ja&t LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY G^/TS x^^,. = sg& ITY OF CALIFORNIA 5 LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIF TY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIF NOTES RISE, PROGRESS, AND PROSPECTS OF THE jbtfyMm from tije Cljurclj at Momr, CAL1KT) THE GERMAN-CATHOLIC CHURCH, INSTITUTED BY JOHANNES ROME AND I. CZERZKI, IN OCTOBER 1844, ON OCCASION OEajafBSSBGSQiU^E TO THE SAM AUTHOR OF " A RESIDENCE IN NORWAY," " A TOUR IN SWEDEN," " NOTES OF A TRAVELLER," A TRANSLATION OF " THE HEIMSKRINOLA," ETC. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATKRNOSTER-ROW. 1846. LONDON : Printed by A. SFOTTKSVVOODE, New-Street- Square. PREFACE, THE establishment, and endowment by the State, of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland is the great question of the nineteenth century. Re- ligious feeling, raised by principle or prejudice, is already agitating the great mass of the Protestant population. The educational endowments of Maynooth as a seminary for priests, and of four colleges for the lay community of the Roman Catholic Faith, are considered, whether justly or not, as indications that these are but preliminary steps to a great organic change in the social state and policy of Great Britain to the formal ac- knowledgment and endowed establishment of a new body in her social structure, the clergy of the Church of Rome. The breeze which precedes the storm is already ruffling the public mind. Political expediency, the necessity of con- ciliating five millions of the population of Ireland, stands on one side of this great question. The weight of the deliberate judgment of many of our A 2 IV PREFACE. most prudent and cautious statesmen, including, it is supposed, the present ministry as well as the most eminent of their political opponents, is thrown into the scale of the expediency, the instant urgent necessity, of Catholic endowment ; and but for the approach of the term when re- presentatives in Parliament must account to their constituents, and might endanger their seats in the next Parliament by a decided opposition to public opinion, or prejudice, on this momentous question, the endowment of the Catholic Church in Ireland might probably have been carried this session with the same, or nearly the same majorities in both Houses, as the endowment of the Catholic colleges. The two measures are, however, to every unbiassed mind, essentially distinct. Sir Robert Peel and Lord Stanley justly argued that the educational measures they proposed stood upon their own ground, on the fulfilment of one of the great duties of modern governments, the education of the people, whether priests or laity, by the means the people prefer and will alone use. No reasonable unprejudiced man, of any sect or denomination of Christians, will deny that to educate the people is the first step to civilise, enlighten, and even convert the people ; that it is the duty of a Christian govern- PREFACE. V ment ; and that, however exaggerated the import- ance may be which it is the fashion of the day to attribute to national establishments of schools and colleges, if these are to be of any use or influence at all, they must be suited to the social and in- tellectual state of the people or classes for whom they are established. The wise or rather wary ministry are entitled to say, with perfect good faith, either that they consider the educational endowments final measures, or preliminary mea- sures ; either distinct and unconnected with any intention to establish and endow the Catholic Church, or as initiative, preparatory, and neces- sarily leading to that end just as they find public opinion favourable or adverse. This is not the position of a high-minded ministry ; but it is safe, very safe ; and what is done is in itself good. On the other side of this great question stand the religious principles, feelings, and prejudices of the great mass of the Protestant population of the United Kingdoms. It may with the many be ignorance worked upon by zealots at public meet- ings, and by the press, until it becomes a blind and dangerous fanaticism ; but with the great body of the middle and upper classes, it unquestionably is the sober, sincere, religious conviction of men of every Protestant sect, and of men not uninstructed VI PREFACE. in their faith, and representing truly the mind of the country, that stands opposed to Catholic endowment for any political expediency. Four fifths of the inhabitants of Great Britain twenty millions of Protestants are opposed to the state- establishment of the priesthood of five millions of Roman Catholics, as a new, acknowledged, and endowed Interest in the social body : and of the twenty millions, a number equal to the Catholic population, or about five millions, of Wesleyans, Free Church Presbyterians, and others supporting their own clergy, are entitled in equity to the same social influence, endowment, and acknow- ledged legal status, as it is proposed to confer on their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects. This is the true state of the parties in this great national question. No individuals are indifferent to it. All are taking a side, all are arraying themselves to oppose or support Catholic endowment, and a little time, a little irritation, a nearer approach of the question to a legislative shape, are all that is wanting to raise a bitter spirit of religious divi- sion in the country. The question of Catholic endowment, besides being handled, as all great social interests with us too often are, merely as a party question, has only been considered as a religious question, or as one PREFACE. vil of political expediency. There is a third point of view, in which, from want of information on what is doing in other countries, it is seldom considered, viz. how is the Church of Rome working now on the civilisation, and social and moral well-being of the countries of mixed Catholic and Protestant population in which it has been endowed and established along with the Lutheran Church ? How is it working in Prussia? Is it for good, or for evil ? Here, if anywhere in political action, experience may be of use to a government pro- posing to adopt the same measures the endow- ment and acknowledgment of the Roman Ca- tholic Church, as an integral part of our social structure, under some kind of Concordat with the Pope settling the relations of the Catholic priest- hood to the Sovereign or State. The very remark- able event in the history of the nineteenth century recorded in the following pages a pilgrimage un- equalled since the middle ages in the numbers and superstition of the pilgrims, and in the display of the material physical power of the established endowed Church of Rome even under an auto- cratic military government may make men pause. It will be prudent to look over our neighbour's hedge, and see how the endowed established Ro- man Catholic hierarchy is working there on the Vlll PREFACE. social condition of the people, and on the safety and tranquillity of the sovereign. It will be wise to consider more narrowly what may be the con- sequences of establishing any similar influence and interest in our social structure. Every con- tribution, however insignificant in itself, that gives information on what is going on in other countries of mixed Protestant and Catholic popu- lation, is of some value at the present moment when we are on the brink of a gulf, yet hesitating and doubtful whether to take a desperate leap, or to remain quietly, as we are, on our side. In this view, the Author has been at considerable trouble to collect the following Notes on the great religious movement in Germany the pilgrimage of a million and a half of people to the holy coat exhibited at Treves last autumn ; and on the re- action of that movement, whether it is to be transi- tory or permanent, which, under Ronge, Czerzki, and other good and zealous men, has raised a German-Catholic Church in opposition to the hierarchy and idolatry of the Church of Rome. The Author has endeavoured to give an impartial view of both churches ; and hopes his contribution may be useful to those who may wish to consi- der Catholic endowment in Ireland in its social results. NOTES RISE, PROGRESS, AND PROSPECTS GERMAN -CATHOLIC CHURCH. I. CHRISTIANITY, after passing through fifteen cen- turies of superstition, one of reform, one of infi- delity, and one of indifference, has reached an age in which all these are blended an age of contrasts, in which superstition, pure religion, infidelity, and indifference are revived, and walk- ing side by side, in every country and class of society. One of the events which express this character of our times very strongly, is the schism from the church of Rome of the German Catho- lics who adopt the views of Johannes Ronge and 2 THE GEEMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. J. Czerski, and are now establishing congregations of a German Catholic or Christian Catholic church purified from the errors and abuses of Popery, and independent of the power, spiritual or eccle- siastical, of the Pope, and of the hierarchy of the church of Rome. " Let me be rightly under- stood," says Czerski, a Catholic priest, who has renounced the Roman Catholic church and its errors, has entered into the married state, and joined the German Catholic church, and who, next to Ronge, is the most eminent of its founders, " I renounce the Pope and the false doctrines of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, but I remain a Catholic Christian, a Catholic priest. I will not be a Lutheran, nor a Calvinist, nor a Mennonite, nor a Greek Christian, I will remain a Catholic, but according to the words of the Scriptures, according to the precepts of Christ and his Apostles, I am and will be an Apostolic Catholic Christian, an Apostolic Christian priest."* This movement is but in progress. Where is * Kechtfertigung meines Abfalles von der romischen Hofkirche. Ein ofienes Sendschreiben an alle die da hb'ren, sehen, und priifen wollen und konnen, von Czerski, Apostolisch Katholischem Priester in Schneidemiilil. Brom- berg, 1845. THE GERMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 3 the prophet who can foresee its end? In reli- gious action, much more even than in political, the merest trifle, as all history tells us, may become the apparent cause of the most important revolutions. The injudicious exercise of their right of patronage by a few lay patrons in Scot- land, was the apparent cause of the establishment of the Free Church, threw the people back upon first principles, which had long been dormant. The visible cause of the Reformation itself, in the 16th century, was the barefaced sale, in the mar- kets and fairs of Germany, of indulgences, and remissions of sins, by the Pope's agent, Tetsler. It would be presumption in the best informed to hazard a decided opinion, at present, on what is to be the end and effect of this religious movement in Germany, whether it is to be a heavy vital blow to the church of Rome, a seed from which is to spring up, in every Catholic country, a Ca- tholicism without the Pope, or whether, being planted in the soft soil of the German mind of the present times, in which every thing new springs up, but withers away before reaching any matu- rity for want of firm support in the character of the people, it is to linger on for a short time in a stunted existence, until swept away by the first popular novelty in philosophy, or the first opera, B 2 4 BISHOP ARNOLDl'S CIRCULAR NOTICE or actress of great merit that appears on the German stage. The history, however, of this schism gives much matter for reflection gives many curious and characteristic glimpses into the social state of the German people, their religious and civil con- dition in the present age, and will enable the English reader to form a more just estimate of the actual progress of the public mind in Germany, in this century, than the accounts which some wri- ters give us of the general education of the people by national schools, and a compulsory attendance on them ; or by the great, and very probably real, advance and general diffusion of taste and execu- tion in the fine arts in music, statuary, archi- tecture, painting, poetry. The Bishop of Treves, Dr. William Arnoldi, issued a circular notice, dated Treves, 6th July, 1844, and signed by the Episcopal Vicar-General Von Mtiller, that in consequence of the urgent request of the clergy and body of believers in the bishopric of Treves, the holy relic preserved in the cathedral, being the coat without seam worn by our Saviour, would be exhibited for the space of six weeks from the 18th of the following Au- gust. " That the wish of all who have the pious intention of making a pilgrimage to Treves, to CONCEKNING THE HOLY COAT AT TK^VES. 5 behold and venerate the holy garment of our Divine Redeemer may be fulfilled, and each may gain the entire remission of his sins, granted by Pope Leo X. under date of 26th January, 1514.