n 
 
 THE 
 
 T)ebdcle 
 
 OF 
 
 Kultur 
 
 1914—1915 
 
 BY 
 
 J. HAY THORBURN 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 DRANES 
 
 DANEGELD HOUSE 
 82A FARRINGDON STREET, E.C. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 To compass within the limits of a pamphlet the work of 
 a century, the review must necessarily be brief, with only a 
 proximate estimate of the causes responsible for the trans- 
 formation and demoralisation of the character of the German 
 nation. 
 
 I have to acknowledge my indebtedness, inter alia, to 
 Professor Flint's standard work, "Philosophy of History" 
 (1874 edition); to the Rev. D. Macmillan, D.D., for his " Life 
 of Robert Flint," one of the most valuable ecclesiastical 
 Memoirs of recent years, and which should be in the hands of 
 every Scotsman, — a popular edition will, it is hoped, be issued 
 to bring it within the reach of all; — to Professor Pfleiderer's 
 " Development of Theology in Germany since Kant " ; and to 
 F. Lichtenberger's " History of German Theology in the Nine- 
 teenth Century," wherein he deals with about two hundred 
 theologians and others, but the exaggerated language em- 
 ployed by him and his translator, the late Professor Hastie, 
 detracts from its value. 
 
 For the purpose in hand, however, the information given, 
 as far as possible in the writers' own words, is sufficient. 
 
THE DEBACLE OF KULTUR. 
 
 T 
 
 have lived to see the Great Catastrophe— the " War of 
 the Nations"— is something; but it is of still greater 
 importance to be able to apprehend the inwardness of 
 the drama which has taken a hundred years to evolve, 
 acclaimed by mailed fist, sabre-rattling, and on strictly com- 
 mercial lines— to which weak politicians and self-seekers 
 bowed the knee— until, as in a moment, the world beholds the 
 colossal tragedy of the work of a century collapsing, and 
 instead of " Kultur " the nations stand aghast at a weltering 
 mass of " f rightfulness," in a sea of unspeakable infamy and 
 barbarism without parallel in the blackest pages of History— 
 a scalding sea of remorse for ever. 
 
 It is evident that for a hundred years there has been a great 
 spiritual battle going on, disregarded by all, save now and 
 then by a solitary voice crying in the wilderness. The forces 
 of Might and Right have been in daily deadly conflict, the one 
 openly triumphing, the other the silent witness; bearing the 
 banner of Truth,— neglected and despised of men,— waiting 
 for the day of vengeance. 
 
 The builders of this great Germanic edifice were blinded 
 by the obsession of this lust of power— the lust of the eye and 
 the pride of life— and paid no regard to the foundation on 
 which they built, or the dry-rot in every beam of the material 
 wherewith they builded. The whole structure being inherently 
 rotten, when "The Day" came the collapse was universal. 
 
 The structure which appeared so great and strong con- 
 sisted, roughly speaking, of four estates, supporting and 
 depending on each other, so cunningly interwoven m self- 
 
4 
 
 interest as to present a solid front against all outside their 
 respective spheres. These are — 
 
 The All-Highest, the War Lord— the embodiment of 
 Divine Right and the immortal Ego. 
 
 The Military Caste of Junkerism, of a prolific aristocracy — 
 along with its Bureaucracy, dependent on and sub- 
 servient to them — with the brutal and iron grip its 
 military system. 
 
 The Intellectual forces of the entire educational army of 
 School Teachers, Professors, Newspaper Press, Com- 
 mercial enterprise, &c, whose appointments, tenure, 
 promotion, and support depended on their fidelity to 
 the Government and its policy. 
 
 The Religious and Moral character of the people, Lutheran 
 Pastors and Theological Professors, — controlled by 
 the Government, — the loss of whose influence over the 
 men was more than made up by their power over the 
 motherhood, permeating the homes, and preparing the 
 generations since 1870 for the part they have so unani- 
 mously and blindly fulfilled. 
 
 So much has been written in regard to Militarism and the 
 Professors, that it is superfluous to add thereto, especially as 
 the root of all the evil springs from the foundation— viz., 
 the spiritual, religious, and moral condition of the whole 
 people, which is the special subject of this pamphlet, 
 
 The whole subject cannot be more clearly introduced than 
 is done by Lichtenberger himself, who, in his preface, says: 
 "The evolution of religious thought of which Germany has 
 been the theatre during the present century, and which, 
 combined with other not less powerful causes, has brought 
 about a complete transformation in the ideas, the manners, 
 and the institutions of that country, as well as exercised a 
 considerable influence upon the development of the intellectual 
 and moral culture of the whole of our modern society. 
 One of the most striking characteristics of the revolution which 
 
we are about to study is the gradual substitution of the 
 principle of liberty for the principle of authority in matters 
 of religion. . . . Will religion arid Christianity in the 
 future impose their services on humanity in virtue of an 
 external authority and of considerations drawn from elsewhere 
 than their own nature, or will their own virtue suffice to make 
 them be accepted as our best auxiliaries in the path of pro- 
 gress, unless it be necessary to break completely with them 
 in the conviction that they constitute an obstacle rather than 
 a help?" 
 
 This work was translated in 1889 by the Rev. Dr Hnstie, 
 who writes as follows in his preface: " In the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, as in the sixteenth, Germany has been the living heart and 
 head of Protestant and progressive theology. In other countries 
 the Christian tradition has been resolutely preserved and 
 somewhat purified and spiritualised, yet the first attitude of 
 its representatives has been generally that of suspicion and 
 distrust, and even in its greatest organisation, of hostility and 
 hatred towards the new theological aspiration and thought. 
 But in the land of Luther and Melanchthon, and even more 
 than in the age of the Reformation, the religious spirit from 
 the very outset of the century realised its Christian freedom 
 and put forth its essential power. In consequence, the 
 development of theology and the evolution of religious thought 
 in Germany have largely responded to the needs of the time, 
 and have presented a spectacle of progress which, when viewed 
 as a whole, has had no rival or approach elsewhere. The vast 
 learning, the indefatigable research, and the intellectual 
 energy of the German theologians have become proverbial, 
 while their daring originality and speculative ardour have 
 recalled the most fertile century in the dogmatic development 
 of the Church, and have alternately dismayed, perplexed, and 
 subdued the more serious thinkers of the other divisions of 
 Christendom. Taken all in all, the German theological 
 development, as exhibited in its profound, penetrating, and 
 fertile resxilts, must be considered to be one of the most dis- 
 tinctive, influential, and characteristic elements in the 
 spiritual work of the century. . . . The already sceptred 
 sovereigns of the German Theology stand out large on the 
 historic canvas when compared with any of their contem- 
 poraries, and their work has a much more sterling and 
 enduring worth." 
 
 I! 
 
With flattery laid on so liberally, as with a trowel, it is 
 no wonder that there are swollen heads in that country, and 
 that they accepted such obeisance. We naturally ask, Is it 
 true? more especially when we remember that every system or 
 revolution must be judged by its fruit. And in the present 
 state of Germany, and how it has reached the bottom of that 
 abyss of degradation and defilement, it is a necessary question. 
 
 Heine, one of those "sceptred sovereigns" whose name is 
 honoured to-day in that land which boasts that it has the 
 monopoly of " Kultur," wrote as follows: 
 
 " Christianity — and this is its highest merit — has in some 
 degree softened, but it could not destroy, that brutal German 
 joy of battle. When once the taming talisman, the Cross, breaks 
 in two the savagery of the old fighters, the senseless Berserker 
 fury, of which the northern poets sing and say so much, will 
 gush up anew. That talisman is decayed, and the day will 
 come when it will piteously collapse. Then the old stone gods 
 will rise from the silent ruins and rub the dust of a thousand 
 years from their eyes. Thor, with his giant's hammer, will 
 at last spring up, and shatter to bits the Gothic Cathedrals." 
 
 So wrote Heine eighty years ago, and he foretold that " at 
 the head of the new barbarians would be found the disciples 
 of Kant, of Fichte, and of Hegel, who, by a regular and his- 
 torical process which lie traces back to the beginnings of 
 German thought, had shorn the ' Talisman ' of its power." 
 
 This is a very remarkable testimony from one who was a 
 sceptic, but the reason for Lichtenberger's hostility to him 
 is seen in the passage where he says : "He has sworn special 
 enmity against Prussia, in which he saw concentrated the 
 most insipid products of German arrogance and self-sufficiency. 
 He pursues with his most stinging darts that bigoted Pro- 
 testantism of which Prussia had made herself the representa- 
 tive, and which Heine regards as at once the scourge and the 
 weariness of modern society. Religion herself is the object 
 of his constant sarcasms"; and Lichtenberger winds up his 
 notice of his Life by saying, " Literary Germany owes to his 
 works no new riches, liberty, or progress, nor religion any 
 testimony." 
 
 Yet this is the man of whom he begins by sayino, " N one 
 has exercised a greater influence on the literary destinies of 
 his country." 
 
 When one remembers that he died in 1856, and compares 
 
7 
 
 the arrogance of Prussia of to-day with what it was in his day, 
 it is evident to all that there must he something very far 
 wrong with the whole trend of German teaching when we 
 survey the inhuman atrocities committed by a nation nurtured 
 from infancy on its poisonous culture. 
 
 There is only one explanation of the mystery of then- 
 iniquity, and that is furnished in the quotation already given— 
 " the revolution is the gradual substitution of the principle of 
 liberty for the principle of aiithority in matters of religion." 
 
 The great difficulty in dealing with German writers is their 
 misuse of terms. What Lichtenberger really means is " the 
 substitution of moral consciousness of the individual for the 
 authority of the Word of God." It is on this seductive theory 
 that the whole nation has made shipwreck. Our moral nature 
 is corrupt to begin with, so the revolution gloried in by 
 German theologians by discarding " the sword of the Spirit, 
 which is the Word of God," and adopting in its place as the 
 supreme standard—" Moral Consciousness "—a thing which is 
 not only inherently corrupt in itself but a variable quantity in 
 every human being, instead of being progress on a higher 
 plane of intellectual development, arrogating to itself the title 
 of "Higher Criticism," is in reality a retrograde movement, 
 the fruit of which is seen in the blood-curdling barbarities of 
 a whole nation. 
 
 In studying the teachings of the long array of theological 
 and speculative writers of last century who have moulded the 
 destiny of Germany, and are therefore responsible for the 
 moral downfall of the entire race and all its works, we must 
 briefly notice what the philosophy of some of these " sceptred 
 sovereigns " really was, and how step by step each one has 
 moved farther and farther from Christianity. 
 
