HOME MISSIONS— A LESSON TO SPOONER.

 (From the Tablet June 30.)

The Tablet, a few weeks ago, noticed what is perhaps the most remarkable episode in the religious history of the present or any other age. The Anglican Establishment, some time since, found it imperatively necessary to send Missionaries, not to the New Zealanders or American savages, but to people quite as ignorant — the inhabitants of London. The mere mention of a mission to London gives rise to many painful reflections. The hideous misery that devours the vitals of Protestant society is laid bare in all its deformity by this enterprise, and the mask is torn from the hypocritical face of an arrogant people, who, intoxicated with themselves, insultingly and incessantly trumpet their own virtues in the very loudest tones. But it is not London alone — Protestant Germany, consumed by like misery, vice, and disease, cries aloud for remedy. When we see thoughtful men like Mr. Vanderkiste and his solemn colleagues setting out gravely and seriously to teach the primary elements of Christianity, not to the negroes of Africa, but to the barbarians of London, a frightful gulf of misery, horror, and shame seems to yawn under our footsteps. But, bad as this is, it might be worse. If, instead of the ruffianly tatterdemalions of the 'slums,' it was seriously proposed to teach the Catechism to the learned professors of the Queen's University, and the educated youths who sprinkle its halls, should we not stand amazed ? Yet this is what is going on in Germany. While in Protestant England the beggars are barbarians, in Protestant Germany the philosophers wade in the abyss of heathenism.

 A mission has been organised in Protestant Germany to teach the elements of religion to men who once knew, but have now lost every particle of religious knowledge. In Germany, under the heedless management of the hirelings of heresy, it is not merely the canaille, but the educated men, that have degenerated into the primitive ignorance of savage life.

 Though the physical misery delineated by Vanderkiste is perfectly appalling, the spiritual desolation of Germany is even more awful. While the squalid tatterdemalions of Vanderkiste have passed into Atheism through the ginshop, the literary classes of Protestant Germany have passed into Atheism through the library. Every shred of religion has been torn away from the minds of the Germans, but nothing has been planted in its stead. Sixty years ago, the business of destruction began, which within the last seven years has produced amid the uproar of revolution its ultimate consequences.

 This disastrous destructiveness was at first contemplated by Protestantism with an approving, or at least with no unfavouring eye, because the old saying, "The farther from Rome the nearer to God," lurked in the mind or was heard on the lips of Protestants. Meanwhile, men doubted and doubted until little was left in their minds except doubts, and thus a kind of moral savages arose in the bosom of civilization in whose minds, as in those of American Indians, the elements of morality and religion were totally absent. To be sure, material civilization was meantime embellished into beauty— glowing every day with superadded splendours — while the moral world was wasted by infidelity into barrenness, and nothingness became the symbol of an enlightened age.

 The philosophers of Germany, like the Buddhists of Asia, may be said to invoke and worship a moral nihility. They preach and cherish it. Nothingness has risen into the solemn dignity of a mystic power. It is the God of the intellectual, who refuses to bend to " idols." Philosophy, formerly so busy in destroying religion, has been of late equally busy in destroying itself.

 For instance, it is the boast and glory of the young disciples of Hegel that they have destroyed and swept away for ever the doctrine of Hegel. They elevate man to the possession of all his powers, they say, when they break all the chains which philosophy, theology, moral science, and respect for human rights had imposed on their fathers.

 No man is to believe in the existence of anything except himself. Even the human species is denounced as a humbug — a scholastic abstraction trumpted by hypocrites to restrain individual freedom. The cry is in Protestant England, "Down with Maynooth,' but the cry that resounds in protestant Germany is, " Down with moral duty ; down with human rights ; away with patriotism, philosophy, and religion." This is a step in advance which Protestant England will ultimately arrive at. This, it seems, is true liberty. Endowed by philosophy, with his long-lost rights, man becomes as free as an Indian savage.

 Such doctrines are not unfavourable to despotism— the man who refuses to obey God must obey the constable. Whereas the man who is a law to himself is the fittest to enjoy political freedom. When in Germany the advantages of Atheism were proclaimed with revolting joy by Max Stirner in a well-written book he simply gave voice to the hidden ideas of the Young Hegelians. The author of the maxim, homo sibi Deus, is only an individual. The calamities of Germany were not produced by his exclusive writings. The cancers had been eating the system before Max Stirner unveiled it. His book only served to open the eyes of the blind.

 To reform such minds as his — as Vanderkiste reformed the beggars — five hundred devoted adherents of the Evangelical sect assembled in Wittenberg in 1848. They consisted for the most part of Pastors, theologians, magistrates, and professional men.

 The frightful revolutions which had recently agitated, terrified, and convulsed society had taught them the necessity of making some effort to diffuse moral and religious principles in Germany. The Germans, it was declared, were very good Protestants, but exceedingly bad Christians. There were philosophers in Protestant Germany, as there were philosophers in Pagan Rome, perfectly ignorant of Christianity, and the mission which was now needed was a home mission which might remedy the results of state education. Our readers will easily understand why they fixed their choice on Wittenberg. Three centuries previously what is falsely termed "the reformation of the Christian Church" (that is, the destruction of conventual institutions) had originated in Wittenberg, and a daring spirit— the great architect of ruin — had flung out a signal of rebellion and defiance to the religious world, which crumbled moral principles to dust, and filled Europe with confusion, disorder, and anarchy. To repair these evils — to undo, like thieves, what had been brought about by plunderers, and to tinker up a vessel that no human skill can render staunch— the Evangelical's met in September, 1848, in Wittenberg. There was another motive — as they sought to superinduce the uniform of Catholicity on the carcass of heresy — to purloin our Apostolic institutions, while repudiating our holy dogmas — to enrich the religion of Luther with the splendour of the good works which Luther denounced — to adopt our discipline, while denouncing our principles, and give Protestant Sisters to Saint Vincent de Paul— they deemed it necessary in this practical recantation of Protestantism to assume the appearance of ultra-Protestants. Like prudent men as they were, they deemed it incumbent upon them to be very cautious. For, to re-establish institutions which the passions of the sixteenth century swept away was tantamount, they felt, to a condemnation of that "reformation," whose foundation-stone was conventual ruin. It must have been a humiliating day to Protestants when they confessed in this public manner the moral reck — the moral distress of sinking Protestantism. 'Twas a cry for help which evinced the agony and despair of those who raised it, as well as their destitution of invention and resources. They deemed it, meantime, a stroke of crafty policy, which might throw dust in the eyes of the world, to originate a movement to reform the Reformation in the very place where the renegade Friar bellowed his bad Latin and roared his ribald oratory at the Pope amid the men of the sixteenth century.

 A home mission was accordingly established, and an eloquent address to the German nation circulated far and wide through Germany. The poor, of course, were the main objects of this mission, and it essayed, however clumsily, to accomplish in their behalf a few works of charity. But its peculiar feature was an attempt to impart Christian knowledge and principles to the well-educated— to teach the Catechism to rich men and learned professors. For this purpose it published many books which were not always unanswered, and a "battle of the books" has raged in Germany. As a fruit of the mission one of these books, and not the least able, is entitled  "Die Diakonissen, Ein Libensbild,” by K. Gutskow. Its special and peculiar object is to exhibit the folly of all attempts to establish Protestant nunneries in Germany or elsewhere — it reveals the pedantry, the hollow-heartedness, the total absence of vivifying faith in those mock convents — the farce of conventual obligations which invariably end in matrimonial engagements — it paints the Deaconess departing from her convent arm-in-arm with her husband, and proves that Catholic institutions cannot permanently exist where there is not true, sound Catholic faith — i. e., the soul of monastic establishments. We recommend this book to the serious study of our Puseyite imitators of Catholic institutions.

 This movement in Germany has proved two things : — 

1st. Protestant society can no longer exist without conventual, that is to say, Catholic institutions.

 2nd. Conventual institutions, without the animating principle of true faith, are a mere delusion.

Freeman's Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1850 - 1932), Saturday 6 October 1855, page 2

