Christian virtues. The Sermon on the Mount is, as an English bishop once frankly proclaimed, impracticable in Christendom, if not undesirable. Not many years later, the best representative of the dominant German theology, Dr. Harnack, in his famous lectures on Christianity,[1] while definitely asserting that 'the Gospel is a social message, the proclamation of solidarity and brotherliness', denied that it could be incorporated into the laws and ordered customs of nations; because 'Jesus was no social reformer', and forbade 'all direct and formal interference of religion in worldly affairs'. Let us struggle, Harnack says, to get justice for the oppressed, 'but do not let us expect the Gospel to afford us any direct help', for 'the Gospel is above all questions of mundane development'. So he leaves the State to go its own way; and can suggest no more practicable ideal than a nationalist anarchism—'a nation of brothers, in which justice is done, no longer by the aid of force, but by free obedience to the good, and which is united not by legal regulations but by the ministry of love'. And this he bases on two texts, 'My kingdom is not of this world', which was, after all, only directed against militarism;[2] and
- ↑ What is Christianity?, English translation, pp. 106, 110, 121, 124, 125.
- ↑ 'My kingdom is not derived from this world (ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου); if my kingdom were from this world, then would my officers fight': John 18 36.