 In doing so, one is struck with the mixture of politics with 
 religion, and also how the humiliation of Germany at the 
 hand of Napoleon revealed to rulers and people alike the need 
 of a moral reformation, with the result that the Bible, which 
 for more than a generation had been cast aside, was again 
 turned to— so that the retreat from Moscow and the final 
 overthrow by the treaties of 1815 were looked on as the answer 
 
8 
 
 to prayer, and the dawn of a new era of emancipation and 
 restoration. 
 
 Instead, however, of looking forward, the minds of the 
 people turned back to mediaeval history; while the rulers, 
 again restored to their little principalities, were only too glad 
 to follow in the same direction, — but for their own ends, — of 
 which feudalism was the predominant factor. It was the 
 pi riod in which the Romantic School nourished. With its 
 usual astuteness the Church of Rome made the most of this, 
 her opportunity; while the Protestant Church lent its influ- 
 ence, and was utilised by the rulers to further their own 
 reactionary policy, which, when the people found that the 
 liberal promises made in the hour of danger were forgotten, 
 naturally included it in the obloquy that fell on the rulers 
 with whom they were associated, which found vent in a new 
 spirit antagonistic to the old traditional religion. 
 
 To arrive at a fair estimate of the nature of the mental 
 food which has produced such a national downfall, I can only 
 notice the opinions of a few of the leaders, and only a few 
 even of the most outstanding. 
 
 While according the highest acknowledgment to the 
 erudition, the magnitude of the labours, the self-denial and 
 zeal with which they devoted their lives, one is filled with a 
 feeling of the most profound sorrow at the sight of the fruit 
 of a whole century's misdirected activity. 
 
 Professor Flint remarks in an opening chapter: "After 
 Kant, Fichte; after one noble man, another still nobler; but 
 also after one erroneous mode of treating history, another far 
 more erroneous." 
 
 This might be the epitaph on the result of the treatment 
 of the Bible and Protestant Christianity in Germany at the end 
 of the nineteenth century. Even at the hands of its most 
 orthodox defenders, what with compromises to the enemy and 
 verbal mystifications, the people have been led to disregard the 
 authority of the Bible as the revealed Word of God At the 
 beginning of the century, national external humiliation caused 
 a national return to a neglected Bible. The beginning f the 
 twentieth century finds the nation in a state of internal 
 degradation, witli a discredited and mutilated Bible From 
 whence, then, is its reformation to come? This will be found 
 to be the serious problem after the war-a godless, demoralised 
 nation— a plague spot in the centre of Europe 
 
 Professor Pfleiderer begins his work by saying- « I D 
 
9 
 
 1784 Kant wrote an essay upon the question ' "What is 
 Auf klarung* ? ' " — which may be regarded as the programme 
 of the tasks to which German philosophy in Kant and Ins 
 successor has devoted itself. " Free Thought," Kant says, " is 
 the advance of man beyond the state of voluntary immaturity. 
 By immaturity is meant inability to use his own understand- 
 ing except under the guidance of another. . . . Dare to 
 use thy own understanding! is therefore the motto of Free 
 Thought. If the question be asked, Do we live in a free- 
 thinking age? the answer is, No; but we live in an age of 
 Free Thought." 
 
 Kant put his conviction into a scientific shape in three 
 critiques — the Pure Reason, the Practical Reason, and the 
 Faculty of Judgment. In opposition to rationalistic phil- 
 osophy, he taught the dependence on the act of cognition on the 
 material supplied in experience in time and space, and the im- 
 possibility of knowing" the reality lying behind these facts of 
 experience. In opposition to empirical philosophy, he taught 
 that it is the subject which, by means of its characteristic per- 
 ception of things under the forms of time and space and of the 
 categories, converts this chaotic material into the regular 
 orderly world called experience, and that in this respect the 
 understanding itself is to be regarded as imposing laws 
 on nature. It was this latter conception, viz., of reason both 
 in theoretical knowledge and practical judgments, imposing 
 laws upon itself, which was the essence of Kant's thought, a ad 
 which he designated " Rationalism." 
 
 It is interesting to recall the fact that Kant was never able 
 to free himself completely from Hume's scepticism, and 
 although properly belonging to the previous century (1724- 
 1804), he was the man of all others who influenced the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 Lichtenberger says of him : " Kant — and not less to the 
 glory of his name — occupied an intermediate position between 
 dogmatism and scepticism, proclaiming ' the autonomy and 
 absoluteness of the moral consciousness, which is the sovereign 
 judge in matters of faith. In no case does God act upon us, 
 for that would be an end to our liberty and our morality. He 
 does not directly attack the doctrine of supernatural revelation, 
 but maintains that reason has no decisive arguments either for 
 
 * Aufklarung = enlightening, improvement of the mind. "From Kant's 
 authoritative definition of the thing, our English ' Free-thinking ' substantially 
 represents it." — Translation. 
 
10 
 
 or against it.' Judging ecclesiastical doctrines by their moral 
 value, and considering dogma as the symbol of a moral idea, 
 lie usually introduced into it by his interpretation an entirely 
 new sense. The Holy Scripture and Confessions of Faith are 
 to be explained according to the needs of the time and the 
 community, at the risk of putting into them something entirely 
 different from what is found in them." 
 
 Fichte (1TG2-1814) followed, but did not accept the limits 
 Kant placed between the pure reason and the practical reason. 
 He taught the necessity of a moral order of the world, which 
 he calls God ; but he expressly denies personality to it, and 
 was not incorrectly accused of atheism. His effort to reduce 
 everything to unity tended more and more to pantheism. 
 
 Hegel (1770-1831) combated the distinction of the sub- 
 jective and objective set up by Kant and the purely subjective 
 idealism of Fichte, and starts from the idea, and professes by 
 the force of dialectic alone to make all things spring from the 
 idea. This includes the Absolute, which is the pure idea con- 
 sidered in itself. He presented the infinite in a formula, but 
 the infinite which is formulated is not the infinite. Their 
 influence on the religious and theological movement was- 
 immense, and still continues. The writer says: "The pan- 
 theism so seductive and so dangerous for the human mind 
 was, taken all in all, a necessary reaction from the abstraction 
 of a superannuated deism ; and the theory of the immanence of 
 God, if on the one side it unfortunately led in certain minds 
 to a removal from Christianity which always became more 
 pronounced, did on the other side, when rightly understood 
 and rectified and completed, respond to the legitimate wants of 
 the religious sentiment." 
 
 Professor Flint, in his great work on the "Philosophy of 
 History " (1874 edition), dealing with Hegel, shows how he 
 plays with words, which is a common German fault. 
 
 " Spirit," Hegel tells us, " is the antithesis of matter; the 
 essence of spirit is freedom, while that of matter is o Tav it y . 
 spirit is free, because it has its centre in itself; and matter 
 gravitates because it tends to a centre and has its essence out 
 
 i, Z 1 / ; ' But What are we t0 think wh en Hegel 
 adds that freedom, the essence of freedom, is not actually but 
 only potentially in spirit; that spirit tends to be free, but is 
 tor very long not free; that it first attained freedom among 
 the German nations under the influence of Christianity f> It 
 
11 
 
 is sufficiently perplexing to hear that the essence of matter is 
 not in matter, and that the essence of matter is the result of 
 a tendency to unity, a striving to attain a centre ; hut it would 
 he still more so to be told that the essence of matter only 
 belongs to some portions of matter peculiar to China or Japan, 
 being only potentially, i.e., not at all, in other matter; and 
 it is precisely in this way that Hegel speaks of spirit. It is, in 
 fact, a direct contradiction to say that freedom is the essence, 
 the sole truth, of spirit, and also that it is the result of the pro- 
 cess of the development of spirit. The contradiction might 
 have been avoided had not freedom been identified by Hegel 
 with the consciousness of freedom, for in that case he might 
 have said that the essence of spirit was freedom and the end of 
 spirit the consciousness of freedom ; but he expressly holds that 
 freedom, is the consciousness of freedom, and that the conscious- 
 ness of freedom is freedom. This view is the natural conse- 
 quence of a psychological doctrine which he has expounded in 
 Sect. IV. of the Introduction to the ' Philosophy of Right,' — a 
 doctrine, viz., that the will is a kind of thought, and not a 
 special or separate power. Further, not only, according to 
 Hegel, is freedom the will, but the will itself is thought; free- 
 dom is not what is commonly called freedom, but the con- 
 sciousness of freedom, and even the consciousness of a kind of 
 consciousness — the self-consciousness of the absolute. Now, 
 when a man plays in this fashion with words, it is of little con- 
 sequence which words he uses, and although he may produce 
 marvellous effects in making one thing pass for another, no 
 trust can be put in what is manifestly intellectual conjuring." 
 
 Very noteworthy at this time is Professor Flint's critique : 
 " In some remarkable pages Hegel insists that the final cause 
 of history is gradually realised through the conflict of passions, 
 private aims, and selfish desires of men and nations, which 
 the universal reason, in its cunning, uses and sacrifices for its 
 own advantage. Underlying private passions and individual 
 views there are universal principles, which are gradually 
 evolved by the very activity of warring desires and intellects. 
 This general truth leads Hegel to the assertion that the State 
 is the result of the evolution of these latent objective and 
 universal principles . . . and .that great men are the 
 founders of States, and these assertions to a number of observa- 
 tions on States and great men, which are of the most dubious 
 character. All the more dangerous, because darkly and 
 
12 
 
 vaguely, optimism, hero-worship, acquiescence in might as 
 right, and the necessity for war, are suggested to be profound 
 philosophical truths." 
 
 " Hegel's historical philosophy is intimately and in- 
 separably connected with his political philosophy. . . . 
 Wishing to resist and defeat liberalism, he fell 
 
 back on the obsolete pagan notion that man exists for the 
 State, and not the State for man. ... He turned bis 
 absolute idealism in the political sphere into a crass realism 
 . denounced those who ventured to criticise political 
 institutions, and advised the Government — which certainly 
 needed no advice of the kind — to look after them. ' What is 
 rational is real, and what is real is rational.' It is not wonder- 
 ful that the then Prussian Government should have admired 
 very much this rosy view of real existence and cavalier way 
 of treating radicals and reformers, or that it should have filled 
 the chairs of philosophy in the universities and the pulpits of 
 the churches with men willing to teach such a pleasing 
 doctrine. . . . Those persons who still believe that Hegel 
 did much either to refute false liberalism or to serve the cause 
 of social order cannot be remarkable for political perspicacity. 
 When Hegel taught the supremacy of the will of the State, 
 and, in fact — like Hobbes — deified the State, be simply taught 
 in another form the falsehood which he pretended to refute." 
 
