In Defiance of Ruin and Death

“We are in God’s hand, brother, not in theirs.”

I begin with a quote from John Sharp Williams (whose speech from 1904 was posted on Spirit Water Blood in 2007):

But there was something else, and even a greater cause than local self-government, for which we fought. Local self-government temporarily destroyed may be recovered and ultimately retained. The other thing for which we fought is so complex in its composition, so delicate in its breath, so incomparable in its symmetry, that, being once destroyed, it is forever destroyed. This other thing for which we fought was the supremacy of the white man’s civilization in the country which he proudly claimed his own; 'in the land which the Lord his God had given him;' founded upon the white man’s code of ethics, in sympathy with the white man’s traditions and ideals.

Mr. Williams maintains that the white man’s civilization once destroyed is forever destroyed. What would he say today? Let us not delude ourselves and say that white civilization has not been destroyed; it has. And every white man with a heart that still “indignant breaks” is trying to come to terms with the fact of the destruction of white civilization. Is it really, now that it has been destroyed, gone forever? That is more than we can know or should seek to know. Mr. Williams, who was a white man back when white males were men, would be the last man, when viewing the ruins of Western civilization, to advise us to remain content with its destruction.

The European civilization was “complex in its composition.” And that complexity makes it impossible to rebuild it as if it were a cathedral or a statue, but I wonder if the reason for the complexity of European civilization might be the smoking ember that could rekindle a fire? The white man’s civilization was complex because it was the only fully human civilization. Certainly there have been fully developed human beings in non-white civilizations, but those individuals became fully human because they adhered to the ethics and values of the white man’s civilization. Kipling’s “Gunga Din” is an example:

An' for all 'is dirty 'ide,
'E was white, clear white, inside

The keystone of the distinctively human civilization was the faith of the European people, as a people, in Jesus Christ. Their link to Him, as evidenced by their culture, was sacramental; the incarnate Lord was all around them, in their churches, in their architecture, in their stories and in their traditions. It is indeed tragic that the Protestants who were once committed to a strict adherence to the Bible have rejected the notion that God became incarnate through His people. And it is doubly tragic that Roman Catholics who were once committed, prior to the revolt of the scholastics, to a sacramental view of the holy Eucharist should have joined the Protestants in their denial of the incarnational aspects of the faith. The unspoken, implicit creed of both the modern Protestant and Roman Catholic is that Christ’s thoughts became incarnate of the Holy Ghost through the virgin Mary and were made manifest to a select few who were capable of understanding great thought. Modern Christianity is Socratic, not Christian.

In order to fill the void in their souls that cannot be filled by Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, the modern European Christian has gone a-whoring after new Gods who can fulfill his need for an incarnational faith. The evangelical’s blasphemous attempt to make non-believing Jews into the people of God is one manifestation of the European’s need to see his faith embodied in a people. But what type of faith is it that can only be held by rejecting the central role of Christ as the one and only mediator between God and Man? And what type of faith is represented by the ecumenical conferences at Assisi where every faith and every people are glorified except the antique European and the Christ of the antique European? The end result, fast approaching, of the modern Europeans' desire to replace their lost faith in a European people connected to the Living God, is to elevate the Negro to the status of God’s people. They are the true evidence, to the modern white man, of God’s grace. Look around you. Is that smug, conceited look on the faces of whites with black children and black grandchildren merely the after-effects of a good bowel movement? No, the white European is all aglow because he or she has become connected to the people of God. It is a terrible thing to lack a living embodiment of God’s grace. The New Age Catholic and Protestant think they have found that embodiment in the black man.

Things spiritual cannot be proven by the dialectical. That is why Philip does not respond to Nathaniel’s question, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” with a Socratic dialogue. He says, “Come and see.”

If a man truly has eyes to see and ears to hear can he fail to see the difference between old Europe and modern Europe? The incarnate Christ is present in the former, and Satan is incarnate in the latter. The children of antique Europe danced and mourned to the Divine Piper’s tune, and they became fully human as a result. The children of modernity have not danced or mourned to the Piper’s tune, and they have become inhuman as a result.

