With this general principle in mind, it is easily seen that a freedom large enough to include an open attack on the fundamental, rational, truths of religion and morals—this having been our subject hitherto—could be conceded only if disbelief and atheism had gained so much power as to make impossible its prohibition. In this case, however, the state should be conscious of the fact that it allows the undermining of its foundations. If, in another state, religious feeling were at so low an ebb, that the freedom of the Christian truth could not be obtained in any other way than by granting full freedom for everything, then even such unlimited freedom would be a good thing to be striven for; of itself a deplorable condition and contrary to God's intentions, but good as the lesser evil.
But let us return to the revealed religion. In the eyes of those who are convinced that the Christian religion, namely, the Catholic religion, is the only true religion, the ideal condition would be to have the entire population united in its [pg 354] faithful confession; then matters would simplify themselves in our case. But this ideal hardly exists anywhere. True, in many countries the population is almost wholly Christian; but the denominations are mixed, and many have separated at heart from Christianity. What standards, then, should rule in this case?
Looking at it specially, the demand of ethical reason is no doubt this: Nations and governments whose past was Christian, whose institutions and civilization are still Christian, and an overwhelming majority of whose members still think and believe in a Christian way, would fail in their gravest duties if they would expose or permit the Christian religion to remain unprotected against the attacks and the attempts at destruction by a false science, or by conceding to the adversaries of Christianity equal rights or even preference. The Christian religion will not be destroyed; but whole nations may lose it, and its loss will in great measure be the fault of those in whose hands their fate was laid. Here might be applied Napoleon's well-known saying: “The weakness of the highest authority is the greatest misfortune of the nations.”
It remains an anomaly that a state, the members of which for the most part are Christians, should treat this religion with indifference, and tolerate that its tenets and traditions be represented as fairy-tales and fables, its moral law as a danger to civilization, and perhaps its divine Founder as a victim of religious frenzy. If the state is the expression and the representative of its subjects, then such disharmony between public and private life is unnatural. Moreover, the Christian religion is held by the majority of its citizens to be the most precious legacy of their forefathers; they must demand from the state protection for their greatest good. And this may be claimed with even greater right by provinces where the population almost unanimously clings to the creed of their ancestors; at the colleges in these parts the faithful people will be entitled to protection more than elsewhere against dangers to its inherited religion. It would be unnatural in this case to apply the thoughtless principle of dealing uniformly with all provinces of the state. The state is not a heap of uniform pebbles, but an organism [pg 355] composed of different parts, each desiring to retain its own peculiar life.
Do not say this presumption does not admit of application to our conditions, the majority of the people of this age being long since estranged from Christianity. It is true, if we turn our eye only to the more conspicuous classes of society, the classes that control the newspapers and mould public opinion, this view might be admitted as to some countries. But if we look at the masses, those not infected by half-education, then this opinion is true no longer. And there are many who at heart are not so distant from faith as it would seem. In public life they pose as free-thinkers, but their domestic life bears frequently a Christian character. And often they approach more and more the faith, the older they grow. This is known to be the fact even of scientists. Instances are men like Ampère, Foucault, Flourens, Hermite, Bion, Biran, Fechner, Lotze, Romanes, Littré, and others. Plato claimed that no one who in his youth disputed the existence of the gods retained this view to his old age. “Christianity,” observes Savigny rightly, “is not only to be acknowledged as a rule of life, it has actually transformed the world, so that all our thoughts are ruled and penetrated by it, no matter how foreign, even hostile, to Christianity they may appear.”
It is a sign how deeply Christian religion has sunk its roots into the heart, that it remains the religion even for those who have turned away from it. To be sure, for our nations Christianity is the religion. For them the religion of a Confucius or Zoroaster does not enter into consideration; nor any of the products of modern religious foundations, which would replace Christianity with substitutions of all kinds of religious essences; they are on a level with the attempts at reconstructing sexual ethics: both are regrettable delusions. “Improvement” of Christian morality is tantamount to abandoning all morals, and desertion from the Christian religion, amongst our people, has always been apostasy from all religion. The Christian religion is so true, that no one can renounce it inwardly and then find peace in a self-made one. And all efforts aimed at displacing Christianity lead only to an abandonment of all religion.
Look at the number of people from whom slander and insinuation have torn their old religion to be replaced by another—a freer, higher religion; their moral decadence soon bears testimony of the religious consecration which has been given to them. Woe unto those authorities who, while able to oppose, are indifferent, and who lend a hand in causing Christian thought [pg 356] to withdraw more and more from our mental atmosphere, to be replaced by another spirit, a spirit that will gradually control the decision of the judge, the practice of the physician, the instruction of the teacher, and thus more and more enter into the life of the people.
It is not assured to those nations of Europe, whose public life is feeding to-day upon the remnants of their Christian past, that they will not relapse into a state of moral and religious barbarity. “Maybe civilized mankind, or our nation at least, is really losing its hold more and more upon definite moral standards,” so complains a modern pedagogue; “possibly the emancipation of sensuality will increase without end, perhaps we have passed forever the stage of true humanity and of a live idealism, and we shall henceforth glide downward.... These are no mere, feverish dreams; there is good reason for facing these possibilities with a determined eye, and no accidental or philosophical optimism can ignore them” (Münch).
“It is quite possible,” we are told by another, “that much will go down in our old Europe during the next centuries; and the downfall will not be restricted by any means to Church and Christianity, and in the crises that will come Europe will hardly get the needed support from an æsthetic heathendom, from the Monists' Union, or from the evidences of science” (Troeltsch).
If it does not come to it, it will not be the merit of authorities who let the vessel of state drift rudderless toward the rocks of dechristianization.