Prince Bismarck's Religion.

Evening Star, Issue 8399, 27 December 1890, Page 1 (Supplement)

Prince Bismarck's Religion.

[' Review of Reviews.'] On May 7, 1866, a young man shot &t Prince Bismarck, He was so close to him that the flash of the revolver burnt Bismark's coat, and three of the five shots which he discharged point blank at his enemy's heart were fired when Bismarck had him actually by the throat. One bullet grazed his side, another struck hiß right shoulder, a third hit him full on the ribs, but it glanced off, and Bismarck was practically unhurt. The surgeon who was called in said gravely, when explanations wore given as to the marvellous escape, " Gentlemen, there is but one explanationGod's hand waß between them." Hesekiel Bays: " The Almighty, the Lord of him and of Prussia, had mercy on him. He gave him a great sign." " From that day all vacillation in Bismarck was at an end. The Lord God, in His wonderful salvation, bad vouchsafed him a sign, and he again felt the full and strong conscience of bis historical mission ; he knew that he was the sentinel whom God had placed at the post, from whioh alone He could relieve him. Nor was this a divine signal to Bismarck alone." The memories of the battlefield, the realisation of the consequences of his policy, however, often haunt Bismarck even now, " Whoever," said he once, " has once looked into the breaking eye of a dying warrior on a battlefield will pause ere he begins a war." He has every now and then the bad fits of gloom, in which he expresses himself as follows, nor have any arguments any weight with him when he is so possessed : " Nobody loves me for what I have done. I have never made anybody happy, not myself nor my family, nor anybody else. Bat how many have I made unhappy ? But for me three great wars would not have been fought; 80,000 men would not have perished. Parents, brothers, sisters, and widows wonld not be bereaved and plunged into mourning. • • • That matter, however, I have settled with God. Bat I have had little or no joy from all my achievements; nothing bat vexation, bare, and trouble," BISMABCK, D.D. " That I have settled with God." A noteworthy expression which brings ns to the subject of Bismarck's religion. With him faith is the main point, not one creed or another. Yet Prince Bismarck is a Dpotor of Divinity by special diploma of the University of Gieisen, which was solemnly conferred upon him on Luther's birthday. This diploma addressed: "To the grefct n'nique man who has dedicated, and is still dedicating, his' life' to the servioe of three emperors, in unrivalled devotion, and who never wearies, never loses courage, and

