Note 2 — I.

Mit Recht bemerkt W. M. Salter, der edle Moralprediger von Chicago, im Hinblick auf die bloßen Atheisten, in einer seiner neueren Reden, betitelt: »The Duty Liberals owe their Children«. [»A Lecture before the Society for Ethical Culture of Chicago. Nov. 1886.« Wir citiren nach S. 4 des uns vorliegenden Separatabdruckes]: »The liberal spirit in the world is simply a possibility. The vainest and emptiest person is one who thinks, that with the rejection of the old creeds, he has reached the end-all and be-all of wisdom. If he has not something else to give color and tone, and substance and purpose to his life, such a liberal is apt to be as thin and flat in his mental and moral life, as juiceless as any a man you can well find. Liberalism in religion simply means that the old order is breaking up but it is not itself the soil, that has been ripped up by the plow, but in which the seed of a new harvest are yet to be sown.« Salter spricht allerdings von einem einseitig moralischen Standpunkte aus, allein seine Worte sind in diesem Falle völlig zutreffend.