J. H. Kurtz

“ In powerful and impressive tones he sets forth the unreconciled disharmonies of nature and of human life. Incurable pain, despair, weariness of life, and hatred of mankind, without hope, yet without desire for reconciliation, enthusiastic admiration of the ancient world, passionate love of liberty and titanic pride in human might mingle with scenes of grumbling, misery, and profligacy. On the other hand, the rich and mostly solid English novel literature is prevailingly inspired by a Christian spirit. ”

“ The inferior clergy, for the most part trained by ultramontane bigots, and held in the iron grasp of strict hierarchical discipline, passed all bounds in their extravagant glorification of the new dogma. And while among the liberal circles of the Catholic laity it was laughed at and ridiculed, the bigoted nobles and the masses who had long been used to the incensed atmosphere of an enthusiastic adoration of the pope, bowed the knee in stupid devotion to the papal god. ”

“ Zinzendorf’s Plan and Work.―While Zinzendorf received his first impulse from pietism, he soon perceived its onesidedness and narrowness. He would have no conventicle, but one organized community; no ideal invisible, but a real visible church; no narrow methodism, but a rich, free administration of the Christian spirit. He did not, in the first instance, aim at the conversion of the world, nor even at the reformation of the church, but at gathering and preserving those belonging to the Saviour. ”

“ More than 6,000 theologians from all parts of Germany had down to Francke’s death received their theological training in Halle, and carried the leaven of his spirit into as many churches and schools. A whole series of distinguished teachers of theology now rose in almost all the Lutheran churches of the German states, who, avoiding the onesidedness of the pietists and their opponents, taught and preached pure doctrine and a pious life. From Calixt they had learnt to be mild and fair towards the Reformed and Catholic churches, and by Spener they had been roused to a genuine and hearty piety. ”

“ Yes, it is so, Protestantism has begotten atheism, materialism, scepticism, nihilism. The Reformation was the murderer of all science, the greatest foe of culture and learning, and the falsifier of all history.... Melanchthon’s Loci may be styled the most unscientific production in the domain of dogmatics.... Yes, the Reformation has proved a prime source of superstition, a step backward in the history of civilization.... The Catholic church has been the champion of conscience, reason, and freedom.... ”

“ During the first half of the century the Roman hierarchy suffered severely at the hand of Catholic courts, while in the second half storms gathered from all sides, threatening its very existence. Portugal, France, Spain, and Italy rested not till they got the pope himself to strike the deathblow to the Jesuits, who had been his chief supporters indeed, but who had now become his masters. Soon after the German bishops threatened to free themselves and their people from Rome, and what reforms they could not effect by ecclesiastical measures the emperor undertook to effect by civil measures. ”

“ From the boys’ convents and priests’ seminaries, erected at all episcopal residences, went forth a new generation of clergy reared in the severest school of intolerance, who, first of all acting as chaplains, by espionage, the arousing of suspicion and talebearing, were the dread of the old parish priests, and, as “chaplains at large,” stirred up fanaticism among the people, and secured the Catholic press to themselves as a monopoly. ”

“ The German people were at heart firmly grounded in the Christianity of the Bible and the church, and where the pulpit failed had their spiritual wants supplied by the devout writings of earlier days. Where the modern vandalism of the “Illumination” had mutilated and watered down the books of praise, the old church songs lingered in the memories of fathers and mothers, and were sung with ardour at family worship. For many men of culture, who were more exposed to danger, the Society of the Brethren afforded a welcome refuge. ”

“ This deep fall, for which she wholly blamed the devil, drove her fanaticism to madness. The ridiculous proceedings in her own house, where for a whole day she and her adherents beat with fists and hammers what they supposed to be the devil, led the police to interfere. But before orders arrived from Zürich, she found refuge in an asylum, and there the end soon came. Margaret assured her followers that in order that Christ might fully triumph and Satan be overthrown, blood must be shed for the salvation of many thousand souls. ”

“ In the world’s development God comes into objective being and unfolds his self-consciousness; Christianity is the turning point in the world’s history; its fundamental dogmas of revelation, trinity, incarnation, and redemption are suggestive attempts to solve the world’s riddle. Schelling’s poetic view of the world penetrated all the sciences, and gave to them a new impulse. Though hateful to the old rationalists, this system found ardent admirers among the younger theologians. ”

“ At the head stood the president, Brigham Young, as prophet, patriarch, and priest-king, in whose hands are all the threads of the spiritual as well as secular administration. A high council alongside of him, consisting of seventy members, as also the prophets and apostles, bishops and elders, and generally the whole richly organized hierarchy, are only the pliable instruments of his all-commanding will. Every one on entering the society surrenders his whole property, and after that contributes a tenth of his yearly income and personal labour to the common purse of the community. ”

“ Italian, government, was not at all to the taste of the curia. The day of Sadowa, 3rd July, 1866, called from Antonelli the mournful cry, Il mondo cessa, “The world has gone to ruin,” and the still more glorious day of Sedan, 2nd September, 1870, completely put the bottom out of the Danaid’s vessel of ultramontane forbearance and endurance. This day, 18th January, 1871, had as its result the overthrow of the temporal power of the papacy as well the establishment of a new and hereditary German empire under the Protestant dynasty of the Prussian Hohenzollerns. ”

“ Socialism and communism both aim at a thorough-going reform of the rights of property and possession in strict proportion to the labour spent thereon. They are, however, distinguished in this, that while communism declares war against all private property and demands absolute community of goods, socialism, at least in its older and nobler forms, proceeding from the idea of precise correspondence between capital and labour, seeks to have expression given to this in fact. ”