fears no one but God, to whose providence in the destiny of nations he trusts; " and it is specially added that he " takes oare that the Evangelical Church shall be rnled according to its distinctive characteristics, and not according to a strange and hurtful pattern." Nor is it only the University of Giessen whioh recognises the Christian character of this stalwart member of the ohurch militant. When the Cultur Kampf was over, and Prince Bismarok went to Canossa, Leo XIIL graoionsly made him a Knight ol the Order of Christ. Bismarck's religious beliefs are not, however, left to be inferred from the diplomas of Lutheran universities or the letters of courtier Popes. A LIVING CHRISTIAN FAITH. In 1872, speaking in a parliamentary debate, he referred to an extract from a speech delivered by him in 1849, in whioh he had maintained that " a certain measure of positive Christianity is necessary to the common man in order to prevent him from becoming dangerous to society." He said : " Whatever in my former utterances may have applied to a living profession—to a profession of living Christian faith I confess quite openly to-day, and I do not flinch from making this profession publicly or in my own house, at any and every time. But it is precisely my living evangelical Christian faith which imposes upon me the obligation to protect in every way the high j ' office confided to me in the country of my birth, to serve whioh God created me." In the midst of the Franco-German war he expressed himself very emphatically in the same Bense : "If I were not a Christian, I would not continue to serve the king another hour. . . . Why should I incessantly worry myself and labor in this world, exposing myself to embarrassments, annoyanoes, and 1 evil treatment, if I did not feel bound to do my duty on behalf of God ? Did I not I believe in a divine ordinance whioh has destined this German nation to become good and great, I had never taken to the diplomatic trade, or having done so, I would long since have given it up. I know not whence I derive my sense of duty, if not from God. Orders and titles have no charms for me. I firmly believe in a life after death, and that is why lam a Royalist. By nature lam disposed to be a Republican. . . . Deprive me of this faith, and you rob me of my Fatherland. Were I not a staunch Christian, did I not stand upon the miraculous basis af religion, you could never have possessed a Federal Chancellor in my person. Sever my connection with God, and I am the man to pack up my trunks to-morrow, and be off to Varzia to reap my oats." BISMARCK A QUAKER. Christianity. What is Christianity ? It is not, said Prince Bismarck, " the creed of Court chaplains." Neither does he accept as authoritative the utterances of the church. " What," he once asked, "do these gentlemen mean by the church ? Doubtless nothing more than a totality of priests, their rights and their pretensions." What, then, is the Christianity of Bismarck 7 It is a curious product of many forceß, the one distinctly religious factor being—according to Dr Busch—Quakerism. When he attained his thirtieth year he married Johanna von Puttkammer, and underwent the spiritual crisis that is known as conversion. Like Cromwell, he had gone through a season of profound gloom, which Spinoza helped to darken, but the influence of his wife, reared in a household " powerfully moved by the spirit of Quakerdom," led to an entire change in his lite. " He became deeply interested in the more wholesome teachings of that particular form of pietism." The Quaker view of mankind and the world became closely blended with the sad, discontented, yearning sentiments by which he had been previously animated. Bismarck felt himself exalted and inwardly deepened, as well as emancipated from his retrospective sufferings, by the positive opinions he derived from the view in question, He had felt a huge void within him which by this means was beneficially filled up. So deeply was he moved by the new spirit that he even became propagandist, and sought to lead others to attain the standpoint at which he had arrived. A CONFESSION OP FAITII. The letter in which the Prince expressed himself in more precise theological phraseology than he usually employed was written to the Rev. Pastor AndnS, who had taken him to task for not attending church, for being photographed in a romantic attitude with Madame Lucca, and for having challenged Virchow to a duel. Bismarck replied, sayiog that he could not deny himself the satisfaction of replying to a summons addressed to him by an honest heart in the name of Jesus Christ. The following passages from this letter speak for themselves: " Would to God that, outside all the Bins of which the world knows me guilty, I hud not others for which I can only hope for pardon through my faith in the blood of Christ. As a statesman I think that lam too careful. lam even cowardly at times ; and that because it is not easy to discern around tho entanglement placed before me that light which springs from a perfeot confidence in God. Ho who reproaohes me for being a statesman devoid of conscience does me a wrong; he ought to begin by exposing his own conscience to a few trials in the same arena. Aa for the Virchow affair, I am long past the age in which one asks advice from flesh and blood. If I expose my life for a oause, I do it in the faith which I have fortified by long and painful conflict, and by fervent and humblo prayer to God, a faith which no words uttered by mortal man can shake, not even the word of a friend in the Lord and a servant of the church. It is not true that I never go to church. For the last seven months I have been either ill or absent from Berlin. Who then has been able to. take notice of my negligence ? I confess moat readily that I may have sometimes omitted to go, not so much from want of time as out of regard for

