Catholic may realize the unutterable gulf of | Republican party wished to continue the misery and guilt expressed by the word sin? | war. It was not possible to have an elecMoreover, while among Protestants, who tioneering agitation, to discuss names, to know that they are saved by faith in divine have preparatory meetings. The German truth, lying is peculiarly hated as being the armies occupied one-third of our soil. Our root of evil, that very sin is one of those railway communication was cat. But the which Popery opposes the least, as its whole bishops had been on the lookout. They had system is based upon forgery. Even among framed lists of men pledged both to make the upright Roman Catholics who are not peace and to obey the orders from Rome. conscious of that fact, there is a general cur- In order to make them acceptable, they had rent of falsehood and deceit, which permeates interspersed them with a few Liberals. They the whole of the Popish nations, and demor- had sent these lists to every parish priest alizes even the best of their members. Is of their department, and, as there were none not Jesuitism, which makes lying for the but these to present to the people, they were Church a virtue, the very flower of Popery? voted. And so it happened that the Jesu| No conscience has first to be re-educated in its became the real government of France. our country; therefore there is nothing in | Our nation now is like a charger-allow me the present movement which may resemble an awakening of conscience.

to add, a fine one-on the back of which a cunning horseman jumped. The charger would be led onward to the battle of liberty, and the horseman is decided to force it backward to the Middle Age. The charger kicks and kicks again, but the horseman holds fast and uses curb and spurs. We feel these spurs now very painfully. Let us hope that a tremendous move of public opinion may at least succeed to kick off the horseman and cast him to the ground.

3. It is not more a religious movement, in the highest sense of that word. If religion is a satisfaction afforded to the deepest wants of the human soul, it is entirely wanting in this so-called revival. There was a time when Popery had retained a sufficient part of Christian truth to feed the souls who did not move in the still loftier sphere of free grace and inward freedom imparted by the Holy Spirit. But now, under Ul- 2. The Jesuits had a powerful auxiliary tramontane impulses, Popery is more and in the Commune. The Commune was a commore deprived of its spiritual marrow. The bination of Socialist influences and of the Jesuits have always worked hard in order hatred which the Parisian people feel against to make it deviate from its Christian basis, the priesthood. There were only sixty thouand to lay its foundation upon the most sand Socialists in Paris. How is it that the worldly tendencies of human nature. They majority of the inhabitants supported the have at last succeeded to make it a complete Commune? Only because they thought that idolatry, having a goddess in heaven-the the National Assembly would bring back a Immaculate Virgin; and a god on earth-clerical royalty, and therefore they opposed the infallible Pope.

the national troops, which they called by the name of Chouans, which was given to the legitimists of the Vendéan war at the time of our first revolution. Those atheists of the Commune who excited so much horror by their crimes had been all trained up in the schools of the friars, and felt an intense aversion to the form of religion in which they were educated. But, whatever may be our judgment of the Commune, the fact remains. The foundations of society were shaken. An abyss was opened under our feet. The nation shuddered before the consequences of irreligion. Capital and wealth were affrightened, and came to shelter themselves under the wings of the priesthood. The higher and middle classes made Popery their great insurance company.

This movement is, therefore, nothing but a great effort of the Jesuits in order to restore the temporal power of the Pope. They try to make France an instrument to reconquer all the ground which they have lost. They are endowed with an amazing firmness of purpose. If we only served our Heavenly Master as they serve him whom they consider as his incarnation on earth! As they believe firmly in the promise made to Peter, and which they apply to the Pope, they are never shaken nor discouraged. When they have failed, they resume their work at the very stage at which it was interrupted. They use the defeats as means for a further success. When they saw France crushed and lying in her blood, they rushed upon her from every quarter. And, indeed, at first they were admirably helped by the circumstances, which appeared to them as most providential tokens of the Divine bless-classes of men had lost their privileges in ing.