* The said Pope, namely, with the wish that the Cathedral of Treves, which has the honour of pre- serving the coat without a seam of our Lord Jesus Christ, and many other holy relics, may be dis- tinguished by suitable grandeur of establishment and splendour of ornament, gives, according to the words of the aforesaid bull, a full remission of sins, in all future time, to all believers who go in pilgrimage to the exhibition of the holy coat at Treves, sincerely confess and repent of their sins, or at least have a firm intention to do so, and moreover contribute with a liberal hand to the suitable decoration of the cathedral of Treves, as recommended by the holy father, but which still remains imperfect from the end of the last cen- tury." This is a translation of the main part of the brief of Bishop Arnoldi, of 4th July, 1844; the rest of it contains directions for preserving * The same pope, Leo X., by his bull giving remissions to Germany at the same period, viz. 1517, and sending Tetsler to sell them through the country, gave rise to Luther's opposition and the Reformation. B 3 6 HISTORY OF THE HOLY COAT. order in the processions of pilgrims, preventing confusion in the access to the sight of the relic, and such matters of police matters which appear to have been exceedingly well attended to, judi- ciously arranged, and fully accomplished. As an introduction to the public exhibition of the relic, a history of the holy coat in the cathe- dral of Treves was, by order of the bishop, drawn up by Professor Marx, of the Episcopal Seminary, and published, with the Bishop's approbation, by Lints, at Treves, 1844. From this history it appears that Bishop Ar- noldi, who was consecrated in 1842, had previous to his consecration a conference, at Coblentz, with Prince Metternich, concerning a holy nail, which, as well as the holy coat, had for many ages be- longed to the cathedral of Treves, and which nail, according to the report of M. Pessina, the secre- tary of the cathedral of Prague, had by some spe- cial circumstances known only to a few persons, come into the possession of Prince Metternich. The Bishop had intended to bring back the holy nail with suitable solemnity, reunite this relic to the holy coat, and exhibit both together to the pious veneration of the people. But Prince Met- ternich somehow never performed his promise of restoring the holy nail, if he had it, and Bishop THE EMPRESS HELENA. 7 Arnold! was at last obliged to proceed without the nail, and exhibit the holy coat by itself. The early history of this relic is somewhat ob- scure. The Empress Helena, who was either the mother, the wife, or the mistress of the Emperor Constantine historians have not determined which was born some time in the third century, either at Treves, or at Drepona, or at York historians have not determined which and was crowned after the victory of Constantine over Maxentius, in the year 312 ; and Constantine and the Empress Helena embraced the Christian faith, and put an end to the persecution of the Christians. About the year 326, this Empress Helena repaired to the Holy Land, discovered, by inquiry among the inhabitants, the exact spot of the crucifixion, the holy grave, and other sacred places, and re- covered the cross itself, the inscription that was nailed on it, and the holy nails which had fastened our Saviour to the tree. She acquired also on this journey according to the best history taught at Treves in the ninteenth century the garment without a seam of our Saviour, the identical coat for which the soldiers cast lots (John, xix. 24.), and out of regard for Treves by some reputed her birth-place, and in that age a city inferior only to Rome itself, and the capital of Western Europe u 4 8 DESCRIPTION OF THE HOLY COAT. she bestowed this relic on the church of Treves through St. Agrocius, then its bishop. This is the tradition of the Chapter of the Cathedral of Treves. How wood, woollen, or iron could be preserved from natural decay for 326 years, unless miracu- lously, is not evident * ; and if miraculously pre- * The preservation of the cloth in which mummies are enveloped for a period much longer, perhaps twice as long as the age claimed for the holy tunic, may appear to invalidate this objection to its authenticity. But the mummy-cloth was embalmed as well as the mummy. It was impregnated with the same resinous or bituminous matter which preserved the body, and which replaced the perishable substance by a process similar to that by which organic remains are fossilised. The tunic appears to have been covered or lined for its preservation with another of the same size and shape ; and although to the eye they appear but one, they are not con- nected, but can be distinctly separated. The material of the upper one, supposed to be woollen, cannot be distin- guished exactly ; but that of the under one, or lining, ap- pears to have been silk of a greenish colour. The upper one, which is the tunic, has peeled off in flakes, and fallen from age into decay ; but what remains is of a dark red colour, and the figures on it of a yellow. These figures, which by a microscopic examination, made by the Vicar- General Dr. Muller and the Prebendary Von Willmowsky, in 1 843, are declared to have been birds with a crown similar to a pea- cock's crest on the heads, and of which the feet and heads are distinguishable, furnish the grounds to Professors Gil- demeister and Von Sybel for doubting, as hereafter stated, DISCOVERY OF THE HOLY COAT. served, and miraculously discovered by the Em- press Helena, how these relics of wood, woollen, or iron, came to be lost and forgotten again for some ten or twelve hundred years, and this woollen relic at least not produced even accord- ing to the history taught at Treves until the year 1056, or, according to others, 1196, and ac- cording to any historical document, not until 1514, when this bull was issued, granting remission of sins to all who went in pilgrimage to it, and con- tributed with a liberal hand to the funds of the cathedral are circumstances not historically and physically of self-evident fact, and requiring no explanation. But the puzzling circumstance is, that according to Gregory of Tours, there was another coat of our Saviour preserved in Galatia, whether it be a Palestine garment at all. The colour also, dark red, gives reason for supposing that this garment has originally been purple ; and the learned professors, taking the measure of the garment, calculating the quantity and price of the dye stuif necessary, and reducing the whole, together with the relative value of money, to the present times, calculate that such a garment must have cost, in the days of our Saviour, a sum equivalent to 139 Prussian thalers if made of very thin woollen stuff, or 220 thalers if made of thick, or from about 16/. to about 25?. ; and main- tain that such a luxury of colour and price is inconsistent with all that Scripture tells us of our Saviour's character and worldly circumstances. 10 DOUBTS ABOUT THE HOLY COAT. and there was one at Jaffa according to Fredegor, and more perplexing still, there is one in the church of Argenteuil in France, for which, on the authority of the chronicler Robert de Monte, and of papal bulls and testimonies, the palm of authenticity is claimed at the present day, in op- position to the garment at Treves, by the French clergy.* The learned Professor gets over these conflicting garments ingeniously enough. They are genuine, but are not Tunica, not the Tunica inconsutilis, the coat without a seam, but the cappa, the upper garment or mantle ; and the Pro- fessor says, the Abbe Calmet in his Dictionary, and the reformer Calvin, both agree in calling the vestment at Argenteuil a mantle, and not a tunica ; and it by no means follows that these other relics are spurious because the relic of Treves is genuine. But it is not so easy to escape from the learning and research of Professors Gildermeister and Yon Sybel of Bonn, who examine the authenticity of this relic, and prove that it is not a Palestine gar- ment at all f , and that in the Christian world there * Des Vetements de N. S. Jesus Christ honores dans 1'eglise d' Argenteuil pros Paris, et dans la Cathedrale de Treves. A la sacristie d' Argenteuil. October, 1844. f From the circumstance that this garment has been ornamented with flowers and birds, apparently peacocks, SEVERAL HOLY COATS. 11 are eighteen or twenty coats *, each of which, on equally good grounds, is asserted to be the identi- cal coat worn by our Saviour, for which the sol- diers cast lots, according to St. John's Gospel ; and the Jewish law (Deut. iv. 17.) prohibits the image of any bird specially, or of any living thing being in the land. In the time of Christ, this law was so strictly adhered to by the Jews, that several insurrections against the Romans are stated by Josephus to have arisen from the attempt to put images, and such ornaments representing living animals, on the public buildings. The learning, research, and reading bestowed on examining the Holy Coat, by Dr. Gildermeister and Dr. Von Sybel of Bonn, in two pamphlets, published 1845, have not been equalled, perhaps, since the days of Gibbon. * Edward the Confessor bestowed one, or a part of one, on a church at Westminster, in 1038. Cologne had one ; the Vatican at Rome has one ; Constantinople, Bremen, Treves itself, besides the one now exhibited, had one. The learned professors of Bonn, above mentioned, have dis- covered about twenty-two places claiming in the middle ages to be possessed of this relic ; and trace the first ap- pearance of this superstition and legend of the Holy Coat to the eleventh century. It is necessary to observe that there can be but one holy coat, because, according to the history of all of them, it was spun and woven by the Virgin Mary for our Saviour when he was an infant, and miraculously grew with his growth, and never needed altering or lengthening. This part of the belief in it is essential to the symbolical mean- ing of the Holy Coat, as representing the one indivisible Church of Rome, which requires no altering, and is always the same, since the birth of Christ. 12 MEANING OF THE HOLY COAT. and each with its miracles, documents, or bulls, to prove its authenticity. The coat without a seam, it is to be observed, which the soldiers would not divide into four parts, as they did the other garments, "being woven from the top throughout," is not merely a holy relic. It is held by the Roman Catholic clergy, that this description of the garment in the Gospel, is emblematic of the one and indivisible church of Rome, established at the Crucifixion; while the upper garments, divided into four parts, are typical of the four quarters of the universe, through which the faith of the one and indivisible church is to be diffused. Our own protestant clergy are perhaps too fond of hunting after typical significations and symboli- cal allusions in scriptural texts and facts, which may never have been intended to cover any other meaning than the simple veritable circumstances or ideas related by the inspired writer, and which are generally more impressive, truthful, and pre- cious for religion, in the plain obvious sense, without any sub-meaning at all, than when twisted into a theological conundrum of hidden allusion and symbolical meaning, by the ingenuity of the preacher. In this case, for instance, the simple natural incident of the four soldiers dividing the VENERATION FOR RELICS. 