 " Hegel expressly identifies with these laws, with divine 
 will, the will of the state, which may be just as capricious, 
 selfish, unscrupulous, and cruel as the will of a very wicked 
 man. The creed of Hegel was not a wise conservatism demand- 
 ing due respect for moral authority, but a political pantheism 
 absorbing all rights and liberties, and logically leading to 
 fatalism, to acquiescence in might as right, to the glorification 
 of all successes, however brutal and unjust." 
 
 Schleiermacher (1763-1834) was the man of that period who 
 did most to impress his personality on and renovate modern 
 German theology. He united religious warmth with scientific 
 clearness. Writing to Jacobi, he said: "Reason and feeling 
 are separated in me, but they touch each other and form a 
 galvanic pile. The most inward life of the spirit consists, in 
 my case, in that galvanic process which is called the feeling 
 of reason and the reason of feeling." Lichtenberger, referring 
 to his immense influence, points out that in an age inclined 
 to incredulity and indifference to religion he restored the 
 
13 
 
 forgotten and misunderstood truths of the Gospel to honour. 
 He loved, and made men love, the person of Christ; hut in 
 order to make men accept Christianity, he had recourse to a 
 new method— "he suhstituted the principle of liberty for the 
 principle of authority." His best known works are the " Dis- 
 courses on Eeligion," and his "Monologues." " Schleier- 
 macher admits that Jesus was truly man, subject to all laws 
 of human development. Now, the Divinity cannot subject 
 itself to these laws; it cannot limit and divest itself. If Jesus 
 was veritably man, He cannot also have been veritably God." 
 Again," He does not proclaim the absolute perfection of Christ : 
 he claims it only in what concerns his religious consciousness." 
 How he acquired such a consciousness in existence of God in 
 man remains a miracle which cannot be explained by any 
 historical connection; therefore, in a sense, every man is a 
 miracle. Here Schleiermacher " has remained faithful to the 
 supra-naturalist view of traditional theology. His opponents 
 point out that the holiness of Christ is a question of fact. 
 Moreover, they ask, What is this ideal type of man which Jesus 
 is said to have realised? Is it not an abstraction or contra- 
 diction in terms, for can an individual realise the whole type 
 of humanity?" He himself speaks of Christ as divine. He 
 certainly accepts religion under the form of Christianity, but 
 on the other hand he only accepts in Christianity what is 
 essentially religious; therefore, he rests everything on religious 
 consciousness. He holds an intermediate position. " While 
 Kant and Fichte, in an exclusive and abstract manner, make 
 morality consist in individuality, Schelling and Hegel, on the 
 other hand, make it consist in abandonment to the universe. 
 He (Schleiermacher) strives to show that both are inseparable 
 elements of all true morality. Without the character of 
 universality there is no reason, without the character of indi- 
 viduality there is no nature. The moral good is the unity of 
 reason and nature." 
 
 Professor Flint had " a great admiration for the genius 
 of Schleiermacher, but he regarded it as a hopeless proposal 
 to base Theology on the obscure element of feeling, and he 
 held that his decision to exclude Natural Theology involved a 
 reckless disregard of assured truth, as well as a serious im- 
 poverishment of the dogmatic system." 
 
 In his lectures on Theological Encyclopaedia, he strongly 
 criticised the German tradition which regards Christian 
 
 c 
 
14 
 
 Theology as the exclusive matter of theology and identifies 
 the subject-matter of theology with Christian Theology. " AH 
 the chief Encyclopedists of Germany," he says, " follow 
 Schleiermacher in this amazingly absurd fashion." 
 
 Pfleiderer describes how " the conversion of subjective 
 into objective idealism was carried out by Kant's successors in 
 various directions — by Fiehte, in the direction of ethica 1 ideal- 
 ism, the original ethical atheism of which became a mystical 
 pantheism; by Schelling, in the direction of a philosophy of 
 nature, which was afterwards turned into theosophy; by Hegel, 
 in the form of logical idealism, with the incorporation of the 
 theory of historical evolution." Hegel's pantheistic doctrine 
 of the State is indeed the frontal source of the cult of the 
 Kaiser and the necessity for aggressive warfare — " The warm 
 and optimistic enthusiasm for humanity, based on religious 
 feeling, formed in the end the meeting-point of Kant's disciple 
 Fiehte and his opponent Herder, and in proportion as Schleier- 
 macher rose above aesthetic subjectivity of Romanticism, 
 he too ranged himself on their side, so that these three noble 
 thinkers stand at the opening of the century as joint prophets 
 of that truth which was to be the distinctive sign of the coming 
 generations " ! 
 
 One can easily understand how such schools of thought, 
 emanating from and appealing to the German type of mind, 
 fostered by their language, which, more than our own, lends 
 itself to shades of meaning, found a fertile reception and 
 speedily brought forth crop after crop of followers and 
 imitators. An attempt was made to invent a new orthodoxy, 
 of which Hengstenberg was the leader (1802-1869), followed by 
 the critical school of which Strauss was the exponent (1808- 
 1848). During the same period, poetical thought also had a 
 profound influence on Germany. Schiller (1759-1805) and 
 Goethe (1749-1832) are the two outstanding figures, but neither 
 of them contributed to the spiritual growth of the nation; 
 indeed, the fact of their being, more especially the latter', 
 idolised to such an extreme pitch, their influence was detri- 
 mental, although no German would admit this even now. The 
 other great factor at work was the political condition cul- 
 minating in 1848. Liberal, Social, and Communistic ideas 
 
15 
 
 absorbed public attention, and came in on the top of the 
 theological unrest, which had been accentuated by the fierce 
 controversy regarding- the Union of the Church and the action 
 of the Governments, with the result in the separation of the 
 educated classes, who moved farther and farther from 
 Christianity. 
 
 Paulus (1761-1851) was the true patriarch of Rationalism, 
 according to which Reason is the last resort and the supreme 
 authority in matters of religion. In 1828 he published his 
 " Life of Jesus," which was the first direct onslaught on the 
 Bible. Pfleiderer says: "We do not know whether to 
 wonder most at his learning and ingenuity, or his ineptitude 
 and want of taste. He turns the finest of the Gospel narratives 
 into the most trivial commonplace incidents, without 
 any deeper meaning or religious significance. Indeed, in not 
 a few places he is even guilty of absolute meanness in his in- 
 terpretation. Thus the supernatural birth is reduced to a 
 deception cunningly practised on the Virgin Mary. The devil 
 that tempted Him in the wilderness was an agent-provocateur 
 sent out by the Pharisees. The plan of Jesus was essentially 
 the political one of restoring the temporary splendour of the 
 Israelitish theocracy; it was not until after the failure of this 
 attempt that He confined himself to an ethical kingdom of God. 
 The change of water into wine was a marriage jest, Jesus 
 giving the present of wine He had brought in this humorous 
 way. The Resurrection was an awakening from an apparent 
 death by tetanus; His Ascension, by a mist serving to take 
 Him from the sight of those beholding His departure." 
 
 The most extraordinary thing about this was the fact that 
 this interpretation of the Gospels, which retains the husk and 
 throws away the religious kernel, was countenanced even by 
 orthodox theologians in many instances, and accepted, at any 
 rate partially, by Schleiermacher too in his lectures on the Life 
 of Jesus. Pfleiderer says: "This can only be accounted for 
 by remembering the difficult position of the theologians of that 
 time, whose general culture made a naive belief in the reality 
 of actual miracles impossible, while their historical criticism 
 was still flattered by the supposition that at least one or other 
 of the Gospels came direct from an eyewitness, and had there- 
 fore to claim an historical character for all its narratives. 
 Paulus' own position is clear enough. He did not admit the 
 possibility of man communicating with God and possessing an 
 
16 
 
 organ capable of perceiving Divine things — that is, he had no> 
 sense of the Divine himself." 
 
 The work of Paulus paved the way for the new era in- 
 German theology, which was the natural development of the 
 cult of "moral consciousness," and to display the peculiarity 
 of the German mind and servile imitators elsewhere, which 
 welcomed the most destructive criticism without consideration 
 as to what was to come in its place. 
 
 Thus Pfleiderer writes: "The rescue of theology out of 
 this blind alley by a thorough and consistent, instead of a 
 halting criticism, getting rid of fettering suppositions and 
 clearing the way for a scientific study of the origins of 
 Christianity, was the work of Strauss " (1808-1874). It was in 
 1835 that Strauss published his " Life of Jesus," which marks 
 the entry of a new school in the name of criticism. He simply 
 applies the principle of myth to the whole extent of the life 
 of Jesus, disintegrating the very foundation of the Bible. It 
 appeared just at a time when the schools of Schleiermacher and 
 Hegel had come to terms with each other. This new bomb- 
 shell was not a mere matter for scholars, but produced an 
 immense sensation, being eagerly read by the man in the street. 
 If the life of Jesus ceased to be a historical reality, the whole 
 fabric of Christianity would crumble to pieces. The storm 
 that arose lost him his appointment at Tubingen, so two years 
 later he published an apology conceding the spiritual power 
 of Jesus, and that He may have been conscious of his Messiah- 
 ship. Still the storm raged, and in a fourth edition he 
 withdrew all the concessions he had made, and finally broke 
 with Christianity altogether. This display of temper is 
 perhaps the best proof of his own want of spiritual enlighten- 
 ment, which showed itself in increased bitterness, as shown 
 m his last work in 1872, when he wrote that " to the historian 
 humbur i '' rreCtl0n a WOlld - wide deception, a colossal 
 
 The length to which apologists of German theology can 
 go is worth noting, and it must be confessed they are difficult 
 to follow. An eminent professor, for instance, charges 
 theologians in this country with "a naive d splay of 
 
 it's ■< • a :r e / hen strw " Leben JeSU " 
 
 Whica?' t 6d ' r C ' S SCandale >- unimportant 
 v nimportant I the subverting f every fact dear 
 
IT 
 
 to Christendom — which shattered Strauss' own, and wrecked 
 a nation's faith. 
 