ON THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM

 There is a profound political as well as religious significance in the general and simultaneous revival of atheism through out those countries of the world that aspire to stand in the van of modern civilisation. The fact of such revival is too patent to require any additional proof, while the avowed aims associated therewith are at once definite and destructive to a degree. The atheism of Lord Cherbury's time, of Voltaire, and Frederick the Great, of Wilkes, Paine, and others of that ilk, was either speculative and dilletante, or materialistic and debased, according to the idiosyncracies and habits of those directly concerned. It took on in every case individual characteristics, hung on to individual lives, derived its intermittent force from personal and isolated action, and began and ended in great degree with the influence of those who dominated the small, erratic, and vagabond coteries that adhered to them. In these days there is a new departure of unbelief and another development altogether. It assumes to represent the highest culture and the most advanced thought of the time, claims with unspeakable audacity the right to reverse that whole system of social order which it has taken so long and cost so much to organise and settle, and aspires to a radical and destructive political dominancy which would turn the world upside down with a terrific vengeance. For religion, it announces with sublime effrontery that there is no God ; for social order, that virtue is an impertinent sham and property a robbery ; and for good government, that all authority is but a braggart usurpation, and that all rulers are tyrants who must be swept without discrimination or pity from the face of the earth. The specially new thing in Atheism is that for the accomplishment of the ends it proposes it enters into subtle and comprehensive combinations, and makes sacrifices of time, money, and life, which it was thought, until now, could be inspired only by the high principle and transcendent hopes of virtue, patriotism, and religion. The determination is further defiantly announced that the war which has been entered upon shall never cease until society as we know it is utterly destroyed.
 If there should be any who are of the opinion that this statement is stronger than the case warrants, we can only say that they must be only imperfectly acquainted both with the literature and current history of the time to be able to entertain such a doubt. This revived cult has its schools, its creeds, its organisation, and its propagandists. The older atheism was coarse, ribald, gross, self-seeking, materialistic, and beastly. The new is no doubt all that in reality, but it comes in another form, and its pretensions and professions are those of an angel of light. It promises to lift the race to a higher level, substitute a true religion for a false, and to secure to men in this life the highest attainable felicity, not by the repression of their lower and the exercise of their higher faculties, but by the unrestricted gratification of the impulses and passions of nature. The inception of these new ideas is to be looked for principally on the continent of Europe ; and of all continental countries, despite the Socialism of Germany and the Nihilism of Russia—France, according to what has come to be the established custom, takes the lead. When M. Gambetta announced that the Republic was the enemy of clericalism he meant more directly that, as administered by himself, M. Paul Bert, and the rest of his motley colleagues, it was the enemy of Catholicism and of the Christian religion in every form. M. Edgar Monteil, of Paris, who by fiction, fly-sheets, newspaper articles, and other means, has approved himself one of the chiefest apostles of this new order, has been at the pains to publish what he calls "A Catechism of the Freethinker," which has the merit at least of explicitness. He shows his artistic discrimination by the mode which he adopts. The religion to which he is avowedly antagonistic rests on the idea of God. The first thought the Christian church instils into the mind of a child is the sense of his relationship to that Great Being whom he is taught to call "Our Father." From this initial and abiding relationship spring all the duties, obligations, and privileges of life. M. Monteil is wise enough in his generation to make this question the first point of attack. The opening interrogation of his catechism is orthodox in form, but in reply to the question—What is God? the answer is given that God is an "expression," the exact value of this expression being the exact value of the word nature, while nature is declared to be the totality of all that we know to exist in the material world—the ALL in matter. "I am persuaded that nature always has been and always will be republican, and consequently is fitted to govern herself." the divine individuality is a lie, and we ought not to believe in the individual named God. Nature, which is not a god at all, is the only God, and being by necessity an aggregation of atoms, every atom is a sort of godship in itself. "Neither the heaven, nor the earth, nor man, nor woman has been created." Topsy's shrewd guess that she was not made at all but that she "growed," unconsciously touched the highest point of the new philosophy in this respect. As for the soul, it is nothing; it does not exist in nature. The only distinction between it and the body is a simple analytical process. There is no thought independent of matter; for everything belongs to the material order, and it does not return to God, for God is formed of that which exists, and the soul does not exist. The creed on this subject is thus summed up:—
"I believe in the infinite universe, in the eternal earth, in nature, all powerful; I believe that all that which is, always has been, and always will be, and that life is eternal in its numberless variations. I believe that all is God."
 This intelligible and cheerful philosophy, this new scientific religion, constitutes the basis upon which ought to be constructed all the institutions, social and political, which are to usher in the new order and restore the long-lost and eagerly-looked for Golden Age. Leaving that dim and misty period to produce its own evidence and testimony when the time shall come, the thing of concernment to us is the present and presumptive outcome of a such a system. It is to be noted that this is at once a parody and an inversion of religion as we have been taught to understand it. Man is a religious animal; the history of all time proves that religion of some sort he must have ; that which is here furnished to him is an anti-religion, a religion without God, without a future life, and which ignores the higher self, the reason and moral faculties, and recognises only the lower self, the appetites and passions, the absolute self-will. It begins in the hatred of God, and that hatred, by an easy and inevitable transition, operates destructively in society and amongst men. Gustave Flourens said some years ago with blasphemous candor — "Our enemy is God. Hatred of God is the beginning of wisdom." The daily history of the world, stereotyped for our information by the electric telegraph, furnishes proofs too abundant that this hatred is not an abstract notion merely, that it is not confined to a Supreme Being, and that it takes on forms from time to time which galvanise the whole civilised world with horror.
 How deeply-rooted and widely extended this grotesque and occult new religion, so-called, is in France in particular, may be gathered from the fact that M. Paul Bert, "a bitter and blasphemous atheist, in comparison with whom Mr. Bradlaugh is tolerant and reverent," was the man chosen by the Liberals of France as the one of all others specially qualified to direct the Departments of Public Instruction and Public Worship. Will the French, it is asked, stop at that? Are they the people to rest anywhere? In that bloody revolution, of which Carlyle is the latest historian of note, they pushed their mad and erratic theories so far that for a god they placed a naked prostitute on the altar of Liberty, so called, and hailed her as the symbol of their sublimest conceptions. If it be a simple fact in mental science that conduct follows faith, the political disturbances of continental countries and the social cataclysms of Russia are by no means to be wondered at; and the anticipation is not at all without warrant that worse is to come. Bradlaugh and Miss Lecompte in England; Bob Ingersol and his confreres in America; M. Monteil, Mdlle. Louise Michel, and their hosts of compatriots in France ; Most, and his coadjutors of the Freiheit, with a whole region of helpers such as Kitz Hofman and others in Germany, and Hartman with his army of inveterate underground workers in Russia, will be heard of again and in terrible fashion, before their reckless and fanatic career comes to an end. It is, characteristic of all the political movements in which the element of diabolism is paramount, that they begin in atheism, work with indiscrimination and remorseless destructiveness, and end in anarchy. The new regenerators prove their love of the race by killing individuals, and their desire for perfect order by turning the world into a pandemonium. We on this side of the world may well be thankful that we are obscure enough to be allowed to live in peace ; that we are permitted to reserve our petroleum for legitimate uses and hold our dynamite for our foes ; that freethought with us has not developed into infernal practice ; and that we have an open opportunity of proving that goodwill at all times and neighborliness all round is the highest practical philosophy and the most productive in the long run of the greatest good to the greatest number.


The South Australian Advertiser 3 June 1882,

MAHOMET AND THE MAHOMETANS.

