DR. JULIUS RUPP.*
Da. Jurnrs RTIT,—if we may describe him in one of those somewhat vague and general fashions which are useful for those who know nothing of a man, and not without interest even for those who know too much to learn anything new from the de- scriptiou,—is the Dr. Martiueau of the religious world in Germany. He has the same profound belief in the reign of 'God. and the free-will of man, the same or even still more enqualified confidence in the inviolability, as it is called, of natural Id ws arid the non-existence of miracle, the * ROOFPII mat Religion. yy 1./r. Julius Iturip. Translated from the German, with a Biographical ,Sitotoh of the Author, by Madame A. 0, lttsuho, London : finaluel Tiasley.
same kind of strong spiritual imagination, though his poetical imagination is less remarkable ; the same humanitarian view of Christ ; and the same deep confidence in the value and signifi- cance of prayer. The book before us is a translation by Madame
Rasche of some very flue lectures on the last-mentioned subject, and on the meaning of the Lord's. Prayer, as the type of all prayer. We need hardly say that our own conception of Christ and
Christianity, of the reign of law, and the scope of prayer, differs very widely from Dr. Rupp's. Not the less, however, we recog- nise to the full the depth and force of his powerful mind, and the great strength and reality with which he has grasped the central problem of our day, the problem of the relation of man's will to the various wishes, desires, and conquerable or unconquerable forces,in the midst of which he finds his personal freedom placed for its training and due exercise. We have not had an oppor- tunity of comparing Madame Rasche's translation with the original, and think that in certain cases she has made an unwise decision, as, for instance, when she translates .E'rleenntniss, in its reference to spiritual truth, by "cognition." Cognition has not only, as Madame Rasche adrnits, a pedantic sound, but it is very much used in England to represent a purely metaphysical idea, —the mere contents of any self-conscious contact with an ideal object ; whereas, if we understand Madame Ruche aright, she uses it to express that highest practical knowledge of truth, which involves the surrender of the will to the power of righteousness, as well as the penetration of the intellect into its significance. We should say that though " knowledge " does not express all she means,—indeed, she could not find any
word which would express it, nor, indeed, does Erkennirsiss ex- press it, except by a kind of special mutual understanding between Dr. Rupp and his alumni,—the word " cognition "
positively leads the mind astray from the true meaning, which the word " knowledge " would not do. This is, however, but a very exceptional error. On the whole, Madame Ruche's translation is lucid and strong, and gives the impression of a mind Which has devoutly studied and firmly grasped the mean- ing of her original.
To bring the reader iato close contact with Dr. Julius Rupp's 'mind will be the most useful result of this review. We may say, then, that Dr. Rupp was born in Konigsberg in 1809, that he studied 'philosophy in the University there, and especially seems to have accepted with his Whole mind the teaching of Kant; that he took Orders in the Evangelical Church, and became a preacher of great note in it, but was condemned for his denun- ciation of the Athanasian Creed ; and that he was once impri- soned, during the revolutionary times which followed 1848, for some of his political publications, which were considered offences against the law of the Press. He is evidently some-
thing of what we may call a rationalistic pietist, having proposed to his religious friends in 1846 to introduce the word "thou," as a mode of distinguishing the brotherly love which was to unite them. Dr. Rupp is still living, though in feeble health, and with very much impaired sight, and is still looked up to as the head of the spiritualist Unitarians among the German Protestants,-7-those who take Christ, after his teaching has been separated by some sifting criticism from all that is
supernatural in his story, as their ideal of human nature, and who, while accepting in its fullest extent the doctrine of invariable law in the physical world, hold that the spirit of man stands above that network of physical laws, and can co-operate, — and even assert in that spiritual region a true reciprocity of relation,—with God himself. To show the power with which Dr. Rupp deals with that Pan- theistic conception which annihilates free-will, condemns prayer as a superstition, and makes the universe a mere product of "Time and Fate," we will take the following passage from his powerful lecture on " The life of him who rejects Prayer"