 Strauss exalts Darwin as one of the greatest benefactors of 
 the human race. " He has delivered \is from the faith in 
 miracles." In dealing- with social or political problems, he 
 rejoices in Darwin's doctrine of " the survival of the fittest." 
 War is undoubtedly an evil, but it is indispensable to the 
 development of humanity and to the advance of its culture. 
 Therefore, as the German nation is the fittest, it is theirs by 
 right to destroy all others ! — and no tenet is more deeply rooted 
 in every German. He gives the preference to monarchy as the 
 best form of government, for a curious reason. He says: " In 
 the monarchical form there is something enigmatical and even 
 visibly absurd in appearance, but that is precisely the motive 
 for the preference which it is proper to grant to it. Every 
 mystery appears absurd, and yet there is nothing more 
 profound ; there is neither life, nor art, nor State without 
 mystery." Strange reasoning from Strauss, who has chased the 
 idea of the supernatural from religion, recalling it and placing 
 it in the State, with which it has nothing to do. 
 
 Stratiss having sown the wind, Germany, that eagerly 
 followed his teaching, is now reaping the whirlwind. Prac- 
 tical men judge of a system by its fruit. As Pfleiderer says, 
 '" He deluded himself, and his case had in it a tragic element in 
 that he shared this delusion with the chief philosophy of his 
 time, while its disastrous consequences were borne by him 
 personally more than by any other man." 
 
 As his teaching bears directly on the object of this paper, 
 we must follow it further. In 1868, in the conclusion of his 
 book on " TJlrich von Hutten," he exclaims, apostrophising 
 his hero: " Kindle in us the hatred of all that is servile, of 
 all that is false, of all that is not German." The German 
 nation is, in his view, the elect people, enraptured by the 
 national greatness, a fierce adversary of ultramontanism, 
 uniting the proud assurance of the free-thinker to the 
 self-satisfaction of the citizen and beatific admiration of his 
 sovereign. Strauss is the type of that numerous class of minds 
 who profess with equal ardour the most advanced religious 
 
18 
 
 radicalism and the blindest political conservatism. In 1872 
 he published another book, "The Old Faith and the New." 
 He congratulates his countrymen that " in consequence of the 
 high facts and events of these last few years, the dynasty of 
 the Hohenzollerns has shot profound and inextricable roots 
 beyond the borders of Prussia into all the German States and 
 hearts." It is absolute monarchy which has his sympathies. 
 It follows naturally, " God dethroned from the heavens must," 
 as the writer says, " be replaced by Csesar on earth." Strauss 
 declares: "After the Goethes and the Humboldts had left us, 
 then appeared the Bismarcks and the Moltkes, whose greatness 
 can be all the less denied because it appears in the domain of 
 external and tangible facts. ... In France what is 
 admired is the power of phrasing, in England the power of 
 practical sense, and in Germany the power of the ideal.'' 
 " Yes," says Lichtenberger, writing in 1889, " we have seen 
 these German idealists at work, and Strauss was worthy to 
 edit their catechism. Its decalogue may be summed up in a 
 single law, the great principle of Darwin, the struggle for 
 existence. The most valiant strugglers, the best equipped by 
 nature and science, and the least scrupulous as regards con- 
 science, are the greatest. It is to the strongest races that the 
 empire of the world belongs. Ply your elbows without being 
 troubled by the twitching of conscience, and you will yet come 
 to do great things. Might overbears right. Germany alone 
 lias understood true modern wisdom, and the future will belong 
 to her, unless there arise from the East a stronger and less 
 scrupulous nation, whose success will still better crown the 
 struggle for existence." Strauss demands, above all, that there 
 is to be no reconciliation of Christianity and modern thought. 
 " Who can tell the effect which will be produced by this new 
 faith on a generation which may deliberately embrace it, and 
 which may no longer be benefited in any respect by the 
 counterpoise of the old traditions and the old religious 
 memories. In truth, it seems that our generation madly 
 squanders the spiritual inheritance derived from its fathers, 
 and that it riotously wastes the treasures of the Gospel without 
 seeing that what it has preserved of moral valour, delicacy, 
 and thirst for the ideal comes to it from that very source which 
 it disdains and deserts." The world knows now how to value 
 their morals and delicacy. The eyes of the most prejudiced 
 minds should be opened by the political conclusions which : 
 
L9 
 
 Strauss in this book draws with an inflexible logic from his 
 system. " At all cost, he must have a strong ruling power. 
 To restrain the appetites which he knows, to break the resistance 
 he foresees, to repel those assaults of covetousness and passion 
 which struggle for their satisfaction, to prevent the explosion 
 of all those modes of selfishness which are rendered more 
 ferocious by the limited space of time that opens before them, 
 and which, once unchained, would convert the earth into a 
 hideous and sanguinary arena, it is necessary to have some 
 Cvesax or other who knows how to make himself obeyed by the 
 most violent means. Whoever does not place liberty in God, 
 whoever does not respect it in man, cannot place or respect it 
 in society. He is obliged, in the name of public safety, always 
 to suspend it or to trample it under his feet. In order 
 to found the era of progress which you are thus promising to 
 men, you will have to commence by immolating all the forms 
 of liberty, and you will have to force us by fire and sword to 
 embrace each other as brothers." 
 
 Twenty-five years have passed since this criticism was 
 published, and the generation which has unchained it has been 
 nurtured on this new faith, stands revealed to the world 
 in the ferocity of barbarism, which has trampled Belgium 
 under its feet and converted Europe into " a hideous and 
 sanguinary arena." 
 
 It was at the beginning of the war often said that we were 
 at war with the Militarism of Germany, and not with the 
 simple, peace-loving people; but as fiendish atrocities multi- 
 plied we have heard less and less of that delusion, as it is 
 realised that the canker lies far deeper, and that it began in 
 the spiritual apostasy of the nation. When we examine into 
 the mental condition of Germany, and remember that Strauss 
 published his " Life of Jesus" in 1835, and the political and 
 social upheavals followed in 1848; then came a reaction, which 
 had a disastrous influence on the ecclesiastical sphere; the 
 union between the Governments and the orthodox party became 
 more intimate; the United Church, which was the work of 
 Frederick William III., instead of bringing peace, became an 
 apple of discord among the Christians of Germany— established 
 
80 
 
 by royal decree, it became simply the tool of political struggles, 
 so as to secure the preponderating power, of which the sovereign 
 disposes, serviceable for the advantage of the party that 
 triumphs. The result, has been that as the ecclesiastical 
 appointments are in the hands of the Government, which 
 selected men to suit its own interests, and being rationalistic, 
 made its appointments accordingly. It followed, naturally, 
 Germany speedily assimilated Rationalism, and distracted by 
 various groups or schools warring against each other, while 
 each courted the favour of the Government, drifted from 
 Christianity altogether. Schenkel (1813-1885), for example, 
 began as a conservative in 1858, but by 1864 he was the leader 
 of the liberal school. His works show that he belonged to 
 Schleiermacher's school, teaching that the conscience is the 
 seat of religion, his book on the character of Jesus being 
 evidently inspired by Renan, wherein he shows himself the 
 declared enemy of the supernatural ; and finally we find him 
 applauding Bismarck, and justifying in the name of religion 
 and morality the conquest of Alsace and Lorraine — the policy 
 of violence to which Germany has owed its national unity. 
 Such a career may be taken as an object-lesson in the value 
 of "moral consciousness " as a standard. 
 
 Ruckhart (1797-1871) was another liberal leader, who 
 published his "Christian Theology" in 1851, developing 
 the views of Kant and Fichte as to the ideal Ego, which every 
 man carries in himself at birth, and finds itself struggling 
 with the lower material nature, with radical evil. When the 
 ideal Ego conquers it rises from stage to stage up to the 
 Absolute Ego, the personal God, the author of the Moral Order 
 of the World (see page 31). 
 
 Ewald (1793-1875) was another well-known name in 
 the arena of ecclesiastical strife, and may serve as an 
 example of how the system of State supremacy works in 
 Germany, as he was, " owing to his strong convictions and 
 immovable fidelity to the cause of justice, suspended from his 
 functions as a professor in 1834, and in 1866 removed from his 
 office for refusing to take the oath of allegiance after the 
 annexation of Hanover to Prussia; thereafter he became the 
 courageous defender of the liberty and independence of the 
 people, and a strong opponent of the oppressive policy of 
 Bismarck. Liberal in his theology, even of advanced opinions, 
 
21 
 
 and a member of the Protestant Union, he nevertheless waged 
 a fierce war against the Tubingen school." 
 
 The neo-Lutheran party owed its origin to the revolution 
 of 1848 and the reaction that followed it. Its object has been 
 to defend the throne and the altar, hence the close alliance 
 between the Lutheran pastorate and the feudal party as against 
 democracy with its anarchy of ideas and the progress of 
 parliamentary institutions. Before the rising tide of 
 democratic ideas, the conservative party welcomed the support 
 of the Church, and in like manner the Church, threatened 
 by the development of philosophical ideas and the progress of 
 Biblical criticism, sought refuge in the arms of the State. 
 
 Stahl (1802-1861) was the head of the party. " In his works 
 he has embraced both the science of law and that of faith, 
 — the sphere of the State and that of the Church, — and by a 
 natural enough confusion he has treated law as a theologian, 
 and theology as a jurist. In his view, the State is the kingdom 
 of God upon earth, and the Church is a juridical institution 
 guaranteed and administered by the clergy. What the clergy 
 are in the Church, the prince is in the State — he is the vicar of 
 God. God Himself is the true master and legislator. The 
 prince rules only in His name; his authority rests only on the 
 Divine right of royalty. In like manner revelation is the 
 authority in the Church, and reason owes it absolute sub- 
 mission. Revolution and rationalism are the two inseparable 
 scourges of modern times, &c. In the second place, the new 
 Lutheranism tendency is the repulsion inspired in it by pietism, 
 which it puts on a level with rationalism, pursuing them both 
 under the common name of subjectivism or individualism, and, 
 by putting in place of the act and function of personal faith 
 the act and function of the Sacrament, these theorists make 
 the idea of the Church repose on the latter of the two." 
 
 Another school is that called the school of Conciliation, 
 which desired to find the mean between the others; but it has 
 not influenced the masses or the religious conscience. Not 
 having inherent strength, it has served the cause of political 
 and ecclesiastical reaction, especially since 1848, and it has 
 yoked itself to the car of Bismarck, glorifying the war of 1870 
 with its violence and policy of annexation, which its most 
 eminent leaders have urged on with all their might. 
 