MEANTIME ascending from the earliest Mahometans to their prophet, what are we to think of him? Was Mahomet a great man? We think not. The case was thus ; the Arabian tribes had long stood ready like dogs held in a leash, for a start after distant game. It was not Mahomet who gave them that impulse? But next, what was it that had hindered the Arab tribes from obeying the impulse? Simply this, that they were always in feud with each other; so that their expeditions, beginning in harmony, were sure to break up in anger on the road. What they, needed was, some one grand compressing and unifying principle, such as the Roman found in the destinies of his city. True; but this, you say, they found in the sublime principle that God was one, and had appointed them to be the scourges of all who denied it. Their mission was to cleanse the earth from Polytheism ; and, as ambassadors from God, to tell the nations— "Ye shall have no other gods but me." That was grand ; and that surely they had from Mahomed ? Perhaps so; but where did he get it? He stole it from the Jewish Scriptures, and from the Scriptures no less than from the traditions of the Christians. Assuredly, then, the first projecting impetus was not impressed upon Islamism by Mahomet. This lay in a revealed truth ; and by Mahomet it was furtively translated to his own use from those oracles which held it in keeping. But possibly, if not the principle of motion, yet at least the steady conservation of this motion was secured to Islamism by Mahomet. Granting (you will say) that the launch of this religion might be due to an alien inspiration, yet still the steady movement onwards of this religion through some centuries, might be due exclusively to the code of laws bequeathed by Mahomet in the Koran. And this has been the opinion of many European scholars. They fancy that Mahomet, however, worldly and sensual as the founder of a pretended revelation, was wise in the wisdom of this world; and that, if ridiculous as a prophet, he was worthy of veneration as a statesman. He legislated well and presciently, they imagine, for the interests of a remote posterity. Now, upon that question, let us hear Mr. Finlay. He, when commenting upon the steady resistance offered to the Saracens by the African Christians of the seventh and eighth centuries — a resistance which terminated disastrously for both sides — the poor Christians being exterminated, and the Moslem invaders being robbed of an indigenous working population, naturally enquires what it was that led to so tragical a result ? The Christian natives of those provinces were, in a political condition, little favourable to belligerent efforts ; and there cannot be much doubt, that, with any wisdom or any forbearance on the part of the intruders, both parties might soon have settled down into a pacific compromise of their feuds. Instead of this, the cimeter was invoked and worshipped as the sole possible arbitrator; and truce there was none until the silence of desolation brooded over those once fertile fields. How savage was the fanaticism, and how blind the worldly wisdom which could have co-operated to such a result! The cause must have lain in the unaccommodating nature of the Mahometan institutions, in the bigotry of the Mahometan leaders, and in the defect of expansive views on the part of their legislator. He had not provided even for other climates than that of his own sweltering sty in the Hedjas, or for manners more polished, or for institutions more philosophic than those of his own sun-baked Ishmaelites. "The construction of the political government of the Saracen empire"— says Mr, Finlay, (p. 462-3) — "was imperfect, and shows that Mahomet had neither contemplated extensive foreign conquests, nor devoted the energies of his powerful mind to the consideration of the questions of administration which would arise out of the difficult task of ruling a numerous and wealthy population, possessed of property, but deprived of civil rights." He then shows how the whole power of the state settled into the hands a chief priest— systematically irresponsible. When therefore, that momentary state of responsibility had passed away, which was created (like the state of martial law) "by national feelings, military companion ship, and exalted enthusiasm," the administration of the caliphs became "far more oppressive than that of the Roman empire." It is in fact an insult to the majestic Romans, if we should place them seriously in the balance with savages like the Saracens. The Romans were essentially the leaders of civilization, according to the possibilities then existing; for their earliest usages and social forms involved high civilisation, whilst promising a higher: whereas all Moslem nations have described a petty arch of national civility—soon reaching its apex, and rapidly barbarizing backwards. This fatal gravitation, towards decay and decomposition in Mahometan institutions, which, at this day, exhibits to the gaze of mankind one uniform spectacle of Mahometan ruins, all the great Moslem nations being already in a Srulbrug state, and held erect only by the colossal support of Christian powers, could not, as a reversionary evil, have been healed by the Arabian prophet. His own religious principles would have prevented that, for they offer a permanent bounty on sensuality ; so that every man who serves a Mahometan state faithfully and brilliantly at twenty-five, is incapacitated at thirty-five for any further service, by the very nature of the rewards which he receives from the state. Within a very few years, every public servant is usually emasculated by that unlimited voluptuousness which equally the Moslem princes and the common Prophet of all Moslems countenance as the proper object of human pursuit. Here is the mortal ulcer of Islamism, which can never cleanse itself from death and the odour of death. A political ulcer would or might have found restoration for itself: but this ulcer is higher and deeper: — it lies in the religion, which is incapable of reform: it is an ulcer reaching as high as the paradise which Islamism promises, and deep as the hell which it creates. We repeat that Mahomet could not effectually have neutralized a poison which he himself had introduced into the circulation and life-blood of his Moslem economy. The false prophet was forced to reap as he had sown. But an evil which is certain may be retarded; and ravages which tend finally to confusion, may be limited for many generations. Now, in the case of the African provincials which we have noticed, we see an original incapacity of Islamism, even in its palmy condition, for amalgamating with any superior culture ; and the specific action of Mahometanism in the African case, as contrasted with the Roman economy which it supplanted, is thus exhibited by Mr. Finlay, in a most instructive passage, where every negation on the Mahometan side is made to suggest the countervailing usage positively on the side of the Romans. O children of Romulus ! how noble do you appear when thus fiercely contrasted with the wild boars who desolated your vineyards! "No local magistrates elected by the people, and no parish priests connected by their feelings and interests both with their superiors and inferiors, bound society together by common ties; and no system of legal administration, independent of the military and financial authorities, preserved the property of the people from the rapacity of the Government."
Such, we are to understand, was not the Mahometan system : such had been the system of Rome. "Socially and politically," proceeds the passage, "the Saracen empire was little better than the Gothic, Hunnish, and Avar monarchies; and that it proved more durable, with almost equal oppression, is to be attributed to the powerful enthusiasm of Mahomet's religion, which tempered for some time its avarice, and tyranny." The same sentiment is repeated still more emphatically at p. 408 — "The political policy of the Saracens was of itself utterly barbarous ; and it only caught a passing gleam of justice from the religious feeling of their prophet's doctrines." Thus far, therefore, it appears that Mahometanism is not much indebted to its too famous founder: it owes to him a principle, namely, the unity of God, which, merely through a capital blunder, it fancies peculiar to itself. Nothing but the grossest ignorance in Mahomet, nothing but the grossest non-acquaintance with Greek authors on the part of the Arabs, could have created or sustained the delusion current amongst that illiterate people — that it was themselves only who rejected Polytheism. Had but one amongst the personal enemies of Mahomet been acquainted with Greek, there was an end of the new religion in the first moon of its existence. Once open the eyes of Arabs to the fact, that Christians had anticipated them in this great truth of the divine unity, and Mahometanism could only have ranked as a sub-division of Christianity. Mahomet would have ranked only as a Christian heresiarch or schismatic ; such as Nestorious or Marcian at one time, such as Arius or Pelagius at another. In his character of theologian, therefore, Mahomet was simply the most memorable of blunderers, supported in his blunders by the most unlettered of nations. In his other character of legislator, we have seen that already the earliest stages of Mahometan experience exposed decisively his ruinous imbecility. Where a rude tribe offered no resistance to his system, for the simple reason that their barbarism suggested no motive for resistance, it could be no honour to prevail. And where, on the other hand, a higher civilization had furnished strong points of repulsion to his system, it appears plainly that this pretended apostle of social improvement had devised or hinted no readier mode of conciliation than by putting to the sword all dissentients. He starts as a theological reformer, with a fancied defiance to the world which was no defiance at all, being exactly what Christians had believed for six centuries, and Jews for six-and-twenty. He starts as a political reformer, with a fancied conciliation to the world, which was no conciliation at all, but was sure to provoke imperishable hostility wheresoever it had any effect at all.—Blackwood's Magazine.

The Australian 1845, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article37153551

[The cimitar, (simitar) has turned now into a suicide bomber.]

ROSE'S STATE OF PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY.

—o—

Page 1.-The theology of the Protestant churches of Germany presented a very singular spectacle during the last half of the preceding century, and the commencement of the present. A very large majority, of the divines of these churches rejected, in a word, all belief in the divine origin of christianity, and anxiously endeavoured to instil into others the opinions which they had embraced themselves. They had possession of far the greater number of divinity professorships, in the many universities of Germany; and they had almost exclusively the direction of the literary and religious journals, a class of publications of more influence and importance in Germany than among ourselves. By the unsparing use of the means thus afforded them, and by an infinite quantity of writings, addressed to men of all classes and all ages, they succeeded in spreading their views over the surface of society. How deep the disease went among the lower orders it is not easy to ascertain. But it appears that after a time, a spirit of almost entire indifference to religion manifested itself among all classes. The churches were thinly attended, the Sabbath little honoured, the Bible much neglected. These melancholy phenomena appear to me to deserve and demand the attention of every Christian community, and I am convinced that in this country, it is very little known how far the evil extended. * *
The divines, to whom I have alluded, have, with the characteristic industry of their nation, published laborious works in almost every department of theological inquiry. Although they rejected, as I have said, all belief in the divine origin of christianity, they retained the name of christians, and the language and profession of christianity. Since our intercourse with the continent has become free, many of the works of these divines have found their way into the hands of English students in divinity. It appears to me, therefore, indispensable, that these students should have a clear conception of the principles of such writers, that they may not, by the deceptive use of christian phraseology be betrayed, at a period of life when their own judgment is not matured, into conclusions wholly subversive of christianity. * *
These are, I think, very important objects; but I have others not less important. I have shown in the introduction what is the proper province of the human reason with regard to revelation. Now the pride of the heart is perpetually tempting the reason to transgress her proper limits and go out of her proper province; and wherever the temptation is not over come, the most serious evils ensue. The recent theology of the German Protestants forms a striking proof of the truth of both these assertions. They judged of the truth of Revelation by its accordance with certain views of their own, which they falsely considered as immutable and universal principles of reason. This was their first and last and great error; and it led them to a total rejection of revelation."
Page 92.-8-"I now proceed to give some account of the tenets of this very remarkable school, with out being solicitous to enquire whether the order in which I have arranged these opinions corresponds with the order of their rise and formation. In different minds that order was probably different, and what I am concerned to shew is the object which was aimed at, and how far, that object was attained. My allegation against the German Protestant Divines then is, that (from what causes I do not determine) the peculiar and positive doctrines of Christianity had lost all value in their eyes, and that they sought to depress Christianity itself to the level of a human invention, and its doctrines, at best, to a repetition of the doctrines of natural religion. They had determined that reason was to possess not a negative, but a positive right of decision on all matters of belief; they had laid down, as I before stated, what they considered as immutable principles of reason, and by the standard of those principles they proceeded to enquire into the pretensions of Christianity. Whether they examined the general notion of a revelation, considered the nature of the Christian revelation in particular, or enquired into its record in scripture, their claims to inspiration, and to credulity, or their contents, the result of all these examinations was, (as the result of any examination conducted on these principles must be) a determination that Christianity had little or no pretence to the character of a Divine religion. * *
I shall begin with showing what were the opinions of the Rationalists with respect to the general notion of a Revelation. When these philosophers began to examine and criticise the old notion of a revelation, that is to say, information communicated by the immediate operation of God on the senses, they first expressed a doubt whether a revelation in that sense were possible, or rather, whether any possible evidence could prove it."
Page 164.-" It will be sufficient to say, that they who wish to form a notion of the Rationalizing method of explaining the doctrines of scriptures as to a saviour, an atonement and all the consequent doctrines, need only turn to the page of ecclesiastical history for a record of the various heresies of the early ages, and that they will also find a tolerable picture of them in the most extreme notions of the most violent English Unitarians." * *
Page 170.-"Starck then makes the following remarkable statements as to the morality enforced by some of the Rationalists. ' I have actually perceived that those same divines who have placed the essence of religion so entirely in morality as to forget, or eliminate, by little and little, all the fundamental truths of faith, now attack morality itself, and attempt to shake it in every way. When the divinity of the scriptures and the necessity of a belief in its truths are denied, it is impossible but that the morality deduced from it must also suffer. What esteem can be paid for the maxims of a religion, the founder of which, according to the notions of modern Protestants, was nothing but a magician and enthusiast, giving himself a name and qualities that he did not possess, suffering his actions to be transformed into miracles, and consequently adding falsehood to fanaticism. What regard could be had for the maxims of a religion preached by men full of prejudices, who did not even understand their master, and whose writings known under their names (?) are falsely attributed to them? Read the first and third number of the second part of the magazine of the late Hencke of Helmstadt, and the third number of the first part of his Eusebia, and you will there find that " monogamy, and the prohibition of extra-matrimonial connexions, must be reckoned among the remains of monachism, that this doctrine rests upon a blind faith." Is it possible to give greater facility to every species of disorder ? One of your journalist theologians, Scherer, has not hesitated to declare, in the first number, page 6, of the preface of his ' Biblical Investigator,' that " Religion has nothing at all to do with duties." What dreadful consequences may be drawn from such a maxim ! Hear what the Superintendant Cannabich says in his Criticism of Practical Christian doctrine, p. 185. " A moderate * * [here modesty obliges us to draw a veil] out of marriage, is no more immoral than in marriage." He adds, that "it is to be avoided merely because it shocks the customs of the persons with whom we live, and that (because) the excesses committed in it are often punished by the loss of reputation and of health." * * *
I speak not here of the published dissertations which might be said to be too abstruse for the public —I speak not again merely of the popular treatises where these doctrines are propounded, though to them the appeal is just and fair—but I assert on the faith of public recorded, as well as private testimonies, that these doctrines were publicly taught from the pulpit. Nay, I have not seen any contradiction to this from any of the party themselves except as to the generality of the usage. They allow its frequency, though they attempt to show that the indifference to religion, which the all allow exists in their church, is not imputable to that cause. But this is not all—They allow too that this wretched mass of abomination was offered to the young in the shape of religious instruction. And the real fact is, that in the Gymnasia, the public instructors detailed to the tender years of childhood all that they could comprehend of it, and the lesson was repeated by the pastor, when according to the custom of the Lutheran church, the young were sent to him previously to the holy rite of Confirmation to receive from the minister of God's word those solemn lessons which were to prepare them for their first attendance at the holy Communion of their Saviour's body and blood, and for the busy scenes of worldly temptation on which they were about to enter. The most moderate of all the printed instructions for Confirmation which I have happened to see inculcate pure Unitarianism. But there are other books for the young, where the attacks upon Christianity, which I have been detailing, were too plainly stated to be misunderstood, and where a virulence truly infamous was shown in raking together all the most distorted views and false representations of the plans and purposes of our Lord and his apostles. And this was the food given to the young heart to feed on,—to nourish it up to all the duties, all the aspirations, all the hopes, all the holiness of an immortal being. I cannot but add a single word as to the persons who were conspicuous in this career of absurdity and wickedness. It must be a matter of deep regret that such a remark can be made with truth; but as I have been reproached with noticing attacks on religion in Germany, which were considered only in the same light as the attempts of Carlisle and Hone in this country, it is necessary to observe that the majority of the writers to whom I allude were in their day the first in station in the church and Universities, and obtained the greatest notice and reputation among their contemporaries. It is a little unfortunate for the remark to which I allude that the persons whom I have brought forward as the foremost of the Rationalists are precisely those whom the most considerable of the Church historians of Germany, Schroekh, produces in his history of the past and present century. I have purposely gone over a large part of Schroekh's work lately, and have given many extracts from it, in order to shew that he thought the persons whom I have noticed so considerable as to analyse their works, and give a view of their literary characters. When I recite the names of Semler, Bhahrdt, Cannabich,Henke, Bauer, Eckermann, Scmid of Jena, Paullus, Eichkhorn, Ammon, De Wette, Wegscheider, Tieftrunk, with many others, I feel at least sure that they who know anything of the history of theology in Germany for some years past will know that these men occupied the largest share of public attention in their class and time, and that they were not mere vulgar retailers of blasphemy, despised by all the decent part of mankind, I must add moreover in contradiction to another statement made with respect to these persons, that with very few exceptions they mere ministers of the Gospel, Professors of Theology, or Lecturers in Divinity.**

