Signs of the times: letters to Ernst Moritz Arndt on the dangers to religious liberty in the present state of the world

Front matter

ptJll^l

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LETTER III. The JabUee Festival — Bonifiice, his forerunners and successors . 61

LETTER JV.

The Sermon on the Tiara by the Bishop of Strasbourg, and the , Manifesto of the Assembly of German Bishops at 'Wiirzburg, in the Autumn of 1848 . 8T

Observations on Stahl's Dbctrine of Tolerance, as regarded from an Historical and Juridical Point of View .... 243

Letter X

Objections to Stahl's Doctrine of the Church and the Union, in its bearing on Law, on Religious Liberty, and on Free In-

quhy 2Y4

History of the tTnion 308

A Summary of our Inquiries with respect to the state of Protestant Christianity in Prussia and Germany generally 354

THE CONCLUSION.

The Significance of the Two Signs of our Times . . . 865

TABLEOFCONTENTS. xi

Appendix To Letter V

PAOB

A.

An Historical and Juridical Account of the Contest in Baden, up to June 1854 . 382

B.

A Project of Law proposed hj Professor Wamkonig, concerning the external affairs of the Church in the Province of the Upper Rhine . ... 401

Appendix To Letter VII

Documents eelatujo to the Recent Pbhseoutions.

A.

The Persecution of Domenieo Ceechetti in Tuscany . . .404

B.

The Persecution of Johannes Evangelista Borczynsld in Prague. 409

C.

The most recent Legislation of Austria on Ecclesiastical Affairs . 417

D.

Report of the Recent Persecution of a Protestant Father in France . . 41»

PASZ A.

Boyal Cabinet Order of 2tth September, ISIT . . . . 42T

B.

Boyal Cabinet Order of July, 1834 429

0. Cabinet Order oftheeth of March, 1852 430

D.

Cabinet Order of the 12th of July, 1853 482

E.

Eoyal Cabinet Letter to the Pastors of the Wittenberg Conference, October 11th, 1853 . . . . ' . . . 434

P.

Bvangelloal Consensus, as agreed upon by the General Synod of Prussia of 1846 436

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

Letter I

SIGNS OP THE TIMES — THE SPIRIT OP ASSOCIATION AND THE HIERARCHY — FREEDOM OP CONSCIENCE AND PERSECUTION.

Chablottenbbeg, near HBiDELBBEa, , let June, 1865.

My Dear and Honored Friend,

What mean the Signs of the Times ? Is it ebb or flood with us? Are we in Germany and Europe going forward or backward ? Which will triumph : Church or State, priesthood or people ?

So have thousands and millions asked since the end of the last and the beginning of the present century ; but never more Tiniversally and more anxiously than since 1848 — except, since 1851. Every one feels that the most opposite extremes — ^indeed, apparently, at least, the most fundamental principles of truth — are standing face to face, in an attitude of absolute defiance ; that decisive conflicts are preparing; that a new order of things is shaping itself. But opinions are everywhere divided as to what is destined to remain at the close, or whether perchance that close may prove to be the end, if not of the world, yet of the existing civilization and social arrahgements of Europe. The fears of one party are the hopes of the other ; selfishness and passion not only step boldly into the foreground, but bear unblushr ingly on their brow the sign of the highest and holiest. The incredible in one form or other appears to all parties and peoples credible, nay, the impossible, probable ; few or none of the existing powers or faiths are held to be secure.

Now wherever the free expression of thought is permitted, and the popular sentiment finds its organs, these contradictory principles, these doubts, this sense of anxiety, are clearly visible. But where this freedom of utterance does not exist, or popular feeling has not as yet colored the literature, there reigns a certain torpor, which to many seems merely a symptom of exhaustion and acceptance of the faits accomplis, but to others the most threatening sign of the times; inasmuch as none can tell how far it is a token of life or death, of indifference or despair, of exhaustion or of energetic and only temporarily repressed indignation. That new delusions have been detected, has not made old lies more credible. Confidence is demanded, but is not given : the duty of faith is preached, but its preachers find no faith, even when they and their sermon deserve it. Add to this, that the mistrustful are by no means all unbelievers, still more rarely thoughtless persons ; and that though the exclusives may be here and there the most influential, they are nowhere the majority of the people, nor yet the leaders of learning and science. Those despairing views of the world prevailing in Southern Europe, which have found voice in the immortal lyrics and meditations of the noble Leopardi, seem to be invading Germany ; may the causes perchance be the same ?

