28 Contemporary Evohition. 



suspect that had Luther foreseen the ultimate outcome 

 of his Biblical criticisms he would have shrunk back 

 into his cloister and refused to aid a movement which 

 had in no way his sympathy. 



A recent writer in the Times has graphically pourtrayed 

 the present state of Protestantism in Germany. He tells 

 us : " Young men decline to ascend the pulpit. Already 

 many parsonages are empty, and more are becoming so 

 every day. To illustrate this astonishing fact by a few 

 figures: the eight Prussian universities in 1831 boasted 

 2203 theological students; by the winter of 1873 this 

 figure has dwindled down to 740. Nor does it look 

 more promising in western and southern Germany. Of 

 the two Hessian universities of Marburg and Giessen, 

 the former had 124 theological students in 1831, against 

 46 in 1873 ; the latter having 80 in 1850, against 10 in 

 1873. Even in Wiirtemberg, the most theologically 

 inclined region of Germany, the supply of young candi- 

 dates for clerical honours has so steadily diminished, that 

 whereas 48 were examined in 1823, only 32 were in 1873. 

 But what is more significant than anything else is, that 

 of the Prussian students of theology who matriculated 

 in the Prussian universities between 1851 and 1873, one 

 third abandoned theology before ordination." 



Dogmatic Protestantism, as such, is essentially anti- 

 scientific and profoundly anti-naturalistic, proclaiming as 

 it does, the utter depravity and helplessness of our human 



