SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1916. GERMAN CRIMES AND THE GERMAN CHURCH

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2723, 18 March 1916, Page 4

SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1916. GERMAN CRIMES AND THE GERMAN CHURCH

Ministers of religion in Germany have perhaps been mobilised as effectively and in the same spirit of cold-blooded calculation as men of war and industry. Much in their pulpit utterances suggests that they have. It is not unreasonable to accept these utterances as affording a truer revelation of the inner spirit of the German nation and of its moral standing and outlook than even its acts of war and the pronouncements ot its military an'd political leaders. Damnatory as so many of these acts and statements are, in the aspect of self-revelation, there is with many people a reluctance which dies hard to saddling the whole German nation with the guilt and infamy which Germany has incurred and earned aB a Power at war. It has been urged with some apparent force that moral responsibility for a submarine campaign with which piracy and murdbr of the ipost brutal and callous type go Ijand-in-hand rests first and foremost, not upon the German nation, but upon _ the military caste by which it is ruled and dominated. A similar line of reasoning has been taken in regard to the ghastly atrocities § committed by the German soldiery in Belgium and in other areas of war. Arguments of this kind are weak enough in any case, but they are utterly and finally refuted when tested by the character of the sermons which are preached in Gierman lohurches during these days of war, and received as appropriate, not -by men who are warmaddened or acting under the direct impulse of a soulless war-authoriij, but by devout and holy, citizens of the Fatherland in the cjuiet hours they devote to the practice of religion.

In these sermons, if anywhere, some indication might ho looked for that the German nation is not as vile to the core as it has shown itself in the conduct of the war which it has inflicted upon the. greater part of civilised humanity. Accepting as typical some extracts from German' sermons which were recently published by the Methodist Times. any such indication will ho looked for in vain. : That the extracts are typical there is no reason to doubt. They are taken, at all events, from aormons preached by leading German divines, and reprinted in the German newspapers. The translations were mado by the Rev. W. Burgess, General Superintendent of the Wcsleyan Methodist Missions in Italy. 'Pastor Zoebel. preaching 'in the Lutheran Churcn in Leipsic, spoke of German guns as beating clown the children of Satan, and of the German submarines as "instruments to execute th« Divine vengeance." The mission of the sub'marines, he explained, was to drown thousands of the non-elect. "There ought," Herr Zoebel goes on', "to be no compromise with Hell, no mercy for the servants of Satan—in other words, no pity for the English, French, and Russians, nor, indeed, for any nation that has sold itself to the Devil. They have all been condemned to death by a Divine decree." The spectacle of a Lutheran pastor exulting in the murder of women and baDies and demanding that such murders bo .multiplied is repulsive enough. In its revelation of the moral standing of the German people' it says more than the murders themselves.

But even this discovery of what, religion means to Germany is overshadowed by the blasphemous ravings of one Pastor Fkitz.Phxm.ipi, who said, preaching in Berlin, that as i God allowed His Son to bo crucified thai; the scheme of redemption might be accomplished, so Germany was destined to "crucify humanity" in order that salvation might be achieved. The , human race could be saved in 110 other way:—

It i 6 really (he said) because wo are pure that wo have been chosen by the Almighty ns His instruments to punish the envious, to chastise the wicked, and to slay with the sword tile sinful nations. The Divine mission of Germany, 0 brethren, is to crucify humanity. The duty of German soldiers, therefore, ie to strike without mercy. Thev must kill, bum, and destrov, and any Tialf-measure would bQ wicked. Lot it, then, be a svar without pity. The immoral and tho fneiide and allies of Satnu must be de«fxavad, eg &a eril pitutt is uprooted

Satan himself, who lias como into tho world in the form of a great Poner (England) must be crushed. . . . The kingdom of righteousness will bo established on the "earth, and tho German Empire which u;ill have created it, will remain its protector.

Nothing, perhaps, could better demonstrate than these lunatic ravings the depth of the moral abyss into which Germany has sunk. Lunatic ravings they must be called, and yet they arc not uttered by untutored souls in frantic heat and passion, but by learned men set apart from thi baser cares of life as ministers of l a religion of love and mercy. It is not a case of distempered passion betraying these pastors and nominal Christians into fanatical excesses of language, afterwards repented. The sermons were not spoken only, but were printed in newspapers and scattered broadcast through the land, and this must have been done with tho kuowleußo and permission of the men by whom they were delivered. Their abominable doctrines are enunciated after all the thpught and with all the deliberation possible to men capable of holding up the sa,vagest outrages ever witnessed in warfare between civilised nations as holy and commendable, and arrogating for the crime-sodden and fame-blackened German Empire the place believing Christians accord to God. Heine once said that Germany was a soul seeking for itself a body. These sermons rather prompt a question whether it is not possible for a nation to conclude the transaction ascribed to Faust and sell its soul to the Devil. ■ The Spectator, in referring to the sermons from which „we havo quoted, speaks of them as revealing tho mind of the German preacher. 'But obviously they reveal much more. It would be unfair and misleading, even in these days of war, when Church And people have moved closer together, to regard the sormons of a people as reflecting comprehensively its intellectual and moral outlook. _ But it is reasonable to expect in the public utterances of the ministers and pastors of a professedly Christian nation an expression of the highest moralitv of which the nation is capable. Considered in this light the sermons t'-orn which we have quoted are a blasting indictment of tho whole German nation. In the presence of such an indictment it. is mere to attempt any distinction between the German nation at large and those of its rulers anil combatants upon whom rests immediate responsibility for the atrocities which have horrified tho world.