The Shakespearean tragedies and the Bible share one central theme: the words we use to frame our laws and worship come from an “abundance of the heart.” It is evident that the post-Christian European has given his heart to the false gods; otherwise he would not worship the Negro and seek to blend Christianity, Judaism, and liberalism.

The great poet Miguel de Unamuno was right to write about the “agony of Christianity.” The Christian must face the tragedy of existence with only his faith in Christ to comfort him. When that faith wavers, and the Christian asks himself, “Suppose He is not really who He claims to be?”, then the previously fervent devotee becomes first a lukewarm adherent, and finally a full scale apostate, whoring after any God that can comfort him in the here and now. And the hereafter? “Best to blot that from my consciousness.”

The love for Christ is no longer in the European’s heart because he no longer believes Christ died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead in order to assure us of eternal life. If the European doesn’t think he needs forgiveness for his sins and he doesn’t believe that Christ conquered death, he will not feel any filial love for Christ, and as a corollary he will feel no love for the civilization that was built by a people who loved Christ.

The European people from the days of Alfred the Great to the last days of Queen Victoria’s reign felt that they were a people with a special destiny. They were Christian when the word meant something. Their faith in Christ gave them a respect for their culture which had been created out of love for Him. That type of faith makes a people determined to survive as a people. They have something to pass on to their children, and they know that they serve as a beacon light to the nations still shrouded in the dark night of heathenism.

We have seen the result of the European’s flight from the “agony of Christianity.” He no longer sees the European people as a distinct people with a special destiny. He no longer sees the need to keep faith with the past. Not only does he no longer want to keep separate from the heathens and show them the light emanating from His culture, he wants to be absorbed by the darkness of heathenism. The European’s headlong rush to the black abyss all stems from the transfer of his affections from Christ to the barbaric 'isms, technological and primitive, that Satan has created for the ruin of souls.

There has not been nor will be any manly Christian response to Satan’s bold conquest of the Europeans coming from the ranks of the halfway-house Christians. They are content to rummage around the ruins of Christian Europe and call the ruins an improvement. The Christian’s answer to Satan’s destruction of Europe will come, as it always has come in the past, from the Europeans who never ceased loving Christ as the warrior God who came down from heaven to lead them in battle against the forces of evil. The first Europeans got it right: Christ the Hero, Christ our Brother, not Christ the endpoint of evolution or the founder of a philosophy, is the source of the spiritual force that enables a man to hurl his defiant ‘no’ at Satan and all the forces of hell. The Christ story was accepted and believed by the Europeans because they had not completely forgotten the source of their being. The twilight of the gods was not the end of the gods:

Deep in the wood two of human kind were left; the fire of Surtur did not touch them; they slept, and when they wakened the world was green and beautiful again. These two fed on the dews of the morning; a woman and a man they were, Lif and Lifthrasir. They walked abroad in the world, and from them and from their children came the men and women who spread themselves over the earth.

The neo-pagans are a disgrace to the world ‘pagan.’ Our pagan ancestors bent their knees to Christ because they recognized Him; He was the God above the Gods who would fight for and with them against Satan. They had hearts to love, and then when they heard of the coming of the Christ, they had a God worthy to love. From that love came the European people.

Tricks and gimmicks from the halfway-house Christians will not restore the civilization that has been burned to ashes. Only the love, which passeth all understanding, that Christ has for His people can rekindle a fire in a civilization that has turned to ashes. The Great Heart is waiting to set our hearts on fire. The European hero of old, who we are all called to be, was not afraid to approach the living God, because he knew with the unerring instinct of love that he would not be consumed by the divine fire; he would become a man strengthened and nurtured by divine charity.

The European civilization is not like any other civilization, and its destruction is not like any other destruction. “So long as the blood endures” -- and it does endure in some European hearts -- there is hope that Europeans will see the God of Europe which the antique Europeans saw, then fall in love once again, and rebuild Europe over the ashes of Europe. +