1. When Germany gave us only ten days to elect representatives who were to decide the question of peace or war, and when each department had to vote at once a whole list of members, nobody was ready for it. The

3. The old nobility has been, since the French Revolution of 1789, the most intimate ally of the Popish clergy. These two

the same hurricane. The clergy had led the noblemen to emigration. After the Restoration of 1815, they both tried to get back their former position in society. The sons of these dukes and marquises are educated by the Jesuits, who take great care to pre

serve them from any influx of modern aspi- | told a few years ago that there were six hunrations and modern liberties. Men of this dred men of that sort in Paris alone. Now class live still in the fourteenth century. imagine such a fall for him who was a meFor their schools and colleges a compound diator between God and man, and even the of history was prepared by Father Loriquet, creator of his own Creator-to have to whip which taught that there was no Emperor Na- on a miserable jade through the streets of poleon the First, but a Marquis de Bonaparte, our capital. Very few priests have courage who had been for fifteen years the command- enough to face such a punishment. This er of the armies of King Louis XVIII. Of accounts for the general acceptance of the course, under the Second Empire they were dogma of the infallibility among the French obliged to make therein some slight altera- clergy. tion; but the fact remains, that all the teaching imparted to these noblemen is falsified. They do not understand their times better than we should understand the Chinese language if we were transported suddenly into the Celestial Empire. The priests persuade them that, if they can only bring their pupil, Comte de Chambord, upon the throne, they would be restored to all their former rights. 4. But they have a still more powerful ally. Generally, in France, in the higher and middle classes, the women who were educated in convents are bigoted; the men who were educated in the public schools are free thinkers. The men remain, however, in the Church, which they disregard and despise, for they will not displease their mother and sisters, their bride or their wife. Now the heart of the Roman Catholic women in the upper classes has been fired by their confess

ors.

6. The Jesuits silenced that portion of the former Liberals who had attempted to carry on an impossible task-the reconciliation of Popery and of liberty. They were headed by the Comte de Montalembert, and after his death by the Duc de Broglie. These very men who had devoted their life to prove that Roman Catholicism was compatible with liberty were obliged to accept the Syllabus, and, indeed, that document had been first of all directed against them. God speaking on earth cursed every thing that was dear to them. They bowed down in humility. However, I think that, in the innermost part of their soul, they did like Galileo, who, after he had been compelled to say, while kneeling, "The earth does not turn round," added, when he rose, "Nevertheless, it moves!"

7. But the Jesuits wanted to recruit an They form an army moving and fight- army ready for any enterprise. They wanting as one man—an army of which the weap-ed, moreover, to show that France had gone ons are seldom to be resisted too, for they are backward enough to justify the return of a charm smiles, tears, and nervous fits. I pity, mediæval king. Indeed, Comte de Chamindeed, the Roman Catholic members of our bord, their pupil, whom they infused entirely legislature who wish to oppose the return with their own spirit, would be nothing but of Henry V., and consider it as the doom of a crowned monk. He is said to have built their country. They must have, indeed, a on his property at Frohsdorf a large house, miserable life, without rest for a single hour. where he feeds two hundred Jesuits. In or5. In the clergy itself the Jesuits succeeded der to smooth down the way before him the in suppressing all resistance. The French pilgrimages were invented. Two memorapriesthood was placed by Napoleon the First, ble apparitions of the Virgin had taken place more than the clergy of any nation, in the in these latter years—at La Sallette, in the hands and at the mercy of the bishops. The Dauphiné, and at Lourdes, in the Pyrenees. great despot thought that it was more easy The first pilgrimages were directed to these for him to control the dignitaries of the places. The sites had been admirably chosen. Church whom he had richly endowed and La Sallette is surrounded with the grandest promoted to their high office, and that, if scenery of the gigantic Alps. Lourdes is at the simple parish priest was nothing but the foot of the most picturesque rocks of the an obedient slave of the bishop, all would Pyrenees. It was a great attraction. As we play smoothly in his hand. Therefore the rejoice to go next week to Washington or French clergy is, more than any other in Niagara Falls, and as we shall visit those Europe, deprived of any will of its own. A places without any expense on account of priest who resists or even displeases his the liberality of our American friends, French bishop is interdicted, without a higher court people think it very pleasant also to see adto appeal to. The bishop has no motive to mirable sites without any charge, and even express, no reason to allege. And the inter- to do by it a meritorious act and to win a dicted priest is an outcast in society. He reward for eternity. But the great success was trained in such a way that he is fit only of these two pilgrimages encouraged the clerfor saying the mass. He is utterly ignorant gy to get up in almost every diocese appa—too ignorant to become a school-teacher-ritions of the Virgin, miraculous images, or and, moreover, nobody trusts him. As the miraculous wells. In that way they told powcauses of his interdiction are not made pub-erfully upon the imagination of the crowds. lic, every one supposes the worst. The best When false miracles were performed by scores he can do is to become a cab driver. I was at each pilgrimage, the people were deeply

