Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

number of the cultivated classes are alienated from their professed faith; that the hatred to the priests in many quarters is intense, especially since the last revolution; and that the religion of very many is limited to an occasional appearance in some processions. Even in Catholic Belgium there are many indications of a strong reaction against the Church, initiated by such societies as those of the Affranchés, the Solidaires, and the Libres-Penseurs. The members of the lastnamed society bind themselves to resist to the utmost all interference of the priesthood in the affairs of social and family life, and therefore (1) not to permit the visit of a priest in case of death, or his officiating at a funeral; (2) to take part in none but civil marriages; and (3) not to allow their children to be baptized, or go to first communion, or be confirmed. And tendencies of the same kind are manifesting themselves even in such thoroughly Romanized communities as the Spanish Republics of South America. Who, then, will deny that in Roman Catholic countries the breach between Culture and Christianity is already a very wide one? And it is one that is increasing every day.

But alas, all the factors of our modern intellectual life are largely influenced by a prevailing spirit of unbelief! Take first our universities and schools. Whereas amongst our theologians the old spirit of rationalism is in great measure overcome, it is quite otherwise among the teachers in our upper schools, and especially our mathematicians, whose training in the exact sciences disposes them to demand a proof for everything, to be strongly prejudiced in favour of “rational religion," to be too ready to forget how many incommensurable magnitudes exist in the moral world, and to seek for clearness of ideas at the expense of truth and life (Bengel). And so, also, the semi-cultured teachers in our popular schools are even more prone to succumb to the temptation of thinking themselves too enlightened and advanced to share the simple faith of the common people, or submit to its restraints. Hence the general outcry for the emancipation of the school from the control of the Church, the endeavour to abridge as much as possible the time given to religious instruction, and to banish it from the central position which it has hitherto occupied in popular education; while in many places, notwithstanding

such frequent failures, the attempt is again and again renewed to establish undenominational schools, in which Catholics and Protestants may be educated together.

In our gymnasia and other grammar schools, religious instruction is, with some praiseworthy exceptions, relegated to a very inferior position. Boys and youths are often found to possess a remarkably good acquaintance with the details of other subjects, whose knowledge of Scripture history and Christian doctrine is of the most meagre description. Not long ago, it was discovered in a Prussian gymnasium that a secret society existed among the boys of from thirteen to fifteen years of age, with rules of a purely atheistic character, the first paragraph commencing with, "Any one believing in a God is thereby excluded from this society."

Such being the condition of our grammar schools, who can wonder that at the university few students but those reading theology should go to Church, while many lecturers allow themselves to hold such language on the subject as to lead their youthful audience to regard attendance on public worship as something quite beneath their dignity? The natural consequence is, that the large class of Government officials are for the most part indifferent, and in many cases even hostile, to Christianity, and that the mutual estrangement between Church and State increases every day.

A further glance at our modern literature will exhibit the almost abysmal profundity of the chasm which in this respect divides our present culture from our Christianity. Not many years ago, German infidelity was contented to appear in the courtly guise and with the aristocratic exclusiveness of science and philosophy; she now endeavours to clothe herself in forms in which every one may give her welcome. Unbelief is no longer a guarded secret among wits and scholars, or uttered in a language "not understanded of the people;" it is now commended in innumerable publications, tracts, novels, illustrated newspapers, to the attention of the working classes, and even of the peasantry.

The tendency to popularize all results of scientific investigation, which is so marked a feature of our time, is seen specially at work in this department, widening more and more the breach between modern popular thought and Christianity. A

few decades back, the study of German philosophy required very severe application. Few then even read Hegel, and still fewer understood him. But the atheistic consequences drawn by Feuerbach and others from his speculations are found by many very piquant and agreeable reading now. Such philosophy every carpenter's apprentice can too readily understand. And so with Strauss. What thirty years ago he addressed to theologians, is now hashed up again and fitted to the palates of "the German people." Every writer now wishes to be popular. The old deductions of Hegelian philosophy paraded by Feuerbach and his compeers, that God is nothing more than one's own inward being made the object of self-contemplation, that prayer and adoration are in reality but forms of self-worship, -"signs," to use Emerson's language, "of infirmity of will:" these are now thrown broadcast by the labours of a hundred pens over the whole field of the popular mind; religion is to be no longer a seeking after God, but a resting on nature's bosom; no longer an obedience to a higher will, but the carrying out of one's own self-discovered system of morality. hence, besides the general disbelief in the supernatural and miraculous characteristic of the popular mind in the present day, the multitude of empty unmeaning phrases which one hears in every social circle expressive of philosophical notions and deductions half understood, e.g. "the worship of genius," "religion of humanity," "moral order of the universe," "progress of the human race," etc. etc., while the use of any scriptural phrase or expression is regarded as a sign of narrowmindedness or bad taste.