13 garments that could be divided, into four parts, and casting lots for the one which could not be cut without spoiling it, because it was without seam, and worked, woven, or knit " from the top throughout," is just the very thing the soldiers were likely to do, is an incident so natural and truthful, that it could not be invented, and is far more valuable from this reality on the face of it, in its plain obvious sense, than all the sub- meanings which catholics or protestants can fancy under it. The sub-meaning, or pun, discovered by catholics under the name Peter (a rock), upon which the church of Rome, and the power of Saint Peter and his successors, is founded, should make the protestant preacher cautious of searching for more symbolical meanings and allusions than the inspired writers themselves have pointed out. He who rings the symbolical bells in his pulpit accord- ing to his own judgment or fancy, should remem- ber what the bells in his steeple are telling him " As the fool thinks, so the bell chinks." The veneration for relics springs from a nobler source than ignorance or superstition. [Is it igno- rance or superstition that makes the stern presby- terian regard with veneration the gown, the pul- pit, the Bible of John Knox ; the window at the head of the Canongate from which he preached; the 14 ON WHAT IS THE VENERATION original manuscript of the solemn league and cove- nant ; or that noblest of all the documents which any Christian church can produce, the Protest of the 376 ministers of the Free Church of Scotland, and their signatures to their instant resignation, for conscience sake, of all the worldly interests that men hold dear, of their houses, homes, and comforts ? Is it superstition that makes this docu- ment of the sincerity of those 376 remarkable men circulate in fac-simile makes it to be vene- rated and preserved by all intelligent men in Scot- land, however widely they may differ from the principle or doctrine of the Free Church, as the most interesting relic of our times ? Is it igno- rance that makes the most enlightened men of the age prize a relic of Sir Walter Scott, or Robert Burns, makes them search with avidity for a genuine portrait, an autograph, or relic of any kind, of Shakspeare, Milton, or Newton ? Is this ignorance, superstition, folly ? If it were within the limits of possibility, and beyond all doubt on historical or physical grounds, that a genuine por- trait of our Saviour did exist, or that his raiment, or the nails by which he was attached to the cross, were preserved unconsumed by moth, rust, damp, and other natural agencies of decay, during eighteen hundred and forty-five years, would it FOE EELICS FOUNDED? 15 be ignorance, folly, and gross superstition to re- gard these relics with the same interest and vene- ration that the most enlightened men pay to similar relics of Shakspeare, Milton, Newton, Burns, or Scott ? What is the intellectual value of a genuine relic, portrait, image, or other me- morial of past events or persons ? It must be a value founded in the natural constitution of the human mind, for it has been given to relics in all ages and in all stages of civilisation. The Israel- ites (Exodus xiii. 19.) took the bones that is, the relics of Joseph with them, on their flight out of Egypt. The most enlightened men, in the most civilised ages, render a similar respect to relics ; and even the free-thinker, the infidel, the atheist, pays this homage to this natural feeling or principle in the human mind, and goes to Ferney for a hair from the periwig of Voltaire, or to America for the bones of Tom Paine. On what is this value founded ? The human mind has a natural and irresistible tendency in it towards truth. All intellectual movement springs from this tendency. All in- tellectual enjoyment, all the pleasure we derive from the fine arts, for instance, may perhaps be traced up to this element in. the constitution of mind, to the gratification of this tendency. To 16 VENERATION FOR RELICS IN RELIGION. make a fact, to make a vivid defined whole, to raise an intellectual fact, although it be out of fiction, out of imagined, not out of natural exist- ences, to give a distinct form to the vague, to combine new and unknown conceptions into one whole, one fact which the mind can grasp as a reality, to individualise, in a word, is poetry, painting, statuary, music. The intellectual plea- sure these arts give us is the gratification of this tendency of mind towards truth, that is to say, towards intellectual truth, towards a distinct con- nected representation to our minds of a whole of ideas which may or may not be naturally true. A play of Shakspeare is intellectually true, without being naturally true, is more true than the matter of fact itself. The fact itself which poetry or painting presents to the mind, may be a false fact, a matter of fiction; yet the poet or painter individualises his fiction, makes his wild- est fancies intellectual truths to the human mind by the distinct impressions of them which his genius has the power of giving. Now, the venera- tion or love for relics, or memorials of past events or persons, for portraits, images, autographs, books, bones, clothes, hair, holy coats, nails, &c., appears founded on this same element in the constitution of the human mind. The relic helps to realise \<2, >*> RELICS IN RELIGION. 17 . the idea, to individualise the conception, and this individualisation is, from the tendency of mind towards intellectual truth, the highest of our mental gratifications. This appears to be the true value of relics. The great and fundamental error of the Roman Catholic church is that it connects this mental gratification, in itself a natural and high gratifi- cation of the spiritual part of man, with the Christian religion, although in reality it has no more connexion with Christianity than the bodily gratification of eating, drinking, or any other physical enjoyment. It enables, no doubt, the Roman Catholic believer to individualise his con- ceptions, and thereby to dwell upon them with a sustained devotion, fervour, and enthusiasm, and ecstasy, of which the Protestant believer is, from the very nature of the human mind, altogether incapable. But of what are his conceptions ? Of the doctrine of our Saviour and his Apostles? No ! but of his or their bodily appearance, pre- sence, or sufferings. This is not religion. It is from this point- in itself a true and natural element in the constitution of the mind of man that the Roman Catholic church has diverged from [genuine Christianity. It has built upon this element an idolatrous worship founded on imagina- c 18 THE WORSHIP OP RELICS. tion, and has placed the Christian religion in the mind of man, on the same basis as that on which poetry, painting, music stand; has made it an affair of imagination and intellectual pleasure, not a business of research and the intellectual exertion of reason and judgment. But Chris- tianity is not a religion of imagination. It is founded on conviction, from reason and judgment applied to fact and doctrine. It is true that the enlightened Catholic denies that the relics, images, pictures, crosses of his church, are intended to be objects of adoration. These objects are presented by his church upon the admitted and undeniable principle, that they act upon the mind, and enable it to grasp more strongly the impressions they represent ; and it is not to them, but through them, that the Catholic prays and worships. But what is it the mind grasps through them ? Is it the doctrine of Chris- tian salvation, by seeing the coat worn by our Redeemer, or the nails by which he was attached to the cross, supposing these relics genuine ? or is it only a lively picture in the mind, of the great fact of the crucifixion ? A livelier impression of the scene of the crucifixion, and of every scriptural circumstance, event, or personage recorded in the Old or New Testament, cannot perhaps be again conceived by the mind of man, than those impres- THE WORSHIP OF RELICS. 19 gions which Raphael, Michael Angelo, and other painters of sacred subjects of the high Italian school, have conceived and embodied in their works ; but were these great artists better Chris- tians more embued with the principles, doctrines, and practice of the Christian religion by having these livelier, more sublime impressions in their minds of the scriptural scenes ? If Christianity was a religion of imagination, and its essence lay in the vivid impression of the facts of Scripture, apart from its doctrine, Raphael would stand above the apostle Paul as a Christian. This work of imagination is not religion. The enlightened Catholic, and the Council of Trent, in its last sitting in December, 1563, expressly disavow any direct adoration of relics and pictures ; and that council, by which all points of church doctrine are regulated up to the present times, expressly directs bishops and priests "to take care in the teaching the due honour and veneration to be rendered to relics and sacred pictures, that the people do not believe there is any thing divine, or any power of miracles, in the relics or pictures themselves, as was the case of old among the heathen, who placed their trust in idols ; but that the honour shown to them refers to the persons or things they represent." Luther himself could c 2 20 THE EDUCATIONAL not give a more distinct negation to idol-worship, that is, to the adoration of the relics, or pictures, themselves ; but under it is a recognition oi saint-worship, and miracle-faith in what is repre- sented by the pictures and relics. The distinction is too refined for the Catholic of common unedu- cated mind. The strong mental gratification of individualising vague impressions by an actual relic or picture, is placed before him, and he is told to abstain from the natural tendency of the human mind, and to be impressed not with the individual object presented to him, but with what it represents. The Catholic mind, even now in the nineteenth century, in the most enlightened, or at least most educated part of the Prussian kingdom, itself the most educated country in Europe, is not capable of this abstraction. On this occasion of exhibiting the holy coat, the relic itself, the holy coat, was the object of direct adoration by the multitude of pilgrims at Treves, It was stated at the time in the newspapers, (in the Herold, No. 7. among others,) that eye-wit- nesses and ear-witnesses of the scene were ready to prove that the multitude, on their knees, were exclaiming " Holy coat, to thee I come ! Holy poat, to thee I pray ! Holy coat, pray for me !" . It is certainly a very unexpected result of the SYSTEM OP PRUSSIA CONSIDERED. 21 far-famed educational system of Prussia of the boasted progress of the Prussian people in mental culture, and of the diffusion of suitable education among all by state schools, and a compulsory attendance on them by even the lowest classes, that here, in the very centre of all this school quackery, the people are in such a deplorable state of ignorance and superstition, that a Catholic priest has only to hoist a flag with a cross in it on the tower of his cathedral, and proclaim the ,i display of a relic, which would scarcely have I passed for genuine in the darkest of the middle rages, and he collects in eight weeks a million and *a half of pilgrims to adore this relic, a greater multitude than has been on foot in Europe at one ; time, on any one religious occasion, since the days >of the first Crusades. If M. Cousins and other ^writers, who have explained and recommended to all Europe the Prussian system of national educa- tion, and its general diffusion, have not, owing to tthe false statements made to them, been imposing on public credulity, not above two or three per cent, of the Prussian population at present are without the benefit of school education. A whole generation has grown up since the system was established, twenty-five or thirty years ago, and trumpeted throughout Europe. Of the million c 3 22 THE PILGKIMAGE and a half of pilgrims who visited the holy coa at Treves, from the adjacent cities and province of Prussia, a very small number, a trifling pa centage, can have been ignorant, or untaught il reading, writing, arithmetic, singing, and thy principles of their religion, whether Catholic o| Lutheran, as taught in the Prussian schools They are in the dilemma M. Cousins, and thl other writers on the Prussian school system o confessing, either that they were imposed upon and unwittingly imposing upon the reading pub lie of Europe, in their accounts of the efficiency and diffusion of education in Prussia; or, tha education, as it is given in the Prussian schools reading, writing, catechismal and other religious instruction is of no value or power in society- is entirely neutralised and ineffective, owing to the want of that real education and mental exercise of a people given by their self-action in a free social state, in which every man thinks and acts for himself. The undeniable fact stands against these writers, that the public mind in the most educated and enlightened provinces of the Prussian kingdom, after a whole generation of them has been taught in the government schools, has shown itself to be in the same state in the nineteenth aa it may have been in about the fourteenth cen- tury, with probably less energy. TO TKEVES. 