GERMAN WORKINGMEN

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 6, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 40.

GERMAN WORKINGMEN.

DR. RADE, an evangelical socialist of Germany, has been investigating the social condition of the German workingmen, and their attitude toward the church and religion, and his report is anything but assuring. Many of the social, democratic workingmen consider the work a hindrance to true culture and progress, and a means in the hand of priest and pastor for the benefit of the privileged classes; that church rites or ceremonies are “perfectly useless,” and are only “dead ceremonies;” that the Christ of history is not the Christ of the church, and that “if He were living to-day He would belong to their party; that many of the German workingmen know nothing about Luther; that by many God is regarded as an impossibility; nature is god.” Many seem to be infidel, all skeptical, and the most religious at sea. And that is about the case with workingmen in England and America. Having no knowledge of Luther shows clearly that the Reformation is indeed a thing of the past.