TTNIVEESAL ANXIETY. . 15

So far, however, we find a firm belief in the moral order of the unirerse, wherever free speech and free thought are not yet stifled. ' But it is equally certain that we find even there, though the feeling may be less predominant, a vague sense of uneasiness, and a gloomy pondering over the signs of the times and the interpretation of prophecy, which paralyzes all energy for united action just among the best people. For we can not recognize as interpretations of those signs, the opinions of such as believe in no moral order of the world at all, nor yet of such as are only capable of regarding it as it concerns themselves personally, or the class to which they belong. Those who deny any sort of moral government, see in the phenomena only chance — only the consequences fortuitously produced by particular persons or events. The latter, however, who judge all events and actions by the standard of their own advantage or their own selfish aspirations, do not really believe in the superhuman, truly moral, and divinely true element that lies behind all phenomena. The one class are the theoretical, the other, the practical deniers of God.

Such a state of things is certainly very similar to that in which the Roman Caesars ascended the throne of the world's empire. But there is now no universal empire ; and yet to have overlooked this circumstance is but the most pardonable error and the smallest sin of the shallow and sanctimonious writer Romieux, who three years ago delighted so many of " the pious" with his " Age of the Caesars," by the background of his picture — the hierarchy ! "

There is no doubt but these two sorts of unbelievers, together with the unenlightened students of prophecy above mentioned, constitute in many countries, at this moment, the great majority, although in various proportions. With regard to our own country, we may still thankfully acknowledge that despairing views of the world have neither got a hold on the mass of the people, nor yet on our learned men, or only in exceptional cases through personal discontent. The German nation has a firmer faith in the moral order- of the universe than any other that I know of. Our notable men of learning and of faith still to this day see in the facts of human consciousness, as in those of the history of our race, the confirmation of that instinctive faith of man in the moral government of God ; and find in the teachings of the Gospel, the same doctrine that is taught by all earnest and thoughtful contemplation of the universe.

Nevertheless, the prevailing mood of men's minds throughout , Europe is everywhere, and not only on the Continent, decidedly that of uneasiness. Hence it is not to be wondered at that many seek to explain this feeling by their view of recent events or those of a more distant past ; and that still more avail themselves of it to further the spread of the views to which they have specially devoted their efforts. Thus we encounter almost daily some new phraseology which promises to explain the state of the world and men's minds by means of some new or old formula, dishonest men who puff these nostrums, simpletons who believe them, and a still greater number of triflers who pretend to believe them. The Mormonites among the Sects, and the Rohmers among the CagUostros, are not altogether isolated phenomena. Hence, too, it is no wonder that we see the delusions and* the sophistry which prevailed in the period of the Restoration appearing again in. fuller force and with bolder face.

How childlike appear the delusions of De Bonald and Le Maistre, of Gorres and Friedrich Schlegel, compared

PEETALENT DELUSIONS. If

to those of the writers in the Univers and the Tablet, and many pastoral letters 1 How ingenuous and siriiply pedantic appears even the sophistry of Adam Miiller and of Haller, compared to the fecility with which their successors and spiritual comrades in the Kreuz Zeitung, or the historico-political periodicals, promulgate falsehood as fact, a paradox as a truth. And how powerfully are they seconded by the band of their juridical abettors, who turn necessity into a virtue, and force into right ; and by the unholy zeal of notable pulpit orators, who paint despotism as law and order, servitude as freedom, but, above all, scoff at the divine spark of reason within us as godless, and crush down the conscience of the individual as rebellion ! Are hot these things signs of the latter days?

