# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1863_S65
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Volume IX.    March 1863.    No. 3.

Materialism, or the So-Called Results of Modern Natural Science.*)

It is asserted, on the part of modern natural scientists, that from day to day there are more of those who "form members of a spiritual phalanx that will surely, little by little, overthrow philosophical and religious mysticism." Unsatisfied — having, in their own consciousness, put to death the striving after that "which is above," the perceiving and beholding of that which cannot be seen with "the eyes of a cow" — our natural scientists, if we may credit this claim, draw ever more closely together for the purpose of bringing destruction upon all truly spiritual life throughout the whole human race. What can move them to this? Does the annihilation of the noblest, most blessed, and most sublime thoughts of which man is capable, which came to him through divine revelation, perhaps produce in them such a feeling of happiness that it drives them to raise their fellow men to share in the enjoyment? Or are they so convinced of the truth of the results of their research, and do they prize the possession of truth so far above everything else, that they feel obliged, despite all its bitterness, to force their conviction upon the world unbidden? Or do they perhaps feel the fact that there are people blessed in God as an evil thorn in their conscience, and do the social relations founded on religion, in which they must live, weigh on them so heavily that they hope to free themselves from this uncomfortable pressure by destroying religion? Or is it merely ambition that drives them — to be regarded among the multitude as shining bearers of enlightenment and progress, and to hold the privilege of prescribing to it what it must accept as enlightenment, progress, truth, and culture? Whatever the motive may be, it is a fact that this phalanx is unceasingly active in lecture halls, through books, pamphlets, and periodicals, for the destruction of Christianity. It is a further fact that a great part of the reading public, stupefied by the fine names of enlightenment, progress, culture, science, and intelligence with which that phalanx wraps itself and its productions as with a cloud of incense, their

*) A contribution by the co-editor, Prof. Lange.