In view of the frequent assurances of the noted historian, Th. Mommsen, that he hates the sight of old Christian inscriptions[9]we may perhaps welcome it in the interest of history that he refrained from writing the fourth volume of his Roman history, wherein the Origin of Christianity was to be treated. One of his biographers asserts that the downfall of paganism through Christianity was a fact not to Mommsen's liking, that “a description of the decomposition of all things ancient, and the substitution therefor of the Nazarene spirit would not have been a labour of love.”[10] And again, when we see the well-known historian of philosophy, F. Ueberweg, in a letter to F. A. Lange, denouncing from the bitterness of his heart “the miserable beggar-principle of Christianity,” and the “surrendering of independence and of personal honour in favour of a servile submission to the master, [pg 268]who is made a Messiah, nay, even the incarnate Son of God,” then we may well dread the historical objectivity of a man of such notions in writing about the religion of Jesus Christ.
With reference to the chief subject of psychology, the noted psychologist, W. James, writes with utmost frankness: “The soul is an entity, and truly one of the worst kind, a scholastic one, and something said to be destined for salvation or perdition. As far as I am concerned, I must frankly admit that the antipathy against the particular soul I find myself burdened with, is an old hardness of heart, which I cannot account for, not even to myself. I will admit that the formal disposition of the question in dispute would come to an end, if the existence of souls could be used for an explanatory principle. I admit the soul would be a means of unification, whereas the working of the brain, or ideas, show no harmonizing efficacy, no matter how thoroughly synchronical they be. Yet, despite these admissions, I never resort in my psychologizing to the soul.”
If we read such statement, if, in addition, we remember the popular-philosophical science of men like Haeckel, particularly perhaps the literature which he recommends for information about Christianity, and of which he himself makes use; if we have read Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or the “Philosophy of Races” of a Chamberlain,—we can no longer be at a loss what to think of the “rule of reason” and of the “search for pure truth.” Observe, also, the restless haste of those who, having turned their back upon the Catholic Church, now proceed to attack her, observe their agitated work and incitement, how they rummage and ransack the nooks and corners of the history of the Church in quest of refuse and filth, and if the find is not sufficient how they even help it along by forgery, all this to demonstrate to the world that the grandest fact in history is really absurdity and filth;—then one will understand what instincts may be found there to guide “reason and science.” How even sexual impulses are trying to shape their own ethics we shall not examine here. F. W. Foerster relates: “I once heard a moral pervert expound his ethical and religious notions; they were nothing but the reflection of his perverse impulses. But he thought them to be the result of his reasoning.” Is there not known in these days the inherited disorder of the human heart as characterized by the Apostle in the words: “But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin (Rom. vii. 23)”? The Ancients [pg 269] knew it. The wisdom of Plato knew it, who speaks of the “pricks of sin, sunk into man, coming from an old, unexpiated offence, giving birth to wickedness.” The wise Cicero knew of it: “Nature has bestowed upon us but a few sparks of knowledge, which, corrupted by bad habits and errors, we soon extinguish, with the result that the light of nature does nowhere appear in its clearness and brightness.” Truth is often disagreeable to nature. And if not subdued and ruled by strong discipline, nature proceeds to oppose the truth. Only to lofty self-discipline and purity of morals is reserved the privilege of facing the highest truths with a calm eye. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Mental Bondage.
Of this wisdom the admirer of liberal freedom knows little. Instead of distinguishing the good from the evil in man, of unfolding his inner kernel, the pure spirit, and making it rule; instead of demanding, like Pythagoras, discipline as a preparatory school for wisdom, he has learned from Rousseau, the master of modern Liberalism, that everything in man is good. Depravity of nature, original sin, are unsympathetic things to his ear. Even Goethe wrote to Herder, when Kant had in his religious philosophy found a radical Evil in man: “After it has taken Kant a lifetime to clean his philosophical gown of many filthy prejudices, he now outrageously slabbers it with the stain of the radical Evil, so that Christians, too, may be enticed to come and kiss the seam.” Instead of exhorting for a redemption from internal fetters, as the sages of all ages did, the principle of wisdom now proposed is to quietly let individuality develop, with all its inclinations. They call this freedom. Is it not the freedom whereof the slave of sensuality avails himself to form his theory of life? It, too, “grows up in man with that inner compulsion which is identical with true freedom” (Adickes).
Freedom this may be. But only external freedom, the only freedom they often know. They are unaware that they forfeit thereby the real, the inner freedom. “Thou aimest at free heights,” admonishes even the most impetuous herald of freedom, [pg 270] “thy soul is athirst for stars. But also thy wicked impulses are athirst for freedom. Thy wild hounds want to be free, they bark joyfully in their kennel when thy spirit essays to throw open all dungeons.”[11] They think to be free and speak of the self-assurance of individual reason, and they cannot see that the mind is in the fetters of bondage.
Else how is it that the atheistic free science, considered in general, arrives with infallible regularity at results that obviously tend to a morally loose conduct of life? How is it, that it tries throughout to shirk the acceptance of a personal God, and is at home only in open or disguised atheism? that it so persistently avoids the acceptance of anything supernatural? Why does it in its researches never arrive at theism, which has as much foundation at least as pantheism and atheism? Why does it, nearly without exception, deny or ignore the personal immortality of the soul and a Beyond; why does it never reach the opposite result which, in intrinsic evidence, ranks at least on a par with it? Why is it not admitted, that the will is free and strictly responsible for its acts, although this fact is borne out by the obvious experience and testimony of mankind? Why does it so regularly arrive at the conclusion that the Christian religion has become untenable, and needs development; that its ethics, too, must be reformed, more especially in sexual matters? Why does it not defend the duty to believe, but reject it persistently? A striking fact! The matters in question here concern truths that impose sacrifices upon man, whereas their opposites have connections of intimate friendship with unpurged impulses. It may be noted also that this same science, that announces to the world these results of research, meets with the boisterous applause from the elements that belong to the morally inferior part of mankind.
St. Augustine prays: “Redeem me, O God, from the throng of thoughts, which I feel so painfully within my soul, which feels lowly in Thy presence, which is fleeing to Thy mercy. Grant me that I may not give my assent to them; that I may disapprove of them, even if they seek to delight me, and that I may not stay with them in sleepiness. May they not have the power to insinuate themselves into [pg 271]my works; may I be protected from them in my resolution, may my conscience be protected by Thy keeping.” It is the realization of the want of freedom of the human reason, the only way to the liberation from the fetters of our own imperfection. He, who has seriously begun to take up the struggle with his inner disorders, will, by his own experience, pray as St. Augustine prayed.
Recognizing this fact, man will try to rise above himself, to cleave to a superior Power and Wisdom, who, in purer heights, untouched by human passions, holds aloft the truth, in order to rise thereby above his own bondage; he will understand the necessity of an authority clothed with divine power and dignity, so that it may hold in unvanquished hands the ideal against all onslaughts of human passions. He will without difficulty find this power in the religion of Jesus Christ and in His Church: in Him, who could not be accused of sin, who by His Cross has achieved the highest triumph over flesh and sin, who has surrounded His Church with the bright throng of saints. And if he sees this religion and Church an object of persecution, he will behold in it the signature of its truth. For truth is a yoke despised by sensualism and pride, and the spiritual power that contends for purity and truth will be hated.