The Mediation school takes its stand between the Lutheran party on the one hand, and the school of criticism on the other, and without going back to the principle of authority, or forward to that of discovery, proposes to unite the use of reason with belief in Scripture, and to understand what it believes. Of the members of this very numerous school Dr. Laemmer had intercourse with Twesten and Nitzch. The Tübingen school had for its leader Christian Baur, and starting from the principle that the only portions of the New Testament undoubtedly genuine are four of St. Paul's Epistles, viz.: to the Romans, to the Galatians, and the two to the Corinthians, it comes to the conclusion that Christianity in its present form is the result of the controversy between the Jewish, or Petrine, and the Pauline Christianity of the apostolic and following ages. All the other books of the New Testament it attributes to some one or other of the contending schools. That this school, extravagant as its conclusions may appear to us, is every day gaining ground in France with a very numerous party, we have been lately assured by competent authority.[ 11] That it has many advocates in England is well known.[ 12] A critic in the Home and Foreign Review[ 13] speaks of "the importance of those inquiries of Dr. Baur and his followers into primitive Christianity, which have in some way modified the views of almost every one who has become acquainted with them."
These are thy gods, O Israel! These are the shapes of Protestantism that wander to and fro in the various universities of Germany. Dr. Laemmer, speaking with full knowledge of the subject, sums up in one word the result of all this unhealthy movement, and that word is—chaos. And what heightens the confusion is, that, although the systems which form this chaos are in absolute and perpetual conflict with each other, yet does each professor claim for himself the exclusive possession of truth, as if he and he alone had been gifted with infallibility.
The special feature of Dr. Laemmer's conversion appears to us to consist in this, under the grace of God, that he approached faith through its historic side. Sound and conscientious historical research has been the means of his deliverance from bondage. His mind from boyhood inclined towards things grave; the details he communicates concerning his choice of authors reveal that sobriety of judgment which is the first quality of a student of history. The bent of his mind in this direction was strengthened by study of the fathers, of the history of the Papacy, and of the Catholic theology of the Reformation period. We invite special attention to the happy result of historical studies in his case, because we see in it a promise of much future good for Catholic truth in Germany. The broad distinction between the German method of the present century and that of the past, lies in this, that the nineteenth century is the age of historical inquiry, whereas the last century was that of critical thought. Even the Tübingen school is an improvement on the destructiveness of Strauss, for it admits and calls attention to the historical value of at least some portion of the Scriptures. In the other schools, above described, this tendency is of course still more marked. The modern spirit tends not so much to examine the ontological value of an opinion, as to investigate how men came to hold that opinion. It was this spirit which suggested the questions of concursus, which, as we shall see, changed the current of Dr. Laemmer's life. Now we hold it very probable that as this spirit becomes more extended, its fruits will be these: men will become familiar with the teachings of Christian antiquity; and although this knowledge may be sought not for the sake of the doctrine itself, but as a preliminary to other studies, still, such is the divine power of truth, that, once revealed to the soul, it creates therein a wondrous craving after itself, which will dispose the soul for the grace of faith. There must be at this moment many thoughtful men in Germany, who, in virtue of this spirit, are engaged in the examination of the fathers and of the theologians of the Catholic Church, and, who, finding themselves, like Dr. Laemmer, between the ruins caused by Protestantism and the unbroken strength of Catholic teaching, are even now turning their eyes towards Rome, therein to seek her who was their mother of old.
Hugh Laemmer was born of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother, at Allenstein, in Eastern Prussia, on 25th January, 1835. His mother was a woman of most fervent piety, who, in almost unceasing prayer, sought and found consolation under her many severe afflictions. It was not given her to exercise much influence over the mind of her son, who, long before her death, had gone to reside with his father's relatives, by whom he was brought up as a Protestant. The lad, nevertheless, had a tender love for his mother, and from his earliest years was conscious of an indescribable leaning towards his Catholic friends in preference to his Protestant kindred. This feeling was the natural growth of observations made by the quickwitted boy regarding the piety, firm principles, and good conduct of the Catholics. At the same time, the devotion of the faithful in their processions and pilgrimages served to put him on his guard against the bigoted prejudices which his Lutheran cousins ever sought to instil into his mind against their Catholic neighbours. When with the other schoolboys he went to church on Sunday, the sermon made no impression on him, and no wonder, for the preacher carried with him into the pulpit the chilling rationalistic principles he had imbibed at the university. Even in those early years the boy's heart tended towards the beautiful and spacious Catholic Church of his native town. Once, when his father took him to Heiligenlind (a famous resort of pilgrims), and the old sacristan showed him the rare treasures of the church, he experienced an emotion so strong that it survived even the rude trials of his after life.