2,3 The scene in the ancient city of Treves, from the 8th of August, when the relic was displayed for the first time to the pious pilgrims, to the 7th of October, when it was again consigned to its shrine, must have very closely resembled the scenes of the tenth or eleventh century, when the i Crusades were set on foot. Multitudes of pilgrims in processions formed by the throng of people in the narrow roads and streets, with banners flying, crucifixes borne aloft, maidens clothed in white strewing flowers, and the priest of each commu- nity at its head, came singing hymns, or telling Aves and Paternosters on their rosaries, in regu- lar columns. The whole Rhenish provinces, the districts on the Moselle, the cities of Cologne, Coblenz, Metz, Nancy, Verdun, Aix-la-Chapelle, Luxemburg, Spires, Limburg, Munster, Osna- burg, towns and districts in France, Belgium, and Holland, all poured their population in a conti- nued stream of pilgrims, moving on and on, without break or halt, towards the minster-tower from which a white banner with a red cross was waving above the dense cloud of dust and the dark mass of human beings. From the 18th of August to the 27th, at mid-day, 112,224 persons, according to the police lists, had come into Treves, not reckoning the multitudes who came in and went c 4 24 NUMBERS OF THE PILGRIMS. out the same day, without stopping the night, As the resort increased, from 1500 to 1700 pil- grims every hour in the day and night were reckoned to be passing through the city. From the 18th of August to the 14th of September, 600,000 pilgrims were reckoned to have entered within its walls. A Treves newspaper of the 7th of October, the last day of the exhibition, reckons the numbers of pilgrims who had visited the holy relic, up to that date, at 1,100,000 per- sons. Others estimate the numbers at 1,500,000, and even at 1,600,000. Any correct statement of such a vast body as must have passed through Treves within these eight weeks cannot be ex- pected. The numbers, like those of the first Crusaders, struck the local authorities into dumb surprise; and many of the devout may have repeated their visits to the shrine over and over, and thus have swelled the apparent mass of pilgrims. It does honour to the arrangements of Bishop Arnoldi, and of the clergy and municipality of Treves, that, with this vast and sudden afflux of people, there were few or no accidents, few or no deaths from exposure to weather, fatigue, or want of food, and even no extraordinary rise of price in the markets for ordinary provisions. This fact THEIR LOSS OF TIME AND MONEY. 25 was clearly proved by the Catholic newspapers, in repelling the forebodings and imputations of the Protestant press at the time ; and this fact is, perhaps, the most serious, and, politically consi- dered, gives occasion to the most serious reflec- tions of any connected with the movement. There was a concentration of physical force within eight weeks in a given spot of a kingdom under auto- cratic military rule, which it would have puzzled a Napoleon or a Wellington to have drawn toge- ther, and compared to which, be the numbers ever so much exaggerated, the standing armies of any government, the two or three hundred thou- sand men of any army, are but a drop in the torrent. It shows the irresistible force of a whole people in movement. It repeats the lesson to monarchs which the French revolution told in France ; the resistance of the Caucasian tribes is telling to Russia ; the resistance of the Arab tribes to France ; O' Connell, and his monster meetings, to England ; and which all history tells, in every page that the will of the people is the master power in society, which may be guided, but can- not be extinguished. The loss of time in the precious season of har- vest and the sacrifice must have been heavy to the great mass of the pilgrims consisting of hus* 26 MIRACULOUS CUKE bandmen and their families some instances alsc of persons who had mortgaged and even sold theii tenements and little spots of land, to raise money to defray the expense of their pilgrimage; the openly avowed object also of drawing money to the cathedral, and to the city of Treves, by the offerings from the pilgrims at the shrine, and b} the necessary expense of their subsistence in the town both together estimated to have exceedec a million of dollars were the chief subjects o reprobation in the local German newspapers ad verse to the movement : but these smaller discus sions were cut short in the middle by a miracle a real miracle, worked by the holy coat ! Wha would the relic and the movement have been without a miracle ? The Countess Droste-Vischering, a young lady of one of the first families in those parts, and of the highest personal character the family and the young lady well known to be of a probity and respectability that placed them beyond all sus- picion of intentional connivance at any deceitful statement had been afflicted for several years with a contraction of the knee-joint, so that the leg was at a right angle with the thigh-bone, and she had for some seasons been using the baths of Bieberich and of Kreuznach without effect. The BY THE HOLY COAT. 27 young lady had a lively hope that she would be cured of her lameness by the holy relic at Treves. She went there, in this hope, from the baths of Kreuznach. Her lameness was such that she had i to be carried out of the inn at Treves to the shrine of the relic : she was instantly healed of her lameness by the virtue of the holy coat ; was so entirely cured, on the spot, that she laid aside her crutches at the shrine, in testimony of her cure, and walked down the marble steps of the altar, and through the cathedral, and down the ; street to her inn, the Red House at Treves, with- out other help than the arm of her grandmother, r who had attended her on her pilgrimage. She 'returned to Kreuznach, complaining indeed of I some pain, but, to the astonishment of all who tknew her, able to do without crutches, although requiring some assistance in moving about. The young Countess and her grandmother are of a character beyond all suspicion of wilful con-^ inivance at any kind of deception. The long previous lameness of the young lady was known to all, and her sudden recovery was now visible tto all. Here then is a miracle! a well-attested miracle, performed by the holy relic, the identical garment of our Saviour, which the woman with the issue of blood touched in the crowd and was 28 CURE OF THE COUNTESS healed, and in the authenticity and miraculous powers of which a million and a half of the most educated of the German people, the Prus- sian population, believe in this nineteenth cen- tury ! This well-attested, undeniable cure at the shrine of the holy coat at Treves would have been the most bouncing of modern miracles but for the doctors. Those doctors will neither allow their patients to be cured by a miracle, nor with- out one. A doctor at Kreuznach, a little town on the Rhine with mineral waters reputed good in scrofulous cases, writes thus concerning the miraculous cure : " Kreuznach, 5th October, 1844. I was not the physician who attended the young Countess ; it was my colleague, Dr. Prieger. What I have to state, however, is partly from my own observation, partly from conversation with the young lady herself and her grandmother, and partly from the accounts of persons who are in almost daily communication with both of them." " The young Countess is an interesting girl, with an expression of suffering in her countenance, quiet, silent, and altogether a stranger to any kind of vanity or love of display. Her grandmother is a worthy, humane, amiable old lady ; and both are so pure-minded, that no shadow of suspicion of any intention to deceive can come near them. DROSTE-YISCHERING BY THE HOLY COAT. 29 Before her journey to Treves, the young lady could only come down the stairs into the saloon of the baths with the help of crutches, and that with difficulty, On her return from Treves, I congratulated her on her being able to do with- out crutches; without, however, touching upon the mode of her cure ; and she told me how happy she felt now, at being able, after three years, again to touch the ground with her foot, and to move about in her chamber, at least, without help. Out of her room, she said, she still required sup- port, as her knee still pained her, and she would now continue her cure at the baths as before prescribed." "From ladies who knew her intimately, and saw her often, it was understood that a gathering of blood had formed on her knee-joint." t( While she remained here after her return from Treves, her leg did not become worse, nor did a new contraction of it take place; but where the tendons had been ruptured, an inflammation had ensued, which was however but temporary, and did not affect the result obtained at Troves." would not be less a miracle if operated on them, instead of on the solar system if to them, and in their perceptions, 'the sun stood still, and they were made percipients of noon- Iday light at the natural hour of midnight darkness. Ir. reasoning it is not wise or allowable to take the most diffi- cult instead of the most easy solution of a difficulty, when the solution involves no dereliction of the character of the subject. The miraculous character of the event is surely as great, operating direct on the intellectual element in man, as operating on the material external world to be perceived by the intellectual element in man. D 34 JOHANNES EONGE. While the German newspapers and their corre- spondents were discussing, asserting, or denying the authenticity of the Holy Coat, and the miracle worked by it, and were brawling about all points except those of real importance in this mighty j religious demonstration of a million and a half of people, a cry came from the East, which, like the roar of the lion in the desert, silenced all voices of inferior note. It electrified modern Germany. In Number 164 of the Sachsische Vaterlands Blatter appeared " The Judgment of a Catholic Priest, Mr. Johannes Ronge, on the Holy Coat of Treves." It was dated the 1st of October at Laurahiitte, and signed Johannes Ronge, Catholic priest. Where Laurahiitte that is, the Laura Foundry - is situated, was known to few. It is an iron-foundry in Upper Silesia, near the Russian frontier. Who this bold man, Johannes Ronge 3 was he is a bold man who dares to publish his opinion on any passing public event in Prussia with his name to it was known to fewer. This obscurity, the manly boldness with which it wa* thrown aside as a cloak of concealment, and the rude, pithy, Luther-like sense and style of the address, instantly roused the attention of all Ger- many. This piece was reprinted, and circulated by thousands. No writing for many years has THE ADDKESS OF ROXGE. 35 raised so general a sensation. The following is a translation : The Judgment of a Catholic Priest, Mr. Johannes Ronge, on the Holy Coat of Treves. " Laurahiitte, 1 October, 1844. " What for a time sounded in our ears like a fable or gossip, that Bishop Arnoldi of Troves was exhibiting a piece of clothing, called Christ's Coat, to religious veneration, ye have already beard, ye Christians of the nineteenth century ye already know, ye German men ye already know, f e teachers of the people in religion, to be no table, no gossip, but the actual reality and fact. For already, by the last accounts, five hundred thousand people have gone in pilgrimage to this relic, and daily other thousands are streaming to it, especially since the said piece of clothing has aealed the sick, and worked miracles. The report aas penetrated through the lands of all people, and in France the clergy have asserted ( that ;hey possess the true coat of Christ, and the one lf Treves is spurious.' Truly the words are applicable c that he who does not lose his D 2 36 THE ADDRESS OF RONGE. understanding at some things, must have none to lose.' " Five hundred thousand people, five hundred thousand sensible Germans, have already gone to Treves, to venerate or behold a piece of clothing ! The most of these thousands too from the lowest class of people, in great poverty, oppressed, igno- rant, stupified, superstitious, and in part corrupted; and now they lay aside the cultivation of their fields, withdraw themselves from their trades, the care of their house affairs, the education of their children, to travel in pilgrimage to Treves to an idolatrous festival, to an unworthy spectacle played off by the Roman hierarchy ! Yes ! an idolatrous festival it is ; for many thousands of the credulous multitude will be led astray to give those feelings of veneration which we owe to God alone, to a piece of clothing, a thing made by the hands of man. " And what are the consequences of these pilgrimages ? Thousands of the pilgrims spend their money on the expenses of the journey, and on the offering they must present to the Holy Coat, that is, to the clergy. They scrape it together with loss, and even by begging, and return home to starve, to pine away, or to be laid down in sickness by the hardships of their journey. THE ADDKESS OF RONGE. 