The belief that the world is governed exclusively by blind forces, sets man in antagonism with himself ; it estranges him from his true self', from his conscience. For what other means has man to test truth than his conscience ? What else can serve him as a spiritual eye with which to regard the whole economy of Creation; as an eye with which to encompass its height and depth, its length and breadth ; an eye for the visual angle of which nothing is too far and nothing too near ; an eye for which every point of the universe is at once centre and circumference ? If the forms or images this eye seeks to recognise are only dreams, then man is surrounded by an impenetrable night, be he ever so wide •awake. If we are driven hither and thither by Time and Fate alone, our steps must be tottering like those of a man who is blindfolded, so that he never knows whether he is not on the verge of a yawning abyss. Even his disposition, the only thing which to him appears to connect past and future, takes more and more the character of the unknowable. So man lacks every condition of a conscious participation in the work of Time and Fate. And if he notices how' in spite of this fact, in spite of himself, he retains the notion that in the course of the world some- thing depends on his decisions ; if he notices how this notion is at the root of his questioning and seeking, his cogitations and choice, his preferences and rejections, error appears'to him as the thread which keeps together the whole tissue of his existence, and life becomes so unbearable a contradiction to him that if he could pray, no wish would be nearer his heart than to beg that the burden of this exist- ence should be taken from him as soon as possible, and that'll() might pass into the order of those beings which to him appear to be like plants and brutes, free from this evil fancy of self-government."
It would be hard to present a true idea with greater vigour;. nor is any reply conceivable, except from those who have gone so deep into the reverence for illusion (as, indeed, some of our modern popular preachers have done), that they preach the. power of belief in an illusion as the one regenerating force in. human society ; and to those we would simply address this. question,—How are we to distinguish the illusions by which it is good for us to be deceived, from those by which it is fatal for us to be deceived ? Dr. Rupp speaks with great force of the relation of prayer to work. He recognises' the absolute necessity of work embodying prayer, if prayer is to be kept true, but he also recognises the absolute necessity of prayer preparing. for work, if work is to be kept real. Work without prayer, he- says, and very truly says, "estranges men from themselves."' (p. 60): Without prayer work falls into a mere habit, and the acts of life proceed like the successive situations of a dream, in which you never realise what the agent really is
"To pray, my friends, is to be awake, to watch. When we pass, from one kind of daily work to another, and from plan to plan, when we have to do our utmost not to slip away from the track prescribed to us by our vocation' when we have to be on our guard against the conflicting interests of reality, the ties and claims of family, of towir and country, we then also see the various aspects of life, but we do, not analyse them. We see them, as it wore, with closed eyes, like the dissolving pictures of a dream. When I say this, I do not intend to speak in a derogatory manner of practical life, for God has investedt it also with a sacred character, but work is not destined to reveal to. us the very essence of things, to make us find out theirreal meaning. It is only when we put work aside in order to devote ourselves entirely to prayer, that the mind can open its eyes and take posses- sion of the riches of its cognition, and can reveal to us the depths thereof. The worship of God is nothing less than this act of the cognition of truth and the contemplation of it," At the same time, Dr. Rupp preaches a very curious and indi- vidual doctrine of his own as to the true subject of prayer. He denies entirely that we ought to Dour out our mere desires or wishes to God. God, he says, has nothing to do with our mere desires and wishes, if we mean by that what will make us happier,. what will make life seem less of a failure, more of a success ; and he ends his first lecture with this remarkable apostrophe. and thanksgiving :— " Because Thou art love, Eternal Father, Thou rojeotest the foolislr prayers of Thy children ! Open Thou our oyes, and let us see that Thou host rejected our prayers even then when they seemed to have been granted. Open Thou our understandings, that we may see how often our prayers have been rejected, oven when we thought we came to Thee with pure desires. Help us to see clearly that Thy very love- most frequently must reject those very prayers dictated to us by our affection and care for those nearest and dearest to us. Let this thought, sharp as a spur, sink deeper and deeper into our souls that it may drive out our imaginary griefs that we may feel with souls, acuteness that our souls still crave and mourn for that which those never miss who walk in Thy sight. Compel Thou us to recognise that every time Thou rejectest 'our prayers, the burden which we have ourselves put upon our shoulders, the chains which we have entangled aronnd us, are taken from us ! We thank Thee, Eternal Father, for every one of Thy denials ! Only when this Thy love that brings the- denial has quickened us to love, then only can we obtain the neces- sary vigour to throw off the burden of imaginary benefits, and to. break the chains of vanity. Then only we walk in ease and safety on the tossing waves of time and fate."