And

The same rationalistic, pantheistic, and materialistic influences pervade our modern aesthetic literature. Many of our would-be fine writers have come to regard Christianity as a direct hindrance to true Culture. So, for instance, Arnold Ruge, who will no longer call it by its name, but speaks of it as "Asiatismus," or Judaism: "This Asiatismus' lies like a dead weight on all the departments of modern life, and holds us in the bondage of a refined (or unrefined) barbarism. Even Voltaire, Lessing, Göthe, Schiller, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, with all their liberality, were unable to free themselves entirely from the yoke." And for such ludicrous outbursts of fanatical infidelity he is praised in a modern journal (the

Gartenlaube) as the ideal of a true German! Another sings the triumphs of natural science in such strains as these: "Brahma, Buddha, Jupiter, and Jehovah must now yield to worthier successors in reason and philanthropy."1 A third, having weighed both Catholicism and Protestantism in the balances, and found them wanting, proceeds to instal the modern drama as the best teacher of true religion: "A great lie pervades the whole of modern society. Priests and laymen alike are liars against their will, and often without knowing it. When we let our children learn the Catechism without believing it ourselves, are we not making ourselves liars? What we want is a new Church. I am for a free stage. The theatre is my temple, where I would see inaugurated a new form of worship. The theatre should be regarded as a house of God, as it was among the ancient Greeks. Religion and the drama I would fain see identified." (Eckardt.)

To these signs of a literary and æsthetical alienation from Christianity we must add those of a more directly political character. Our daily press in far the largest number of instances takes up a perfectly indifferent, if not openly hostile, position. Witness the unmeasured scorn poured by a hundred of its organs on the efforts to promote home and foreign missions, and even on charitable associations if worked in a Christian spirit; and so likewise our political clubs, and unions, nay, even those of a merely social character,-singing, rifle-shooting, athletic clubs, and trades-unions, such as that of the shawl weavers in Berlin,-often go out of their way to parade religious indifference and unbelief; and is it not in the memory of many of us how the great popular movements, some twenty years ago, for the political regeneration of our country were conducted in the spirit of the motto of the last named association:

[merged small][ocr errors]

how the proposal to implore the divine blessing and assistance on the deliberations of the Frankfort Parliament was received with shouts of derisive laughter; and how in so many educationist meetings in later years the watchword most in favour

1 Compare Wichern, Die Verpflichtung der Kirche zum Kampf gegen die Widersacher des Glaubens, p. 7 sq.

has been: The undenominational "Christianity of humanitarianism must henceforth be the religion of Germany"? Are not all these signs of the times, which exhibit the breach between our present Culture and true Christianity as most deplorably deep and wide?

It may then, I fear, be affirmed with truth, that the great mass of our educated, and yet more of our half-educated, classes in this our German Fatherland is alienated from all positive definite Christianity: our diplomatists almost without exception, and the great majority of our officers in the army, our Government officials, lawyers, doctors, teachers of all kinds but professed theologians, artists, manufacturers, merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans, stand on the basis of a merely rationalistic and nominal Christianity; while the lower middle class (always excepting the agriculturists and peasantry), carried away by the materialistic tendencies of the time, assume a more or less hostile position towards it.

But is not the condition of some other countries better than ours in this respect? It is so in England and America. There the mass of the people, especially the middle classes, still rest their faith on the old foundations; and England more especially still recognises with practical gratitude the inestimable blessings for which she is indebted to the gospel. But alas! the following statements are enough to show that even there the breach is of lamentable extent. It has been calculated that in the year 1851 more than 12,000,000 copies of infidel publications of various kinds issued from the London press,-640,000 purely atheistic, small pamphlets included, but without reckoning newspapers. These publications have an immense circulation among the working classes. To these must be added the enormous mass of immoral publications issued, according to a previous statement in the Edinburgh Review, at the rate of 29,000,000 copies a year,-making a larger aggregate than all the publications of the Bible, Tract, and many other religious societies put together. (Comp. The Power of the Press, published 1847, and Pearson's prize essay, On Infidelity, published in 1863.) The perusal of these works, and of the wretched penny papers dispersed in hundreds of thousands, must powerfully contribute to spread infidelity and immorality among the masses of the population. Turning

C

« PredošláPokračovať »