RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Wager of Battle, Duel
under public law; no more decisive is the fact that in the duel the innocent often suffers and the guilty goes free, for this occurs in public administration of justice; and the Christian idea of honor does not come into the account, since it is conceivable that love for one’s neighbor may involve one legitimately in the duel. Abstract and applied ethics are different things. The Christianity of the individual is bound up with a nature in which are ingrown native instincts and prejudices, while the individual moves in an environment in which values are fixed by custom. Hence it results that he has to take account of an honor of position as well as of that honor which is his as a Christian. Each class has something of this, and sometimes with opposite results. A pastor is by a duel made unfit for his office, an army officer may not refuse a duel on pain of losing his position and the honor due to it; yet both have as Christians the same honor. The same conduct can not be exacted of these two men in their diverse associations. For the officer in the army honor of position is a vital thing. If the conditions of life are wrong, the task is to change them; if honor of position is unwarranted, it is to be set aside, and the way is to be prepared for abolishing the duel. Christianity has to deal with analogous conditions, such as the compulsory oath, religious education, baptism, and the like; in the mission field polygamy has to be tolerated. The reason for these things is the imperfection of the state of society. So with society in Germany, where class distinctions are sanctioned at least tacitly by the Church, out of which distinctions grows the duel. Indeed, the latter is rather a symptom. To abolish dueling there is necessary a revulsion of public sentiment, which must work against what is at present an exceedingly strongly entrenched feeling. Even those who maintain the code of honor must work for the alleviation of the duel, for the removal of false positions and the improvement of the code. In the duel, in its very operation, the moral vagabond assumes the position of the morally upright, the innocent stands on the same plane as the guilty. Could this alleged equality, but real inequality, be abolished, the conception of the honor of position would be purified and a way opened for a conservative estimate of the duel which would lead to its inclusion within the strict path of Christian duty. (M. Rave.) Brpiiograpny: Lists of literature on the subject are: Hauck- Herzog, RH, xxi. 759-760 (giving titles of books, mainly in German, issued during the controversy in Germany, 1896 sqq., concerning the duel, decided in favor of the practise by public opinion and the emperor); C. A. Thimm, Bibliography of Fencing and Duelling, London, 1896; G. E. Levi and J. Gelli, Bibliografia del Duello, Milan, 1903. An excellent review of the history of the wager of battle is H. C. Lea, Superstition and Force, pp. 93-216, Philadelphia, 1878. Literature which deals with the subject will be found under OrpEAL. Consult further: Thatcher and McNeal, Source Book, pp. 388-400; J. Milligan. Hist. of Duelling, 2 vols., London, 1841; A. Steinmetz, The Romance of Duelling, 2 vols., London, 1868; C. de Massi, The Hist. of Duelling, London, 1880; B. C. Truman, The Field of Honour, New York, 1884; J. Gelli, Zl Duello nella storia della giurisprudenza, Florence, 1886; A. von Oppenheim, Das Wesen des Duello, Vienna, 1887; GC. Thuemmel, Der gerichtliche Zweikampf und das heutige Duell, Hamburg, 1887; J. Cockburn, Hist. of Duels, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1888; G. Neilson, Trial by Combat, Glasgow, 1890; G.
Wagner Waleus
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Letainturier-Fradin, Le Duel & travers les dges, Paris, 1892; Vidal de Saint-Urbain, Le Duel sous l’ancien régime et de nos jours, Dijon, 1892; C. de Smedt, Le Duel judiciarre et Véglise, Paris, 1895; A. Wiesinger, Das Duell vor dem Richterstuhle der Religion, Graz, 1895; H. Pierquin, La Juridiction du point d’honneur sous l’ancien régime, Paris, 1904; H. Fehr, Der Zweikampf, Berlin, 1908; C. L. Brace, Gesta Christi, chap. xiv., new issue, London and New York, 1911.
WAGNER, vaH’ner, CARL JULIUS IMMANUEL: German Evangelical; b. at Greifenberg (125 m. n.w. of Berlin) Oct. 5, 1847. He served as field chaplain during the Franco-Prussian war; taught in private families and in secondary schools, 1871-73, passing meanwhile his theological examinations; was assistant preacher for the German Reformed congregation in Budapest, 1873-76; pastor of the German Evangelical Church at Sydenham, London, 1876-90; traveling preacher for the Innere Mission, 1890-93; pastor at Pritzerbe (Havel), 1894-1904; and since 1904 has been in charge of the Westdeutscher Verein fiir Israel. He is the author of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Lebensbild (Berlin, 1893); Was sagt Christus von den Juden? Hin Beitrag zur Lésung der Judenfrage (1893); Volkserholungen im Lichte des Evangeliums (Darmstadt, 1893); Die Sittlichkett auf dem Lande (Leipsic, 1895); Zur Frage der Sittlichkeit unter der Landbevilkerung (1897); Auf zum Kampf wider die liéndliche Unzucht (Hanover, 1898); Angelikas Weihnachten (Darmstadt, 1904); and Jean Baptist Harth (Leipsic, 1904).