5? If these external evils are great, very great, the moral evils are still greater. Will not many, brought to want by the expenses of their journey, seek relief by improper ways ? Will not wives I and daughters lose their purity of heart, theij [chastity, their reputation, and thereby ruin the peace, happiness, and well-being of their families ? This altogether unchristian spectacle, in short, opens the door to superstition to the supposed holiness of things earthly, to fanaticism, and to what is bound up with these, to vice. This is Ihe blessing diffused by the exhibition of the Holy Coat, and it is altogether the same whether it be genuine or spurious. And the man who has presented this piece of clothing, a work of auman hands, to public view and veneration who las led astray the religious feelings of the credu- ious, ignorant, or suffering multitude who has *iven an impulse to superstition, and thereby to dee who has drawn their money and substance from the hungering people who has made the Grerman people a derision to other nations who aas drawn together still more strongly the thun- ler-clouds already rolling dark and fearful enough Dver our heads this man is a bishop, a German oishop ; it is Bishop Arnoldi of Treves. " Bishop Arnoldi of Treves, I turn myself to D 3 38 THE ADDRESS OF RONGE. you, and, by authority of my office and calling as Catholic priest, as a teacher of the German people, I demand of you, in the name of Christianity, oi the German nation, and of their teachers, to pu1 an end to this unchristian spectacle, this exhibition of the Holy Coat, to withdraw from the public eye this piece of clothing, and not to increase scandal already too great. "For do you not know as bishop you must know it that the Founder of the Christian reli- gion bequeathed to his apostles and disciples, not his coat, but his Spirit ? His coat, Bishop Arnoldi of Treves, belongs to his executioners. " Know you not as bishop you must know it that Christ taught ' God is a spirit, and he "who worships him must worship him in spirit and in truth ? ' And he is to be worshipped every where, and not merely in Jerusalem in the Temple, or on the mount Garizim, or at Treves, before the Holy Coat. " Know you not as bishop you must know it that the Scriptures expressly forbid the worship of any likenesses, or of any relics ? that the Chris- tians of the apostolic times, and for three hundred years after the Apostles, tolerated no relics (and surely they could have had enough of them), and no images, in their churches? that the worship THE ADDRESS OF RONGE. 39 of images and relics is heathenish, and the fa- thers in the first three hundred years derided the heathens on this very account ? For instance, it is said (Div. Inst. II. c. 2.) ' the images, if they had life, should rather worship the men that made them, than the men them.' Nee intelligunt homines ineptissimi quod si sentire simulacra et moveri pos- sent, adoratura hominem fuissent a quo expolita. " Finally, do you not know as bishop you must know it that the sound strong sense of the German people was first debased to the worship of relics in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the Crusades, when the high impression it had of the Godhead before was obscured by all sorts of fables and miracle stories brought from the East ? " Look you, Bishop Arnoldi of Treves ! You know all this, as well and probably better than I can tell it you. . You know too the consequences which the idolatrous veneration of relics, and superstition in general, have brought upon us ; namely, the spiritual and intellectual slavery of Germany ; and yet you set up your relics to be publicly adored ! But even if you did not know all this, and if you had only the good of Chris- tianity in view in exhibiting the relics of Treves, you have then a double guilt upon your con- science, from which you cannot clear yourself. D 4 40 THE ADDRESS OF RONGE. For, in the first place, it is unpardonable in you, if you knew that the aforesaid piece of clothing had the power of healing, to have kept it up from suffering man until the year 1844. In the next place, it is unpardonable that you take money for it, in offerings from the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. Or is it not unpardonable that you, a bishop, take money from the starving poor of the population, although but a few weeks before you saw that want had driven hundreds of them to insurrection, and a desperate death? But do not suffer yourself to be deceived by the concourse of hundreds of thousands. Believe me, that while hundreds of thousands of Germans, full of en- thusiasm, are hastening to Treves, millions, like myself, are filled with horror and the bitterest de- testation of your unworthy exhibition. These feelings are not confined to one class or one party, but are felt by all classes, and even by the Ca- tholic priesthood. Judgment will overtake you sooner than you expect. Already the historian's pen is consigning your name, Arnoldi, to the con- tempt of the present and future generations, as the Tetzel of the nineteenth century. " But you, my German fellow-citizens, whether you dwell near to or far from Treves, turn your- selves with all might to shake off this scandal on THE ADDRESS OF RONGE.XV^ 1 & the German name. Ye have town municipalities, parish overseers, district and provincial repre- sentatives. Well! work through these. Strive every man with might, and to his utmost, to oppose and restrain the tyrannical power of the Roman hierarchy. It is not at Treves alone that this trade in the remission of sins is driven. Ye know, that east and west, north and south, rosary- money, mass-money, remission-money, burial- money, and the like, is gathered in, and that spi- ritual darkness is spreading and gaining the upper hand over all. Go all, Catholics and Protestants, to the work, for it concerns our honour, our li- berty, and our well-being. Do not bring to shame the spirit of your forefathers, who razed the Ca- pitol, by suffering the Castle of St. Angelo in Germany. Let not the laurels of Huss, Hutte, Luther, be disgraced! Give words to your thoughts, and deeds to your will. "Finally my professional brethren who have Ithe welfare of your flocks, and the honour, free- Idom, and happiness of the German nation, in your ihearts and in your endeavours, be silent no longer, ; for you are sinning against religion, your country, ind your calling, if you remain silent longer, and tlelay to bear testimony to your convictions by your doings. I have addressed you separately, 42 TlxE ADDRESS CONSIDERED. so that I shall only add a few words to you her Show yourselves to be true disciples of Him wh offered up all for truth, light, and freedom. Sho that you have inherited his Spirit, not merely h coat. (Signed) "JOHANNES RONGE, Catholic Priest There is true eloquence here, genuine thun der. The nineteenth century has found its Luthe Will its Luther find followers and support ? This is a very weighty political question, momentous crisis has very unexpectedly occurrec a break in the clouds of a black thunder-storm, through which the sunshine suddenly pours light upon the earth, and cheers the heart of the way- faring man. How much depends upon, how much is more or less closely connected with the success, permanent establishment, and future growth of this German Catholic church ! Ho\v much, in the political, social, and religious con- dition of future generations in every civilised land, is wrapped up in this little paper of Johannes Ronge is hanging upon the movement it has given rise to ! A German-Catholic church dis- tinct from the Roman, or, as it is now called by THE ADDRESS CONSIDERED. 43 Ronge's followers, the Italian-Catholic church ! i Then why not an American-Catholic church, i a Spanish-Catholic church, a Belgian-Catholic \ church, nay, an Irish-Catholic church it would : be worth half a crown to Queen Victoria a ["Catholicism without the Pope;" in short, in every Catholic land, a church, without any con- nection with the Roman hierarchy, returning to what the church was before the bishop of Rome had any supremacy over the clergy of other coun- tries? All this, and more of what is of greater importance to the social well-being of the people than the political changes it may produce in their governments, may be connected with this move- ment. All the interference of the church of Rome with mixed marriages, which has afflicted domestic life of late years so severely on the Continent that is, the demand of the Roman Catholic priests, that the children of a marriage of a Catholic and a Protestant shall be brought up in the Catholic faith; otherwise, absolution, the sacraments, the death-bed and burial services, and all other church privileges, shall be denied to the Catholic parent falls at once to the ground. The German-Catholic church is an asylum from such persecution. The disputes on this question, 44 BENEFITS CONSIDERED OF in which the Prussian Government was involved! with the Court of Rome, through the bishops pfl Cologne and Posen, are terminated at once by this! voluntary renunciation of the power of the Pope] and his priests in matters spiritual or temporal, by the Catholic clergy and population of Ger- many, or by any such considerable body of the enlightened influential men among them as will constitute a Catholic church independent of Rome, purified, as far as each congregation may think fit, from the errors and abuses of the church of Rome, and having a clergy elected by the con- gregation from the priests who have seceded with them a national clergy, requiring no ordination from or communication with Rome. The secret power, real or imaginary, ascribed to the Order of Jesuits in modern society falls at once to the ground, with the machinery through which alone they could act on society, a priesthood dependent on Rome, and holding the religious education of the people in their hands. The other social evils, too, of the Roman Catholic church fall at once to the ground : the state of slavery and debasement of mind in which the inferior clergy are educated and held ; the immorality produced by the forced celibacy of the clergy: the auricular confession of wives and maidens on the most secret immodest A GEKMAN-CATHOLIC CHUKCH. 45 circumstances and subjects, on which a wife would i not talk to her husband, or a girl to her own mother, in the shameless, open, and descriptive way which the duty of the confessional imposes on the priest and the female, side by side, in the confessional box, and which is exposed by Ronge, Czerki, and other Roman Catholic priests who have given in their adhesion to the new Catholic church, as an immoral, degrading, unchristian abuse, and the chief among the causes on account of which they separate themselves from the church of Rome ; all these abuses fall to the ground. The abuse and immorality of the auricular con- fession, and its effect, even when not abused, to break the confidence and sacredness of communi- cation in married life, and, even between Catholics, to give, in fact, a spiritual husband to the weak- minded female, as well as her worldly spouse, are felt, in our times of delicate and refined ideas, as destructive of domestic happiness. If the auricu- lar confession was in the days of Luther felt to be unsuitable to the manners and spirit of that age, it is an abuse of itself sufficient to produce a second reformation, in our more intellectual and refined nineteenth century. This movement is, in fact, in all its circum- stances, very similar to that which Martin Luther 46 RESULTS CONSIDERED. headed in the sixteenth century. Then, it was an obscure monk, opposing the sale of indulgences and remissions of sin in the fairs and market- places, to the people, by the Pope's agent Tetzel, that struck the spark which enlightened himself at last, and with him the Christian world. Now, it is an obscure Catholic priest, teacher of a school at an iron-foundry in Silesia, a man, to judge from his style of thought and expression, very like Luther in strong sense, rude eloquence, and determined energy of character, opposing the same abuses, and exposing another Tetzel, in the Bishop of Treves, to the descendants of the same people. Will he have the same success ? This event is either to prove the most important that has risen on the political horizon of Europe since the Reformation, to be a second reformation, and a fatal blow to the power and stability of that church which survived even the storm of the French revolution, and gathered vigour from the winds that shook her ; or it is to stand, in the future history of these times, a clear proof that the religious element in the mind of the German popu- lation upon which in the sixteenth century the Protestant church was built, is extinct now, in the nineteenth century. Its success or its failure are SOURCES OP INFORMATION. 