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June 5, 1912] THE
BACK TO THE LIGHT.
it is well known that rationalism, in one or
more of its many modern aspects, has been in
recent years a formidable obstacle to the progress
of evangelical religion on the Continent of
Kurope. In Roman and Greek Catholic countries
the people have to a large extent lost conlidence
in the faith of their fathers, but instead
of resorting to the Word of God for light they
have benumbed their better instincts and longings
by embracing a sordid materialism or some
gross humanism of a kindred nature. Protestant
communions have suffered a similar apostacy and
the result has been low morals, industrial de
cline, tlie rise of anarchy, and a corresponding
instability of government.
The time has come when there is general alarm
among responsible thinkers lest an overturning
be at hand, the extent of which none can forecast.
We accordingly find writers upon economic
subjects sounding an alarm, and those who
feel the burden of public welfare summoning the
people to a return to Biblical standards of conduct
and Biblical articles of faith.
Something never known before in Russian
official circles occurred when one member or
more of the Douma expressed the desire that the
Scriptures might be generally circulated among
the people. A parish priest of St. Petersburg in
an open letter to one of the daily papers said:
"We wish that the desire expressed in the
Douma the other day that the masses of our people
should become acquainted with the Scriptures
might be speedily fulfilled. Many reasons
have been assigned by church papers and dignitaries
for the growing indifference of the masses
toward the State Church, but the chief reason
has been overlooked. It is the absence of the
living Word of God."
The Record of Christian Work, from which we
quote, states also that the advance of crime is
alarming the leaders of French opinion. A
French writer, GounelLe, quoting for confirmation
the statements of leading writers say:
"Our terrible moral crisis begins to frighten people."
Free thinkers have called a halt, having
discovered a close relation between morality and
religion. One of the most notable and militant
nf + * 1 ~
?"'ow nimself to be called bad, but not uncultivated.
Now what is culture!
True culture means the possession of religion,
morality. It is closely identified with
home, the experiences of married life, health
and breeding. All other things cannot produce
culture. Honors, pleasure, gold, cannot; neither
art, literature, science, technique, trade, discoveries,
inventions, politics. These things do
"ot lift up a people. They are mere condiment.
Jvligion, morality, home-life, and health?here
1>; the true nourishment for a nation.
In the schools every weed of the field is
brought in and examined, every river in Brazil
('?unted up. And the Saviour of the world gets
flr8t twelve hours, then four, then one, and
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE S<
filially in the very 'cultivated' schools no hour.
As if the weed in the garden counted more than
the Saviour of the world I
"It is said among us that a book is a deed.
This is not true; a book is no deed. A deed is
more than a book. The pride of our over-culture
is its history-writing?history of every land,
of every tongue, of every science. When the
history of philosophy is finished we get a history
of the history of philosophy. This is a senile
loquaciousness. The historical sense is a trait of
age. Tlip Middle Ages had no history and cared
for none. It let the past lie where it dropped.
This tendency is fatal to originality. All true
art lives without regard to a historical past.
"A people which has lived its time ends in infinite
knowledge and stifles in learning. Knowledge
kills great accomplishment. Under the
regime of the jurist, the man is ever more unjust;
of the physician ever sicklier; of the theologian
ever more godless.
"It is well known how Kaulbach, with biting
irony, represented Germania on the Museum
walls in Berlin, reading. And while she reads
the crown has fallen backwards from her head
and she does not notice it!'' * *
44 Goethe accomplished great things as a poet?
everyone agrees to that. Goethe had an eminent
memory; great talents for the arts of human
intercourse. But Goethe as a man! Goethe's appreciation
of country, of religion! Goethe's
sense for family life, for morals! The judgment
of him in these relations is final. Everywhere
where a man was needed Goethe failed.
iuau amu, iu explaining nis cnange oi tront,
"W? are making for the pit." Gounelle further
SJl VS "Pino ? li AU-i At " '
-y*" v/uc uu^iiio tu luciuzc 11 Lit L LUG QOCtriI16
oi' human rights does not spring from the Revolution
of '89, or from the Declaration of Independence,
but from the Gospel by way of the
Reformation and the Puritans; that theories of
eo-operation have their psychological and historical
roots in Paulinisin."
One of the more recent products of the pen
in Germany is a volume on "The Psychology of
Culture," by L'Houet, in which the author exposes
the impotency of German culture to save
Germany and eloquently appeals to the cultured
classes to turn their own minds and the minds of
the people to the Bible and family religion as the
only sufficient guardians of the nation's security.
Nowadays,'' he says, '4 everyone wishes to be
cultivated; no one uncultivated. A man will
oil- . -
"Mow mueh smaller in his whole figure was
he than Bismarck! How much more earnest was
the latter in all that concerned family, home,
marriage, children, work and, not the least, religion
! How much sounder the bases of his life 1
How much more depth and accuracy in his utterances
1
"The epitaph of Paulsen, the philosopher of
Berlin University, was recently published in the
press. IIow insipid and at the same time vainglorious
it was! Very different the inscriptions
on the graves of the forefathers! Think of the
verse of the ninety-one year old apostle John,
who for sixty-seven years was a Christian preacher.
'Behold, what manner of love the Father
hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called
the sons of God.' It is a sign of beginning decline
to esteem anything higher than the Gospel
and sonship to the Father. What manner of love
has the Father bestowed upon us that we should
be called the followers of Kant, or Herbert, or
members of the Goethe Bund! Does England
think so? England knows on this point to decide
far better and more accurately. We are
ahead in science; England in religion. We have
found the pfennig and lost the thaler.