NOTE p. 51.-In the North American Review for July 1824,'vol. x. p. 117. ' It is the English Infidel writers, moreover, who laid the foundation not only for the school of their successors in France but for the modern German divinity, which in any common acceptation of terms, is another form of infidelity. The first lines of that scheme which was imperfectly shadowed out by Semlar, and has been filled up by Eichhorn and his followers, and which, with much variety in details, insists on denying anything supernatural to belong to Christianity, may be very clearly traced in the works of Toland and Collins. I should be inclined to think that Mr. Everett, who spent some time at Gottingen, was the author of this article.
NOTE p. 100.--The following particulars of the parts of both Testaments, which have been attacked by the German divines, may be convenient though I fear it is defective. With respect to the Old Testament, we find many of them rejecting it altogether as a source of religious knowledge. * *
Wegscheider, (Instit. Theol. Christ. p.118), and others accede to Aben Ezra's notion of the Pentateuch not being the work of Moses. Wegschiedar says that Eichhorn, Jahn, and Rosenmuller, think that the greatest part was the work of Moses * *
These writers do not agree to what age to refer the Pentateuch; some say to Esra, others to a far earlier age. The notion as to Esra's age, which Rosenmuller adopts on the ground of the exact similarity of the style to that of Esra and Nehemiah, is positively rejected, and with contempt, by Doderlain on the ground of their difference (Inst. Theol. Christ. I. p. 132, chap. ii. tom. 11. § 88.) Doderlein, however, and others, who think the Pentateuch the work of Moses, allow only the law to be divine. The rest they think, made up of mythi, family pedigrees, rhapsodies; in memory of illustrious men and things, and note books or memoirs of the religion of the founders of the nation. This they think clear from' Numbers xxi. 26, 57, and from the diversity of style,&e. See Doderlein ubi supra, p. 141. §39, and Bauer's edition of Glass's Philogia Sacra, tom. II. Sect. 2. p. 867. The reader, who has patience end curiosity, may refer to Eichhorn's Repertorium, Parts IV. and V. for some articles on the books of Moses, especially one called Urgeschicte. He will find there too a pleasing speculation of Rosenmuller's on the Fall. He says that it is only a sort of translation of an ancient historical painting (such an were in use before the invention of letters) into language, (Part V. p. 168-185). Professor Herbst of Tubingen adopts a middle theory, conceiving that the law and the greater part of the history were written by Moses, but its fragments, and that the Pentateuch was arranged by Esra. His proofs are derived from the repetitions both in the law and historical part, and the alleged contradictions between parts of the history. * *
Generally, the authors of all the historical books and of Job are unknown (Wegscheider, p. 117). and they were compiled from public monuments, and acts and memoirs, so that it would be absurd to speak of their being inspired. (Doderlein, p. 132. Bauer, p. 367.) The principal aim of their authors was to insist on the external observation of the law, and to trace every misfortune to some neglect of it, (Bauer, p. 3869) ' That the historical credit of the books of Chronicles is very doubtful,' says Wegscheider (p; 119) with great coolness, ' has been lately demonstrated by Gramberg (Die Chronik nach ihrem Gesch. Charakter und ihrer Glaubwur digkeit gepruft. Hall. 1823) after De Wette (Beitrage sur Einleitung in das A. T. 1.) ; they have been defended by Dahler (De Libror. Paraleip. auctor. et fide Histor. Argent. 1819.) Vogel of Halle, as I learn from Schroekh, vol. VIII. p. 390, rejected Esther, the Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and the nine last chapters of Ezekiel, principally because they are not referred to in the New Testament. For Michaelis's suspicions see the Orienta liseche Bibliothek. P. 11. p. 1. With regard to the prophecies, it will be seen from Rossenmuller's commentary on Isaiah, (Part Ill. vol. 1, p. 4, and p. 459), that he considers that book as made up by one writer out of the minor works of several, which is also the opinion of Eichhorn and many others. See also Gesenius Commentar. 'inerd. Jesaia, vol. 1. Leips. 1821, and De Weote's Emleitung, p. 286. From Rosenmuller also, on chap. ix. of Zechariah, or Bertholdt's Isag. Histor. Orit, in Vet. Test. Part IV. p. 1707, No. 1, or De Wette ubi supra, p. 337, it it appears that many maintain that all of that book after chap, viii. is not the work of Zechariah. Jonah, which Rosenmuller takes to be the mere repetition of the Mythus of Hercules swallowed by the sea monster, he says was not written by Jonah, but by some one who was contemporary with Jeremiah. See. Ro., Part VII. vol 1I. 359. I see by Weigscheider that the book of Daniel is not ascribed to that prophet. He refers to Bertholdt's 'Daniel sus dem Hebr. araemischen neu ubersetzt] 2 Parts, Erlan. gen., 1806. The rest of the prophecies are, I believe, allowed to be the work of those whose names they bear. But many after Eichhorn deny that the Prophets enjoyed any supernatural revelation, and say that they were very clever and experienced men, likely from their abilities to foresee future events, and that from their purity of manners they were used as instruments of Providence to check a guilty age. See Doderlein I. p. 146. Eichhorn Ein. leitung in des A. T. Part III.
NOTE p. 151.-Scherer represents the prophets of the old testament as so many Indian jugglers, who made use of the pretended inspiration of Moses, and the revelations of the prophets, to deceive the people, He treats those who have still any regard for the prophecies of the New Testament as enthusiasts and simpletons, calls all the predictions respecting the person of the Messiah nonsense, accuses the prophets of being cunning deceivers, and says that the belief of those prophets brought, and has preserved incredulity on earth. This precious work is praised by the Allgem. Deutsche Bibliothek. LXIX, p. 228) and 238, as a very commendable book, inasmuch as it contributes to dissipate the shades of ignorance, blindness, and folly. But there is a book called Moses and Jesus, by Buchhols, published at Berlin in 1803, in which Moses especially is abused, and accused first of deceit, and then of terrorism. Janisch also (Univers, liberblick der Estwlcklung der Menschengeschlechts) makes the same charge, and says that the Levities were the satelites and executioners of Moses, whom he used for the purpose of establishing his power. This man was a preacher at Berlin.
NOTE, p. 166,—Cannabich, who was a superintendent (one of the highest dignities in the Lutheran Church) attacked the doctrines of the Trinity, Original Sin, Justification, the Satisfaction of Christ, Baptism, and the Lord's Supper, as taught in his own church. * * *
For the opinions of Plank and others on original sin, and other doctrines, see this latter work, p. 145--148. Wegscheider (p. 274 et seq.) says, that the Trinity, Incarnation, and Descent of the Spirit are positively absurd, and p. 277 and 370--2) that Christ was a mere man. The doctrine of the Trinity was not established for nearly the three first ages. (So Cannabich says that it is a new doctrine without foundation, and contrary to reason, and that it may be removed. The doctrine of the Fall, and of Original Sin, is set aside by Wagscheider (p. 850), entirely; one reason is given, which is curious. Except St. Paul, no sacred writer clearly makes mention of it.
NOTE, p. 174.-The Rationalist principles were taught in the pulpit, while some of the Rationalists (in compliance by the way with their recorded opinions) preached upon the useful topics of agriculture, &c. &c. So we find in Denmark, that during the Rationalist period there, the pulpits resounded with these wretched doctrines. The history of Rationalism in Denmark is most curious, as an illustration of what happened in Germany. It will be found in a series of papers in the Evangelische Kirchen Zeitung for Dec. 1827, July 1828, and August 1828.