BrsiiocRarHy: A. F. Sanborn, in Review of Reviews, xxx (1904), 329-331; G. King, in Outlook, 1907, pp. 198-204.
WAGNER, CHARLES: French: Protestant; b. at Wibersviller (20 m. n.e. of Nancy), district of Chateau Salins, Lorraine, Germany, Jan. 3, 1852. His father was the pastor of the village Lutheran church. Two years afterward he became pastor at Tiefenbach, some sixty miles eastward, and there Charles Wagner got his elementary education. From 1866 to 1869 he studied in Paris and took the degree of B.A. He then went to Strasburg for theological study, but ended his studies at G6ttingen in 1875. He served for a year at Barr, at the foot of Mount St. Odile in the Central Vosges Mountains. Up to this time his associations had been with Lutherans and the German language. But in 1876 he left Germany and began ministerial service in connection with the liberal wing of the French Protestant Church. He was first pastor at Remiremont, 50 m. s.e. of Nancy. In 1882 he went to Paris. Beginning in a modest way, he won prominence and fame. Besides his strictly pastoral and preaching duties, he interested himself in the uplift of the working classes. With Paul Desjardins he founded “The Union for Moral Action,” and cooperated in the university extension courses. He is the author of the following books: Justice (Paris, 1889; crowned by the French Academy); Jeunesse (1892); Vaillance (1893); La Vie simple (1895; crowned by the French Academy); Le Long du chemin (1896); L/Evangile et la vie (1897); Auprés du foyer (1898); Sots un homme (1899); L’ Ame des choses (1900); L’ Ami (1902); Histoire et farciboles (1904); Pour les petits et les grands (1907); Par la lot vers la liberté (1908). The following are the titles of the English translations of his works, arranged chronologically;
places of publication, London and New York: Youth (1893); Courage (1894); The Simple Life (1903); The Better Way (1905); By the Fireside (1904); The Voice of Nature (1904); The Busy Life (1904); My Appeal to America (1905); The Gospel of Life (1905); On Life’s Threshold (1905); Justice (1905); The Upright Life (1905); Towards the Heights (1906); Wayside Talks (1906); Home of the Soul (1909). x
WAHABEES, wa-ha’biz: Adherents of a reforming sect of Mohammedans. The name is derived from that of the founder, Mohammed ibn Abd al- Wahab (b. in 1691 at Horemeleh, a town in the Nejd, Central Arabia; d. in 1787). In his early days he traveled extensively, perhaps as far as India; and, comparing Mohammedan life, practise, and theology with his reading of the Koran, he concluded that the essence of the faith was no longer held, its primitive faith no more maintained, and that most Mohammedans were idolaters. He therefore determined to attempt a reform which should do away with the accretions of creed and custom, and restore the religion to its primitive purity and simplicity. He began his preaching when he was about forty, polemizing against appeal to Mohammedan walis or saints, pilgrimages to the shrines, and paying honor there by prayers to or through the saints by dedicatory offerings. He emphasized abstinence from liquors and particularly from tobacco. With this went hatred of the Turks, the natural effect of which was that political consequences attended the results of the religious aspirations as the movement ultimately spread over nearly the whole of Arabia, excepting only its extreme borders, and even surging over into the Euphrates valley.
Interested in the movement was Ibn Saoud, who became patron of the founder of the sect and lent his arms to second the religious propaganda. He reaped his reward in the founding of a kingdom which for a time covered central Arabia. His son, who succeeded in 1765, assumed the titles of imam and sultan. The progress of conquest went side by side with the preaching for half a century. By 1804 Mecca and Medinah were in the hands of the Wahabees, and pilgrimages to those places were permitted only to adherents of the sect. This was a direct challenge to the Sublime Porte, and, besides, aroused the animosity of the entire Mohammedan world. As a consequence the Turkish Government entrusted the curbing of Wahabee power to the Egyptian Mehemet Ali. Piratical operations on the part of some Wahabees brought about also intervention by the British government in the region of the Persian Gulf in 1810 and 1819. The campaigns covered eleven years, and not till 1818 was the political power of the Wahabees disintegrated. The remoteness of the Nejd, the focus of Wahabee feeling, permitted about 1840 a renascence of Wahabee politicalism, though on a much smaller scale. This region is still devoted to Wahabism, remaining nominally Turkish, but practically independent, and ruled by two powerful sheikhs.
The essential contentions of the Wahabees, apart from those mentioned above as contained in the preaching of the founder, are rejection, as not bind-