PROTESTANTISM AND CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY.
PROF. GEORGE H. SHODDE, PH.D., one of the best informed Americans on German affairs, tells us that the "era of good feeling" which prevailed some ten years ago in the land of Luther is passed. He says: "It seems not improbable that Cardinal Weisman's prophecy is to prove true, who declared that the great apocalyptic battle between Catholicism and Protestantism is to be fought to a finish on the sands of Berlin. Nowhere else are the conditions more favorable for a struggle between the two on an equal basis than is the case here. In Germany Roman Catholicism is at its best and at its worst. It is at its best, because through its contact and competition with Protestantism it stands spiritually, intellectually, and socially higher than it does anywhere else." But about the same thing can be said of Protestantism, that it stands at its best and at its worst in Germany, and the saddest part of it is that the worst seems to have the greater influence. Germany is the home of Higher Criticism, and a large number of influential thinkers stand on that side. These men have deprived Protestantism of all power by taking from it, in the minds of the people, its source of power, the Bible. All that made Protestantism what it is in Germany was simple faith in the Gospel of God. Turning from that Gospel, the source of her life, Protestantism is bound to fall. She has nothing positive to present to the people. She is like a great, magnificent hulk on the theological sea, without chart or compass or rudder, elated with her own learning, wealth, and numbers, yet drifting on to destruction. Week by week the empty forms are repeated, and nominally the memory of Luther is cherished, but the living principles which ruled him and which made the Reformation and made Germany are almost wholly wanting. How can such a body as that meet the coherent harmony of Roman Catholicism, which, erroneous tho it may be, has a positive force and holds before the people a tangible something? Would to God that Germany would return unto her old-time principles, casting off all alliance with the state and with worldly power, and standing for the Word of God and that alone. Then could she hope to meet Roman Catholicism; but on any other grounds "Protestantism" will wage a losing battle.