 Tholuck (1799-1877), while he exposed the weaknesses of 
 
22 
 
 Strauss' "Life of Jesus," it was said of him that he was 
 less afraid of not beiug in harmony with Scripture than of 
 being against the philosophical spirit of the time. 
 
 Hoffmann (1800-1873) was, however, the leader of this 
 school, Superintendent-General of the Church, and Court 
 preacher at Berlin. From the very object of the school, and 
 his position of courtier and churchman, rather than as a 
 theologian, he was ever ready to bless victory, even when it 
 was Might over Right, and to throw the mantle of his phrase- 
 ology over the weaknesses and faults of the chosen instruments 
 of Providence. In 1809 he published " Germany, Past and 
 Present, in the Light of the Kingdom of God," which sum- 
 marises his position and expressed his conviction that 
 " Germany will abandon it-self and commit suicide if it 
 abandons faith in the personal God and His perfect revelation 
 in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, in religious matters, and 
 in royalty by Divine right in political matters." 
 
 The last party to be noticed is the neo-Kantian school, 
 which seeks to combine Kant with Luther and Schleiermacher, . 
 with the object of overcoming the sterile antagonism between 
 Supra-naturalism and Rationalism, or between faith and 
 science, and so acquire an independent province for the 
 religious consciousness by disengaging religion from all 
 essential association with metaphysics, natural sciences, and 
 historical criticism. 
 
 Albrecht Ritschl, Prof essor at Gottingen (born in 1822), was 
 head of this school. " He teaches that the only proper religious 
 authority is the person, the word, and the work of Christ. 
 While Schleiermacher took up the standpoint of the believing 
 individual and his Christian consciousness, Ritschl places 
 himself on the believing community and the historical testi- 
 mony it has deposited in the Biblical writings. It is not the 
 business of religion to pass the phenomena such as the moral 
 conception of God as opposed to the metaphysical conception, 
 or miracles, through the sieve of scientific criticism. His 
 Christology renounces all attempts to make us understand how 
 Jesus came to take possession of the mystery of the kingdom 
 of God. The eschatology of Ritschl is summed up in the lively 
 hope of the Christian in the final realisation of the supreme 
 good. Lichtenberger also says that the defects of his theology 
 are just those which are peculiar to the German mind, which 
 notwithstanding its pretensions to perspicuity, is essentially 
 
2:5 
 
 lacking in clearness and simplicity, and cannot be wholly 
 vindicated from the reproach of taking pleasure in equivoca- 
 tion. Under the form which the master has given it, it can 
 hardly ever become popular." 
 
 What is specially noticeable in the spirit of last century 
 is the popularity of destructive criticism and the enthusiasm 
 with which anything tending in that direction was received — 
 the temptation to pander to popularity acting and reacting 
 in a vicious circle. Strauss had declared the whole Gospel 
 history to he mythical, without being able to put anything in 
 its place. This the Tubingen school set itself to do, the head 
 of which was F. C. Baur (1792-1860). He is described as " one 
 of the most eminent representatives of the intellectual nobility 
 of Germany." To Baur the weak point in the dogmatics of 
 Schleiermacher was its Christology. In his judgment, the 
 person of Jesus cannot have been the incarnation of type 
 destined to serve as a norm for the generations following; in 
 this he showed himself the follower of Hegel. His view was 
 that Christianity is not a finished, perfect product which has 
 descended from heaven, but a complex whole of views and ideas, 
 which develops itself progressively. As for the Gospels, they are 
 in his opinion not the originals, but while there were primary 
 nuclei of legendary narratives, they were altered and modified 
 by additions and revisions in the middle of the second century. 
 Only the Epistles to the Romans, Galatians, and First and 
 Second Corinthians are admitted to be genuine; all the rest — 
 Gospels, Acts, and Epistles — were placed by pious forgers 
 under the segis of venerated names. " What, in his view, is tc- 
 be alone decisive of the character and origin of the various 
 writings of the New Testament is the alleged struggles of the 
 early primitive Church. . . . Baur himself describes his 
 point of view as lying in the attempt to explain the historical 
 origin of Christianity. . . . That is to say, to strip it 
 of its supernatural character; therefore, it is not surprising 
 to find that the resurrection of Jesus and the conversion of 
 St Paul are two points which neither Baur nor his disciples 
 have been able to explain. And yet it is on these two points 
 that all the history of the apostolic age turns." It is no. 
 wonder that the German people have lost their faith. 
 
24 
 
 As the object of this paper is to deal with German thought, 
 it would be beyond its scope to follow the foreign writers whose 
 works influenced them. It must suffice to mention two 
 Frenchmen : that of Comte (1798-1857), by whose system 
 "the conception of God is superseded by the abstract idea of 
 Humanity, conceived as a kind of Personality." It is curious 
 to note that this apostle of humanity, in his preface to his 
 " Catechism of Positivism," published in 1852, expressed his 
 approval of Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat, exactly as the 
 German theologians eulogised Bismarck's policy of Might 
 being Right. 
 
 The other Frenchman whose influence was international 
 was Renan, who in 1863 published bis " Vie de Jesus." The 
 sensation accorded to Strauss' work assured a similar reception 
 to a further attack on the Bible. " It was not a scientific 
 attack, but for popular consumption its poetical style and 
 imagery made it all the more seductive; it is a religious epic, 
 which brings forth the Saviour from the unapproachable dark- 
 ness of dogma into the midst of the life of His people, first as 
 the idyllic national leader, then as the contending and erring 
 hero, always aiming at the highest, but doomed to tragic 
 failure from the resistance offered by the reality to His ideal." 
 
 Of English influence it is safe to say that only three — 
 Darwin, Huxley, and Herbert Spencer — have exercised in- 
 fluence, and that because they were on the same line of German 
 speculation, so that evolution and the gospel of the survival of 
 the fittest were naturally received with unbounded en- 
 thusiasm. 
 
 During all this period of destructive criticism, defenders 
 of the truths of the Gospels were not wanting, such as Neander 
 (1837), Ebrard (1842), Lange (1843), Olshausen (1853), Weisse 
 (1850), Riggenbach (1858), Ewald (1855); but running through 
 their writings there is, as Neander puts it, the sense that they 
 were produced in " an age of crisis, of isolation, of pain, 
 and of throes." Keini published his " Jesu von Nazareth" 
 in 1867, and gives it as his conclusion that " in the life of 
 Jesus, where the most genuine and unadulterated humanity 
 dwelt, was revealed not only a religious genius, but the 
 miracle of God and His presence on earth," and that "the 
 person itself and nothing else is the miracle." The writer 
 says "he shows by how vast a space modern opinion has 
 receded from the views of the Catholic Church." Lichten- 
 
25 
 
 berger says of him that, while he considers Matthew the most 
 faithful of our Gospels, and does not deny miracles, particu- 
 larly that of the Resurrection, he accentuates the Judaic type 
 in the person of Jesus; he believes that, in eschatological 
 matters especially, Jesus shared the rude and erroneoxis ideas 
 of His time. Thus we have the striking fact that even the 
 defenders of the truths of the Gospel dealt it heavy blows. 
 
 Naturally, Roman Catholicism has not been idle; but even 
 when it showed most intelligence, as in the case of Dr Dollin- 
 ger, whom it ultimately excommunicated, he seemed thereafter 
 to place in his discourses the German Empire and Bismarck in 
 the place which the Church and its infallible Head occupied. 
 
 The sphere of its influence has been chiefly directed to 
 political intrigue. As might be expected, Bismarck's attitude 
 towards Ultramontanism is not forgotten, or the sensation his 
 declaration made that " they were not going to Canossa 
 again"; or the Kaiser's visit to the King of Italy on his 
 accession, and how he baulked the Vatican of making capital 
 out of his call on the Pope by the prearranged interruption of 
 the interview by Prince Henry, to their intense chagrin. 
 Since then much water has flowed down the Tiber. The 
 glittering cross worn by Leo. XIII. was his gift, to whom 
 the Pontiff often alluded as "my best European friend." 
 Constant flattering communications passed between them. 
 When the Kaiser went to Rome in 1903, he visited the Pope 
 in state, amid the plaudits of priests and monks. A 
 " Te Deum " was sung in St Peter's on his birthday, which 
 mark of apjjroval the Kaiser returned by bestowing the decora- 
 tion of the Black Eagle on a Cardinal, and by securing the 
 election of a German to fill the post of General to the Jesuits.* 
 
 How has this change been brought about? It is not 
 difficult to read between the lines of Jesuit diplomacy, which 
 has fanned the embers of hatred and jealousy towards Great 
 Britain, as the strongest Protestant Power which stands in her 
 own way; by pandering to the ambitious dreams of the Kaiser 
 of world-wide dominion on the one side, while on the other 
 assisting him by throwing all the weight of its vast well-drilled 
 secret organisation here and in Ireland into the Home Rule 
 plot, which, had it been successful, would have plunged the 
 country into civil war and paralysed our action at the critical 
 
 * "The Papal Conquest," by Rev. Alex. Robertson, D.D. 
 
26 
 
 moment on the Continent, facilitating, humanly speaking, the 
 Kaiser's march on Paris and the triumph of his Kultured Huns. 
 Again, in the good providence of God, the situation was saved 
 by a "contemptible little army." The heroic conduct of the 
 staunch Protestant men of Ulster and their leaders will not 
 be forgotten when the history of our times comes to be written, 
 which will rank along with the little nations of Belgium and 
 Serbia in the glory of the story of the triumph of Right over 
 Might, Intrigue, and Perfidy. It is but another proof of the 
 utter incapacity of the over-rated German mind (and of our 
 politicians and clerics who draw their inspiration from the 
 poisoned well of Kultur) to assimilate fundamental principles. 
 Repudiating Divine authority, which makes men free, they 
 have substituted Reason, which has made them slaves. 
 Flattered by the Jesuits into the belief that they were leading 
 the world, they are unable to see that they were being led, and 
 made tools of, by men of far subtler intellects than their own 
 — men as unscrupulous as themselves, but cunning and far- 
 sighted enough to see that they were bound to win, whichever 
 way the game they promoted should end. One or other of 
 the two great Protestant Powers must be defeated, and the 
 Vatican laughs in its sleeve — one enemy less, and missions of 
 both abroad discredited — and the Kaiser, — " sceptred sover- 
 eigns," — and people do not see it. 
 
