The Insufficiency of Intellectual Culture, Science, and Philosophy to Regenerate the Individual, or Bring In the Kingdom of God

The sixth great lesson of the year 1917 is the insufficiency of intellectual culture, science, and philosophy, to regenerate the individual, or bring in the kingdom of God. In recent years many preachers and churches have tried to substitute regeneration by culture and education for regeneration by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the instrumentality of the Word of God, and they have sought to bring in the kingdom by culture, science, philosophy, sociology, instead of by hastening the coming of the King. Indeed, they fancied they could dispense with the King altogether, and have the kingdom without the King’s coming. The year 1917 proves the utter futility and folly of all this. Every unprejudiced scholar knows that the highest purely intellectual culture in recent years has been in Germany, that Germany is the land in which what is called science and philosophy have blossomed and born fruit as in no other land. England, Scotland and America have been selecting their brightest men and sending them to Germany to complete their education. Germany illustrates to the full what science and philosoph and purely intellectual culture can do, and behold the result! Is Germany the kingdom of God on earth? No, it is the kingdom of William, the Second, and the Devil. The leaders in Germany, university bred men, many of them university professors, are displaying the most appalling brutality, the most conscienceless lying, the most shocking inhumanity, the most astonishing disregard for the most sacred rights of women and children, the most complete moral degenercy the world has seen for centuries. Germany’s “Superman” when he is unmasked proves to be the Devil. From this time on Americans, English or Scotch will as soon think of sending their children to a smallpox hospital as a health resort as to Germany for the development of their manhood.