One of the most striking testimonies to the Crown Princess’s intellectual interests is to be found in a letter written to Charles Darwin, in January, 1865, by Sir Charles Lyell. The great geologist says that he had had,
“An animated conversation on Darwinism with the Princess Royal, who is a worthy daughter of her father, in the reading of good books and thinking of what she reads. She was very much au fait at the Origin and Huxley’s book, the Antiquity, &c. &c., and with the Pfahlbauten Museums which she lately saw in Switzerland. She said that, after twice reading you, she could not see her way as to the origin of four things; namely, the world, species, man, or the black and white races. Did one of the latter come from the other, or both from some common stock? And she asked me what I was doing, and I explained that, in re-casting the Principles, I had to give up the independent creation of each species. She said she fully understood my difficulty, for after your book ‘the old opinions had received a shake from which they never would recover.’”
It may seem an intrusion on what should be sacred ground to touch on the religious belief of the Crown Princess, but it is a subject on which there have been a certain number of misstatements, and it may therefore be well to set forth plainly the material facts.
The present generation perhaps hardly realises what a period of intellectual ferment had set in just at the time when the Princess’s mind was most eagerly absorbing all that she could read and hear on the subject of religion and philosophy. She was twenty when Essays and Reviews appeared: she was twenty-two when Colenso published his book on the Pentateuch: twenty-three when Renan’s Vie de Jésu appeared: twenty-four when Strauss’s shorter Leben Jesu was published: and in one year from the time in her life at which we have now arrived Ecce Homo was to appear. Most important of all, Darwin had published his Origin of Species in 1859, when the Princess was nineteen, and it is evident from Sir Charles Lyell’s letter that she had not only read but understood that epoch-making book. Of all the giants of those days Darwin alone remains a giant; the lapse of time, as well as the work of other scholars and thinkers, has reduced the intellectual stature of those other writers whose work seemed of such crucial importance when the Princess was a young woman.
It was indeed a period when many thought that the old sound, even impregnable, position of Christianity had been not only undermined but overthrown. Strauss, for example, honestly believed that he had entirely destroyed the historical credibility of the four Gospels. The Princess herself came to Germany at a moment when the Tübingen schools were the intellectual leaders, and Strauss was their prophet, and the training which she had undergone under the superintendence of her father had prepared her to sympathise rather with the attack than with the defence. It is easy now to see that orthodoxy was not then very fortunate in its champions, and that the overwhelming weight of the scholarship and intellectual strength of the time belonged to the advanced thinkers. Moreover, it must be remembered that much of the religion of that day was mere lip-service, a conventional orthodoxy which, while it resisted investigation and inquiry on the one hand, failed to bear practical fruit in conduct and life.
Only a few months after the Princess had arrived in Prussia as a bride, the then Prince Regent, her father-in-law, made a speech which attracted great attention, not only in Germany but in Europe generally. In it he said it could not be denied that in the Lutheran Church, the established church of Prussia, an orthodoxy had grown up which was not consistent with the basic principles of the church, and the church, in consequence, had dissemblers among its adherents. All hypocrisy, the Prince continued—and he defined hypocrisy as ecclesiastical matters which are utilised for selfish purposes—ought to be exposed wherever possible. It was in the whole conduct of the individual that real religion was exhibited, and that must always be distinguished from external religious appearance and show.
When such language could be used from the very steps of the throne, it may be imagined how great was the intellectual ferment in which everyone who thought and read at all was necessarily involved. Naturally the eager, impulsive Princess, with the intellectual courage and sincerity which her father had implanted in her, could not stand aloof. But if, at this time of her life, she seemed to abandon the old orthodox positions, it is not less true to say, that, while paying the penalty at the time in unhappiness and spiritual disquiet, she ultimately reaped the reward of an even firmer faith. She came to see, indeed, that the deepest religious convictions are not the fruit of philosophical speculation or of textual criticism, but of experience.
In the years that followed, the Princess was destined to be a near spectator of great events—of the progress and ultimate triumph of Bismarck’s policy of blood and iron; while in her own home she suffered the bitter pain of the death of her children, of sister, of brother. Even what seemed surely the crowning tragedy of her husband’s brief reign and swift end was not all. That cruel malady, the origin of which still defies research, and which often, as in her case, kills slowly with lingering torture, seized upon her in her stricken widowhood.
Yet the successive ordeals through which she passed seemed but to strengthen her grasp upon the realities of life, and the Christian faith took on for her a new meaning and became the rock to which alone she clung. She left a most striking expression of her religious belief, written in the summer of 1884, at a time when she had no prevision of the fiery trials which were still in store for her. Long as the passage is, it is worth quoting in full:
“When people are puzzled with Christianity (or their acceptance of it), I am reminded of a discussion between an Englishman and an advanced radical of the Continent (a politician). The latter said, ‘England will become a republic as time advances.’ The Englishman answered, ‘I do not see why she should. We enjoy all the advantages a republic could give us (and a few more), and none of its disadvantages.’ Does not this conversation supply us with a fit comparison when one hears, The days of creeds are gone by, &c? I say ‘No.’ You can be a good Christian and a Philosopher and a Sage, &c. The eternal truths on which Christianity rests are true for ever and for all; the forms they take are endless; their modes of expression vary. It is so living a thing that it will grow and expand and unfold its depths to those who know how to seek for them.