 And what of ourselves? To say a word against Jesuit 
 intrigue is to be looked on as narrow-minded, old-fashioned, 
 &c, by party politicians, by the Cocoa Press, Nonconformists, 
 and Presbyterian Liberals in Scotland — all of whom, following 
 the example of Germany, have put politics before religion. 
 These men know that Prussian Protestants and Roman Catholic 
 Germans daily sing the " Hymn of Hate," and call upon the 
 god of force they worship "to punish England" — and Sir 
 Edward Grey sends a special envoy to the Pope ! Sancta 
 simplicitas I 
 
 From the resume of the distracted state of Germany in 
 matters theological, there could be only one result on the mass 
 of the people. Deprived by the clergy of the Bible, the homes 
 were godless. To young men in Germany the day of their 
 confirmation becomes the day of their emancipation from 
 
27 
 
 church-going, and with the exception of the special festivals 
 of the Church, it sees them no more. Sundays are holidays, 
 in whole or part; and Monday morning brings tliem back to 
 the week's work bleary and headachy; the Bier-halle supplants 
 the home ; and public opinion has been almost entirely on the 
 side of the Rationalists, who are held up to them as " sceptred 
 sovereigns." When the age for military service is reached, 
 the character of the nation is still further moulded. The dull 
 stupid countryman or the gamin from the towns are indeed 
 licked into better physical condition by the iron discipline 
 exercised on them with unrestrained brutality, which would 
 not be tolerated here, and which converts the barracks into lint- 
 beds of socialism, while the moral atmosphere is putrid; and 
 at the end of their three years' training they return to their 
 homes learned in all the vices of their superiors and comrades, 
 along with bitter resentment of their rulers. The gulf betwixt 
 the Junkers — the class from which the officers are drawn — 
 thus grows wider and deeper. There is the same hostility 
 towards the Junkers from the merchant class, many of whom 
 vote for Socialists merely to keep the representatives of the 
 landed artistocracy out. Great things were foretold of what 
 the Socialists would do to prevent a European war, but, 
 instead, the hold which the military system had on them was 
 too perfect to permit of a revolution. Another potent factor 
 has been the astuteness of the policy of the Government, 
 which has diverted public attention from home affairs by 
 systematically fostering the pride of the nation, teaching 
 hatred for all other countries in the homes, schools, uni- 
 versities, and in the Press. The tortuous diplomacy which has 
 characterised their politics, their hereditary disregard for 
 international treaties and rights, has been only consistent in 
 the one ruling principle — that nothing was sacred if it stood 
 in the way of German aggrandisement. The easily won victory 
 of 1870 has been Germany's undoing. Intoxicated with the 
 belief that they were invincible in war, their ambition was 
 set on fire; while the indemnity paid by France turned their 
 heads, enhanced prices, altered the style of living all round, 
 and started them on their career of commercial rivalry, to 
 further which no duplicity or deceit came amiss. Wherever 
 they stretched their hand, the "mailed fist" was shaken and 
 the sabre rattled. The doctrine of " Might being Right " per- 
 meated every class of the community. Commerce, backed by 
 
28 
 
 fraudulent force, became insensibly the excuse for more mili- 
 tary and naval preparations. The spectre of Russian invasion 
 on the one hand, and the capture of British trade and 
 supremacy at sea with world-wide dominion dangled skilfully 
 before the people, led them to submit to the burden of mili- 
 tarism at home by the dreams of booty abroad. 
 
 The Rev. Dr Hastie in his preface says: " But it will be 
 to misunderstand every page that follows if the reader does 
 not find that the work of German theology throughout the 
 century has been in its own way, however much it has been 
 misrepresented and decried, a work of revival, of renovation 
 and reconstruction." 
 
 There are only two methods of judging as to this : the one 
 is the actual teaching of those who have engaged in the 
 process which I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to give 
 of some of the leaders; and secondly, to judge of the tree by 
 its fruits. The reader must be the judge of this for himself. 
 The problem we started to consider was how a whole 
 nation could stand before the whole world clad in the 
 cloak of Kultur, demanding obeisance from the world as 
 the embodiment of "the deepest conscientiousness and the 
 highest morality," and that in a few short weeks the 
 cloak of Kultur was dropped and it is seen to be a mass of 
 corruption and rottenness. But the worst feature of the 
 exposure is that while it stands revealing its own perfidy, 
 lying, ruthless barbarity, lust, and blood-thirstiness in all its 
 astounding nakedness, yet it is not ashamed — nay, it glories 
 in its trickery and deceit by the publication of its General Staff 
 Regulations*; it openly commands the trampling under foot of 
 every law of God and international obligation. Murdering the 
 wounded on the battlefield and civilians on their own door- 
 steps, slaughtering women and children, destroying churches, 
 shelling hospitals, using Red Cross waggons for their machine- 
 guns, disguising themselves in the Allies' uniforms, using the 
 white flag as a decoy, pirate submarines, &c, &c. — these 
 things the world reads of day by day, and the world blanches 
 with horror in the name of our common humanity; but from 
 the length and breadth of Germany no voice is raised to protest 
 
 * " Kriegsbrauch im Landki iege," or The German War Book. Translated by- 
 Prof. J. H. Morgan. 
 
29 
 
 against the infam}-, least of all the voice of the German theo- 
 logians, neither has any neutral Power — although all signa- 
 tories to the Hague Convention — protested. 
 
 "A NATION WITHOUT THE BIBLE." 
 
 Such is the practical result of a whole century of laborious 
 theological activity. Instead of any renovation or higher 
 spiritual life in Germany, there is only the doctrine of 
 Frightfulness and Hate. Abstract and sterile discussions as 
 to Pure Eeason and Practical Eeason — or the proposition that 
 " All that is Rational is Real, and all that is Real is Rational, 
 the Reason of Feeling and Feeling of Reason " — have not 
 helped on the spiritual life of the nation ; while there can 
 be no doubt that " the substitution of ' moral consciousness ' 
 for the authority of the Word of God " has alienated it from 
 •Christianity as a guiding and controlling power in daily life 
 and conduct. The marked absence of recognition of the work 
 of the Holy Spirit in their dealing with spiritual matters is 
 also very significant. 
 
 Thomas Arnold, the beloved headmaster at Rugby, who 
 died in 1842, "was the first to show his countrymen the 
 possibility and to make the demand that the Bible should be 
 read with honest human eyes, without the spectacles of 
 orthodox dogmatic presuppositions." 
 
 Jowett, Master of Balliol, and one of the first to introduce 
 Hegelianism into this country — in "Essays and Reviews," 
 1860 — goes a step further, and demands that " the Bible must 
 be interpreted like any other book." 
 
 Since then the floodgate of "Higher Criticism" has been 
 opened wide, until even semi-religious, but wholly secular, 
 newspapers claim the right "to handle the Word of God as 
 any other book." 
 
 " The Life of Robert Flint " brings the world back to the 
 fundamental fact that " knowledge divorced from experience 
 is more adequately recognised to be futile ; theology apart from 
 religion to be empty and worthless even as science. Theology 
 is the science of religion, and just for that reason it is the 
 religion, not the theology, which is of prime importance." 
 
30 
 
 "It is essential that the student of Christian doctrinal 
 theology should be of a reverent and righteous spirit." " He 
 who would know the truth must himself stand in the truth." 
 
 "The so-called Higher Criticism . . . there are some 
 serious evils accompanying it ... by the fact that the vast 
 majority . . . are wholly incompetent to judge for them- 
 selves whether these results have been really attained or not, 
 and can only accept them on the authority of those whom they 
 are told are the highest authority, and told by whom? Per- 
 haps by a credulous partisan disciple of those authorities; or 
 more probably by, say, journalists who really know nothing 
 or almost nothing about the Higher Biblical Criticism, except 
 what they pick up to enable them to compose the articles, 
 which are supposed to mould, and perhaps do mould too much, 
 public opinion." 
 
 " Eeceive rashly no new hypothesis as to Scripture, for the 
 vast majority of them are born only to die." 
 
 Contrast this scientific philosophic standpoint with that of 
 German speculative theologians, and the parting of the ways 
 is at once manifest. Take the case of the triumvirate of the 
 mischief— Paulus, Strauss, and their ally Renan. What is 
 lacking in them was just this " sense of the divine, or, in a 
 word, the religious sense," and yet while it shattered their 
 own lives, it has been accepted with the same disastrous .results 
 by the Germans as a nation. 
 
 As Flint truly says, " The only true basis of Christian 
 Theology is the original revelation of God in Christ." As 
 such, the record of it must have been by the inspiration of the 
 Holy Spirit, both in the Old Testament and the New. Christ, 
 we are told, " beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he 
 expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concern- 
 ing himself." 
 
 To claim " the right to handle the revealed Word of God 
 as any other hook" implies, therefore, that it stands on the 
 same level as any work, which is undoubtedly the initial error. 
 
 To all in this country who have been led to follow in their 
 wake, and treat or criticise the Bible " as any other ordinary 
 book," the result ought to come home as a rude awakening to 
 serious consideration. 
 
 A word of dissent from those who say— You will only do 
 harm to Biblical authority if you hold by the old hypothesis of 
 plenary inspiration. This is hardly a fair statement of the 
 
31 
 
 position. The Bible itself makes the claim, it is for the critics 
 to prove that it is not inspired. When they are agreed among 
 themselves— give proof of their own inspiration— and explain 
 away "frightfulness," the result of having no Bible— only then 
 would it be pertinent to ask the laity to abandon their belief in 
 the inspiration of the Bible. 
 
 To take the Kaiser as typical of the modern German 
 character as we now know it. We can see how he and his 
 people have become more and more obsessed with the teaching of 
 Strauss—" Kindle in us the hatred of all that is not German" ; 
 or the teaching of Ruckhart— of the Ego in man, which could 
 rise up even to the Absolute Ego (page 20); or, again, the 
 Divine right of the State, of which the Church was only a de- 
 partment—preached by professors and pastors, accepted and 
 confirmed by Kaiser and people— the one absorbed in the idea 
 of the "Ego," and by the other as being the " elect people " 
 into whose hands the supremacy of the world was given! 
 This obsession accounts for the familiarity with which 
 the Kaiser uses the name of God, and the manner in which it 
 is used in conversation by the people. Beginning his reign 
 as a Protestant ruler, inspired by Bismarck with a wholesome 
 knowledge of Jesuit intrigues, he and his people have seen 
 the Word of God torn to pieces by the Protestant clergy them- 
 selves, and deprived of a supreme standard, they have been 
 taught that " Moral Consciousness " is their guide. 
 