And what, with all their apparent success, do they really bring to pass ? That the great mass of society in Germany close their minds all the more against any kind of mystery as mystification, and reject every means of exciting the religious feeling, because they regard them all but as so many attempts at galvanization on the part of the police. Once for all, the people stay away from church out of sheer aversion to a police-church. And can the exclusives believe that the people will flock into their church, when they openly confess that the great mass of the town population and the cultivated classes must be excluded from it, or at least given up as unbelievers ? That this feeling is rankling in the hearts of the people is one cause, too, of the morbid political excitement, or torpor, reigning in so many quarters. To most politicians, as to the masses, for this year past, all has been trembling in the balance with Sebastopol. That city is, to the one side, the fateful Troy, that must be taken at all price ; to the other the fateful Palladium, on whose rescue hangs the future of the -world and the preservation of the conservative element in our fatherland. Both these politicians and the masses forget, meanwhile, the realities around them, and overlook, or positively despise, the opportunity now afforded for useful, calm, unceasing, durable, if not brilliant and stirring action and reform. But "the Oriental question will decide our future; the elections will turn upon that." We look on at the strife; our old men sulk, and our young men — smoke cigars ! To lay the hands in the lap counts fo» wisdom, and is perhaps abnegation. The great body of the nation is silent. But never could the maxim of the jurists, " Silence gives consent," be less correctly applied to the state of men's minds.

But we, too, my dearest friend, have always held with those who believe firmly in a moral order of the universe, and think that we are speaking aa becomes Christians when we express our conviction, that both that order and the mental freedom taught by the Gospel have been acknowledged by the wise men of all ages and nations, and are attested by the world's history no less than by conscience.

You, my honored friend, our national seer of ninety, have from the beginning of this century held up before us of the past generation, as well as those of the present — the third that has listened to your sacred songs of faith and freedom, of patriotism and humanity — ^the torch of God's Word and' human experience on the path of Christian and truly German faith in Providence. The great men under whose guidance Brandis, and I, and many others, some of whom have now departed, while others are still left, entered on active life and the world of realities — I mean Niebuhr and Schleiermacher, especially — were snatched away from us at the begin-

PAST BXPERTENCB. 19

ning of the stormy period. But we ourselves have abeady left behind us a forty years' pilgrimage through a checkered and observant life, and we have passed these years of sojourn, not at home among books and scholars, but among various nations, and in divers spheres of activity. And this we can say truly of ourselves and our fellows in age and spirit, that we have striven not to live unworthily of the teaching and the solemn baptism of 1813 ; have never and nowhere denied our German sentiments, or despaired of the future of our nation or of humanity. Our first love is not quenched ; God be thanked ! not one of us has suffered shipwreck in this faith. All the more do we unitedly rejoice in your wondrous youthful freshness and courage; but we esteem you yet more happy in the absence of all bitterness in your conversation or writing, notwithstanding all you have suflFered from injustice and disappointed hopes. In possessing such a temper of mind you have borne off the high prize, the truly divine jewel of a Christian spirit ' and genuine philosophy from the warfare of life. You might have responded to the arrogance of the successful party of the last six years, as you answered in your " Nothgedrungenen Berichte,"* the insolent and shameless accuser of 1846, in the words of Goethe's Prometheus :

* " Nbthffednmgenen, Berichte;" — "Statement extorted by Necessity," is the title of a book published by Arndt, in 1846 — an account of the persecutions he had sufferred on the plea of so-called "demagogical intrigues." It was "extorted" because some evil-disposed person had, in 1846, again revived insinuations against him, six years after the king had reinstated Amdt in his professorship. — 2V.

Du mich beneidest

Bliitentriiume reiften ?"*

But not alone have you tamed the Titan-nature in your breast, but the love of God and our brethren has, at all times, found an echo there. In the sultry atmosphere of 1846,1 which weighed heavily on us all, you say :

* These verses may be ratter rougUy translated as follows :

" Yet must thou leave me My earth still standing,

And this my dwelling which thou didst not build, And my bright hearth Whose ruddy glow

Thou enviest me

Deemedst thou ever

That I should hate my life

And flee to deserts.

