In the universal readjustment—or, to use the favourite expression of Nietzsche, in the “transvaluation”—of political and spiritual values which must follow the war, we may confidently expect a general slump in all German values. There will be a slump in German education and in German erudition, in German music and in German watering-places. There will be a slump in that “exclusive morality” for which Lord Haldane could not find an equivalent in the English language, and for which, in his famous Montreal address, he could only find an equivalent in the German word Sittlichkeit. But, most important of all, there will be a lamentable slump in the most highly prized of all German values—German theology.

Germany may still retain a monopoly of toys; Germany may still continue to supply Princes to the vacant thrones of Europe; but it is eminently probable that God Almighty will cease to be made in the Vaterland.

II.

No one who has not been brought up in a Scottish Presbyterian University atmosphere realizes the mystical prestige hitherto enjoyed by German theology. The education of a Scottish divine was thought incomplete, a graduate in divinity, however brilliant and devout, could not get an important charge, if he had not received the hallmark and consecration of a German theological faculty. And what was true of German Universities was equally true of German theological books. Publishers like Messrs. Clark, of Edinburgh, and Messrs. Williams and Norgate, of London, made considerable fortunes merely from their translations of German works of divinity.

The prejudice in favour of German Universities and against French Universities goes back to the early days of the Reformation. Already in “Hamlet” we find the serious young man going to Wittenberg and the frivolous young man going to Paris in quest of worldly amusement. That pro-German and anti-French prejudice has continued until our own day. In vain have I for twenty years attempted in the Universities of Scotland to send our graduates to French Universities. In vain did I contend that one single year spent in the Sorbonne provided greater intellectual stimulus than a whole decade spent in a German University. The old Puritan feeling against France proved too strong. Until the year 1914 the stream of our students continued to be directed to GÖttingen and Heidelberg, to Bonn and Berlin. Even in our distant colonies, even in Toronto, I found that the majority of teachers were “made in Germany,” whilst of American Universities it is hardly too much to say that many of them had actually become German institutions.

III.

The prejudice which sent Scottish and English ministers of the Gospel to complete their preparation in Germany was all the more extraordinary because Positive Christianity had almost vanished from the theological faculties of Protestant Germany. Even as Holy Russia has remained on the whole the most Christian nation in Europe, Protestant Prussia was certainly the least Christian. It was aptly said by Huxley of the philosophy of Comte, that Comtism was Catholicism minus Christianity. We might say in the same way of German theology, that it was philosophy and metaphysics and philology minus Christianity. Seventy-five years ago David Frederick Strauss, who would be forgotten but for the pamphlet of Nietzsche, wrote a ponderous treatise of a thousand pages, translated by George Eliot, to prove that Christ was a myth. At the end of his life he strenuously attempted in his “Old and New Faith” to find a substitute for Christian theology. German Protestantism travelled the road he indicated. The German people have ceased to believe in Christianity; but they have come to believe in the self-styled Anti-Christ Nietzsche. They have ceased to believe in God; but they still believe in His self-appointed vicegerent, the Kaiser. They have ceased to believe in Providence; but they still believe in a Providential German nation. They have ceased to believe in the Holy Trinity; but they believe all the more fanatically in the New Trinity of the Superman, the Super-race and the Super-State. And it is this new fanatical belief which has brought about the war of the nations.

IV.

The prejudice of our Protestant Churches in favour of German Theological Faculties proceeded on the assumption that German Protestantism was identical with Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. Surely that strange assumption does little credit to the spiritual insight of our divines. German Protestantism has absolutely nothing in common with Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. For whatever may have been adduced against British and American Nonconformity, it must be admitted that at least Anglo-Saxon Nonconformity was generally what it professed to be. Anglo-Saxon Nonconformity actually did refuse to conform, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism did actually protest. The separation between Church and State was a fundamental principle of Anglo-Saxon policy, and that separation was no ideal platonic theory. Nonconformists gave up their emoluments, they again and again risked their lives in defence of their principles. In defence of their principles tens of thousands migrated to distant climes.

For that very reason Anglo-Saxon Nonconformity has rendered inestimable service to political liberty. German Protestantism has never rendered a single service to political liberty, for the simple reason that its political practice has been consistently the reverse. So far from Lutheran Protestantism being based on the separation of Church and State, it was based on the confusion of spiritual and temporal power. That confusion began with the very earliest days of Lutheranism. Lutherans are inclined to depreciate the personality and activity of John Huss, the great Slav reformer, because, judged from worldly standards, John Huss seems to have been a failure. As a matter of fact, the Slav reformer was the ideal spiritual hero. The Teutonic reformer was in many ways a time-server. To Luther must be traced the principle that spiritual allegiance must follow temporal allegiance, that the subjects must follow the creed of their Prince. That belief was expressed in the Protestant motto, Cujus regio illius religio, and that motto even to this day accounts for the bewildering religious geography of the German Empire.

That servile attitude of the Protestant Church to the German State has survived to this generation; whereas the Roman Catholic Church made a brave stand against Bismarck in the Kulturkampf, the Lutheran Church has remained a docile State Church. This Erastianism is illustrated by no one more signally than by the Pontifex Maximus of Prussian Protestantism, His Excellency Wirklicher Geheimrath Adolf von Harnack. Harnack has earned world-wide fame as a bold interpreter of the Scriptures, but he has refused to countenance those ministers who were discharged merely because they acted on his teachings. In his exegesis, Harnack has been the most uncompromising of critics. In his religious politics, he has been the most tame of courtiers, the most pliable of diplomats. He has taken infinite liberties with the Sacred Texts. He has never taken any liberties with the sacred majesty of the Kaiser.

V.

The confusion of temporal and spiritual power in German Protestantism brought about two great evils—servility in politics and indifference in religion. But it also seemed to bring one great compensating advantage—namely, complete toleration of other creeds. People do not fight for a creed to which they have become indifferent. Frederick the Great gave equal hospitality to the free-thinking Voltaire and to the Jesuits who had been expelled from most Catholic countries.

That compensating advantage of religious toleration seemed to further the higher intellectual life of the Universities, and in one sense it did. But it must not be forgotten that neither religious toleration nor the higher intellectual life ever extended to the province of politics. The freedom of the Prussian Universities was always limited by the necessities of the State and the accidents of politics. With regard to religion and political thought, the Prussian State always acted on the principle implied in the cynical epigram of Gibbon: “All religions are equally true to the believer. They are equally false to the unbeliever, and they are equally useful to the statesman.” For three hundred years the Prussian statesmen have attempted to utilize the Christian religion, and Prussian Christian divines have in fact proved the most serviceable of tools. Unfortunately, in the process religion has disappeared from Prussian soil, and with the liberating influence of the Christian religion has vanished political liberty.

CHAPTER XII