my own health. . . . As for the Lucca photograph, Mdme. Lucca, though a public singer, is a lady who has never been reproached any more than myself with any improper liaisons Believe me, we all stand in need of indulgence. I am among the crowd of sinners who fall short of the glory of God ; but, with them, I do not despair that in His mercy He will not take away from me the staff of humble faith with which I seek my way amid the doubts and dangers of my position. This faith, however, does not make me deaf to the reproaches of my friendß, nor impatient of their scornful, harsh judgments." HIS THEORY OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE. He believes also in the Christian State. For the Christianity of our forefathers an ambiguous moral philosophy is no efficient substitute. Remove the positive faith, and " the bare bayonet alone interposes between criminal passions and the peaceful citizen." The State without the religious basis is only a haphazard aggregation of laws. " Every State, if we wish to ensure its durability and to prove its right to existence, must rely upon a religious basis." There would be less objection to the doctrine of the Christian State if he always limited it to the following unobjectionable ethical principle:— " I could wish that a State which consists in a large majority of Christians should allow itself to be guided to a certain extent by the principles of the religion we profess, especially with respect to the aid every man owes to bis neighbor and to the sympathy due to the sad fate awaiting infirm old people." Faith with him means conscious realisation of an over-ruling Providence. He said in 1864:—"-The longer I am engaged in politics, the less J, place faith in human calculation. I am animated by an everincreasing thankfulness to God for his support, in the belief that He knows h,ow to turn even our mistakes to good, aeoount. This I experienced daily, to my most salutary humiliation." Again he said in 1878 in the Tribune: " J, live a life of great activity and occupy a lucrative post; bat all this could offer me no inducement to live one • day longer did I not believe in God and a better future." In that faith he lives, and in that faitjh he will die whenever the apEointed year comes, the date of which, as e believes has been revealed, to him, will fall between 1890 and 1894, when he will be gathered unto his fathers. II THIS LITE WERE ALL ! ■ This weariness of life, if there were not : something beyond, is a note whiah frequently recurs in his letters. He is t he sometimes says, todtmiide, dead tired of it ajl. Here is a oharaoterisjfci,o passage, written after a

visit to Wiesbaden in 1851 : " With a mixture of sadness and wisdom we went to see the scene of former folly. Would it might please God to fill this vessel with His olear and strong wine, in whioh formerly the ohampagne of twentyone years of youth foamed nselesßly, and left nothing bnt loathing behind. Where now are . . and Miss . . ? How many are buried with whom I then flirted, drank, and diced ? How many transformations have taken place in my view of the world in these fourteen years, among which I have ever looked upon the actual present as the true ? How little are some things to me that then appeared great ? flow mnch is venerable to me now that I then ridiculed ? How mnch foliage may bud, grow green, give shadow, rnstle, and worthlessly fade Within the next fourteen years, till 1860, if we live to see it? I oannot understand how a man who considers his own nature and yet knows nothing of God, and will know nothing, can endure his existence without contempt and wearisomenesr. I know not how I could formerly support it; were I to live then without God, without you, without my children, I should not indeed know whether I had not better abandon life like a dirty shirt; and yet most of my acquaintances are in that state and live on." Eight years later, writing from St. Petersburg, he reverts to the same strain: —"Be it as God wills ; it is here below always a question of time, nations and men, folly and wisdom, war and peace; they come like wavesand so depart, while the ocean remains. On this earth there is nothing but hypocrisy and jugglery, and whether thia mask of flesh is to be torn off by fever or a cartridge, it must fall at laßt, and then the difference between a Prussian and an Austrian, if of the same stature, will be so small that it will be difficult to distinguish between them. Fools and wise men as skeletons look very much like one another; specific patriotism we thus lose, but it would be desperate if we carried it into eternity." When bis only sister's favorite child died he wrote a letter of comfort to his brother-in-law, in which he recurs to the burden of the Preacher as to the Vanity of Life:— " How do all the little cares and troubles which beset our daily lives vanish beside the iron advent of real misfortune ? And I feel the recollections of all complaints and desires, by which I have forgotten how many blessings God gives us, and how many dangers surround us without touohiDg us, as so many rsproofa. We should not depend on this world, and come to regard it as our home. Another twenty or thirty years under the most favorable circumstances, and we shall both have passed from the sorrows of this world ; our children will haveerrived at our present position, and will find with astonishment that life so freshly begun is going down hill. Were it all over with us so, it would not be worth while dressing and undressing."

He reads in bod. After Sadowa he was found with his candles at two o'clock in the morning reading a 'French novel, Paul Feval's 'Hotel Carnavalet.' On another occasion his reading was very different. When he was summoned to meet the Emperor Napoleon early on the morning after Sedan, there lay upon a table beside the bed where he had slept two books, ' Daily Solutions and Instructive Texts of the Fraternal Congregation for 1870,' and ' Daily Refreshment for Believing Christians.' His Bervant explained that His Excellency was in the habit of reading these books before he went to sleep.