 Morning Chronicle 3 August 1844, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article31743304

Socialism.

With the exception of the papers in the paid interest of the originator of Socialism, and his satellites, the press of tho Mother Country is unanimous in execration of the disgusting conduct of a mad wretch named Owen, who professing "to ameliorate the condition of society" under the seductive name of " Socialism," aims at the root of all religious and moral institutions a blow which is likely to shake them to the very centre, if not to effect their destruction. If Socialism becomes general, every profession of religion must inevitably become extinct; the admitted tenets of Socialism are of that accommodating character that will suit the major part of all communities, who being satisfied in a mere religious profession, would prefer that which not only excuses them from the slightest restraint of moral discipline— that exacts from them not even the appearance of virtue— but openly and boldly avows the propriety of a depravity of deportment, unheard of until Socialism was introduced in British communities, and unpractised even amongst the wildest of aboriginal savages. Socialism is so opposed in its principles to every thing religious, so glaringly opposed to the common usage of decency, so truly at the antipodes of the duties of religion and morality, that it is impossible for it to be tolerated in a country where a Supreme Being is acknowledged or the commonest decorum is practised as necessary to the conducement of general order. Night and day may be expected with equal consistency to merge into each other, as that religion of any sect and Socialism be acknowledged in the same community ; the one profession is so thoroughly at variance with the other, that the ruin of the one can alone form the foundation upon which the superstructure of the other can be successfully reared. The Quarterly Review of December exposes in a masterly manner the abominations of Socialism. We have not space to give the extract entire, but the following "explanation" of Mr. Owen's plan by which he pretends " to ameliorate the condition of society," will not be uninteresting to the reader. We cannot close this article without expressing our opinion that the abominations of the many leaders and professionists of our tolerated churches have given rise to Socialism. The conduct of many of the ministry of the Established Church has been so depraved and disgusting as to drive from their teaching and pastor-ship the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands who setting up religions professions according to their own ideas of rectitude, became according to the common term "Dissenters," —they became dissenters from the Mother Church— the Established Church. Hence have we Methodists, Baptists, Independents, Armenians, Jumpers, Quakers, Squeakers, and sects out of number. Many of the leaders and professionists of these sects shewing likewise the profession without the possession of religion, have induced men who were capable of thinking, or who ever thought at all, to satisfy their minds that the profession of religion is often put on as a matter of convenience, and too often serves as a cloak to hide the basest conduct, and that to follow the path as tracked out by the various professionists is not necessarily that which leads to future happiness: they abandon it and take up, no doubt with the utmost conscientiousness Socialism, or any other doctrine which offers to them the easiest mode of acquiring a confident assurance of a comfortable hereafter. But Socialism saves its professor from any qualms about a future reckoning —it denies the existence of a God and eternity. One remark more. We have known something of Revolutions ! and never knew one that would have ripened without having, at a particular crisis, an impetus afforded to the turbulent masses by tho establishment of some easy and accommodating profession of religion. The open announcement of Socialism in England at this unsettled period we think is a bad omen, but time will shew. "We have said that we hoped and believed that Owen himself was insane ; but we had, till lately, no idea that there could have been any one else mad enough to adopt his doctrines even as speculative theories : it turns out how ever that—under the general relaxation of all public discipline—under the general contempt for all authority, and the general enmity to all our institutions— under the general arrogance of self-judgment, self-indulgence and self-sufficiency — all of which have been growing up for many years, but particularly since the unfortunate Reform Bill, and, most of all, under the Melbourne Ministry— Robert Owen has made numerous practical proselytes— that he is at the head of a great and spreading sect, calling themselves Socialists, and professing the doctrines just mentioned, which are not only incompatible with our political constituting moral obligations and religious duties, but, we will boldly assert, wholly irreconcilable with any system whatsoever of human society. We are not informed of the full extent to which this miserable delusion may have spread, but we have abundant evidence that it has become so formidable by its numbers, and other elements of power, as well as by its doctrines, as to have of late excited the apprehensions, not merely of Churchmen and Methodists, but even of others who are little likely to be startled at any form of sectarianism short of absolute extravagance."

"The evil in fact has grown to be of such magnitude, and has created so much alarm that the 'Christian Advocate,' in the University of Cambridge, however reluctant to notice such abominations as long as 'they were confined in their circulation, and not calculated to do extensive mischief,' at length felt it to be the duty of his office to endeavour to arrest and expose the progress and tendencies of this profligate system,—a task which he has performed with great utility and effect. It is not our present intention to enter into the argumentative part of the subject, or to show in any detail the wickedness and folly of Socialism, but merely to state some general facts as to the existence, progress, and public professions of the sect, with immediate reference to the extraordinary presentation of Robert Owen to the Queen by the hands of the Prime Minister. But for this purpose it is necessary to impress on our readers minds the general tenets of this sect, of which we have already given a summary, but which we think it right to reproduce in the more authoritative words of Mr Pearson— 'It would not have been justifiable to allude thus publicly to these opinions, unless they had been propagated with a mischievous activity in those districts of the country to which allusion has just been made, and unfortunately with too much success; and unless their promoters were making great efforts to extend their influence more generally through the land. It will be possible only just to allude to the leading features of this infidel creed— which indeed amounts to nothing less than the absolute rejection of Christianity altogether! The first and leading principle of this scheme is that of practical atheism ; and consists in the assertion that "it is irrational to believe the existence of a God, who made and who governs the universe," and maintains that " to worship such a Being is opposed to the rational conviction of every conscientious and intelligent mind." Its votaries are instructed to disbelieve the existence of a future life and a future judgment ; and, consequently, they maintain that man is not responsible for his actions. They are taught that the Bible rests on no better authority than that of the Koran, and the pretensions of Jesus Christ on no better grounds than those of Mahomet. They are instructed that " no one (to use their own language) shall be responsible for his physical, moral, or intellectual organisation," or " for the sensations made on that organization by external circumstances ;" and therefore that man is at liberty to give full scope to the indulgence of the sensual passions ;— and, lastly, with regard to the sacred institution of Marriage, it is treated by them with open ridicule; and they propose to substitute for it a licensed system of adultery, such as even the worst and most corrupt ages or heathen antiquity never knew. " Mr. Pearson most truly states that — 'the promulgation of these opinions in so many districts or the country can be no longer regarded as a matter of indifference, when it is stated that there is at this time a public Institute for the purpose of giving lectures, and of other objects connected with the propagation of these opinions, in the course of erection at Manchester, and that persons were found to guarantee the architect in the sum of £5000 .....
And he gives us the following statement from their own reports of the growth of the Society, if we may call by that name that which is in fact subversive of the very foundations of all society:— ' In the proceedings of the last Congress of this Society, [we beg our readers to bear in mind this Congress, and its title.] which is denominated "THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY SOCIETY OF RATIONAL RELIGIONISTS," held at Birmingham in May [last], there is an account of fifty places, comprehending the most populous towns in England and Scotland, at which branches have been formed ....

 The Cornwall Chronicle 1 August 1840,

MODERN INFIDELITY.

The progress which Infidelity is making in Germany, France, and even England, is truly appalling. The consideration of the various phases it assumes will not be without warning against insidious propagandists here, nor yet without interest, as reflecting in some measure the peculiar national genius of its disciples respectively.

German Infidelity is simple, cold, heartless Atheism, unenlivened by one fanciful hallucination. On the other hand, there is in the French Infidelity— which cannot be exactly characterised as atheistic — a wild flightiness of the imagination, an extravagance in the conception, and a gaiety which, but for the gravity of the subject, might almost tempt one to smile. English Infidelity, as being the most moderate and least revolting to common sense, appears the most dangerous of the three.The facts we will submit, depicting a deplorable state of things, will enable those who read to judge for them selves. We would, however, caution against an error into which clerics are apt to fall, namely, that there is a necessary connection between republicanism and Infidelity (an error which some of them very assiduously inculcate) ; and also state our firm conviction that much of the prevalent Infidelity is attributed to the illiberality of the established clergy, whether Catholic or Protestant ; or to their being leagued with the State in withstanding the aspirations of the multitude. A kind of exasperation, and in many individuals a hatred, has thus been engendered against them, which is but too readily transferred to Christianity itself. Those who have placed Christianity in a false position— whether in Germany, France, or England — are responsible for much of the Infidelity which prevails. However, as there can be no deviation from natural laws without entailing on those who violate them the most painful consequences, so, in God's moral government, we may reasonably conclude that this very Infidelity is designed to scourge Christian ministers from their anomalous and adulterous connexion with the State. It appears that the most active propagators of the German Infidelity are the wandering journeymen of that country (llandwerksburschen). Compelled by the corporation laws to a vagrant life before he can obtain a certificate of being master of his craft, the journeyman puts up in his wanderings at the Herberge or Trades-hall ; one of which, for each description of artizanship, exists in every city where the corporation system is still kept up. Here the uninitiated are indoctrinated with the prevailing leaven, and converted into active propagandists. As a specimen of what takes place in the Herberge, we give the following : —

" At Hamburg recently, one of the songs which re sounded with applause in the convivial meeting of a certain trade, ran thus —

Curse on the Godhead! the blind and the deaf.
To which heretofore we have pledged our faith ;
On whom we have hoped and have waited in vain:
He hath tricked us, and mucked us, and laughed at our pain "

Such language is enough to make one's blood run cold. The worst feature of the case is, that these numerous missionaries of Infidelity are far from being " unlettered or ignorant men." "It would be difficult," says M. Hechern, "for those who are unacquainted with this class of Germany's population to form a conception of the sophistic attainments of our travelling artisans. The dogmas of the most radical philosophy and the sinthetics of Hegel's theology are familiar in their mouths as household words. Neither does practice lag behind theory, and they are fully prepared to bide the brunt of what may come upon them. As "they fear not God, neither do they regard man."

