b of Peasants," which might have come from the Reverend
Woelfkin, Fifth Avenue Pastor of Standard Oil: "The ass needs to be
beaten, and the populace needs to be controlled with a strong hand.
God knew this well, and therefore he gave the rulers, not a fox's
tail, but a sword." He implored these rulers, after the fashion of
Methodist Chancellor Day of the University of Syracuse: "Do not be
troubled about the severity of their repression, for it will save many
souls." With such pious exhortations in their ears the princes set to
work, and slaughtered a hundred thousand of the miserable wretches;
they completely aborted the social hopes of the Reformation, and cast
humanity into the pit of wage-slavery and militarism for four
centuries. As a church scholar, Prof. Rauschenbusch, puts it:

The glorious years of the Lutheran Reformation were from
1517 to 1525, when the whole nation was in commotion, and a
great revolutionary tidal wave seemed to be sweeping every
class and every higher interest one step nearer to its ideal
of life.... The Lutheran Reformation had been most truly
religious and creative when it embraced the whole of human
life and enlisted the enthusiasm of all ideal men and
movements. When it became "religious" in the narrow sense,
it grew scholastic and spiny, quarrelsome, and impotent to
awaken high enthusiasm and noble life.

#Deutschland ueber Alles#

As a result of Luther's treason to humanity, his church became the
state church of Prussia, and Bible-worship and Devil-terror played
their part, along with the Mass and the Confessional, in building up
the Junker dream. A court official--the Oberhofprediger--was set up,
and from that time on the Hohenzollerns were the most pious criminals
in Europe. Frederick the Great, the ancestral genius, was an atheist
and a scoffer, but he believed devoutly in religion for his subjects.
He said: "If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one would remain
in the ranks." And Carlyle, instinctive friend of autocrats, tells
with jocular approval how he kept them from thinking:

He recognizes the uses of Religion; takes a good deal of
pains with his Preaching Clergy; will suggest texts to them;
and for the rest expects to be obeyed by them, as by his
Sergeants and Corporals. Indeed, the reverend men feel
themselves to be a body of Spiritual Sergeants, Corporals,
and Captains, to whom obedie