“Yet I hold all four evangelists as thoroughly genuine, for there is in them the reflection of a greatness which emanated from the person of Jesus, such as only once has appeared on earth.  If anyone asks whether it is in my nature to pay Him devout reverence, I say—­’Surely, yes!’ I bow before Him as the divine revelation of the highest principle of morality.  If I am asked whether it is in my nature to revere the sun, again I say—­’Surely, yes!’ For the sun is also a manifestation of the highest, and, indeed, the mightiest which we children of earth are allowed to behold.  But if I am asked whether I am inclined to bow before a thumb-bone of the apostle Peter or Paul, I say, ’Spare me, and stand off with your absurdities!’

“Says the apostle, ‘Quench not the spirit.’  The high and richly-endowed clergy fear nothing so much as the enlightenment of the lower orders.  They withheld the Bible from them as long as possible.  What can a poor member of the Christian church think of the princely pomp of a richly endowed bishop, when against this he sees in the Gospels the poverty of Christ, travelling humbly on foot with His disciples, while the princely bishop drives along in a carriage drawn by six horses!

“We do not at all know,” continued Goethe, “all that we owe to Luther and the Reformation generally.  We are emancipated from the fetters of spiritual narrowness.  In consequence of our increasing culture, we have become capable of reverting to the fountain-head, and of comprehending Christianity in its purity.  We have again the courage to stand with firm feet upon God’s earth, and to realise our divinely endowed human nature.  Let spiritual culture ever go on advancing, let the natural sciences go on ever gaining in breadth and depth, and let the human mind expand as it may, it will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity as it shines and gleams in the Gospel!

“But the more effectually we Protestants advance in our noble development, so much the more rapidly will the Catholics follow.  As soon as they feel themselves caught in the current of enlightenment, they must go on to the point where all is but one.

“The mischievous sectism of Protestantism will also cease, and with it alienation between father and son, brother and sister.  For as soon as the pure teaching and love of Christ, as they really are, are comprehended and consistently practised, we shall realise our humanity as great and free, and cease to attach undue importance to mere outward form.

“Furthermore, we shall all gradually advance from a Christianity of word and faith to one of feeling and action.”

The conversation next turned on the question how far God is influencing the great natures of the present world.  Said Goethe, “If we notice how people talk, we might almost believe them to be of opinion that God had withdrawn into silence since that old time before Christ, and that man was now placed on his own feet, and must see how he can get on without God.  In religious and moral matters a divine influence is still admitted, but in matters of science and art it is insisted that they are merely earthly, and nothing more than a product of pure human powers.