One of the most active and successful preachers of Atheism is William Mar, a native of Hamburg, who recently received the largest number of votes, as the future representative of her population. He makes no secret of his sentiments, and after having served his apprenticeship to Atheism in Switzerland, in which, by his own account, he was instrumental in leading hundreds of his own countrymen to apostatise from God, he was, in 1845, in common with other members of her communistic clubs, forced to leave that country, where, as he says in his book, entitled "Dasjunge Deutscheland," "Many hundred Germans, avowed enemies to God, returned to their native land."

The tactics, too, of the Atheistic Propaganda for evading the activity of the Police, so long as they could lawfully interfere with their designs, were admirable, they contrived to give a harmless exterior to their associations. Here a reading club was established ; there a singing club. In one place a gymnastic society; in another an artisan's educational association. But in all, the books, the songs, the mental training, were selected and directed to the up rooting of every principle of religion, and infusing discontent and reckless disregard of the means, provided the end could be compassed.

This apostle of Atheism does not confine his labours to Hamburg and its vicinity, but travels through the whole north of Germany, availing himself of a decree recently passed, which declares every German free to hold and to teach whatever be believes to be truth in religion or politics.

A few brief extracts from Mar's writings will suffice to shew that he insults all religion, natural and revealed : —

"I maintain," says this religious reformer, "that THE BELIEF IN A PERSONAL LIVING GOD IS THE CHIEF FOUNDATION AND ORIGIN OF OUR PRESENT WORM EATEN SOCIAL STATE; and further, that so long as mankind shall hang by a single hair to the idea of HEAVEN there is no happiness to be looked for on earth." "Christianity, and the existing order of things, which is built upon it, are the true fretting cancers of human society." "Man himself is the religion of futurity. God stands in need of Man, but Man has no need of God.''

And these horrible sentiments are not only shared by such men as Itzstuin, Hecker, Simon of Treves, Voght, but by vast multitudes of the commonalty, as is evidenced from his being returned by a large majority for the city of Hamburg. French Infidelity, though revolting enough, does not present such atrocious features as the German ; and appears to be rather an unintentional burlesque on revelation, than an attack on natural religion, or an endeavour to explain the phenomenon of Christianity on natural principles; placing Christ in the same category with Plato, and Socrates, or any other great religious or political reformer. It does not formally repudiate Christianity, but rather contends that it has been misunderstood. Whether this be merely the scheme of an able tactician, to mask a more direct attack, we cannot affirm.

The following is a brief account of the manner in which these new religionists celebrated their Christmas festival. For daring impiety it has seldom, if ever, been surpassed : —

'It was announced, as usual, than the Montagnard deputies would attend. MM. Pierre Leroux and Felix Pyat, were the only members of the National Assembly that honoured the banquet with their presence. The price of the tickets of admission to this "holy sacrament," at which " bread and wine" were to be allowed unsparingly, and ad libitum, and many other dainties beside, are to be enjoyed at this altar, was fixed at 1f 50c. per head for adult, and 50c. for children. After the "holy supper" had been discussed, and the cloth removed, the public were admitted so payment of 25c. per head to witness the subsequent ceremonies. A large number availed themselves of the privilege, and the galleries were crowded to suffocation. The first religious speech was delivered by a lady, and was entitled the " Sermon on the Mount." Owing to her low tone of voice, however, and the noise caused by the ingress of spectators, we could only catch a few phrases of this eloquent "discourse," in which Jesus Christ was designated as the Apostle of Socialism. Toasts were afterwards pro posed, such as "The advent of God's coming upon earth," and these too by ladies. M. Pierre Leroux responded to the toast to " Liberty." M. Herve, after having made an apology for St. Just, proposed a toast to his memory, adding the names of Couthen and Robespierre. Toasts were afterwards drunk as follows :— The women;" "Our mothers and our children ;" "France, the living Christ" (by M. Bernard, who sought to prove that there was a complete resemblance between Jesus Christ and the people of France) ; " Mary, the first propogatrix of Socialism ," 'The Martyrs of Vienna" (by a lady) : " Inequality ;'' "The realization of universal happiness upon earth ;" " Religion ;" ''The independence of thought," &c. Apologues and poems were then recited, seasoned with several sacred patriotic songs. Another banquet took place the same evening, at the Barriere de Sevres, presided over by the Abbe Chatel. Several " disciples and adepts" of the French Church were present, and toasts were drunk to Jesus Christ, "the great apostle of Socialism," with great zeal and gusto. The banquet terminated with chaunting of the psalms and hymns used in the Churches of France.'

In connection with S. Just, who, though mentioned by name, was not present at the proceedings described, we may state, that his opinions are in every way accordant with those which so prominently characterised the meeting, and fully corroborate what we have stated as to the socialist estimate of the Founder of Christianity. At the Parisian banquet of ' the Confederation of the People of Europe,' at which about eight hundred operatives (almost entirely French Socialists) attended, the following toast was proposed by this same M. St. Just, and drank with three rounds of defending applause: — 'To the men strong, courageous, and valiant in the cause of humanity. To those whose names serve as a guide, a support, and an example to the degenerate beings. To all whom history calls heroes ! To Brutus, to Catiline, to Jesus Christ, to Julien the Apostate, to Attila! To all the thinkers of the middle ages! To unfortunate thinkers! To Jean Jacques Rousseau, and his pupil Maximilian Robespierre !"

Jules Janin the novelist thus concludes a notice of a second-rate actress, who has just reappeared in Paris :—

" People and natives, I announce it to you by the found of the trumpet of literary judgement— clap your hands — strew flowers, lilies, and roses by handfuls— make crowns, put on your Sunday clothes and your new hats ! — Hosannah ! Hosannah ! — Mlle. Seriwaneck has returned !"

This religious pestilence, or rather pest of religion, is not confined to the Continent. It has crossed the Channel (we say crossed, for certainly it is not indigenous to England), and has fixed itself in Birmingham, and is even insidiously creeping through the Universities, where its propagators, though they do not go the length of classing Jesus Christ with such men of blood as Catiline and Attilla, make no scruple to place the Apostle Paul in juxtaposition with Shakspere and Milton ; and possibly, were they to pass over to Ireland, they would associate him with Ollam Foodlah or Brian Boroimhe, though with very little success ; for there is in the habitants of that country an obstinacy of character, and an innate sense of religion, which would be proof against such seductive arts. The Irish patriot may justly boast that Infidelity has never made way in Ireland. Whatever other charge may be laid against the democratic clubs of that country and their leaders, Infidelity is not one.

Some estimate may be formed of the fatal progress which the Infidel sentiments referred to are making in England, from the following extract of a speech by the Rev. C. Miller, at the forty-fifth anniversary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Marquis Cholmondeley in the chair : —

My Lord — We have in the heart of Birmingham preaching which is attracting very great attention — thank God it is not reaching within the bosom of the Church of England, thank God it is teaching which our orthodox Dissenting brethren have long ago repudiated — we have teaching that informs the people that Shakespeare, Milton, and Homer were as much inspired as tho Apostle Paul himself. My Lord, I am not speaking of what I do not know, nor simply from newspaper reports, but I believe there are many here who are as familiar as I am with the fact that such is a favourite sentiment with regard to the schoo1 to which I am alluding— I see Neology spreading, as I find it is spreading in my own beloved University, among many of the learned and leading men there — and I know there is such teaching as this among the intelligent men, and that the young men especially are caught by it in Birmingham.

While thus chronicling the progress of Atheistic and Infidel opinions, we cannot forbear remarking on the apathy or pusillanimity of those whose official duty it specially is to "drive away all heresy," and a fortiori all Infidelity and Atheism. Instead of taking the bull by the horns, boldly confronting and grappling with the teachers of error, they lugubriously declaim in their conclaves against the havoc the wolf is making in the field. If they are not hirelings, why do they skulk about instead of boldly combating their enemy ? These gentlemen ministers of Christ fancy it would be a lowering of their dignity, were they to come in collision with an Atheist or Socialist preacher. Paul did not think so when he encountered the Epicureans at Athens; while the signal defeat sustained by Owen at the hands of Campbell in America, with its admirable results in confirming the faithful, and winning over multitudes from their error, point out that weapon of primitive times, public discussion, as the most effectual that can be wielded now.

