My Autobiography: A FragmentMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
My Autobiography: A Fragment
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Asianists -- Germany -- Biography; Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max), 1823-1900
from the Psalms of David, and I well remember what a shock it gave me
when at Oxford, much later in life, I heard Luther spoken of like any
other mortal, nay, as a heretic, and a most dangerous heretic too.
When I was a boy I remember that in some places the same building had
to be used for Protestant and Roman Catholic services. All that, I am
afraid, is now changed, and the old liberal and tolerant feeling then
prevailing on all sides is now often stigmatized as indifference, and
by other ugly names. It should really be called the golden age of
Christianity, and this so-called indifference should be classed among
the highest Christian virtues, and as the fullest realization of the
spirit of Christ.
Thus we grew up from our earliest youth, being taught to look upon
Christianity as an historical fact, on Christ and His disciples as
historical characters, on the Old and New Testaments as real
historical books. Though we did not understand as yet the deeper
meaning of Christ and of His words, we had at least nothing to unlearn
in later times, or to feel that our parents had ever told us what they
themselves could not have held to be true. Our simple faith was not
shaken by mere questions of criticism, or by the problem how any human
being could take upon himself to declare any book to be revealed,
unless he claimed for himself a more than human insight. The simplest
rules of logic should make such a declaration impossible, whatever the
sacred book may be to which it is applied. Granted that the Pope was
infallible, how could the Cardinals know that he was, unless they
claimed for themselves the same or even greater infallibility? It is
far more easy to be inspired than to know some one else is or was
inspired; the true inspiration is, and always has been, the spirit of
truth within, and this is but another name for the spirit of God. It
is truth that makes inspiration, not inspiration that makes truth.
Whoever knows what truth is, knows also what inspiration is: not only
_theopneustos_, blown into the soul by God, but the very voice of God,
the real presence of God, the only presence in which we, as human
beings, can ever perceive Him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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