4? as yet in the womb of time. In either case it will be an important elucidation of the present state of a great and enlightened portion of the European people, of the social, intellectual, and religious condition of the public mind on tthe Continent. In this view, every fact, and opinion formed on the spot from the facts, is of isome historical importance. This importance must ibe the excuse for repetitions, contradictions, and imperfect conflicting opinions in this statement. This German-Catholic church is not a fait ac- ompli, but an event in formation and progress ; the facts concerning it have to be collected from a mass of pamphlets, and accounts in the small coun- try journals and newspapers, in which the circum- stances are differently represented according to the local prejudices of the circles in which they circulate, or of the writers. The great leading journal of Germany, the " Allgemeine Zeitung," which is equivalent to the " Times " in England, and which perhaps alone could give the (e form and pressure " of the public mind in Germany truly upon this subject, is published in Augsburg, in the Bavarian dominions, and the newspapers i in Bavaria are interdicted from even mentioning the name of the German-Catholic church. It is 48 SOURCES OF INFORMATION. therefore upon the swarm of country minor news- papers that the inquirer is thrown for picking out his facts and opinions, and they are truly legion. This must be the excuse for what may be found inconsistent, contradictory, or groundless in the following remarks. OTHER ADDRESSES OF RONGE. 49 JOHANNES RONGE published at the same time, viz., in October, 1844, an " Address to the Catholic Teachers," alluded to in " The Judgment of a Catholic Priest on the Holy Coat at Treves " translated in the preceding chapter ; also an t 'Ad- dress to the Lower Catholic Priesthood," and an " Address to my Fellow-believers and Fellow-citi- zens ;" and in December, 1844, his "Justifica- tion." The three first-mentioned addresses are exhortations to throw off the degrading yoke of the Roman hierarchy, and of the upper clergy ap- pointed from Rome to renounce the servility, superstition, abasement of mind and body, in which pupils, teachers, and the lower order of priests are held by the discipline of the Roman Catholic church to renounce the Pope, auricular confes- sion, celibacy, and all the immoral and irreligious abuses/introduced without any Scriptural warrant, in the dark ages, merely for the support of the Papal power to take the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, for the rule of religious life and to establish an Apostolic Catholic church 50 OTHER ADDRESSES OF RONGE. a church such as the Christian church was in the time of the Apostles, and for three hundred years after them in which there is no Pope or papal power in which the clergy are chosen by their elders and congregations, from suitably educated men, and mutually ordained and inducted by their fellow-clergy and in which the service shall be in a known tongue, the German, not in the unknown Latin language the sacrament of the Lord's Supper dispensed to the laity, as well as the clergy, in both elements, the wine as well as the bread the fees for masses, burial-services, and other rites, together with pilgrimages, fasts, saint- worship, relic-worship, abolished each congrega- tion retaining as much of the ceremonial service, mass, and liturgy of the Roman Catholic church as it finds suitable, until a general council of the new German-Catholic church be convened, in which the several congregations will take part. These are the principal points referred to in these addresses, and in the numerous letters, paragraphs, proposals, articles, in which the subject of the German- Catholic church is discussed through the provincial newspaper press. Germany has not, like England or France, a centre from which political or literary intelligence is diffused through the countrv, and that intelli- GEEMAN LOCAL NEWSPAPERS. 51 gence the better the nearer to the source. The periodical press of the capital cities as of Berlin, Munich, Dresden are the nearest to the censor's bureau ; and if his scissors are not visible, the fear of him is, and its sheets are far behind those of the provincial small-town press in freedom of discus- sion and intelligence. They, from their local cir- culation, may escape notice, and insert discussions which would bring the newspaper editor in the great city under the infliction of the law. The restraint upon the liberty of the press in Prussia is the most absurd and ineffective exertion of arbitrary power in modern times. Intelligence, like quicksilver, slips out between the fingers, while the censor tries to hide it in his hand. Conversation cannot be stopped. The intelli- gence gets out with all the obnoxious comments upon it ; and what the censor in the capital, under the eye of the court, may think very unsuitable to appear in a newspaper, the censor at Breslau, Cologne, or Dantzig, in the same kingdom, may not observe to be objectionable at all ; and out of tthe Prussian dominions it assuredly gets printed, in some little town journal, and circulates widely among the very classes from whom the govern- ment wished to keep it the middle and lower slasses who take their intelligence from cheap local E 2 52 TEIFLES OCCUPY THE NEWSPAPERS. papers. Political news or discussions are at any rate of small interest in Germany, because the German powers Prussia, Bavaria, Wirtemburg, Hanover are shut out by nature, in times of peace, from any political influence. What could these powers say to Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Egypt, or any American State ? Their recogni- tion or non-recognition of the governments of these countries, or approval or disapproval of their acts, are empty forms of diplomacy. There is no political weight and no real interest in the foreign relations of those states, and therefore the public mind is thrown back upon petty domestic politics and theoretical discussions. The affairs of their theatres, the marriages, births, journeys of every petty prince the matters of no importance or influence, and therefore of no interest, in our state of society, to the reading public, and which we would call gossip, rather than news occupy the public mind. The minds even of their rulers are narrowed by the limited sphere of really im- portant affairs in which they have to work ; and they carry on a fidgetty governing in small things ; a busy bustling interference in petty parish details ; a galloping from end to end of their dominions, to see what their personal seeing is altogether absurd and useless ; and a mixing themselves up, in no very TRIFLES OCCUPY THE SOVEREIGNS. 53 dignified way, in personal opposition to political writers and their works. The censorship of the press, the persecution of many authors, whose only claim to be read is that their books have been prohibited, the system of passports, the military system, the educational system, the system of in- terference in all operations of industry and ca- pital, are in reality the workings of a government that has nothing to do, no other sphere to work in, and which must be doing something to satisfy its own self-importance. A continental king in these times is very like an English gentleman at his country-seat during the recess of Parliament, who, although detesting public business, for which he perhaps is unfit, feels the want of excitement, the having nothing to do of any importance, and from mere ennui and idleness bustles about in his stable, kitchen, and garden, as head groom, cook, and gardener in one ; sits in solemn committee upon a gravel walk to his greenhouse, as if it were the London and York railroad ; and torments every body, and interrupts all work, in his endeavours to have something to do, and to gratify his self- importance. Many of the domestic events which astonish us with our notions of royal dignity and kingly office such as the personal displeasure of the Prussian monarch at two private gentlemen of E 3 54 SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS. Baden, members of its States, or Parliament, who are leaders of the liberal party in it, and ordering them instantly out of his dominions, although provided with regular passports may be ac- counted for as the natural consequences of the royal position, without real weight abroad in the world's affairs, and with nothing to do at home but the business it can make for itself, and without even an opposition in its home-affairs to carry a point against. This want of really important affairs, and of freedom to discuss what they have, will account for the speculative spirit of the German journals. It is not what is, but what may be, that they discuss and the further from reasonable probability in these speculative views, the further from risk of censorship. This church movement came on so unexpectedly, and at first under the shape of discussions upon the antiquity of the holy coat of Treves, the reality of the mi- raculous cure of the young lady, the numbers of pilgrims, and such subjects as governments jealous of political discussions rather encouraged than repressed, that its objects and opinions were spread over Germany by the country newspaper press before the governments had time to con- sider it. The subject was exactly suited to the state of the public mind and the public press in BY KONGE. 55 Germany : plenty of speculation on what may i be growing under it ; no necessity to discuss what is ; great room for antiquarian research and ab- stract opinions, without approaching too near to i matters prohibited. The idea too of a German 1 Catholic church, a national church, a nationality . in all things, is fashionable. The governments of some of the Protestant states, as of Wirtemburg, and of Prussia itself, were probably not very averse, even after they had considered it, to allow J the demonstration against the Papal authority and hierarchy to go on, and to check the assump- =1 tion of power in their dominions over marriages : and education, by showing that there was a re- : sistance among the Catholics themselves, which, ! if fostered by government, would annul the Papal j pretensions, and become a second Reformation. These considerations perhaps, and the impossibility of suppressing by censorship what the public is determined to know, prevented any general inter- i ference with the circulation of Ronge's publica- i tions, and of hundreds on the same side. The " Justification " was a reply by Ronge to a multitude of slanderous articles which had appeared, in all the Roman Catholic newspapers, on his character and conduct. He was stated to be a suspended priest suspended for im- E 4 56 RONGE'S LIFE. moral conduct from the functions of priest by the chapter of the cathedral of Breslau, in Ja- nuary, 1843. The "Justification" is a simple account of his life. He was born on the 16th of October, 1813, at Bischofswalde, a village in the circle of Neissen in Silesia. He was the third child of his parents, who had a family of ten children, and a small croft, or peasant estate, on which their labour supported them. From his sixth to his twelfth year, he kept the sheep, and his elder brothers helped to work the arable land. He was taught, at the Tillage school, to read, write, and cipher ; got the Catechism by heart, and Bible history, while at- tending his sheep in the field; and learnt geo- graphy and the history of Silesia the last year he was at school. One of the teachers persuaded his father to send him to the Gymnasium at Neissen, in the year 1827, and he remained there until 1836. Ronge adopted the clerical profession, as most suitable to his own pious disposition and love of giving instruction, and also to his father's circumstances, who had eight other children to provide for. He performed his military duty of three years' service while at the Gymnasium, in the years 1837, 1838, and 1839 ; and in Decem- ber 1839, entered the Priest-Seminary. The RONGE'S EDUCATION. 57 training of the young priest * the crushing all thought, feeling, devotion, and knowledge, into a repetition of the same and the same forms the reducing the human mind to a ceremonial machine the five hours daily of the same Latin prayers the silence, the idleness of mind, the want of communication with, and consequent hypocrisy * The following account of the day's occupation in a priest-seminary gives the best view of the formation of the mind and habits of the young men studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood : Morning, 5^ to 6 o'clock, morning prayer. 6 to 7 . . breviary prayers. 7 to 1\ . . mass. 7| to 8 . . breakfast. 8 to 10 . . lectures. 10 to 103. . free. lOfto 1H . study. Hi to 12 . . breviary prayers. Before and after dinner prayers in the chapel for about three quarters of an hour together, and afterwards from a quarter to half an hour of breviary prayers. Afternoon, 2 to 4 o'clock, lectures. 