impressed by God departing in their own | for the national wounds. The souls had sight from the natural laws. They would been prepared by unheard-of humiliations, not believe, indeed, that these healings were a mere trick of their spiritual leaders.

And, nevertheless, that present campaign which was to the Jesuits of so solemn an issue will prove a failure. The great battle into which they marched all their forces will be lost.

by unwonted sufferings, by the bitter fruits. which atheism brought forth in the days of the Commune. But the Jesuits liked better to offer to the nation the most degrading superstitions. Instead of answering the higher wants of the nation, they made appeal only to ignorance and credulity. They carried it too far for their own purpose. They led multitudes to implore black wooden statues of the Virgin which were supposed to act by themselves. And when the remark was made to them that they had en

that complaint by the worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. What is that sacred heart? Not the soul of Christ, both divine and human, sympathizing with us and full of mercy to the sinner, but his bodily heart, which is said to have appeared to Mary Alacoque. Now I think that it is going yet further down than the worship of the Virgin, for Mary at least is a person, while the sacred heart is nothing but a muscle of flesh.

The Jesuits, who succeeded in every thing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are nowadays like that Sisyphus of old who in the ancient hell was said to be rolling a heavy stone up hill, which continually fell back upon him, and never reached the sum-tirely forgotten the Virgin's Son, they met mit. What their cunning has half brought to success fails by their ignorance of the time in which they live. They strain every nerve to bring back an irretrievable past; but they aim at an impossibility. They must now give room to the Gospel which is suited for all times. They succeeded in bringing our French armies to Mexico, and with them an Austrian emperor; but they only prepared the way for the Gospel. The Bible was carried into that country by the Protestant chaplain of our forces. They succeeded in bringing France into a war with Germany-they were thereby instrumental in the downfall of Napoleon III., who alone kept the Pope in the possession of his temporal power, and in opening the city of Rome to the Italians, to the Bible, and to Protestant churches. Now they try again to get a king of France, who, like a Messiah, will not only restore the Pope to his throne, but redeem the Papal Israel from all bondage in the whole world. I met a few days ago at Niagara Falls a Roman Catholic Irishman, who told me that all his wishes were centred upon the restoration of Henry V. to France, for he hopes that the king will rescue Ireland from the jaws of England.

And how unwise it was to have selected La Sallette as their foremost place of pilgrimage! When these good legitimist noblemen went there so cheerfully to that high Alpine valley, they did not know that the Virgin who had appeared there to two little shepherds was an old maid from the city of Valence, Mademoiselle Lameilière. They did not know that, as most of our French ladies are (I will not speak of other nations), she had been too talkative, had avowed to a priest at Grenoble that she was the Holy Virgin, that she had showed the dress in which she was to appear to the conductor of the coach which had brought her to La Sallette. They did not know that she had cursed the potatoes-it was a part of the message which she had brought from heaven-and the potato crop had not failed.

But in order to reach their aim they took They were ignorant of her having prophesied the wrong way.