That passage, and the whole chain of dootrine with which it is connected, seems to us to push a very ascetic view of prayer to an extravagant limit. To our minds, the true view of ' prayer is, that recognising our weakness and shortsightedness, we should, nevertheless, confide to God all we desire, all we would wish to desire but cannot yet desire, and all we resolve, or fail to resolve but know that we ought to resolve, and ask for God's full and final judgment on all, whether that be denial or acceptance of what we ask. But to speak of our life as Dr. Rupp does, as if by far the larger portion of our external circumstances were determined by God's natural laws, without any relation at all to our personal needs, and as if the refusal of our desires were necessarily more divine than the granting of them, is to assume a sort of knowledge which, so far as we know, is not knowledge at all, but loose conjecture.
suggested by scientific moods of thought, and to banish all the- freedom and freshness from the communion of the soul with God. When, for example, Dr. Rupp Hays, "The wishes that rise in our hearts "are not intended to lead to any special object that could be considered as the fulfilment of them ; they are intended to give to man the opportunity of recognising his liberty, and of bringing it into activity,—to procure for him the opportunity of becoming acquainted with God and himself,"—he surely denies that which he denies on no evidence at all. As regards the positive part of his assertion, his statement is not only true but of the first importance. Whether our wishes are to lead to their own fulfilment or not, they certainly are given us to exercise our moral freedom, to help us to choose between what is high and what is low, between juktice and ambition, be- tween God and man. But how in the world does Dr. Rupp or any one else know that they are given us for no other and further purpose than this ? Is the commencement of human love, for instance, never intended to be prophetic of the mutual knowledge, mutual aid, mutual sympathy, and mutual sacrifice which so 'often result from it ? It may be, of course, that Buell a beginning of love has no fulfilment, no completion in the relations of this world ; but how often has it not the most important fulfilment, one with the growth of which the whole education of our lives is bound up ? It seems to us that the weakness and sterility of Dr. Rupp's religious philo- sophy arises entirely in this aatounding dognia,—that the will of man, and the will alone, is the arena of his spiritual life. Doubtless, it is the centre of that life. Doubtless, without recognising man's free-will in the fullest way, there would be no human personality, no-faith, no religion. But equally certain does it seem to us that this centre of spiritual life once ad- mitted, it is a strange blunder to confine the relation borne by God to the soul, to the region of spiritual volition. If God does not teach us by our human affections, and by our involuntary human affections, we may say with some confidence that he does not teach us at all • Yet the philosophy of Dr. Rupp would shut out the whole region of our affections and desires from the region of legitimate prayer altogether. And on this side, as we think, the weakness' of this remarkable man's belief lies. He is apt, too, at times to become dreamy. , His two lectures on "Hallowed be Thy Name," in which he tries to make out that the Name of God includes all human language, and that the drift of the prayer is that we may use all language —language concerning the smallest and most concrete things, as well as the language of conscience and religion,—in the spirit of worship, seems to us visionary and wholly wanting in substance. Nevertheless, we are sure that the more study thinking people give to this book of Dr. Rupp's, the more they will admire the masculine vigour of the thought, and the more they will venerate the man.
Previous page