 Kaiser, clergy, and people have truly sown the wind, and 
 are now reaping the whirlwind. We know what it means for 
 a people to accept authority and hold fast their faith in the 
 Word of God, devoting all the powers of human intelligence 
 to understand and apply it; but to disintegrate it, declaring 
 that the early books of the Old Testament are woven out of the 
 raw material of myth and legend, that prophecy is little more 
 than forgery, that Christ is no more divine than any mere 
 member of the human race, that the whole of Revelation is a 
 mere figment of the imagination, and then to substitute for the 
 supreme authority of the Word of God Free Thought, Liberty, 
 Pure Reason, Rationalism, Moral Consciousness, or Spiritual 
 Freedom— all of which are the same thing under different 
 names, without any definite supreme standard— reduces the 
 whole position to national atheism or pantheism — a state of 
 spiritual bankruptcy. Then comes in the prince of this world 
 with counsels of personal and national glory and material gain. 
 
32 
 
 Might is exalted above Right, Force is worshipped, and with 
 the cry " Gott mit uns " they go forth on an unjust war, not 
 realising that, having broken the " Talisman " of the Cross, 
 the gods they appeal to are the old stone gods of a thousand 
 years ago. 
 
 It is interesting again to recall the past to see how this 
 has come about. Just as in .1815 (see page 7) so after 1870, 
 reunited Germany turned its face backward to Medisevalism 
 and Mythology, seeing in the old Emperor the reawakening 
 of Barbarossa and the resurrection of Germany as a nation. 
 Inebriated with the exuberance of their suddenly acquired 
 importance, Might having been successful, the question of 
 Right was eclipsed. It was therefore an easy matter to lure 
 the nation by visions of fresh conquests, booty, and material 
 advantages to blindly follow their leader by Divine Right. 
 
 Hence the strange spectacle of a nation in the name of 
 Liberty casting aside the authority of the revealed Word of 
 God, and at the same time servilely surrendering itself to 
 work the will of an unscrupulous and cruel military despotism.* 
 
 Another object-lesson which should be taken to heart is 
 the practical effect and the destructive work Higher Criti- 
 cism has had on the masses in Germany. Before the war a 
 great deal was heard of the growth, and power of Socialism 
 there, as shown by the poll of four million votes at the last 
 election, the influence of which in the preservation of peace 
 was to be the outcome. The strength of the movement owed 
 much to the moral force of what was proclaimed from plat- 
 forms, international conferences, and their press as to the 
 brotherhood of man — the fraternity of the working men. 
 
 But, alas, when the war broke out this was found to be 
 an empty dream. With one consent the very same Socialists, 
 without a protest, have devastated Belgium with unspeakable 
 ferocity, are in deadly grips with their brethren in France 
 and Russia, while their "Hymn of Hate" towards ourselves 
 has lashed them to the white heat of frenzy. We now see how 
 Rationalism and Moral Consciousness, having extinguished 
 their spiritual or religious life, reacted on their secular life, 
 and by eliminating moral conceptions brought out the gross 
 materialism of the whole nation. Darwin's doctrine of the 
 
 *As a writer has pointed out, "The Kaiser alone could not have effected 
 much had it not heen for the new Idealism which had come into the minds of 
 Germans as the result of success, and, indirectly, of the materialistic philosophy." 
 
33 
 
 survival of the fittest, and the weak nnist go to the wall, per- 
 meated every class. Might supplanted Eight; Force had 
 hecome their god. 
 
 We have therefore before us the old question as to what 
 the supreme standard ought to be. The choice lies between — 
 
 The Word of God— The Church— Moral Consciousness. 
 
 Great Britain and Ulster acknowledge that the secret of 
 their greatness and safety is in the Word of God. 
 
 Roman Catholics, High Churchmen, E.C.U., Home Rulers, 
 &c, exalt "the Church " over it. 
 
 Germany and Higher Critics substitute " Moral Con- 
 sciousness" for it. 
 
 In the relapse into barbarism of Germany, and the ruin of 
 Austria, we have object-lessons of how the moral fibre of these 
 nations has been destroyed, which, if adopted by any other 
 nation, must inevitably have the same result. 
 
34 
 
 There is only one explanation of this debacle, and it is 
 given by the sharp two-edged sword, " The sword of the Spirit, 
 which is the Word of God," quick and powerful, discerning 
 the thoughts and intents of the heart. Thus we read in Titus 
 I. 16— 
 
 They profess that they know God; but in works they 
 deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto 
 every good work reprobate. 
 
 And again, in Romans I. — 
 
 28. And even as they did not like to retain God in their 
 knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do 
 those things which are not convenient ; 
 
 29. Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, 
 wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness ; full of envy, 
 murder, debate, deceit, malignity ; whisperers, 
 
 30. Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, 
 inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 
 
 31. Without understanding, covenant-breakers, without 
 natural affection, implacable, unmerciful : 
 
 32. Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which 
 commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the 
 same, but have pleasure in them that do them. 
 
 Truly the devil has led them up into an exceeding high 
 mountain and showed them all the kingdoms of the world and 
 the glory of them . . . from the summit of which they 
 have been hurled by the "sword of the Spirit, which is the 
 Word of God " ... and lo . . . the portion of their 
 inheritance is revealed in the " reprobate mind." 
 
 It is not for us to say more. We lay our cause to the 
 plummet of the " sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of 
 God," and leave it, and ourselves, there. 
 
35 
 
 PROBLEMS. 
 
 The close of this great war will mark the opening of a new 
 era in the history of our Empire and in Europe, which, 
 according as it is used, will be for good or evil to the whole 
 world. 
 
 The Problem before us as an Empire is all the more 
 serious from the fact that our Party Politicians and Little 
 Englanders do not realise that we are at war with Kultur. 
 The Kaiser himself tells us that it is Kultur against Civilisa- 
 tion, and Kultur stands revealed to the world in " Frightf ill- 
 ness " — the brute force of Barbarism. 
 
 A state of war postulates Victory or Defeat, and we cannot 
 contemplate either the triumph of Kultur or compromise 
 with it. Its defeat necessarily entails humiliation ; yet the 
 Little Englanders raise the cry, Don't humiliate Germany — 
 which means do not defeat her. Shallow sentimental ism 
 cannot fall lower — besides which it is a travesty of Chris- 
 tianity. Divine Love and Justice demands Repentance as 
 the first essential step to Forgiveness — Except ye repent, ye 
 shall all likewise perish ; if thy brother repent, forgive him. 
 Germany is still among the swine, and only by humiliation 
 can it " come to itself " — repentance and restoration. 
 
 We have to see to it that our hands are clean and free from 
 Kultur, as we have been called to be instruments to overthrow 
 it; then the Victory is sure in a righteous war. We must be 
 faithful to the great Trust and heritage which has grown up 
 in our hands, almost unconsciously, of Imperial Britain, with 
 its banner of Freedom and Justice. 
 
 Wars are sent as a punishment to one nation and as a dis- 
 cipline to another — Russia and France have recognised this. 
 Are we as a nation to lag behind and not to profit by the stern 
 lesson? There are e'rave Problems ahead of us — such as the 
 Drink question — the right relations of Capital and Labour — 
 
36 
 
 Gambling— the Social Evil— Housiug of tlie Poor— Protection 
 for the Working Man, &c, &c, and strong men are needed to 
 lead the way to great Eeforms— failing which a tide of 
 Socialistic Anarchy may arise and sweep us we know not 
 whither. 
 
 One thing is certain, the heart of the nation has been 
 roused by the spectacle of Might trampling over Eight — and 
 will demand in the future that the " Right" shall decide our 
 problems, and not mechanical majorities, which act in the 
 spirit of Kultur. 
 
 The degradation of Germany, we have seen, comes from 
 its Kultur, which destroyed the authority of the Word of God. 
 
 Already we have many tens of thousands of aliens in our 
 midst. After the war, when armies are disbanded, are we to 
 receive hordes of these brutalised Kultured Germans into this 
 country without let or hindrance? — the mere declaration of 
 Peace will not change their character. To allow such free 
 entry here will be a great moral and material wrong to our 
 own people, especially to our working classes. 
 
 Germany has, we know, lavished vast sums of money in 
 its secret service of bribery and. corruption in the U.S.A. and 
 every European country. Millions were sent to the Young 
 Turks ; even as far as China her gold was poured out. How 
 much has been and is being spent here, or who the traitors in 
 high places are that have got it, no one has as yet found out; 
 but that will come to light some day, — truly " a man's foes 
 shall be they of his own household." 
 
 Do we wish to see a higher standard in public life? That 
 is the great question. If we are to lead the world in the new 
 era, we must 
 
 " Ring out the feud of rich and poor; 
 Ring in redress to all mankind ; 
 Ring out a slowly dying cause, 
 
 And ancient forms of party strife. 
 
 Ring in the nobler modes of life, 
 With sweeter manners, purer laws." 
 
 Certainly it cannot he attained by a recrudescence of class 
 against class agitation and legislation, or by a Socialistic pro- 
 paganda. 
 
 There is a Christian Socialism of which the new era should 
 
37 
 
 be the harbinger, but of " Socialism " as presented now to 
 the masses, Professor Flint says, it " leads men to expect 
 extravagant results from merely repairing or reconstructing 
 the outward mechanism of society. It encourages them to 
 fancy that their welfare is more dependent on what Govern- 
 ment does, than on what they do for themselves ; on tbe wisdom 
 or power of their legislators, than on their own intelligence 
 or virtue. There can be no more foolish or baneful illusion. 
 Let any drunkard become sober, or any profligate a man of 
 clean and regular life, and he has done far more for himself 
 than any Government can do for him. Let Irishmen deliver 
 themselves from the superstition that their clergy can, by 
 an act of excommunication, exclude them from the pale of 
 salvation, and they will thereby obtain both for themselves 
 and their country more moral and political liberty than any 
 Home Ride Bill or other Act of Parliament can give them ; 
 while Almighty Power itself cannot make them free either as 
 citizens or as men so long as they retain in their hearts that 
 servile faith." 
 
 In other words, it is the Socialism of Kultur which ignores 
 God altogether, and is therefore bound to fail — not a question 
 of Right, but of Force, Might, and Class Hatred. 
 