4 to 4| . . free. 4 to 7 . . study. After supper about half an hour of prayers in the chapel, and one hour of breviary prayers. The prayers are always in Latin ; and on Sundays and holidays are more frequent. At meals the pupils must not speak. Twice a week they are allowed to go out. They sleep from three to fifteen in one room, and have one room for about 20 pupils to study in. 58 towards, each other of the inmates the degrad- ing treatment from the superiors are touched upon as having lowered him morally in his own estimation ; and when he left the seminary, as a priest, the finding himself cut off as it were, by his profession, from his former free communications with his parents, and brothers, and sisters and the meeting an old man, who used to fondle him when a child, who now reverentially kissed his hand, when he was going to shake hands with him this separation from the common sympathies of our nature, by the conventional standing of the priest, are slightly but feelingly touched upon, and disclose, no doubt, the real feelings of many a young Roman Catholic clergyman, living in the world as a thing not of it, walking about in the crowd of human beings, not in the pride of a superior, but in the desolation and agony of heart of an isolated outcast. He was appointed to the cure of Grottkau in 1841, as preacher and school- master, or chaplain. The chapter of the Breslau cathedral, of which Grottkau was a chaplaincy, was then, in consequence of the vacancy of the see, presided over by Dr. Eitter, the vicar-general of the diocese, an ultramontane divine, who was endeavouring to bring back the darkness of the middle ages in the schools and in the pulpits RONGE'S LIFE, 59 under his control. Ronge opposed this retro- gression; taught and preached in the most en- lightened strain permitted in other Catholic countries ; and in an article in the " Vaterlands- : blatter" of the year 1842, intitled "Komeand the Chapter of the Cathedral of Breslau," and signed " A Chaplain," which attracted much notice, exposed the attempts to bring back the super- stitions and usages of the dark ages. For this he was called to account, and suspended by a decree of the chapter, in February, 1843; and he repaired to Laurahiitte, as chaplain, and teacher of the ^ school in the ironfoundry. So far from any moral delinquency being imputed, or being imputable to : him, the whole inhabitants of Grottkau, and of I Laurahiitte, signed a testimonial of his irreproach- *able moral and religious conduct, and of their re- gret at losing him as their teacher and pastor; are seats of considerable manufactures; and Leip- i$ic, Dresden, Berlin, Breslau, are cities of such l! magnitude, that a considerable body of individuals [have a living in them independent of government [function. It is in these localities, and among this class, that the new German-Catholic church has found favour. The very highest and the very lowest classes, and the country population, appear jiot at all to have adopted it. The million and a half of pilgrims to Treves, composed entirely of those classes, show that it has not extended to them; that on the contrary, the current of effective religious zeal is running altogether in an opposite direction, and in favour of the most gross super- stitions of the Roman Catholic church. The schism is, however, extending itself daily, and making rapid progress among those of the middle class whose circumstances and social position allow them to adopt it. Every newspaper has accounts of new meetings, or new congregations being formed, and of individuals giving in their adhesion to it, whose respectability keeps others in countenance. Marriages have been solemnised in it at Breslau, Berlin, Elberfeld, Leipsic among others, Czerzki, the Roman Catholic priest of 64 EXTENSION OF Schneidemiihl, has evinced the sincerity of his renun- 1 ciation of the errors of the Roman Catholic church, by taking upon himself the yoke of matrimony. Baptisms have been performed. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper has been dispensed in both elements to the laity. In two or three towns in which the property of the churches happens to be vested in the municipality, or in the parishioners, the use of the Protestant church has been given to the new congregations. In others, warehouses or other large buildings have been converted into temporary churches. At Offenbach, near Frankfort, the petty government of Anhalt-Dessau prohibited the use of the church being given to the new congregation on the eve of its first meeting. A rich merchant lent his warehouse, the tradesmen of the place gave their work and material, and on Sunday the church was ready, and the service and sermon, by Pastor Licht, an aged Roman Catholic priest, who has joined the new church, were so effective, that a congregation was imme- diately formed in the adjacent very important city of Frankfort. Meetings, addresses, even subscrip- tions of money, although very sparingly, compared to the efforts of any Scotch parish in raising pecuniary means for its spiritual objects, are every where on foot. In England, according to THE GEKMAN-CATHOLIC CHUKCH. 65 report, the German Roman Catholics are about forming a German-Catholic church. The actual number of congregations established on the principles of the Christian-Catholic or German- Catholic church is supposed to be, in the month of May, above one hundred ; but of these many have not, as yet, settled ministers. Considering the slow movement of life in Germany, the want of communications, and the novelty of any exercise at all, by the people themselves, of civil or re- ligious rights without the sanction of government, this progress and extent of a schism which has only been in existence about eight months is not discouraging. 66 CONFESSIONS OF FAITH. III. THE principles, doctrines, or confessions of faith of the congregations of the German-Catholk church, in what they differ from, and in whal they agree with, the Roman Catholic church, or the one hand, or with the German Protestanl church on the other, have to be examined, before any reasonable conjecture can be made on its ulti- mate success or failure. If founded on sound consistent, distinct principles of religious doctrine and church service, it will succeed ; if not, it wiL fail, and be merged in one or other of the churches on either hand of it, the Lutheran or the Roman Catholic. The congregations which started up simultane- ously in the most distant parts of Germany, at the call of Johannes Ronge, had no time to commu- nicate with each other, and adjust common points of faith. The repudiation of the Pope and hier- archy of the Roman church, of its errors, idola- trous observances, and superstitions, and the esta- blishment, in place of it, of a pure Apostolic- Christian-Catholic church, such as the Christian CONFESSIONS OF FAITH. 67 church may have been in the days of the Apostles, and for three hundred years after them, was a common point of union, but it left something a great deal indeed vague, and to be defined by each congregation according to its own views and feeling of what is error, and superstition, what observance idolatrous, or unscriptural what observance innocent, venerable, useful, and to ye retained. To renounce more or less of the toctrine and service of the Roman Catholic church vas a common principle in all ; but how much to enounce, how much to retain, depended, no loubt, on the spiritual condition of each con- gregation. At first, therefore, each congregation, when it was formed, drew up a confession of faith or itself, and an enumeration of the points of doctrine or observance on which it dissented and differed from Roman Catholicism. Other con- gregations, finding their religious views in ac- cordance with one or other of these published confessions, adopted that which suited them, with or without alteration. It is understood that these are but temporary, or at least are not unchange- able confessions of faith, and adoptions of ritual services. A general council of the German- Catholic church, in which the several congregations are by their ministers, elders, or representatives F 2 68 CONFESSIONS OF FAITH. to take part, will be held at some future period, for adjusting the various confessions of faith and rituals, for drawing up a catechism, a liturgy, a system of religious instruction, and such essential matters. In the mean time, the leading confes- sions of faith, and declarations, 'of dissent from the church of Rome, which have been publishec and most generally adopted by the new congrega- tions, are very widely different from each other in doctrine, and in what they retain or renounce o Roman Catholic superstition, in belief, and in ceremonial. To reconcile them, to bring them under one church, one religious body of doctrine, appears a work impossible for any council to accomplish, because principles totally discordant, and incompatible with each other, are involved in the differents points of doctrine, faith, and cere- monial retained by some and renounced by others of these congregations. The following are the leading confessions of faith, or articles of belief, and articles of dissent from the church of Rome, which have hitherto appeared, and have been adopted as a type by other subsequent congregations. All the con- gregations have adopted one or other of the fol- lowing confessions and declarations. To reduce them to one, common to all, and acceptable to all, CONFESSIONS OF FAITH. 69 will be the very difficult problem for the proposed council of the German-Catholic church. The earliest in date, and which is referred to by many subsequently formed congregations as the confession of faith which they adopt, is the con- fession of faith, and articles of dissent from the Church of Rome, of the congregation of Schneide- miihl, of which its former Roman Catholic priest, Czerzki, is now the pastor. " Sdmeidemiihl, 19th October, 1844. I. " WE believe in one God, the almighty Father, creator of heaven and earth. II. " We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, who from all eternity was begotten of the Father, and is God of God, Light of Light, rery God of very God, begotten, not created, of equal nature and being with the Father, and through whom all was created, who for our sakes, and the salvation of man, descended from heaven, .and by the Holy Ghost from the Virgin Mary assumed flesh, and became man ; who also was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered, and was buried, but on the third day, according to F 3 70 CONFESSION OF FAITH OF THE Scripture, arose again, and ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of God, and from whence he shall again come down in glory to judge the living and the dead. This his kingdom will have no end. in. " We believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord, who giveth life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who is to be praised and adored with the Father and the Son: who spoke through the Prophets. We believe in the holy general (catho- lic) apostolic church. We acknowledge a baptism to the forgiveness of sins, and await a resurrection and a life in the future world. Amen. IV. " We receive the Holy Scriptures as the only sure source of Christian faith, and that in the sense in which they are intelligible to every enlightenec pious Christian. v. " We acknowledge that by Jesus Christ our Lord seven true and proper means of grace (sacra- ments) are established under the new covenant, CONGREGATION OF SCHNEIDEMUHL. 71 namely 1st. Baptism. 2d. Confirmation (the laying on of hands with prayer). 3d. The holy Supper of the Lord. 4th. The penitence. 5th. The priestly ordination (the laying on of hands with prayer). 6th. Marriage. 7th. The prepara- tion for death (extreme unction); and that these r impart pardon ; and of these, baptism, confirmation, !of Faith as theirs, and places it as the object of the church and of individuals to come to a living [acknowledgment of the same, suitable to their temporal convictions. In the different explanations and understandings of its meaning, the Congre- gation finds no ground for separation and con- demnation. "SPECIAL PROVISIONS. XII. " The Congregation makes use again of its old rights to elect freely its minister and elders. G 3 86 CONFESSION OF FAITH OF THE XIII. " Every minister will be introduced to his con- gregation and office by a solemn act ; but in this every thing will be avoided that can recall the sacramental meaning of the Koman consecration to priesthood, or could serve as a foundation for hierarchy. XIV. " The Congregation understands it to be the chief problem of Christianity, not only to bring to a lively conviction by instruction, teaching, and divine service, its members, but also, by active Christian love, to promote with all their power the spiritual, moral, and material interests of their fellow men without disti action. xv. " The external forms of divine service shall always be regulated by the wants of the time and place. XVI. " The reception into the Congregation, after it is fully constituted, will take place, upon a decla- ration of willingness to join it and acceptance oi the Confession of Faith, by the elders making it known to the Congregation. CONGREGATION OF LEIPSIC. 