a gloomy pessimism is spreading

more and more, why the depressed feeling of littleness and

weakness is pervading mankind in the midst of its triumphs.”

Similar, and profoundly true, are the words spoken some years ago

by a noted critic in the “Literarische Zentralblatt” (1900): “A

painful lament and longing pervades our restless and peaceless

time. The bulk of our knowledge is daily increasing, our technical

ability hardly knows of difficulties it could not overcome ... and

yet we are not satisfied. More and more frequently we meet with

the tired, disheartened question: What’s the use? We lack the one

thing which would give support and impetus to our existence, a

firm and assured view of the world. Or, to be more exact, we have

found that we cannot live with the view of the world which in this

century of enlightenment has stamped its imprint more and more

upon our entire mental life. Materialism, in coarser or finer

form, has penetrated deeply our habits of thought, even in those

who would indignantly protest against being called materialists;

the name seemed to imply scientific earnestness and liberal views.

However, there was still left a considerable fund of old,

idealistic values, and as long as we could draw upon them we saw

in materialism only the power to clear up rooted prejudices, and

to open the road for progress in every field. To the newer

generation, however, little or nothing is left of this old fund,

hence, having nothing else but materialism to depend upon, they

are confronted by an appalling dreariness and emptiness of

existence. And ever since the man on the street has absorbed the

easy materialistic principles, and looks down from the height of

his ‘scientific’ view of life contemptuously upon all

reactionaries, we have become aware of the danger that imperils

everything implied by the collective word ‘humanism.’ This

explains the plethora of literature which in these days deals with

the questions of a world philosophy.” Who is not reminded after

reading this mournful confession of the words of _St. Augustine_:

“Restless is our heart, till it finds rest in Thee”?