“ The huge lie that Protestantism is in matters of State as well as of church essentially revolutionary, while Catholicism is the bulwark of the State against revolution and democracy, was affirmed with such audacity that even Protestant statesmen believed it. ”

“ Since then, indeed, it has fallen far short of the all too sanguine hopes and expectations at first entertained; but still within narrower limits it continues steadily to spread and to rear for itself a solid structure, while carefully, even nervously, shrinking from anything revolutionary. More in touch with the demands of the Zeitgeist in its reformatory concessions, yet holding firmly in every particular to the positive doctrines of orthodoxy, the Old Catholic movement has made progress in Switzerland, while in other Catholic countries its success has been relatively small. ”

“ This movement was essentially different from English deism. The principle of the English movement was common sense, the universal moral consciousness in man, with the powerful weapon of rational criticism, maintaining the existence of an ideal and moral element in men, and holding by the more general principles of religion. French naturalism, on the other hand, was a philosophy of the esprit, that essentially French lightheartedness which laughed away everything of an ideal sort with scorn and wit. ”

“ With the reawakening of the religious life in the nineteenth century, however, its adherents lost ground in Europe more and more, by maintaining their old onesidedness in life and doctrine, their depreciatory estimate of theological science, and the quarrelsome spirit which they generally manifested. But in one province, that of missions to the heathen, their energy and success have never yet been equalled. ”

“ In A.D. 1828 he was made ephorus at the preachers’ seminary of Wittenberg, and afterwards professor in Bonn and Heidelberg. Rothe was one of the most profound thinkers of the century, equalled by none of his contemporaries in the grasp, depth, and originality of his speculation. Though influenced by Schleiermacher, Neander, and Hegel, he for a long time withdrew like an anchoret from the strife of theologians and philosophers, and took up a position alongside of Oetinger in the chamber of the theosophists. His mental and spiritual constitution had indeed much in common with that great mystic. ”

“ Endowed with glowing eloquence and remarkable popularity as a lecturer, he appeared at Rome in 1848 as a politico-religious orator, attached himself to the evangelical church in London in 1850, and undertook the charge of the evangelical Italian congregation there. He returned to Italy in 1860 and accompanied the hero of Italian liberty, Garibaldi, as his military chaplain, preaching to the people everywhere with his leonine voice with equal enthusiasm of Victor Emanuel as the only saviour of Italy and of Jesus Christ as the only Saviour of sinners. ”

“ In opposition to an only too prevalent externalizing of the doctrine of justification, Spener has taught that only living faith justifies, and if genuine must be operative, though not meritorious. Only in faith proved to be living by a pious life and active Christianity, but not in faith in the external and objective promises of God’s word, lies the sure guarantee of justification obtained. His opponents therefore accused him of confounding justification and sanctification, and depreciating the former in favour of the latter. ”

“ Ritschl’s Christology rests on the witness of Christ to himself in the synoptists, through which he proclaims himself the one prophet who in the divine purpose of grace for mankind has received perfect consecration, sent by God into the world to represent the founding of the kingdom of God on earth foreshadowed in the Old Testament revelation; but no attempt is made to explain how Christ became possessed of the secrets of the divine decree. To him, as the first and only begotten Son of God, standing in essential union with the Father, belongs the attribute of deity and the right of worship. ”

“ No European country has during the nineteenth century been the scene of so many revolutions, outbreaks and civil wars, of changes of government, ministries and constitutions, sometimes of a clerical absolutist, sometimes of a democratic radical tendency, and in none has revolution gone so unsparingly for the time against hierarchy, clergy and monasticism, as in unfortunate Spain. Portugal too passed through similar struggles, which, however, did not prove so dreadfully disordering to the commonwealth as those of Spain. ”

“ But by deeper digging in the soil it unearthed many a precious nugget, of whose existence the vulgar rationalism had never dreamed, without any intention of becoming a schoolmaster to lead to Christ. Kant showed the impossibility of a knowledge of the supernatural by means of pure reason, but admitted the ideas of God, freedom, and immortality as postulates of the practical reason and as constituting the principle of all religion, whose only content is the moral law. Christianity and the Bible are to remain the basis of popular instruction, but are to be expounded only in an ethical sense. ”

“ Thomas Hobbes, A.D. 1588-1679, an acute philosophical and political writer, looked on Christianity as an oriental phantom, and of value only as a support of absolute monarchy and an antidote to revolution. The state of nature is a bellum omnium contra omnes; religion is the means of establishing order and civilization. ”

“ And war at last came, but it helped only their opponents. Although at its outbreak in 1870 the ultramontane party in South Germany, especially in Bavaria, for the most part with unexampled insolence expressed their sympathy with France, and after the brilliant and victorious close of the war did everything to prevent the attachment of Bavaria to the new German empire, their North German brethren, accustomed to the boundless compliance of the Prussian government, indulged the hope of prosecuting their own ends all the more successfully under the new regime. ”

“ The official churches were only state churches, but the true church was scattered in the hearts of individual saints, until Noyes collected and organized it into a Bible family. For them there is no more law, for laws are for sinners and the saints no longer sin. Each saint can do and suffer whatever the Spirit of God moves him to. All the members of the congregation constitute one family, live, eat, and work together. Goods, wives and children are in common. It lies with the wife to accept or refuse the approaches of a man. ”

“ The government does not trouble itself with religious questions, and lets every denomination take care of itself. Preachers are therefore wholly dependent on their congregations, and are frequently liable to dismissal at the year’s end. Yet they form a highly respected class, and nowhere in the Protestant world is the tone of ecclesiastical feeling and piety so prevailingly high. In the public schools, which are supported by the State, religious instruction is on principle omitted. The Lutheran and Catholic churches have therefore founded parochial schools ”