If the clergy are either unable or afraid to cope with their Atheistic and Infidel foes, or too proud to do so, then we say to them, as Cromwell did to the Parliament he ejected, "Get you gone; make way for better men." Cease to monopolise those functions which all Christians may lawfully exercise, and let the laity carry on that war which confessedly you are unequal to yourselves. The true cure for the monstrous evil of the day is to be found in the purest voluntaryism and an extensive system of lay agency. Constituted as Established Churches are, there is necessarily in them a prodigious amount of ignorance, incapacity, indolence, self-seeking, and hypocrisy. It is no wonder, therefore, that the really learned, pious, and zealous among the clergy are, as it were, overwhelmed by the activity, multiplicity, and subtlety of their foes. This could not be, were the Church constituted as in the first ages of Christianity, where the highest offices invariably entailed the largest amount of toil and self-denial, and where all fell it their duty, irrespective of any office they might or might not held in the Church, to preach the Gospel.

We never hear in the primitive ages the truly Infidel cry of "The Church is in danger!'' No; the first Christians knew that "The Church was founded on the Rock of Ages (its Divine Author), and that the gates of hell could not prevail against it." The Church meant with them not the " loaves and fishes" — not a corporation of vested interests in lands, and houses, and tenements, and princely offices and dignities — but a system of doctrine and discipline which, though in the world, was not of the world, and which, as it was Divine, could exist and prosper, not to say without the protection, but despite the hostility of mankind.

The present ecclesiastical system may and most probably will be rooted up, but the imperishable truths of Christianity will continue to flourish, when Rome, and London, and Geneva shall be levelled with the dust.

Since writing the foregoing, we have lit upon William Johnson Fox's (M.P.) lectures on the religious ideas, which expose the true nature of English Infidelity in all its naked deformity ; and we are bound to say, that, without being attended by its ludicrous displays, the English is identical with the French Infidelity. But this gentleman has been far outdone by the the Rev. Mr Froude, F.L.U.C., author of the ' Nemesis of Faith,' whom it was proposed to appoint Master of the High School of Hobart Town, in connexion with the University of London, and who makes no secret of his opposition to Christianity. The following will suffice as a specimen : —

" What is Revelation if it is but a catalogue of examples, not which we are, but which we are not to follow ? No, Arthur ! this is not God. This is a fiend.

" When a crime of one of our fallen brothers comes before ourselves to judge, how unspeakably difficult we find it to measure the balance of the sin; cause winding out of cause temptation out of temptation; and the more closely we know the poor guilty one the nature with which he was born, the circumstances which have developed it, how endlessly our difficulty grows upon, us !— how more and more it seems to have been inevitable, to deserve (if we may use the word deserve) not anger and punishment, but tears, and pity, and forgiveness. And for God, who knows all! who not only knows all, but who determined all— who dealt us out our natures, and placed us as it pleased Him! 'what more could have been done to my vineyard that I have not done?' Alas! then, if Omnipotence could not bring but wild grapes there, why was the poor vineyard planted? It never asked to be. Why fling it out here into these few miserable years; when it cannot choose but fall to ruin, an I then must be thrown into hell-fire for ever?....I cannot tell. It may be from some moral obliquity in myself, or from some strange disease ; but for me, and I should think, too, for every human being in whose breast a human heart is beating, to know that one single creature is in that dreadful place would make a hell of Heaven itself.

" I believe that fallen creatures perish, perish for ever, for only good can live, and good has not been theirs."

" I could never fear a God who kept a hell prison house. No, not though he flung me there because I refused. There is a power stronger than such a one; and it is possible to walk unscathed even in the burning furnace."

"Ah, well! The Mahometans say their Koran was written by God. The Hindoos say the Vedas were; we say the Bible was, and we are but interested witnesses in deciding absolutely and exclusively for ourselves. If it be immeasurably the highest of the three it is because it is not the most divine, but the most human. It does not differ from them in kind; and it seems to me that in ascribing it to God we are doing a double dishonour ; to ourselves, for want of faith in our soul's strength ; and to God, in making Him responsible for our weakness. There is nothing in it but what men might have written ; much, oh much, which it would drive me mad to think any but men, and most mistaken men, had written.

" People canvass up and down the value and utility of Christianity, and none of them seem to see that it was the common channel towards which all the great streams of thought in the old world were leading, and that in some form or other when they came to unite it must have been. That it crystallized round a particular person may have been an accident. "Sin, therefore, as commonly understood, is a chimera.

" According to the theory maintained, the various forms of religion that prevail in the world are but so many developments of that innate sense of religion, which characterises humanity (man being essentially a religious animal), modified by the peculiar moral, social, and even physical circumstances which surround it. Thus "gloomy regions" will impart a melancholy cast to religion, while "attitude" inspires sublime aspirations. There is much of truth in all this, but the grand error consists, in accounting for Christianity on the same principle, instead of considering it sui generis, as standing alone, or in solitary association with the Jewish dispensation, in the Divine economy.

The explaining Christianity on purely natural principles, rejecting from it everything of a miraculous character, is the rationalism or neology of the present day, the progress of which in our universities is so bitterly deplored. It is almost needless to add that this doctrine reduces the question between different religions to a mere matter of taste.

 south australian register 25/2/1850, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article38439115

Bakunin on religion

Thus the true God:— the universal, external, immutable God created by the two-fold action of religious imagination and man's abstractive faculty, was posited for the first time in history. But from the moment that God became known and established, man forgetting or rather not being aware of the action of his own brain which created this God, and not being able to recognize himself any longer in his own creation:— the universal abstraction, began to worship it. Thus the respective roles of man and God underwent a change: the thing created became the presumed and true creator, and man took his place among other miserable creatures, as one of them, though hardly more privileged than the rest.

Once God has been posited, the subsequent progressive development of various theologies can be explained naturally as the reflection of the development of humanity in history. For as soon as the idea of a supernatural and supreme being had got hold of man's imagination and established itself as his religious conviction:— to the extent that the reality of this being appeared to him more certain than that of real things to be seen and touched with his hands, it began to appear natural to him that this idea should become the principal basis of all human experience, and that it should modify, permeate, and dominate it absolutely.

Immediately the Supreme Being appeared to him as the absolute master, as thought, will, the source of everything— as the creator and regulator of all things. Nothing could rival him, and everything had to vanish in his presence since the truth of everything resided in him alone, and every particular being, man included, powerful as it might appear, could exist henceforth only with God's sanction. All that, however, is entirely logical, for otherwise God would not be the Supreme, All-Powerful, Absolute Being; that is to say, he could not exist at all.

...Thus man's reason, the only organ which he possesses for the discernment of truth, in becoming divine reason, ceases to be intelligible and imposes itself upon believers as a revelation of the absurd. It is thus that respect for Heaven is translated into contempt for the earth, and adoration of divinity into disparagement of humanity. Man's love, the immense natural solidarity which interlinks all individuals, all peoples, and, rendering the happiness and liberty of everyone dependent upon the liberty and happiness of others, must unite all of them sooner or later, in spite of differences of race and color, into one brotherly commune— this love, transmuted into divine love and religious charity, forthwith becomes the scourge of humanity. All the millions of human victims immolated for the greater glory of God, bear witness to it....

In religion, man the animal, in emerging from bestiality, makes the first step toward humanity; but so long as he remains religious he will never attain his aim, for every religion condemns him to absurdity, and, misdirecting his steps, makes him seek the divine instead of the human. Through religion, peoples who have scarcely freed themselves form natural slavery, in which other animal species are deeply sunk, forthwith relapse into a new slavery, in to bondage to strong men and castes privileged by divine election.

...But whoever says revelation says revealers, prophets, and priests, and these, once recognized as God's representatives on earth, as teachers and leaders of humanity toward eternal life, receive thereby the mission of directing, governing, and commanding it in its earthly existence. All men owe them faith and absolute obedience. Slaves of god, men must also be slaves of the Church and the State, in so far as the latter is consecrated by the Church.

...And unless we desire slavery, we cannot and should not make the slightest concession to theology, for in this mystical and rigorously consistent alphabet, anyone starting with A must inevitably arrive at Z, and anyone who wants to worship God must renounce his liberty and human dignity.

God exists: hence man is a slave.

Man is intelligent, just, free; hence God does not exist.

We defy anyone to avoid this circle; and now let all choose.

 

 ...Religion, as we have said, is the first awakening of human reason in the form of divine unreason. It is the first gleam of human truth through the divine veil of falsehood, the first manifestation of human morality, of justice and right, through the historic iniquities of divine grace. And, finally, it is the apprenticeship of liberty under the humiliating and painful yoke of divinity, a yoke which in the long run will have to be broken in order to conquer in fact reasonable reason, true truth, full justice, and real liberty.

In religion, man —the animal—in emerging from bestiality, makes his first step toward humanity; but so long as he remains religious, he will never attain his aim, for every religion condemns him to absurdity, and, misdirecting his steps, makes him seek the divine instead of the human. Through religion, peoples who have scarcely freed themselves form natural slavery in which other animal species are deeply sunk, forthwith relapse into a new slavery, into bondage to strong men and castes privileged by divine election.

One of the principal attributes of the immortal Gods consists, as we know, in their acting as legislators for human society, as founders of the State. Man—so nearly all religions maintain—were he left to himself, would be incapable of discerning good from evil, the just from the unjust. Thus it was necessary that the Divinity itself, in one or another manner, should descend upon earth to teach man and establish civil and political order in human society. Whence follows this triumphant conclusion: that all laws and established powers consecrated by Heaven must be obeyed, always and at any price.

This is very convenient for the rulers but very inconvenient for the governed. And since we belong with the latter, we have a particular interest in closely examining this old tenet, which was instrumental in imposing slavery upon us, in order to find a way of freeing ourselves from its yoke.

