THE BARBARIANS IN CENTRAL EUROPE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 135, 3 December 1875, Page 13

THE BARBARIANS IN CENTRAL EUROPE.

The torchlight procession which took place recently at Dusseldorf in honor of Dr. Falck, the German Minister of Public Worship, is said to have been a magnificent spectacle. Six thousand persons took part in the demonstration, and the Minister was enthusiastically cheered. Next day he received deputations from eight different towns, assuring them of their approval of the ecclesiastical policy pursued by the Prussian Government. I believe this expression of opinion to be perfectly sincere. The people of Germany not only thoroughly approve the attitude of their rulers towards the Roman Catholic Church, but would willingly see them go much further in the same direction. The rast majority of educated men in the country of Strauss consider the historical origin of Cb.ristiau.ity as purely mythical. They have made up their minds that the statements embodied in the creeds have no real foundation in fact, and that it is beneath the intelligence of a sensible person to discuss them any longer. Hence, unle«s some sort of religious reaction should take place in the national mind, of which there is as yet no sign, Germans will be inclined to treat the Church of Rome as the great upholder of historic Christianity with more and more severity. In short, they will hold that the Roman Catholic clergy are trading upon a proved imposture, and they will probably end by punishing them for that offence, just as the spiritualists were punished the other day in Paris. ISTor, if their present temper continues, will they deal much more tenderly with Protestants of the Evangelical type who sincerely believe in the literal truth of the Biblical narrative. Lament it as we may, the fact remains that Germany has rejected Christianity, taking the Culture and Patriotism as its gods. Since the last war a third god has been set vp — no less than the Golden Calf — the Worship of which bids fair to be the most popular of all. A nation of armed men, fond of money and restrained by no religious sentiment, is not likly to prove an unmitigated blessing to mankind, or to advance, in wonderful ways, the civilization of the world.

The names of the first three horses for the Melbourne Cup were brought in from the Albion at Hokitika by carrier pigeons, "which hdd been taken out by the Waipara.