Because not every

Dream-blossom of youth bore fruit?"

t The universal feeling of discontent, of the instability of pohtical powers in Germany, had grown to such an extent in 1845, that the year may well be compared to the calm preceding a storm. Few things happened to denote it to the vulgar eye. Tet it could be discovered in the character of several bread-riots; in the habit which then gained ground, even among men in office, of ridiculing and regretting every existing institution ; in the progress of power made by the provincial Diets in Prussia ; in the threatening language held in all the "constitutional" States of Grermany; in the resuscitation of naiional feelings which had Iain dormant since 1815. Hence the immense excitement which accompanied every Hberal movement in Italy soon after, and the strong pohtical agitation produced by the King of Prussia's convoking the first United Diet in February, 1847. — Tr.

THE TRUSTWORTHY SEER. 21

And when, in the year 1851, many generous-hearted and brave Angles and Hessians were forced to seek a new home, and honorable grave, beyond the ocean, though your deep grief broke out in the song —

— yet how does it conclude ?

" Still I 03 rufet, du sollst beten,

* " Come, Grod, from Heaven, oh, come I

In grace look down on us.

And let Thy sunshine pierce the gloom

Wher-e we are '-wildered thus ; Guide us from out the maze.

Where, reft of wisdom, light.

Our path through wilds of error strays

Still further from the right."

t " Hush I it cries, and pray, Christian, Thou must hope, believe, and love ; Shut's the German world against thee, Open still stands Heayen above I

Nor haye you, since then, lost your trustful', joyful confidence. Where could this feeling be more freshly or youthfully expressed than in "your last sopg, -written . for the blessing of the colors, last November, Trhich is now lying before me, in your own beloved handwriting ? You, who have seen Frederic the Great and his heroes, sang in your eighty-fifth year, as you were nailing to its staff the ensign of the "Union of Veterans" of Bonn-?- '

Der Veteranen Ehrenspruch.*

Then let all tMngs in confusion, Fall and sink, and crack and break:

One, believe it, rules still o'er us.

Who the final word shall speak 1"

* " 'Tis not our truth that here we nail.

That must be done by God on high.

That when the battle's deadly hail

And iron storms around us fly.

Our flag may tell to all the field

The truth and honor of our band.

That in the fight we ne'er will yield.

For King, and God, and Fatherland.

LAWS OP GEOWTH AND DECAY. 23

Concerning the politics of the day, and the attitude of our country toward the great struggle between the East and West, we have exchanged few words. Conscious of a perfect understanding with each other in regard to the main point, each has allowed the other to shape out his own course. It was, therefore, very natural that my heart should be attracted toward you, of all others, when, at the close of the &st year after my return to my native land, I looked around me, considering whether the fitting season had arrived to discuss the portents of the age with friends and fellow-thinkers in the presence of the public. For you are our oldest and most trustworthy seer, and the signs of the times, and their true and false interpreters, are a never-failing subject of reflection and discourse with you. Of all stiU left to us of the "neponeg avOpamoi" of this age, none has a more liviug conviction — ^to none is it a more self-evident feet — ^that the belief in an Eternal Love as the foundation of the universe, is the source of all wisdom as of all true piety and godliness. With both of us, also, it is a fixed conviction that the highest conflicting questions of the day, and, in particular, the question whether the present condition of afiairs is tending toward rejuvenescence, or decay and dissolution, can not receive any decision except in accordance with those eternal laws by which the universe is ruled. And what these laws are can not be a matter of dispute among those who, in the

" And now your last and loudest shout,

And let your prayer to Heaven arise I Our truth diall ne'er be stained with doubt

Where'er this baimer o'er us flies I And when it tries in deed once more

The Prussian eagle's glorious flight, Our veteran's motto, as of yore,

Is ' death or victory' in the fight !" — 3V.

light of this feith, have studied the course of human events with Moses and the prophets, with Solon and Herodotus.

