The Christ Myth by Arthur Drews was published early in 1909, and before the
year was out its author was being requisitioned by dissidents from Christianity
of the most incongruous types as a promising instrument for the general
anti-christian propaganda. Few more remarkable spectacles have ever been
witnessed than the exploitation throughout Germany in the opening months of
1910 of this hyper-idealistic metaphysician, disciple of von Hartmann and
convinced adherent of the “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” by an Alliance the
declared basis of whose organization is a determinate materialism. As, under
the auspices of the Monistenbund, he
made his progress from city to city, lecturing and debating, he drew a
tidal-wave of sensation along with him. A violent literary war was inaugurated.
It seemed as if all theological Germany were aroused.
