this! But whatever in our modern culture is thoroughly Christless, and therefore Godless, is unworthy of the name, and can therefore claim from us no further consideration; it is mere naked rudeness and selfishness, ill-disguised by the gaudy rags of outward decency; a mere cherishing of the sensual nature, which, left to itself, would soon degenerate into monstrous barbarism, of which we already see many indications. See, for instance, how fearfully the thirst for gold unchristianizes and demoralizes men, and how much internal rudeness and want of moral discipline are thereby fostered in the face of all external and apparent culture! With moral failings of this kind, which are, alas! closely blended with the culture of the present day, the spirit of Christianity can never be reconciled. To overcome these failings, we need, as we have previously recognised, a high degree of moral resolution; and he who is not capable of this, will never be able to embrace even the purest form of Christianity; indeed, the more purely Christianity presents itself to such a one, the more direct will be the antagonism in which he finds himself placed towards it.

If, however, it is anywhere high time to undertake with earnest diligence the work of filling up this great breach in our modern civilised life, that duty methinks is incumbent upon us. The Teutonic races have a special need and a special vocation to overcome this deep-seated contradiction from which our age, and most of all we Germans, so greatly suffer. No nation has learnt to feel its internal disruptions so painfully as we. We are more truly than any other " a nation of contrarieties." Down to the latest period, in which, since the events of 1866, the German spirit has manifested itself as more and more essentially Protestant in church and school, science and politics, the opposing parties were very evenly balanced. This continuous tension of opposing forces of equal strength has been the cause of the paralysis of German power.

The difference, however, which in truth has been and is the greatest of all others, and before all others has laid hold of the heart and marrow of our people, is a religious one. Other countries are tinged with one prevailing colour in a religious point of view; they are either Protestant or Romanist. Down to a very recent period we were divided into two nearly equal

parts; and this religious and ecclesiastical dualism has contributed and still contributes the greatest share to political division between North and South. Lately, indeed, in consequence of the mastery obtained by Jesuitism in the Roman Catholic Church, the breach between the two Churches has become more and more irreconcilable; and this growing breach is nowhere more painfully felt than among our people. Both camps are pervaded by this internal dissension between believers and unbelievers, between Christianity and modern ideas, and in public life neither tendency has hitherto held unlimited sway, while both parties are active and powerful. Elsewhere, a country developes either a predominant energy of faith, as, in a practical point of view, England, which is still on the whole Christian and evangelical, or a special energy of unbelief, as France, which perhaps to a greater degree than any other nation has been disintegrated by infidelity from the days of Voltaire down to the Comtes, Renans, Michelets, etc. Germany (and in a less measure Switzerland also) furthers, in a way peculiar to herself, both belief and unbelief in almost equal proportions. The believing Protestant theology of Germany, from the Reformers down to Schleiermacher, Neander, Tholuck, Dorner, etc., has rendered the greatest assistance towards the more profound comprehension, the scientific confirmation and vindication of our faith by its intellectual products the Protestant theology of the whole world is still nourished. The Roman Catholic faith, likewise, as regards its scientific vindication, has found its chief supports in Germany, where alone any scientific Roman Catholic theology can be said really to exist, although latterly more and more oppressive fetters have been imposed upon it.

On the other hand, the negative and destructive productions of German theology have formed the groundwork in other countries of opinions hostile to Christian faith. Among all our opponents, it is German philosophers, critics, and theologians, who have made the most dangerous attacks on the framework of our Christian faith; and we find our foreign assailants standing shoulder to shoulder with our domestic enemies.

Thus among us, more than in other countries, we see the deepest antitheses maintaining a nearly equal balance. We

are indeed a people of contrarieties, and our need of reconciliation is consequently the greater. The words which follow apply well to our time: "So long as a reconciliation between our religious and scientific culture is not attained by the greater number among us, that is, is not brought about in every sphere of our national education, in churches and schools, in our teaching and life, our age will be debilitated by this internal opposition, as by a secret ailment which threatens our moral and spiritual development with distortion and decay" (Gelzer). And all this is specially applicable to the German people. Its many internal differences will never be truly adjusted so long as the main cause of dissension, the religious difference, remains; and the matter still stands as it was put by a well-known historian in 1851: "Any one who desires to have a German empire must, in the first place, have a united and firmly-established German Church: German history for more than six centuries has taught this lesson !"

