# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1863_S246
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

246    Kirchlich-Zeitgeschichtliches [Church and Contemporary History].

sisters, and relations generally, which drew nothing but hateful barriers between members of the same species and only stood hindering in the way of the natural striving after immediate gratification, are unknown to the animal world. In vain do we look throughout the whole animal world for those scenes of torment, of tyranny, of fraud — for churches, courts, and prisons. Only of man could Mephistopheles raise the bitter complaint: Law and right are handed down like an eternal disease; they drag on from generation to generation, and shift quietly from place to place. In the animal world alone do we find the one truly natural right, that of the stronger, and the one truly correct, all-embracing cosmopolitan standpoint, that of ubi bene, ibi patria. Therefore it is in the animal world, too, that the most cheerful outlook on life, in its purest naturalness, is set before us for imitation and regeneration; to lead mankind back to it from its many aberrations is the great task of our age, so that, in the eternal and unceasing round in which all the constituent parts of our being, as we unceasingly compose ourselves out of animals into men and out of men into animals, we may in like manner, in every phase of our existence, given over wholly to the pressure of natural necessity, enjoy the glorious life of nature undistorted and unimpaired by the so-called innate moral law, whose several component parts prove, on closer inspection, to be nothing but — clauses of the criminal code. *)

Let us at last break off the monologue. Whoever still sets any value on what distinguishes man from the animal, on reason and morality, will recognize with abhorrence and horror the consequences and the goal of this new doctrine. The punishment of pride, which once cast the Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar down from his throne, has come upon the swollen-headed scientists of our age: the human heart has been taken from them and a beast's heart given them instead, so that, if it be still possible, they might lift up their eyes out of the depth of their science toward heaven, come again to reason, and praise the Most High. (Dan. 4.)

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Church and Contemporary History.

I. America.

The Old School Presbyterians debated, on the occasion of the meeting of their General Assembly in Peoria, Illinois, at the end of May, the question, "whether a church member, when he publicly and conscientiously declares that he is not yet converted, is to be excused from attending the Holy Communion." It was resolved: "to allow such an excuse, when the member is otherwise a regular attendant at worship

*) The chief passages of this monologue are, apart from the word order, taken verbatim from Büchner's work.