We may, perhaps, sum up these laws most simply in thefoUowing manner. Every human institution perishes in one of two ways. In the first place, when the special principle of life embodied in it dies out because it has run its course, and some higher development is demanded by the order of God's providence ; but it perishes too when its representatives transgress the limits appointed to man, which circumstance, indeed^, often coincides with that former inward decay. Quern Deus vult perdere, prius dementat, says a wise old proverb ; and the homely German saying, Pride comes before a fall, utters the mystery of ancient tragedy.

For every thing human is subject to conditions. Nay, divine truth itself, when applied 'to definitive human relations, is only true under conditions, and within the limits they draw around it ; but man, by reason of his egotism, is ever striving to get free of all conditions.

The first sort of death may be compared to the natural death of an individual; the second, to suicide, and, in general, to madness. It is this second, self-incurred doom which is the source of the tragic element in history, and which constitutes the magic power of the poetic creations of Eschylus and Sophocles, of Shakspeare and Goethe. Even the greatest and most glorious human energy and might are forfeit to fate as conditioned, and go to destruction, when they try to become absolute, and as such think and act. Thus the instinctive striving after unconditional expansion has its source not in the God-appoiated destiny of humanity in itself, but in the blindness of the selfish element in our nature, which desires to make the Me into the center of all things.

THE ORACLE OF HISTORY. 25

The moral order of the world, on the contrary, demands of each man and of each human institution, that this Sdf-Seeking thould be conquered, and freely subordinate itself to the Divine Whole. Hence arises a conflict which touches the moving springs of the world's history. For, inasmuch as the natural Sdf makes its own specific existence a center, it foolishly attempts to make that into an ultimate end, which has its true existence only in its conformity with the collective arrangements of the universe. Thus, every power that makes itself its own end necessarily works, so far as in it lies, for its contrary; anarchy for despotism — ^unbridled license for servitude ; while in so fair as the moral energy of men and nations overcomes evil in its double aspect, is the divine order of the world, and God himself made known.

This principle is no matter of dispute in our nation, or in Christendom at large ; nay, all men who are in their senses assume it, although they express it variously, and often confuse and deceive themselves with regard to it. Even in its application to persons and circumstances that have long since passed away, the judgment of thoughtful and well-informed men is seldom fundamentally at variance. But the dispute is concerning its application to ourselves, and to the circumstances with which we stand in immediate contact. Here our sense of right is sadly apt to be confused by the tendency to self-seeking inherent in our very existence; whether the egotism that relates to our own personal existence, which is strong, or the egotism of party or nation, which is often still stronger and more reckless.

And yet the possibility of any mutual understanding between opposing parties, or any adjustment of the conflicts of the present, lies in the mutual recognition of the claims of others, and the voluntary limitation of our own.

Now, it has always appeared to me the surest method of arriving at such an understanding and reconciliation, to start with a conscious and practical acknowledgment of. the principle we have laid down, and then to go on to exhibit it as mirrored in sometbiug objective. This, however, we can effect neither by a course of abstract demonstration, nor yet by adducing single historical examples ; but only by contemplating the wide page of the world's history spread before us, whose center is the Bible, and, above all, the Gospel. He who, .in its light, can rise to a comprehensive survey of universal history, attains, in proporticm to his mental requirements, a height from which he can look down ia freedom on the contests and struggles of the actual world. This is the only sort of prophecy to which our age has a clear vocation.

Does it not necessarily follow hence, my dear friend, that we can succeed in reading the signs of the times in an actual given case, only by adopting this method, but then may perhaps also hope to persuade others to follow in the same path, in order to reach the same insight into the true laws and actual condition of our world.