 The Christian Socialism is very different. Workers are to 
 give " not eye service, but willing service"; and masters are 
 likewise commanded to "give to their servants that which is 
 just and equal " ; and all are bound " to love their neighbour 
 as themselves." Such rules of conduct are the very antithesis 
 of our limited liability, monopoly, and trade union code of 
 morals. Scamped work is just as hateful to God and ruinous 
 to a nation as the avarice which sweats labour — both are wor- 
 shippers of Kultur. 
 
 The same applies to the pursuit of Pleasure. There is no 
 difference between those who — when the flower of the man- 
 hood of the country are laying down their lives, suffering un- 
 told hardships in the trenches, or preparing themselves to do 
 their " bit " in the struggle on which our very existence as a 
 nation depends, and to avert the horrors of Belgium from our 
 homes — raise the cry for " pleasure as usual," whether drink- 
 ing, gate-money, or prize cups, &<•. These false gods are all but 
 different phases of Kultur. If right feeling, noblesse oblige, 
 and every Christian sentiment are powerless to stem the tide, 
 the line of demarcation can at least be drawn, and untimely 
 and unseemly things left severely alone. 
 
38 
 
 If we as a nation are to attain to a higher standard, then 
 we must hold fast to the supreme standard, even the Word of 
 God. 
 
 The problem for England arises from the loss of influence 
 of the Church of England, owing to the efforts which have been 
 going on for years to substitute " the Church," as the supreme 
 authority, for the Word of God. The fact cannot be too often 
 repeated that in 1908 a list was published of 9600 clergy of 
 the Church of England — how many more now is not known — 
 who were members of the English Church Union, the object 
 of which Society is " the restoration of visible communion with 
 the Church of Rome." The man in the street is able to see 
 the dishonesty, and turns his back on religion altogether. 
 On the other hand, the Nonconformists of England have— like 
 the Lutherans in Germany — allied themselves with a political 
 party for the purpose of obtaining Disestablishment, on the 
 plea for Spiritual Independence, playing into the hands of the 
 E.C.U., which desires the same thing, but for its own ends; 
 while the clergy of all the Churches who have followed the 
 school of Higher Criticism may lay to heart the disastrous 
 results of undermining the authority of the Word of God. 
 
 The problem for Scotland arises from the efforts now being 
 made so insidiously to substitute " Moral Consciousness " for 
 the supreme standard of the whole Word of God. 
 
 The material, moral, and spiritual ruin of Germany affords 
 an object-lesson which will be a blessing in disguise if those 
 who, under the specious plea for Union, are covertly aiming 
 at the same substitution of "Liberty" for "Authority," 
 which has brought down that nation, realise what they are 
 really doing. 
 
 The very fact that they have taken great care not to call 
 it Rationalism or Moral Consciousness reveals the inwardness 
 of the situation, and of their own knowledge of it. " Spiritual 
 Liberty " is a mere catch phrase for unlimited Higher Criti- 
 cism. While utterly disapproving of Lord Hugh Cecil and 
 his E.C.U. demand for "Spiritual Liberty," one can acknow- 
 ledge the candour of the men who boldly declare their object 
 to be " the restoration of visible communion with the Church 
 of Rome." But it is melancholy to find Scotsmen — in the 
 very courts of the Lord's House — acting in the opposite way, 
 bringing forward schemes ostensibly for one purpose, but in 
 reality to follow the lead of German theologians on the broad 
 road to disaster. 
 
30 
 
 The Union between the majority of ministers in the old 
 Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church had for its 
 motive and driving force the opportunity it afforded of relaxing 
 the terms of subscription to the Confession of Faith. This 
 was adroitly accomplished by the insertion in the Formula of 
 the clause " in the sense in which I understand the Holy 
 Scriptures." From the extracts given of the views of the 
 "sceptred sovereigns" of German theology, it will be seen 
 that any one of them could sign the Confession of Faith with 
 the same reservation. It can be fully realised now why Mr 
 Haldane, now the Lord Chancellor, who has declared that 
 " Germany is his spiritual home," was the Counsel and adviser 
 of the leaders who engineered that Union. The very same 
 motive lies at the bottom of the present scheme for " Dis- 
 establishing the Church of Scotland from within." There are 
 those in that Church who have imbibed this fatal doctrine of 
 " Moral Consciousness " as their supreme standard in 
 substitution for that of the whole Word of God. The scheme 
 propounded of conferring " Liberty " or Spiritual Independ- 
 ence, which would enable the new Church to alter its Creed 
 annually by a mere majority of votes, cannot, in the light of 
 the great object-lesson now before our eyes, commend itself 
 to thoughtful Christian men. 
 
 To the Word of God, to the Confession of Faith and the 
 Shorter Catechism, to the faithful preaching of the Gospel, 
 and to the observance of the Lord's Day, Scotland owes 
 everything that has made her great; therefore, the message of 
 the angel to the Church of Philadelphia comes to us with 
 new force — 
 
 " Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, 
 that no man take thy crown." 
 
 The primary responsibility for the downfall of Germany 
 rests, as we have seen, on the heads of its spiritual leaders, 
 and only secondarily on its militarism. Their foe and ours is 
 Kultur.' 
 
 As Heine wrote in 1835 foretelling that at the head of the 
 new barbarism would be found the disciples of Kant, of Fichte, 
 
40 
 
 and of Hegel, who, by a regular logical and historical process, 
 which he traces back to the beginnings of German thought, 
 had shorn the " Talisman " of its power, can anyone imagine 
 that if we also follow the same broad downward road we shall 
 escape the degradation, infamy, and humiliation which must 
 for ever be attached to the name of German? 
 
 It was said in the days of Lord John Eussell : " The 
 country has fallen on the days of little men with little 
 measures." So iu view of the new era ahead of us, what we 
 require are not party politicians, but statesmen of great ideas 
 aud deep Christian principle, with force of character not only 
 to avow them, but also strength of faith to carry them out. 
 Around such men — wise to discern the signs of the times, and 
 resolute to promote the cause of truth and righteousness — the 
 vast majority of the country would most gladly rally, as 
 destined to make the British Empire a power for good through- 
 out the whole world. 
 
 " Ring in the valiant man and free, 
 
 The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; 
 Ring out the darkness of the land, 
 Ring in the Christ that is to be," — 
 
 KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF ALL. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 i. 
 
 The incapacity of the German mind to take a broad grasp 
 of fundamental principles is well illustrated in a national 
 characteristic. There is no country in the world where 
 Shakespeare is so studied, quoted, and his plays produced 
 more constantly than in Germany, and yet his teaching and 
 spirit have absolutely no place in either their hearts or heads. 
 To take only two most commonly quoted passages — 
 "The quality of mercy is not strained," &c. ; and 
 " My son, fling away ambition — by that sin fell the 
 angels," &c. 
 
 Yet these two common vital principles are qualities to 
 which we now see they are entire strangers. 
 
 II. 
 
 Eighty years ago, as we have already mentioned (page G), 
 Heine foretold that the old stone gods would rise again as the 
 fruit of the teaching of the " sceptred sovereigns." The 
 "Morning Post" of 7th December 1914 gives the following 
 extract from the " Kolnische Zeitung," which published a 
 poem entitled " The German God " : " Germany's enemies," 
 it says, " have heard that Germans call on and pray to a god 
 for help in their fight, and these enemies are asking if the 
 Germans have an especial god on their side whom other nations 
 do not know. Yes, all Germany replies." The poet adds. 
 " And we will tell you who he is." The poet explains that 
 " the god who speaks out of our cannon, the god who breaks 
 up your fortresses, who rushes through the seas on our ships, 
 
'who whizzes across the heavens with our flying men, the god 
 of our swords before which you tremble, is the same almighty 
 spirit that has moved over Germany for thousands of years. 
 He was Wotan, the cloud wanderer of our fathers; it was he 
 who suffered with us, but who remained alive in Paiil Gerhardt 
 and John Sebastian Bach — the god who lay beside Frederick in 
 the field, and finally gave us a new day." 
 
 (It should be explained that Odin's name is connected with 
 that of Wotan or Wuotan, and referred to the Old High 
 German verb watan, wuot — " meare, cum impetu ferri " 
 (Grimm, Teut. Myth. — English translation, i. 131). Odin 
 would thus be " the swift goer." See Encycl. Brit., vol. xvii. 
 156.) 
 
 III. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF FOECE. 
 
 Amsterdam, Jan. 2. 
 
 In its first issue of the Few Year, the " Vossische Zeitung " 
 publishes an article by Karl Scheffler on the relations of 
 politics and ethics. In the course of his argument he says: 
 "During the last few months we have frequently heard dis- 
 cussions of the basic principle that the State must act like a 
 moral individual, and this principle, which in a certain manner 
 can be referred to Kant, has been nowhere particularly con- 
 troverted, although the experiences of these days, comprising 
 a logic far removed from the ideas of social and personal 
 morality, are in the liveliest contradiction with it. The 
 principle is false, because, while practical civic morality is 
 rendered possible by the authority of the State and of Law, 
 the State itself has no authority above it. In its moral right 
 it possesses no protection beyond the protection which its own 
 might can afford. It is, therefore, a misapprehension of reality 
 for a people in war time to be morally indignant; for example, 
 
concerning the infringement of international law. It is at 
 all times noticeable that it is mostly the mentally undeveloped 
 who employ moral argument in situations of difficulty. All 
 International Laws are agreements which at once become 
 illusory in war time, and all the more so in proportion to the 
 number of contracting parties who are involved in the war. 
 
 What third State will take up arms because either 
 or both of two belligerent States violate the laws of war? 
 There is no terrestrial judge. ... A heavenly judge is 
 competent only if he is regarded as great and free enough to 
 be a God of war as well as of peace, not only a God of civic 
 morality, but also of the rights of nature, and the most terrible 
 war must be a factor in his dispensations. . . . He who 
 acknowledges a judge acknowledges his dependence. Are we, 
 then, afraid of the opinion of the world? ... It must 
 suffice us to know that in our national dealings we have a 
 higher morality, namely, the ethics of force and of national 
 expansion. An action shall not be justified morally, but 
 politically. More important is it to think politically than to 
 give reciprocal assurances of behaving morally. That is just 
 where we are lacking." — The Morning Post, .Tanuary 7, 1915. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM HIMMO AND CO., J. KITH, EDINBCROH. 
 
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