In 1844 he entered the gymnasium of Koenigsberg. He brought with him from home a good stock of elementary and grammatical knowledge; and soon discovered that his tastes inclined him to the study of literature more than to that of science. Ellendt, then rector of the gymnasium, was a man who possessed in a remarkable degree the power of making his lectures interesting to his pupils. Explained by such a master, Homer and Herodotus became in a short time the favourite authors of M. Laemmer, who, on the other hand, had no taste for what he calls "the tedious narratives of the Anabasis, and the pedantic tirades of the Cyropaedia". He preferred Caesar and Livy to Cicero, whose philosophy especially he found to be commonplace. Modern French literature had no attractions for such a mind as his; the contemporary romance writers of that nation excited even his disgust. As Germany is considered by many to be the very home of perfection in classical studies, it will be interesting to hear the opinion Dr. Laemmer's experience has led him to form concerning the special dangers which beset middle school education at the present day:—
"I believe it to be a mistake", he says, "to make modern languages, mathematics, and the physical sciences occupy very much of the time appointed for the study of the classics; and as far as middle class instruction is concerned, we have reason to be grateful to the Raumer ministry for the prominence it has given in the new educational plan to the wise principle non multa, sed multum. It is highly dangerous to the young to distribute their faculties simultaneously over many heterogeneous branches of knowledge. Ubique hospes, nusquam domi: such a system is the sure path to that half-learning, which, without giving a thorough knowledge of anything, encourages young men to talk presumptuously of a host of subjects of which they have but the barest surface knowledge. What happens when the examination papers exact from students a knowledge of science as well as of literature, physics, chemistry, natural history, and the different branches of mathematics? It is a well-known fact that, with the exception of a few intended for certain professions, young men are careful to forget as soon after examination as they can, the information it has cost them so much labour to acquire. Against this it is vain to urge the importance which the natural sciences have now-a-days attained to—an importance so great that no one, save at his peril, can remain a stranger to them; for, on no account should we furnish new weapons to materialism. At most, it is required that students should be supplied with such elementary information as may enable them in the future to keep in sight the true bearings of things, and in creatures recognize Him who is proclaimed in the first article of the Creed. That extravagant cultivation of the natural sciences, so often substituted by our ministers in place of the lessons of Holy Writ, is as perilous as is the undue exaltation of man and of man's pretended victories over nature. The laws of nature have never acknowledged any master save One—our Lord Jesus Christ—and in Him the saints with whom it has pleased Him to share His sovereignty" (p. 13).
Whether the authorities at the gymnasium shared these views or not, we are not in a position to state. One thing, however, is certain,—much attention was paid there to the study of the German language and literature; much of our student's time was passed in the excellent library of German authors provided for the use of the scholars. What an eventful moment that is in which a youth, in the flush of the early vigour of his mind, finds himself for the first time in a library where the treasures of human thought are gathered before him clothed in the language he has learned from his mother's lips! Then begins for him that daily contact of mind with the mind of others, which will infallibly colour for good or evil the history of his future. He who, without an enlightened and friendly guide, adventures inexperienced upon this commerce,
"Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone",
runs no little risk of being caught unawares by error where his generous ardour looked only for truth. In the world of books as in the world of men, evil lies very close to good, and wears its garb and mien; and how shall the inexperience of youth be able to see through the disguise, or how avoid becoming captive to its snares? And from such captivity, how harassing the toil of escape! Of that toil let him make light who has never had experience of the almost ceaseless influence erroneous principles exercise on the mind with whose growth they have grown. From reading Newton on the Prophecies in 1816, Dr. Newman, then a boy of fifteen, became convinced that the Pope was Antichrist; and his imagination was stained by the effects of this doctrine up to the year 1843.[ 14] Nor did M. Laemmer come away safe. His random reading brought him both good and evil, so intermingled each with each, that his unripe judgment could no more discern between them than the hand can disjoin the sunshine from the shadow that follows after it. After ransacking the bulk of German literature, he selected from out the rest certain writers to be his prime favourites. The choice he made reveals at once the bent of his mind, and the dangers to which that very bent exposed him. The schools of German poetry and taste are divided in Vilmar's History of German Literature into five classes. First, that which preceded Lessing, subdivided into the Saxon school, and the Swiss school of Wieland in his early manner; to which was akin the Göttingen school of Klopstock and Voss; second, that of Lessing and the writers influenced by him; third, the Weimar school with its three great names, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller; fourth, the later schools, the romantic, represented by the two Schlegels, Novalis, and the patriotic; fifth, the modern school of reaction against absolute government, headed by H. Heine. Of these schools, only the second and third gave M. Laemmer delight. There was a hidden sympathy between the qualities of his own mind and the exquisite critical genius and reasoning power of Lessing, which made him find the writers of the first class insipid and trivial. He came under the influence of Lessing to a remarkable degree, and if to that influence he owes the gain of an important truth, to it must be attributed also his acceptance of a most fatal error. That remarkable man, author, or, as it now appears, editor of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments, in consequence of that publication, had a warm controversy with the Lutheran pastor Göze, in which he forcibly showed, by historical arguments chiefly, that the principle of the Bible and nothing but the Bible, was illogical and false. M. Laemmer followed the course of the controversy, and found to his dismay that the arguments of Lessing had brought home to him the conviction that Lutheranism rested on a false basis. This was a great gain; but it was counter-balanced by a great loss. The ardour of his youthful admiration blinded him to the dangerous principles of indifferentism and doubt contained in his master's works, and particularly in his Education of the World. The third Fragment sets it forth as impossible, that all men should be brought to believe revelation on rational grounds. These principles, destructive of all faith and certainty in belief, were adopted by the young student, and warmly defended by him in a special dissertation.
Towards the end of his course he devoted himself to the study of Herder; and here again vague reading brought to him gain and loss, truth and falsehood together. He learned from this writer to believe in the mysterious action of Providence in the world; but the view he was led to form of the Divine plan was confined, superficial, and vague. He also gave much time to the reading of Schiller, in whose works he found an assault on the frigid deism then predominant in Germany. But, the deity which that poet brought so near to men was not the Blessed Trinity, but the gods of Olympus; and whilst his strains rebuked the philosophy which never rose above the laws of gravity, he himself did but serve the cause of epicureanism by his praises of the pleasures of the earth.