"In the Biblical account of the death of the
patriarch the phrase runs: 'And he died old and
lebensatt' (i. e. full or satisfied with years). In
our modern society we can say that only among
the peasantry is this feeling common. The deepest
hope of man in the high culture is to pass beVrtnrl
fV?n onnnmfrt/l 4-^? XT- J-? 1
j v/?iu i/iiv of|/yviutcu timet xic qi6s nungry lor
life. But the peasant when he is gray expects
that his pastor will speak to him of death, and
nods, when the subject comes up, with a 'Yes, I
am content.'
"It is known that the reverse of all pride is
desperation. Behind the curled and scornful lip
is the slag of a burnt-out heart which falls to
dust in a nighttime. It needs hardly to be said
fKof n J
iiutyucic uura uuspair rage as in the overcultured.
Pettenkofer, the great Munich scientist,
shot himself at eighty from fear of going
insane. His friends would have been able to
endure the two or three years to a natural death,
but desperation overcame him.
"The lion hunter, when at night lions or hyenas
breajc through the circle of fire and suddenly
seize a sleeper by the shoulder, grabs a brand
from the fire and grinds it into the face of the
beast. So says Qerard in his 4 Memoirs of a Lionhunter.'
When the hyenas of despair sneak up
to a man he should thrust a brand into their faces
?4 Casting all your care upon him, for he careth
for you,' or, 4Take no anxious thought for the
morrow.' But men cannot do it any more; their
fire is gone out; they don't understand how to
keep it alive! They have no more firebrands!"
)UTH (615) 11
"Our people try to pull themselves out of the
slough. All kinds of conferences are held, and
congresses, great and small. They help somewhat,
no doubt. "Why should they not? They
tend to drive off Satan who goes about devouring
our people?for a time. The boot of the ctiirassicr
gives no permanent relief, but it frightens
back the rabble when they get too saucy.
"In spite of all, however, these are no enduring
remedies, as everyone knows from daily experience.
Against world and Satan there is but
one complete and adequate antagonist?that is
God, Belief, Religion."
"Dozens shut the book when they read the
word 'religion.' Other dozens follnw wp#.-iiv
_ "
the end. Dozens laugh, hoot, mock
Will the German not recognize himself longer?
Will he deny his own picture? We repeat it: the
German is no Frenchman or Spaniard. Even iu
the worst Berliner is some soul for religion.
" 'Morning prayers, evening prayers.' . . .
Hundreds cry out again. Other hundreds shout,
'Stop?would you actually have us read those
dull books of household worship?'
"We would urge this. Let the German man
and woman, in so far as they are to be taken
seriously?the German family, in the morning
before coffee and newspaper, in the evening after
supper, read aloud a chapter from Jesus the Son
of Sinach, or of the Proverbs of Solomon, or out
of the simply colossal Old Testament Prophets, a
chapter from Thomas a Kempis, a chapter from
Muller's 'Spiritual Hours' or from Herberger's
or Christian Scriver's 'Devotions.' Let them
continue this for a quarter year and see what
the impression will be. Here is a demand that
must be made on every household. The drops
must be clear again if the stream is to be. Germany's
education has corrupted Germany's people.
It has given a horrible example of endless
i)ess. If the nation is to nave strength again, it
must strike into new channels. Laughter and
mockery? Of course there will be that, but they
harm no one. They belong to life as the frame
with the picture. Hundreds of the loudest laughers
will in three months be silenced by their own
convictions. Let Germany but have the courage
to grasp again that which Satan has taken from
its hands and it will in a hundred places find
itself. Thousands of little glowing fire centers
will start up again without help of state, or
money, or congresses.
"Here is the best alexine for Germany?today
as for a thousand years since. "What folly to
say that the modern man is different from his
ancestor of a millenium ago! He is the same as
the fir on the mountain is the same."
"This is the requirement. If we neglect it,
there is danger that we ascend the scaffold on
which France is bleeding, or find our neck in the
noose in which Austria hangs. God may, with the
scourge of a degenerate high finance or of an
equally degenerate social democracy, smite a
wholly degenerate folk as one kills a mad dog.
If man will not listen to God and his commands,
God breaks him in pieces?there is no more iron
law than that.
"It was said of the slighted king in the parable
that 'he sent forth his armies, and destroyed
those murderers, and burned up their city.' Is
this not literally the fate of all civilizations
when they have reached their highest pojnt? It
is not necessary to dwell on the scorn, the mockery,
the enmity and hate against all that has to
do with God and his wnrd Ponnlo
? .. v. V?. A vvj^/iu UU uvt VY 1?3U IU
see the consequences of these things. The theology
of over-culture, in order to lull men to
sleep, teaches that God's highest attributes are
love, pity and forgiveness. But God is still a
God who will not be mocked. Death no longer
moves upon us with fire and sword, but with a
corruption of physique and destruction of
nerves. Despair and misery are the end of all
over-culture. The only hope is in a return to
God."
The immigration of Methodist ministers to
other churches has been very pronounced of
late. Tn a recent congregational installation
service in Spokane, Washington, it is said that
seven of the nine congregational pastors present
were former Methodists. In other parts
of the country the same movement has been
noticeable.