During the next six years Herr Kessler was called upon more and more often to perform German Faith Movement funerals, baptisms, even weddings. There was no church service, of course, for the funerals, only a cemetery service, and no sermon but, rather, a speech, “no Bible, never a word about God or the soul, the whole personal afterlife denied by the clearest implication.” The baptism celebrated nature as the source of life and the child’s father as the “life-giver,” and the wedding joined the couple as “Germans.” “But,” said Herr Kessler, “man is still man, he must be comforted in the
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