Cologne, March 11. A few days ago the Rhein- und Mosel-Zeitung 
published a bull of excommunication against the pious Kolnische 
Zeitung. Today the Trier’sche Zeitung stands before the court of 
inquisition in Koblenz, and rightly so. 

For, in connection with Friedrich von Sallet, the Trier’sche 
Zeitung says among other things '*: 

“We have before us his book, the Laien-Evangelium, which without falsification 
reveals for us the holy, eternal truths of the gospel.” ‘“‘He” (Sallet) “endeavoured to be a 
man in the highest sense, following the example given by Jesus, and, as the true 
champion of the Lord, revealed eternal truth.” 

“Anyone who reads that,” says the Rhein- und Mosel-Zeitung, “and knows nothing 
more about this man who is given such high praise, would he not believe that Herr 
von Sallet must have been a faithful Christian and in his Laien-Evangelium must 
have preached the Lord’s word with fiery zeal? But what in truth is the content of 
this gospel? It is that false and pernicious doctrine which a Strauss, a Feuerbach, a 
Bruno Bauer, and all the apostles of modern paganism, whatever their names are, 
expound in lecture-rooms and in their writings for a narrow circle of learned peo- 
ple and so on.” 

As an authentic proof of its assertion, the Rhein- und Mosel- 
Zeitung quotes 

“a passage from this Laien-Evangelium, namely, that in which a parallel is drawn 
between the traitor Judas and the Christ of the gospels, i.e., Christ as depicted in 
the Bible’”’. 

The proofs cited strikingly demonstrate Sallet’s attitude of 
deliberate opposition to historical Christianity. 

A mistaken feeling of humanity may be offended by the ruthless 
polemic of the Rhein- und Mosel-Zeitung against a man who has 
only just died, but is not the apologia of the Trier’sche Zettung 

The Rhein- und Mosel-Zeitung as Grand Inquisitor 37] 

more inhuman, and equally offensive? Do I honour the deceased 
by giving a false account of his spiritual personality? Sallet indeed 
endeavoured to reveal truth, but by no means the truth of the 
gospel. Sallet certainly endeavoured to be a true human being, but 
by no means a champion of ecclesiastical truth. 

On the contrary, Sallet believed that he could make rational truth 
effective only in opposition to holy truth, and that he could make the 
moral human being effective only in opposition to the Christian 
human being, and that is why he wrote his Laien-Evangelium. And 
what happened? Did the Trier’sche Zeitung’s apologist honour the 
man when he turned all his efforts upside down? Would it be an 
honour for Luther if one said he was a good Catholic, or for Pope 
Ganganelli if one called him a Maecenas for the Jesuits? What 
hypocrisy! What weakness! Sallet was a republican; can you be his 
friend if you make a great show of declaring his royalism? Sallet 
loved truth above all; do you believe there is no better way to pay 
homage to him than by an untruth? Or are Christianity and 
friendship at odds in your person? All right! Admit it then, and say: 
Sallet was a good man, etc., but a bad Christian! Deplore that, if you 
like, deplore it publicly, but do not pretend that his works are an 
illuminating testimony to his Christianity. If you condemn what your 
friend strove for, then condemn it sans-géne as the Rhein- und 
Mosel-Zeitung does, but not in a hypocritical, devious way, not by 
praising him for being what he was not, and therefore rejecting 
precisely what he really was. 

Even if we admit that the Laien-Evangelium itself could give rise 
to such a conception, that Sallet here has by no means got things 
clear in his own mind, that he himself believes he is teaching the 
true meaning of the gospel, and that it is easy to counterpose quite 
Christian-sounding contradictory excerpts to the quotation given by 
the Rhein- und Mosel-Zeitung, that newspaper is still correct in 
claiming that he puts forward a self-made Christianity instead of 
historical Christianity. 

Finally, a few words more on the passages quoted by the Rhein- und 
Mosel-Zeitung! They suffer from a fundamental defect, that of being 
unpoetical. And what an altogether mistaken idea it is to want to 
treat theological controversies poetically! Has it ever occurred to 
a composer to set dogma to music? — 

Leaving aside this heresy against art, what is the content of the 
passage quoted? Sallet finds it incompatible with the divinity of 
Christ that Christ knows the treacherous intention of Judas and 
does not attempt to reform him or to frustrate the crime. Hence 
Sallet exclaims (as cited by the Rhein- und Mosel-Zeitung): 

Woe to whoever —in dazzled delusion! — 
Contrived to invent such traits of the Lord, 

And caricatured him to jet him retain 

This morsel of knowledge of man’s human nature.? 

Sallet’s verdict testifies to the fact that he was neither a theologian 
nor a philosopher. As a theologian he could not have been disturbed 
by the contradiction with human reason and morality, for the theolo- 
gian does not judge the gospel by human reason and morality; 
on the contrary, he judges these by the gospel. On the other 
hand, as a philosopher he would have regarded such contradictions 
in the nature of religious thought as well founded, and therefore 
he would have conceived the contradiction as a necessary product 
of the Christian outlook and would by no means have condemned 
it as a falsification of the latter. 

May the Rhein- und Mosel-Zeitung vigorously continue its work of 
faith and clothe all and sundry Rhenish newspapers in the 
sanbenito.'** We shall see whether the half-and-half, lukewarm ones, 
who are neither hot nor cold, will get on better with the terrorism of 
faith than with the terrorism of reason.