(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
No comments:
Post a Comment