"We must address ourselves to the present, and the pressing questions of our own day. We must endeavor to penetrate into the heart of reality. We must fix a steady gaze upon those signs of the times in our own heavens which now challenge us to read them. And we must look at them from our own horizon, that is to say, as referring them always to the true, namely, the divine; center of all things. And I believe that I may especially hope for your concurrence, when I propose to you to abstain for this time from all mere politics of the day, and all confessional theology. Doubtless every significant portent of the times must have a bearing on our

ABSTINENCE FEOM CONTROVEEST. 27

political circumstancea, both those of our German fatherland and those of Europe at large, which are so closely interwoven with each other. Certainly, too, they can not be without effect on the theological systems in accordance with which Christendom has desired, or been forced, to mold or bind her communities for the last fifteen hundred years. But just at the present moment, and with the phenomena which we are discussing — some of which, indeed, we shall perhaps have been the first to exhibit .in their full proportions — there is clearly an imminent risk of dropping from the serene sky of contemplation into the dark clouds of political and religious passions, and instead of attainiag to light and peace, rather augmenting perplexity and strife. Therefore no politics and no theology in these pages, and still less learned controversies or acerbities ! Of course we must call things by their true names, and that can not please every body. Eurther, truth requires that we should not conceal righteous indignation, but only keep it within bounds, by remembering that the triumph of falsehood and baseness can be but short, and that pride comes before a fall. And least of all, I think, ought it to be difficult to us to hold bitterness and passion afar from our meditations where we find the like in our opponents. We preach toleration ; what a contradiction if we should be intolerant ! No, we will be tolerant toward the intolerant, and intolerant only toward intolerance. Motives of personal ill-will have, thank God, always lain far enough from either of us. Indeed we are not concerned with the ever-changing actors in the scene, nor yet with the religious and political convictions or systems which now divide the world. We recognize them all as Christian, and as having a right to be there, in so feir as they obtain credence. Nay, on the domain of theology, we are ready to. concede to the theologians who wish it, that according to their system, they are in the right: though, however, we know no theological system among Christians, which in itself would necessarily lead to intolerance and persecution so long as it remained within its own ground.

Of the two eminent men against .whose doctrine I shall have to express myself most strongly, one is entirely unknown to me' personally, and I have a sincere respect for his private character, as, it is needless to say, I have for his ofiSce. But with the other I have been for many years on terms of friendship, and I have never doubted of the honesty of his religious zeal, even when it a{)peared with a new ingredient which was to me unintelligible. And if I should sometimes exchange the straightforward German mode of speech toward them with that which in Socrates is called the ironical tone, this is but the softened expression of a deep-seated indignation in behalf of our cause, and justified by my sincere belief that my opponent is as much in earnest as myself in seeking for objective truth. And verily each shall find me ever sincerely ready to learn the truth from him.

Let me, therefore, relate to you, briefly and explicitly, how I have come to feel myself called on to enter into this discussion.

When on my return to my Grerman fatherland in the summer of last year, I began to compare what I saw there in traversing its various districts, with the result of similar observations and studies during my fourteen years' residence in England, two phenomena immediately arrested my attention as universal and significant characteristics of the age. I refer to the spontaneous and

THE PRINCIPLE OP ASSOCIATION. 29

powerful development of the spirit of association, and the evident increase of the power of the clergy or hierarchy. I had long since fixed my eye on both these fiicts, and endeavored to understand their workings, particularly in England.

The spirit of association, to speak of that first, is of native and not recent growth in England ; and among the modern monuments and public works of London, or indeed of the British empire at large, there is scarcely one that is striking or of any magnitude but what has its root in this principle. The British empire in India, the greatest in the world, has grown up in less than a century from a company of traders and capitalists. The great American republic had its origin for the most part in voluntary Churches and other English associations, and a future Canadian Union, which already looms on the horizon, will also take its place in the world's history by the strength of this same spirit. What but the spirit of association has called into existence, within the last twenty years, the gigantic railway structures, which throw into the shade the collective results of all that princes and states had ever been able to accomplish in the way of roads and canals, and whose erection has required more capital than the revenues of all the states in the world amount to ? And what has given England, in the same space of time, more new churches and chapels, and congregations of all Christian sects, than governments and hierarchies have founded during the whole course of the last four hundred years, but this same principle ?