THE RELIGIOUS SIDE OF THE GERMAN EMPEROR. T HE just appreciation
of religious sentiment is a quality not always—we might almost say not often—found in statesmen'. They are greatly the worse for the want of it ; they run upon all kinds of difficulties from which the possession of it would have saved them ; they discover, when it is too late, how greatly it would have helped on the objects they have most at heart. But they seem in- capable of seeing this until it is too late. They can only understand that religion is a force when they have fougba It and been beaten. The last quarter of the present century has furnished two conspicuous examples of this ]aw,—the Ifulturkampf in Germany, the quarrel between Church and State in France. The completeness of Bismarck's ultimate capitulation is the best measure of his mistake in seeking to found the German Empire on the persecution of the Catholic part of it. The position which the Army has assumed in France is largely the result of the persistent disregard which the Third Repub- lic has shown to the greatest of Conservative forces,— the Church. Bismarck, however, had an extraordinary faculty of undoing his own blunders. A policy which had failed, a calculation which had proved incorrect, had absolutely no attraction for him. The French Republic seems to be wholly destitute of this faculty. It clings to Gambetta's ecclesiastical policy in circumstances which, we may be pretty sure, would have led Gambetta himself to throw it aside.
The German Emperor is not the man that the Great Chancellor was, but in this one respect he is his superior. He does realise how great a force religion is, and how dangerous it may be to neglect it. This has been con- spicuously shown in the course of his visit to the East. He has been a Mahommedan with the Mahommedans, a Protestant with the Protestants, a Catholic with the Catholics. It is difficult to our Western and Christian ideas to discover any virtue in the Sultan, but at least he may be admitted to be a good Mahommedan. If his treatment of his Christian subjects is open to criticism on other grounds it is impregnable here. This, we may suppose, is the reading of his character adopted by the German Emperor. Before we can condemn the Sultan's treatment of the Armenians, whether in their own country or in Constantinople, we must give full weight to his religious convictions. The Mahommedan religion in its integrity has no compassion for Christians. 'Their lives are already forfeited by their obstinate unbelief ; all that is left to the Khalif is to determine when he shall proceed to take them.' Realising this the Emperor's course was clear. 'In Abd-ul-Hamid,' we may imagine him saying, see only the devoted religionist. His moral standard may be different from mine, but we occupy the same theological standpoint. We are equally faithful to our convictions, though we give effect to them by different methods.' No doubt his friendship with the Sultan has been cemented by considerations of policy. It is convenient for the German Emperor to be on the best possible terms with the ruler of a country in which there are so many German settlers. But in order to get on these terms with the author of so many massacres, it was necessary to find a new point of departure, and this, we can readily believe, may have been discovered in the theological aspect of Abd- ul-Hamid's acts. He was but carrying out his creed and obeying the convictions which that creed embodies and mp las. This is familiar ground to a Hohenzollern. It is the rendering appropriate to the atmosphere of the -Ottoman Empire of the old Hebrew vow, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."
Still, we may imagine that the Emperor felt a certain relief when he had parted from the official representative of Mahommedan zeal, and found himself once more among his own Protestant subjects. Whether the German colony at Jerusalem is as devoted to the promotion of Evangelical Christianity as the Emperor, may perhaps be doubted. But considering how many English people go to an Anglican chapel on the Continent and yet seldom trouble themselves to go to an Anglican church at home, we shall not perhaps be wrong in crediting this little outlying bit of Germany with a religious fervour superior to that of their countrymen at home. Anyhow, they had an excellent example in their Sovereign. Not only was he present at the consecration of the Church of the Redeemer, but he himself preached a sermon. It was a very proper Evangelical discourse, even if the Socialist paper which prints it in full is right in saying that it went with him to Jerusalem "with the helmet, the tan boots, and other paraphernalia." But what was said in the sermon matters little. Its importance lies in the fie that it was preached by a German Emperor in Jerusalem. The religious sanction is thus given to German commercial enterprise. The development of German trade in Palestine is associated with the triumphs of the "Blessed Reformation." There is not a sincere Protestant in Germany who will not feel that his religion has been honoured in the face of all its rivals, that the German Evangelical Church, which has not always played a very prominent part in Ecclesi- astical history, is now placed on a level with the Eastern and Latin Churches, and that this is due to the energetic piety of William II. Once more he has identified himself with one of the great departments of national feeling, and has earned for himself a devotion which may bear unlooked-for fruit in a division or at an election.
But the Emperor has done a cleverer thing than this. After all, to glorify the Church to which you yourself belong is not a very wonderful act. Where his real faculty for appreciating the force of religious sentiment is most visible is in his choice of the same visit as an occasion for honouring both his own Church and the Church which is its most persistent adversary. The gift to the German Catholics of the house in which the Blessed Virgin is traditionallly supposed to have lived with St. John from the day of the Crucifixion to her death must have cost the Emperor a good deal of trouble. It was in Turkish hands, and the Turks have sufficient veneration for Christian traditions a date anterior to the birth of Mahomet to indispose them to let another Holy Place pass out of their hands. This initial objection had to be got over, and it could only be got over in one way. The Emperor, instead of playing his usual part of a beneficent donor, must for once have become a suppliant. No doubt the Sultan, in his present mood, was well in- clined to do anything in his power for his Imperial guest. But in all transactions of this kind there is, to say the least, an expenditure of interest which cannot be repro. dueed at will. The Sultan has made a magnificent present to the German Emperor, and the use to which the Emperor has put it shows that in suggesting it—and it could hardly have been a wholly unsolicited gift—the Emperor had it in his mind to give pleasure to his Catholic subjects. The Protestants of Germany are con- tent to have a fine new church, but the Catholics wish their church to stand on some specially sacred site. Among the sites not yet appropriated by Greeks or Latins none can surpass in sanctity the actual dwelling place of the Virgin, and this, by the Emperor's own thought and care, now passes into Catholic hands. On its will be built a Catholic church, and in this way a new and conspicuous position will be given to Latin Christianity in the very home of the Orthodox Church.
The more carefully this act of the Emperor's is studied the more significant it will be found. It is the offspring, we do not doubt, of a genuine desire on the part of the Emperor that no section of his subjects shall feel that they have been outside his thoughts during his Eastern journey. But it is also prompted in all probability by a politic wish to secure the goodwill of the Centre in the German Parliament. Patience, organisation, unflinching devotion to a common aim, have reaped their just reward, and have made the Centre an exceptional force in German politics. How great a force, indeed, we did not know until now. Whether the gift of a Holy Place to the German Catholics will in any way modify the policy of the Centre may well be doubted. Its leaders are keen politicians as well as devout Catholics, and we suspect that no concessions to religious sentiment at Jerusalem will blind them to the importance of retaining that deter- mining influence in affairs at home which they have built up with so much pains. At the same time, we do not doubt that the Imperial gift will have a real effect on the rank-and-file of the party, and so may dispose them to obey their leaders more cheerfully when they decide to give their support to the Government. In this way the Emperor may perhaps find an equivalent for the offence he has undoubtedly given to the Orthodox subjects of the Czar.
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