Evening Post. SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1933. THE WORSHIP OF THE BEAST

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 105, 6 May 1933, Page 12

Evening Post. SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1933. THE WORSHIP OF THE BEAST

The "New York Times" of April 6 and 7 contains two remarkable reports from its Berlin correspondent on the scope and character of the Nazi movement for the establishment of a new evangelical church. Telegraphing on the sth he sarfl: — 39,000,000 German Lutherans—virtually the whole Protestant Church in Germany—learnt today from the papers that tho Church is on its way to become an annex of tho Nazi Government and ai^ "awakened Germany.'? He quoted Dr. Weineke-Soldu, the spiritual leader-of .the movement, as saying:— '. The Swastika and the Christian cross belong together. If Christ came back, He would be tho, leader against Marxism and internationalism. . . . They .rejected all idea of a Christian world community, all pacifism, and ,aH internationalism. The spirit of St. Paul, |vho outside of Germany is still regarded as a higher Christian authority than Herr Hitler, had a wider reach. God, he said to the Athenians, "hath made of one. blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." But, as we have previously suggested; the .catholicity,of the Apostle of the Gentiles, who^ was. equally proud of his Jewish blood and of his Roman citizenship, makes him just as much out of place in the Bible of the Nazis as the heroes and the prophets of the Old Testament \vhom they have decided to expel. Like Moses and Davidi Elijah and Isaiah, St. Paul j may have to stand down. He certainly would not have recognised in the tribal and anti-Jewish God of the Nazis the Master whom he served. In a leading article on "The Nazi Theology," the "New ,York Times" wastes .no invective on the subject, but does its denunciation by deputy in the form ..of a very apt quotation from the great passage about the worship of the Beast in Revelation xiii :— And they .worshipped the beast, saying: Who ia like unto tho beast? and who is able to war with him? and there was given to him authority to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth for''blasphemies against his1 name, :and his tabernacle, even them that dwell in the' heaven. \ • ' • '■ ; The parallel is very close, and might have been carried further with equal aptitude by including the appearance of the second Beast in the verses that follow., A passage which has' been the subject of countless fanciful interpretations throughout the Christian crq is now accepted by" the best authorities.as referring to the Roman Emperors and their persecution. of the Christians. The Beast "par excellence" is Nero, whose cruelty/is proverbial. The second Beast or "false prophet" is the pagan priesthood,' and especially that part of it which was set aside for the worship of the emperors. A more exact parallel to, the Hitlerworship which is plainly one object of the Nazi Church, and for the share of the false prophet in promot< ing it could hardly be desired. And it would be quite in accordance with precedent if perverse ingenuity discovered in the three and a half years for which the Beast's authority was to continue an adumbration of Hitler's four-year plan, or even, if he follows the Bolsheviks' lead and hurries it up, an exact anticipation. But the country which has' hitherto led the world-in these speculations will give it no lead today. The reign of terror in the German universities enforces a complete silence upon those professors whose "daring conjectures" and "Contempt for the Probably True" were satirised by Mr. Godley. ' . ' Who is like unto the beast? and who is able to war with him? There is probably no chair or Protestant pulpit in Germany where it would be safe to question even the spiritual infallibility of the great Beast who now seems likely to add a religious tyranny to that,which he already exercises in every civil sphere. Five or six months ago the.deplorable position into which the Protestant Churches of Germany were drifting under the Nazi influence was the subject of an article which was contributed by Arthur yon Broeckcr, of Halle, to the "Christliche Welt" and reviewed by "J.T.S." in the "British Weekly" of January 5. The appeal of the Nazis to pastors and students was, lie said, in this fashion: You, as:. a German Christian, ought to bo a National Socialist. And as a National Socialist you ought to be a Christian. Hail, Hitler! The appeal was so successful thai "masses of the people' have lost all confidence in the clergy," and divinity students in the universities were

throwing themselves into the Nationalist and Nazi movement and "thus preparing themselves for their vocation, for the work of the pastoral office;" The most striking part of Herr yon Broecker's counter-appeal quoted in the "British Weekly was as follows:— ' Christ appears amongst us today in His living powor and seeks pastors for Ilia realm of brotherhood. He wants something far grander than the "Third Kingdom" (of the Nazis); He asks for a National (^lnternational) Kingdom. All the great souls of mankind's inner history waited longingly for His Kingdom: Socrates, Plato,-Epietetus, Francis of Assisi, Herder,1 Kant. The whole inward History of human civilisation is striving towards that Kingdom. ■ The best Socialists and noblest Communists are yearning, all unconsciously, for the comingl of His day. Isaiah and Mieah had a vision of that Christian Kingdom as they foretold tho coming of a time When nations should learn war no more, when their swords should be beaten into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks. "that realm alone spreads beauty over earth and heaven and sets a crown upon' Humanity. It is "older in man's .imagination than the modern ideas o,f blood and race. These belong to an "animalistic conceptual range; Christ's realm of brotherhood is Divine. . The. breadth of < Herr . yon Broecker's Protestantism is testified by his inclusion of three Greek philospphers, two German philosophers, and a Roman Catholic saint, with the two most evangelical of the Hebrew prophets, as heralds of the Kingdom. His mention of Micah is even' timelier today than when he made it. As a Jew, Micah is to be excluded, along with all the other Old Testament writers, from the Nazi Bible, and he must be admilted to have deserved it. For, in addition to the great peace passage, Micah is also responsible for the following: — Ho hath shewed tlice, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord rcquiro of theo, • but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? These 'beautiful words are described by Sir George Adam Smith as expressing "an ideal of religion to which no subsequent century has ever been able to add either grandeur or tenderness." Justice, mercy, and humility;—these, according to Micah, are the essentials of religion. As every one of them is flagrantly and persistently violated by the practice of the Nazis, who can say that his book has not been properly banished from their Bible?