The question has now become exceedingly simple: God not having any existence at all, or being only the creation of our abstractive faculty, united in first wedlock with the religious feeling that has come down to  us from our animal stage; God being only a universal abstraction, incapable of movement and action of his own: absolute Non-Being, imagined as absolute being and endowed with life only by religious fantasy; absolutely void of all content and enriched only with the realities of earth; rendering back to man that of which he had robbed him only in a denaturalized, corrupted, divine form—God can neither be good nor wicked, neither just nor unjust. He is not capable of desiring, if establishing anything, for in reality he is nothing, and becomes every thing only by an act of religious credulity.

Consequently, if this credulity discovered in God the ideas of justice and good it was only because it had unconsciously endowed him with it; it gave, while it believed itself to be the recipient. But man cannot endow God with those attributes unless he himself possesses them. Where did he find them? In himself, of course. But whatever man has came down to him form his animal stage—his spirit being simply the unfolding of his animal nature. Thus the idea of justice and good, like all other human things, must have had their root in man's very animality.

The common and basic error of all the idealists, an error which flows logically from their whole system, is to seek the basis of morality in the isolated individual, whereas it is found—an can only be found—in associated individual. In order to prove it, we shall begin by doing justice, once and for all, to the isolated or absolute individual of the idealists. 

This solitary and abstract individual is just as much of a fiction as is God. Both were created simultaneously by the fantasy of believers or by childish reason, not by reflective, experimental, and critical reason, but at first by the imaginative reason of the people, later developed, explained, and dogmatized by the theological and metaphysical theorists of the idealist school. Both  representing abstractions that are devoid of any content and imcompatible with any kind of reality, they end in mere nothingness.

I believe I have already proved the immorality of the God-fiction. Now I want to analyze the fiction, immoral as it is absurd, of this absolute and abstract human individual whom the moralists of the idealist school take as the basis of their political and social theories.

It will not be very difficult for me to prove that the human individual whom they love and extol is a thoroughly immoral being. It is personified egoism, a being that is pre-eminently anti-social. Since he is endowed with an immortal soul, he is infinite and self-sufficient; consequently, he does not stand in need of anyone, not even God, and all the less of other men. Logically he should not endure, alongside or above him, the existence of and equal or superior individual, immortal and infinite to the same extent or to a larger degree than himself. By right he should be able to declare himself the sole being, the whole world. For infinity, when it meets anything outside of itself, meets a limit, is no more infinity, and when two infinities meet, they cancel each other.

Why do the theologians and metaphysicians, who otherwise have proven themselves subtle logicians, let themselves run into this inconsistency by admitting the existence of many equally immortal men, that is to say, equally infinite, and above them the existence of a God who is immortal and infinite to a still higher degree? They were driven to it by the absolute impossibility of denying the real existence, the mortality as well as the mutual independence of millions of human beings who have lived and still live upon the earth. This is a fact which, much against their will, they cannot deny. 

Logically they should have inferred from this fact that souls are not immortal, that by no means do they have a separate existence form their mortal and bodily exterior, and that in limiting themselves and finding themselves in mutual dependence upon one another, in meeting outside of themselves and infinity of diverse objects, human individuals, like everything else existing in this world, are transitory, limited, and finite beings. But in recognizing that, they would have to renounce the very basis of their ideal theories, they would have to raise the banner of pure materialism or experimental and rational science. And they are called upon to do it by the mighty voice of the century.

They remain deaf to that voice. Their nature of inspired men, of prophets, doctrinaires, and priests, and their minds, impelled by the subtle falsehoods of metaphysics, and accustomed to the twilight of idealistic fancies—rebel against frank conclusions and the full daylight of simple truth. They have such a horror of it that they prefer to endure the contradiction which they themselves have created by this absurd fiction of an immortal soul, or hold it their duty to seek its solution in a new absurdity—the fiction of God.

From the point of view of theory, God is in reality nothing else but the last refuge and the supreme expression of all the absurdities and contradictions of idealism. In theology, which represents metaphysics in its childish and naive stage, God appears as the basis and the first cause of the absurd, but in metaphysics, in the proper meaning of the word—that is to say, in a refined and rationalized theology—he, on the contrary, constitutes the last instance and the supreme recourse, in the sense that all the contradictions which seem to be insoluble in the real world, find their explanation in God and through God—that is, through an absurdity enveloped as much as possible in rational appearance.

The existence of a personal God and the immortality of the soul are inseparable fictions; they are two poles of one and the same absolute absurdity, one evoking the other and vainly seeking in the other its explanation and its reason for being. Thus, to the evident contradiction between the assumed infinity of every man and the real fact of the existence of many men, and therefore an infinite number of beings who find themselves outside of one another, thereby necessarily limiting one another; between their mortality and their immortality; between their natural dependence and absolute independence of one another, the idealists have only one answer: God. If this answer does not explain anything to you, if it does not satisfy you, the worse it is for you. They have no other explanation to offer.

The fiction of the immortality of the soul and the fiction of individual morality, which is its necessary consequence, are the negation of all morality. and in this respect one has to render justice to the theologians, who, being more consistent and more logical than the metaphysicians, boldly deny what in the general acceptance is now called independent morality, declaring with much reason that once the immortality of the soul and the existence of God are admitted, one also must recognize that there can be only one single morality, that is, the divine revealed law, religious morality—the bond existing between the immortal soul and God, through God's grace. Outside of this irrational, miraculous, and mystic bond, the only holy and saving bond, and outside of the consequences that it entails for men, all the other bonds are null and insignificant. Divine morality is the absolute negation of human morality.

Divine morality found its perfect expression in the Christian maxim: "Thou shalt love God more than thyself and thou shalt love thy neighbor as much as thyself," which implies the sacrifice of oneself, this being an obvious act of sheer folly, but the sacrifice of one's fellow-man is from the human point of view absolutely immoral. And why am I forced toward this inhuman sacrifice? For the salvation of my own soul. That is the last word of Christianity.

Thus in order to please God and save my soul, I have to sacrifice my fellow-man. This is absolute egoism. This egoism, by no means destroyed or diminished but only disguised in Catholicism by its forced collective character and the authoritarian, hierarchic, and despotic unity of the Church, appears in all its cynical frankness in Protestantism, which is a sort of religious "Let him save himself who can."

The metaphysicians in their turn try to mitigate this egoism, which is the inherent and fundamental principle of all idealistic doctrines, by speaking very little—as little as possible—of man's relations with God, while dealing at length with the relations of men to one another. That is not so nice, candid, or logical on their part. For, once the existence of God is admitted, it becomes necessary  to recognize the relations of man to God. And one has to recognize that in the face of those relations to the Absolute and Supreme Being, all other relations necessarily take on the character of mere pretense. Either God is no God at all, or his presence absorbs and destroys everything.

Thus metaphysicians seek morality in the relation of men among themselves, and at the same time they claim that morality is an absolutely individual fact, a divine law written in the heart of every man, independently of his relations with other human individuals. Such is the ineradicable contradiction upon which the moral theory of the idealists is based. Since prior to entering into any relation with society and therefore independently of any influence which society exerts upon me, I already bear within me the moral law inscribed by God himself in my heart,—this moral law must necessarily be strange and indifferent, if not hostile, to my existence in society. It cannot have as its concern my relations with men; it can only determine my relations with God, as it is quite logically affirmed by theology. So far as men are concerned, from the point of view of this law, they are perfect strangers to me. And inasmuch as the moral law is formed and inscribed in my heart apart from my relations with men, it therefore has nothing to do with them.

But, we are told, this law specifically commands us to love people as ourselves because they are our fellow-creatures, and not to do anything to them which we would not like to have done to ourselves; and in our relations with them to observe equality, justice, and identical morality.  To this I shall answer that if it is true that the moral law contains such a commandment, I must hence conclude that it was not created nor inscribed in my heart. For it necessarily presupposes an existence preceding in time my relations with other men, my fellow-creatures, and so it did not create those relations, but, having found them already established, it only regulates them, and is in  a certain way their developed manifestation, explanation, and product. It follows that the moral law is not an individual but a social fact, a creation of society.

 Were it otherwise, the moral law inscribed in my heart would be an absurdity. It would regulate my relations with beings with whom I have no relations and of whose very existence I am completely unaware.

The metaphysicians have an answer to this. They say that every human individual, when he is born, brings with him this law inscribed by God's hand in his heart, but that this law is at first found in  a latent state, in a state of mere potentiality, unrealized or unmanifested for the individual himself, who cannot realize it and who succeeds in deciphering it within himself only by developing in the society of his fellow-creatures; in a word, that he becomes conscious of this law which is inherent in him only through his relations with other men.

This plausible, if not judicious, explanation leads us to the doctrine of innate ideas, feelings, and principles. It is an old familiar doctrine. The human soul, immortal and infinite in its essence, but corporeally determined, limited, weighted down, and so to speak blinded and abased in its real existence, contains all those eternal and divine principles, without, however, being consciously aware of them. Since it is immortal, it necessarily had to be eternal in the past as well as in the future. For if it had a beginning, it is inevitably bound to have an end, and therefore can by no means be immortal. What was its nature, what had it been doing during all the time it had left behind it? Only God knows that.

As for the soul itself, it does not remember, it is clearly ignorant of this alleged previous existence. It is a great mystery, full of crying contradictions, and in order to solve it one has to turn to the supreme contradiction, God himself. At any rate, the soul, without being aware of it, carries within some mysterious portion of its being all these divine principles. But, lost in its earthly body, brutalized by the grossly material conditions of its birth and its existence upon the earth, it is no more capable of conceiving them, or even of bringing them back into its memory. It is as if it had never possessed them at all.

 

 Federalism, Socialism and Anti-Theologism.

The Political Philosophy of Bakunin. 1953