1834 PROPHECY

The concluding words of Heinrich Heine’s 1834 book, “Religion and Philosophy in Germany.”

Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal German love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals...Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder... When you hear a crashing such as never before has been heart in the world’s history; than you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll.

This is prescient of Germany’s fall into Fascism before World War II and the ensuing holocaust, but could it not be a reminder that America needs Christianity today more than ever?