1. They counteracted all the instincts and aspirations of our country. After our disasters the watch-word of the whole nation was, "Let us raise up France again, by liberty, by education, by light in every form." My countrymen rose, all with one mind craving for compulsory education, which had made Prussia so strong against us. But, as the ideal of the Jesuits was backward, they opposed it. They made a crusade in favor of the holy ignorance. They had memorials signed by the children of their own schools. Of course, these children, who dislike very much the discipline of the friars, signed enthusiastically these petitions. It was the first mistake of the clergy.

2. They missed the opportunity for getting hold of the hearts which seemed prepared for the first one who would come to them, bringing comfort for the afflicted, and balm

that the Prussians would conquer France in 1856, and that the silly little shepherd whom she had addressed was to become king of France. The secular newspapers tell now that whole history, which was unfurled at the time before the court of Grenoble. That whole campaign will have in the end no other result but to subject Popery to a greater amount of ridicule and disgust.

3. The way in which they govern France increases the hatred which the great majority of the people feel for the Popish clergy. They trample upon every liberty; they violate every protecting law. They made the whole nation burn with indignation when they threw aside our greatest citizen, the liberator of our territory, M. Thiers, and abuse him in the extreme in each number of their newspapers. They call themselves, however, the men of moral order, but people consider that name as the bitterest irony.

442

ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM.

be examined by a select committee of the House. The majority had chosen its members with much care, and made it to be com

erals. However, after a thorough examina-
tion, that committee decided unanimously
to bring that proposal before the Assembly.
And if it is carried, oh then what an admira-
ble field of labor France will afford! After
such a preparation, with that longing for a
renovation, with that more thorough repu-
diation of a religion which resisted all its
wants, what may we not expect from our na-
tion! And then you, dear American friends,
France is
will stand side by side with us.
lying before you as the wounded man on the
road, and you, like the good Samaritan, will

In the hands of God this passing reign of the Jesuits will have loosened France more completely from the bondage of Popery. 4. While they cover France with pilgrim-posed of thirteen clericals and only two Libages, we cover her with Bibles. The Bible societies have sold four millions of copies of the Holy Scriptures among our people. Our schools in Paris are overfilled with children of Roman Catholic parents, and in one of them ninety thousand francs of school fees have been contributed in one year by very poor workmen. We preach the Gospel from place to place, and, as in the Roman Catholic villages there is no place for meeting except the dancing-hall, we preach there the good tidings of salvation before crowded audiences, which come week after week to hear of God's love and of a free pardon. The Evan-have compassion upon us, and pour oil and gelical Society of France last winter had, in one department alone, nine thousand Roman Catholics in several places attending upon the Protestant worship. By a marvelous direction of God, our army, recruited from every part of the country, was for thirty years taught to read in the Gospel of John by one of the elders of my own Church, who, by the order of Marshal Soult, in 1840, had introduced that method in every regiment of French soldiers, and was the general superintendent of these reading schools. another direction of God, the eighty-four thousand men of Bourbaki's army, who had been thrown upon Switzerland, brought back from that country the sacred volume and an unbounded admiration for the Protestant faith.

By

5. Religious liberty is just at this time very much imperiled, but we shall have it ere long. Dr. De Pressensé, who occupies such an important position in our national legislature, made the proposal to do away with all the former laws obstructing religious liberty, and to make the worship as free as it is in the United States. That proposal, before being submitted to the House, was to

wine into our wounds. And let no one say
that our progress in France is too slow to
repay the efforts made in that direction. He
who would say so is certainly not an Anglo-
Saxon, and he is, moreover, in my opinion,
a poor Christian. For, indeed, what distin-
Is it not
guishes the Anglo-Saxon race?
that persevering energy which never yields
to difficulties, but goes ahead and overcomes
them one after another? We have already
succeeded in an amazing measure if we take
into account the obstacles which were in our
way. Thousands and thousands of precious
souls have been brought from Popery to the
true knowledge of the Saviour. But we are
still a feeble band of laborers. We strug-
gle hard. We are just now the only Chris-
tian community in any nation which has to
endure persecution. We are not in the least
discouraged. It took more than a century
for the Jews who had come back from Baby-
lon to rebuild their Temple, but they suc-
ceeded at last, and the glory of that temple
was greater than that of the first had been.
Our work is now obstructed in many ways,
but it is God's work. We know it, and we
also shall succeed in the end.