But for this very reason, the work of reconcilement is our special vocation. It is certainly the problem of our century, in the solution of which all are bound to join; but the "People of contrarieties" is called upon more than all others to do this for itself and for the world in general. It is fitted for this vocation both by internal gifts and also by its past history. Amid all its weaknesses and faults, the Teutonic genius more than any other combines a deep religious tendency with a peculiar power of speculative thought; high moral earnestness with the deepest and most comprehensive thirst for knowledge; peculiar energy for the most protracted and profound investigation, with humble submission to what is sacred and divine; an honest and enduring inspiration for all that is high and ideal, with peculiar sobriety, clearness, and acuteness of criticism. "The Nation of thinkers" is evidently at the same time a nation fitted for the service of Christ. And in many bitter trials it has maintained its public conscience more purely than has been the case with many other nations, and, in spite of all mortifications, has "never bartered away its ideals." By this moral attitude, and with the universality peculiar to it, it has been capable of containing within itself for so long a time, and even up to the present day, the above-mentioned evenly-balanced antitheses, for the mere

toleration of which such an infinite tension and spiritual elasticity is requisite, that other nations would long ago have broken down in the attempt. It is this mental and moral tendency and attitude which capacitates the German people before all others for effecting the reconciliation of faith and science.

The genius of Germany has, however, already shown histori cally that it has recognised, and has begun to fulfil, this its vocation. When, at the close of the middle ages, in consequence of the degeneracy of the Church, culture and Christianity fell into a state of antagonism, it was the mind and conscience of the Teutonic races which sought and found the right way to unity. Together with the work of the Reformation, classical studies began to revive. In the Reformation we have Luther, the most German of Germans, the man of faith, standing side by side and hand in hand with the most profound adept in classical culture, Melancthon the Teacher of Germany, a living and speaking proof how little faith and genuine science contradict, how nobly they supplement and further one another, and both together showing to the world in the newly acquired gospel the way to escape out of the profound contradictions of the time, and to bring Christian faith once more into harmony with knowledge and conscience.

In later times the German people has indeed so powerfully furthered the unbelief which it received from others, that it bears a considerable share of the guilt incurred in its extension at the present day. For a long time past, the breach which it was their vocation to heal has been deepened and widened by them. But, however deeply entangled in unbelief, the German people is now beginning to make good the wrong committed against itself and others, and to direct its attention, both practically and scientifically, to the great religious task incumbent on it. German inquirers pre-eminently have followed out all doubts into their innermost grounds; and just as they have gone into them the more deeply, they have the more recognised the absolute irrefutableness of the fundamental articles of Christian faith, and shown anew to the world that belief and really thorough culture and science can exist together in the noblest union. And if in the future the breach is to be thoroughly healed,

recourse must be had to all that German industry and German mental labour has done, and is still doing, in promoting the reconciliation of faith and knowledge. In these dissensions we have suffered, and are still suffering, not merely for ourselves, but, in a measure, for all; and some day others will be compelled to come to us-and many are now already coming -to ask us for the use of our weapons, and for the fruits of our victory.

As yet, this victory has been gained for a small number only. The greater proportion of educated persons still view the Christian faith with doubt and distrust. But must we therefore renounce all hope that this yawning breach will one day be filled up for the great body of our people? I think not. During the war of liberation, Christianity and German nationality solemnized an alliance, deficient indeed in depth and clearness (genuine Christianity being still obscured by the fog of rationalism), but from which, nevertheless, proceeded a new religious and moral impetus, which at the present day is still operative in various ways in our National Church. Many brave and earnest men are even now working at the bridgingover of this great gulf. For the last thirty years, in spite of all hostilities, a truly Christian science has begun victoriously to lead the way: by new and deeper exegetical researches; by historical investigation; by pointing out the remarkable harmony existing between many new archeological, ethnological, and even many scientific discoveries, and the utterances of Holy Scripture, it has vindicated the truth of the latter, and has confirmed the faith of many individuals. In the pulpits of by far the greater number of the German churches, and in the theological faculties of most of the universities, it has so completely driven unbelief out of the field, that the latter has been compelled to retire in a great measure into the divinity schools of adjacent countries (Switzerland, France, Holland, Hungary). Already Germany, as well as these and other countries, shows in various ways that unbelief has a greater tendency to insinuate itself into, and to make its permanent abode among, half-educated rather than thoroughly educated communities.

A great portion of the Church, moreover, has already turned away from fruitless controversies, and addressed itself to the