# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1864_S378
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

378 Literary Intelligence.

Among the characteristic traits of the so-called "free" tendency he
points out, among other things: thoughtlessness. "Where reflection sets
in," mostly awakened through Christianity, there "even the satisfaction
(which rationalism grants) ceases. And that may also be the reason why
this free tendency generally shows itself so irritated against the
adherents of biblical Christianity," which disturbs the "satisfaction
that it had until now drawn from the undisturbed sole rule of a
dreamily indulgent thoughtlessness." Further: waverings. "Wherever it
suits them, the enlightened appeal now to the pastors against the
Bible, and now to the Bible against the pastors. And although they
constantly maintain that they can learn nothing from the church, they
nevertheless seem to have learned this one piece from a piece of church
furniture, namely from the weathervanes on the towers, which point now
left, now right, exactly as the wind blows." Then also narrow-
mindedness. "Setting out from their prejudiced aversion (to
Christianity), they (the rationalists) also only want to arrive again
at that same aversion, and on their way there to be disturbed by
nothing in their aversion. If one thus assumes the desired goal of the
road in advance, what need is there then for further reflection and
effort to reach it correctly? One is already there. All their talk
really stays on the same spot the whole time, like oxen on a
treadmill." The Enlighteners will never let themselves be moved "to
study more thoroughly the inscription over the entrance of the Delphic
temple, which gave Socrates so much trouble his whole life long." "The
little book deserves attention."

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As a characterization of the "Apologetic Lectures by Luthardt,"
likewise only announced in the previous number, we share here the
following review from the "Freimund" of September 15: "In the first
lecture the honored author presents to us the contrast of world-views
in its historical development; in the second, the contradictions of
existence; in the third, the personal God; in the fourth, the creation
of the world; in the fifth, man; in the sixth, religion; in the
seventh, revelation; in the eighth, the history of revelation:
heathenism and Judaism; in the ninth, Christianity in history; in the
tenth, the person of Jesus Christ. The lectures are followed by notes,
which contain the documentation for what is adduced in the lectures
from other writings. The author was stimulated to these apologetic
discussions by the Pensées of Pascal. He himself says that his
apologetics grew out of the Pensées. Accordingly, his task is to
demonstrate the Christian world-view "as the only satisfying solution
to the problem of existence as a whole, of human life and its riddle,
of the human heart and its questions, before modern thought and by the
means of modern intellectual culture, so that one may recognize that
Christianity is the ever-young and ever-new [teaching], equally suited
to all times and states of culture, and