When the report went through the papers that a lieutenant colonel of the Prussian army had written a pamphlet entitled “Serious Thoughts,” in which he renounced the teachings of the Church, and that as a result of this he had been obliged to send in his resignation, it was regarded as a spicy bit of news. People sent for the pamphlet expecting to find in it the views of an enemy of religion; and behold, they were the thoughts, the serious and quickened thoughts, of one of the most religious and Christian men that could be found; but one who, like unnumbered multitudes of his contemporaries, did not regard the dogmas and formulas of official orthodoxy as true and binding—who, however, in contradistinction to the contemporaries that pass over this discord, considered it incompatible with his human dignity and his religious nature to pretend to a belief which he did not cherish. His demand was that the Church should cease to impose articles of faith that are in contradiction with the conscience of the time, and that instead of the narrow sects a broad, great, united Christianity should embrace all those who feel the need of a consecrated life, and who carry in their hearts faith in God, and the Christian ideal. Honest, solid, frank, glowing with inward warmth, was every word of the booklet; and even one who occupied a quite different standpoint—that is to say, one who had not reached the author’s degree of doubt or who had got far beyond it—could not but feel the one desire to shake that man’s hand. That it is not compatible with the position of an active officer to utter thoughts that are not merely “serious” but revolutionary, since they assail an established institution sanctioned by the State, was doubtless clear to the penalized lieutenant-colonel himself; and he accepted his discharge without resentment, as a matter of course. And where he had posted himself he kept his stand, with head erect. To be of use to the men of his time, to make a way out of untenable contradictions for them, to free the sacredness of genuine inward religion from external fetters of falsehood, was what had constrained him to write. And he felt himself doubly bound to continue the work that he had begun after a multitude had flocked to him waiting for his further leading.