Note 91 — Chapter XXI · FREETHOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

A somewhat similar state of things exists in Holland, where the “higher criticism” of both the Old and New Testaments made notable progress in the middle decades of the century. There then resulted not only an extensive decay of orthodoxy within the Protestant Church, but a movement of aggressive popular freethought, which was for a number of years well represented in journalism. To-day, orthodoxy and freethought are alike less demonstrative; the broad explanation being that the Dutch people in the mass has ceased to be pietistic, and has secularized its life. Even in the Bible-loving Boer Republic of South Africa (Transvaal), in its time one of the most orthodox of the civilized communities of the world, there was seen in the past generation the phenomenon of an agnostic ex-clergyman’s election to the post of president, in the person of T. F. Burgers, who succeeded Pretorius in 1871. His election was of course on political and not on religious grounds; and panic fear on the score of his heresy, besides driving some fanatics to emigrate, is said to have disorganized a Boer expedition under his command;91 but his views were known when he was elected. In the years 1899–1902 the terrible experience of the last Boer War, in South Africa as in Britain, perhaps did more to turn critical minds against supernaturalism than was accomplished by almost any other agency in the same period. In Britain the overturn was by way of the revolt of many ethically-minded Christians against the attitude of the orthodox churches, which were so generally and so unscrupulously belligerent as to astonish many even of their freethinking opponents.92 As regards the Boers and the Cape Dutch the resultant unbelief was among the younger men, who harassed their elders with challenges as to the justice or the activity of a God who permitted the liberties of his most devoted worshippers to be wantonly destroyed. Among the more educated burghers in the Orange Free State commandos unbelief asserted itself with increasing force and frequency.93 An ethical rationalism thus motived is not likely to be displaced; and the Christian churches of Britain have thus the sobering knowledge that the war which they so vociferously glorified94 has wrought to the discredit of their creed alike in their own country and among the vanquished.