ULTRAMONTANISM AND THE FOUR PRUSSIAN

CHURCH LAWS.

BY THE REV. LEOPOLD WITTE, OF COETHEN, PRUSSIA.

THE four laws lately enacted by the Prus- | freely the words of men, even if they are sian Government, in its struggle with Rome, have an interest far beyond the limits of the German empire. They were provoked by infallible Rome, and infallible Rome is an enemy of every Protestant country-of free America as well as of free Germany. The old Roman proverb may be justly quoted here: "Non tua res agitur, paries si proximi ardes ""Thy own house is in danger when thy neighbor's is in flame." So let me anticipate your interest in the subject of my treatise.

high in authority. Besides this, my friends, let me tell you, if you boast justly of the freedom of your Church, of the independence of its doings and institutions, this very freedom of the Church of Christ is dear to me also, and is dear to every evangelical minister and layman in Germany who loves the Kingdom of God. I do not in the least think that the State churches in Europe, as they have grown in history, represent that condition of the bride of Christ which is desirable for her, if she expects to unfold the full riches of her beauty. But we have to deal here not with a state of things which ought to be, but with a state of things as it is in Germany.

I will, in the first place, briefly state the contents of the said laws. They are four in number. The first asserts the right of the State to exercise a supreme control over the education of the clergy; the second es- In your own country the principle of retablishes the right of the State to superin-ligious and ecclesiastical independence has tend the discipline exercised by the Church over clergymen; the third defines the limits of the ecclesiastical power to exercise church discipline against laymen; the fourth gives some regulations for those who are going to leave the Church.

been established only gradually in the course of the last and in the beginning of the present century. The Middle Ages did not know any thing of religious freedom, and even the principles of the Reformation were in the beginning not strong enough to prevent intolerance and narrow-mindedness. "Cujus regio, illius religio" "Where I live I must accept the religion of the land." This was for a long time the ruling principle in European Church history. It is well known that the family of the Hohenzollern of Branden

Even this simple general statement must, I am aware, strike you, my American friends, very strangely. You live in a country where the churches are entirely independent of the State. You will therefore naturally think that the State has nothing whatever to do with affairs of the Church. But the stran-burg were in this respect more enlightened ger these laws appear to you at the first glance, the more perhaps you may feel a desire to have them explained by a citizen of that country in which they were enacted, by a pastor of a church which is itself placed under them.

But what will you expect me to do? Do you think that I have come here as a delegate of the Prussian Government or of Bismarck, in order to persuade you to fall in love with these four children of the Prussian legislature, who are stigmatized by the hirelings of Rome as children of Satan? I am not here in such a capacity. Or do you think that I, rejecting with the pride of a Christian the infallible Pope, am worshiping an infallible State, and will, therefore, sanction every thing which is issued in the form of laws by the Government? I am a Christian, and believe only in one infallible Head and King of churches and states, Jesus Christ, and claim the right to criticise

than most of their contemporaneous princes. They granted a refuge within their realm to any denomination and sect that was persecuted abroad, although they did not yet endow all these different churches with the same rights and privileges as their own Evangelical Church enjoyed in their country. Nevertheless, the Roman Catholics could not have any imaginable reason to complain of pressure and want of freedom in Prussia. The Brandenburg electors and Prussian kings have always been very careful not to give the least offense to the bishops of Rome; nay, have often treated the popish Church like a petted child in their household. The popes themselves have repeatedly and most gratefully acknowledged this fact. It is to be presumed that, if the character of the Romish Church had not been altered, she would still have enjoyed these ancient privileges, and her peace could not have been disturbed.