87 XVII. " The Liturgy, and the part of the divine service belonging to edification, shall, according to the practice of the Apostles and first Christians, be adapted to the wants of the times. XVIII. " The external usages in worship in the church are left to each member ; only what leads to su- perstition is forbidden. The holy or festival days appointed by the State are alone observed. XIX. "The congregational constitution follows the model of the Apostles and early Christians, but necessarily altered to suit the circumstances of the times. The Congregation is represented by its minister, and chosen elders elected yearly at Whitsunday, xx. " All church duties, as baptisms, marriages, burials, will be performed by the minister equally for every member, without fees. XXI. "For the sake of unanimity, all those provisions, G 4 88 CONFESSION OF FAITH OF THE and also the Confession of Faith, shall be subject to the determination of a general German Council, and are therefore only to be considered as pro tempore. " CONCLUSION. " All these provisions are not settled for all time coming, but may be altered by the Con- gregation according to the conviction of the times." (Signatures.) Elberfeld, a town of very considerable import- ance in the cotton manufactures, is situated near Dusseldorf, in the midst of the population which rushed in pilgrimage to Treves. Its declaration is dated the 15th of February, 1845. " IN the name of God the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. " We, the undersigned burgesses of Elberfeld, belonged hitherto to the Roman Catholic church, and as members of it have long seen, with increas- ing distinctness, the greatness of the errors and abuses which adhere to her inmost principles, and have taken the upper hand altogether in her latest movements. The more we endeavoured to know CONGEEGATION OF ELBEKFELD. 89 and understand the pure teaching of Jesus, and to ground our faith on the Gospel, the only spring of Revelation, the more deeply were we penetrated by the conviction, that He, Christ, is the only mediator between God and man ; that the doctrine of the Pope, of an infallible church, of the religious use of saints and relics, is not founded on the Word of God, and weakens the merits of our Saviour ; that the ideas of the Roman church on the Lord's Supper, on the priesthood, and on its position with respect to the laity, are false, and rob the believers of their most precious privileges. The clearer these convictions by degrees became, the heavier we felt the chains in which we were bound to a church of which the most important doctrines could not be reconciled by us to the Gospel ; and the heavier we felt it to have a belief which we could not openly acknowledge, and to have no divine service answerable to our religious wants. A light suddenly arose out of this dark- ness which was growing deeper and deeper, and a day-dawn of hope announced the goodness of >God to us. Circumstances which we need not mention have brought the joyful certainty, that the day is near, and brings light and liberty to the captive. What was struggling in us is come to clear conviction, and we thank God that we 90 CONFESSION OF FAITH OF THE know what we want, and that He has given us the courage freely to declare the belief we acknow- ledge. " In the sight of God we abjure the Pope, and the hierarchy, and all the non-evangelical matters thereunto belonging. Whatever struggles or slanders may assail us, we cast ourselves loose from them. We cast ourselves loose, not to go to war with men of another belief, not even of that belief which we renounce, but to find peace to our souls, and to thank, and serve in joy, God our Lord. We cast ourselves loose, not in pride or from a craving for a false liberty. We embrace, with our brethren in Schneidemiihl, the crucified Jesus, whose pure precepts alone, whose kingdom alone, whose honour and worship alone we seek and wish. Amen. " While we thus constitute ourselves into a Christian-Catholic-Apostolic Congregation, we solemnly declare that we adopt the Confession of Faith of our sister church (Schneidemiihl) in all essential points." This Confession is then quoted verbatim, and the declaration is signed with a strong expression of the firm resolution of the subscribing members to abide by and support their principles. CONGREGATION OF ELBERFELD. 91 Offenbach appears not to have formed a con- gregation until May, but adopted a series of re- solutions as a foundation for a Declaration of Faith, similar to that of Breslau, on the 20th February. This declaration requires I. i "Free reading of the Scriptures, and in the translations not sanctioned by Rome. II. " Abolition of fasts by church appointment. in. " Abolition of the invocation and veneration of saints and relics. IV. "Abolition of the unintelligible and unprofitable in the service ; and above all, of the Latin tongue. v. " The Lord's Supper in both elements, which by historical right acknowledged by the Popes themselves, the so-called laity are entitled to, and which would place the priest in his proper posi- tion. 92 CONFESSION OP FAITH OF THE VI. u Abolition of auricular confession, and its effects without however restraining the free communication and confidence of individuals of a congregation in their minister. . :" " Abolition of remissions, as an unworthy trad- ing with the highest spiritual blessing. VIII. " Abolition of the impious and inhuman church laws against the members of other confessions of faith, particularly respecting mixed marriages, and godfathers and godmothers. " Abolition of the forced celibacy of the clergy, on the grounds of humanity, of the history of the church, and of the efficiency of the clergy themselves in the clerical office. x. "Complete abolition of dependence on the Roman Pope, as the chief cause of every evil." CONGREGATION OF WORMS. 93 The declaration and articles of dissent from the Eoman church, by the congregation of Worms, is dated 8th March, 1845. (S WE, the subscribers, declare I. " We remain as before Catholics. II. " As such, we remain members of the congre- gations of our respective parishes ; and we adopt, consequently, the doctrines or dogmas of the Ca- tholic church, as articles of faith. But, in the course of time, abuses have crept in, which we do not consider as belonging to the Catholic church. We protest, therefore I. "Against all restraint in reading the Holy Scriptures in translations not approved of by the church. II. " Against church fasts. in. of the soul hereafter, step by step, like the pro- motion of an under-officer in the Prussian land- wehr. This advance of the soul hereafter, from one mansion to another from a lower to a higher (stage of existence and happiness, is merely the I doctrine of purgatory in finer words, and some- what dressed out. Are these steps from a lower to a higher state to be gained by the merits of the dead themselves in those preparatory steps, states, or mansions of their future intermediate existence ? [Why, this is the Indian doctrine of the transmi- gration of souls into inferior animals, as a purifi- cation and punishment, until they acquire by merit a qualification to enter into a superior order [ of being ; only the Schneidemiihl doctrine is not quite so intelligible and reasonable as the Brah- minical. If not by the future merits of the dead themselves, in some new, unknown, yet morally and religiously responsible state of future exist- ence, it must be by the present merits of the living, by the prayers, masses, alms, penances in behalf of the dead by the living, that this advancement of the dead from state to state is to 110 PUKGATOEY. INCONSISTENCY OF be gained. There can be no third way, as none of the living have such an excess of merit, mora and religious, that they can spare some to theii deceased neighbours. It can only be by theii fastings, masses, and prayers. It is but a difference of words, not of doctrine, about a purgatory thai we have here. In a poor ignorant village in Silesia, making its first effort to throw off the slough of superstition, this doctrine on the subject is ex- cusable ; but from the enlightened city of Berlin the world is entitled to expect something less childish, something more precise and fixed on the doctrine of purgatory, than the Article XII. of its Declaration. " We reject the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church concerning purgatory, but admit a purification of the soul (lauterung der seele) after death." What is purgatory but a purification of the soul after death ? The Berlin Declaration is a curious and characteristic speci- men, altogether, of the courtly style of affirming and retracting (so as to give no offence to people in power) in religious belief. The first clause and the last of each Article are, like this one, in direct opposition and contradiction to each other. In the Articles on transubstantiation, on auricular confession, on saint and relic worship, the retrac- tation or modification follows in breathless haste THE BERLIN CONFESSION. Ill the affirmation ventured upon, and in reality leaves the matter as it stood before. This is not root-and-branch work. It is but cutting down the stem and foliage of the weed that poisons the ground, leaving the root in the earth, to shoot up as vigorously as before. These declarations of faith and of articles of dissent from the church of Rome renounce saint worship, relic worship, penances, clerical celibacy, auricular confession, and yet retain the root of doctrine from which all these necessarily and reasonably, that is, ogically and in reason, spring. It is the doctrine, - the premises, not the consequences or deduc- tions from it, that are wrong. Admit the doctrine, and you cannot shut the door upon the con- sequences. 112 REMARKS ON THE DECLARATIONS V. ANOTHER weak point, not, indeed, exactly doc- trinal, but seated in the natural constitution oi the human mind rather than in the social oi political state of Germany, will strike the readei who peruses attentively the mass of doctrine set forth in the above confessions of faith. They consist almost entirely of negative, not of positive doctrine of the negation of erroneous dogmas oi the church of Rome, rather than of the affirmation of other right dogmas. Now, there is truth in the negation and renunciation of error, as well as in the affirmation and adoption of truth. That is unquestionable. But if we attend to the natural action of mind, and to the experience of its move- ment which all history gives us, we find that in negative truth, if it may be so called, there is not the same living spirit of action as in positive truth. We discover and renounce error, each mind by itself and for itself, and there we sit individually and separately. We embrace a positive truth it may be a gross error, but it is received as a positive truth and we act together; we are a body embued w *w> CONTINUED. NEGATIVE DOCTKI]SffiJir>> 113 with common feeling, because one common of mind, and not each thinking by and has brought all to the same point by the same way. Energy, enthusiasm, fanaticism, all active imovement of mind, are connected, through that sympathy which spreads in crowds, with the class of positive truths received by all in one' and the same way, much more than with the class of nega- tive truths which each mind individually, and by a different way and process, according to its powers, receives, or works out by itself. We find in his- :ory, that every sect which has had any great seal and duration, has dealt in positive ideas, whether errors or truths. Negation will not >ustain a sect. The simple non-reception of loctrines will not burn up into a flame of active eal, although it may passively endure to the itmost for the sake of truth. It wants the element f acting and spreading, like positive doctrine. Che Deists or Unitarians have always languished HB religious sects, because their denial of the loctrine of the Trinity, their negation of the livine nature of our Saviour, give no positive logma for the mind to lay hold of. The Mormo- ites flourish, because they not merely deny, but ffirm, and give something positive, however bsurd, to the vulgar mind. The Roman Catholic 114 POSITIVE DOCTRINE. church, with its Pope, its caste of priests devotee to celibacy, its relics, images, miracles, soul-saving penances and ceremonies, deals in positive ideas The reform of Luther, Calvin, and John Knox would never have succeeded if these reformer! had contented themselves with giving such simpL negations of the errors, abuses, and superstition of the Roman Catholic church as are contained ii these declarations of faith of the new Germai Catholic Congregations. They gave positive doc trine against positive doctrine, went to the BibL for positive truths, not merely to the practices o the church of Rome for negative truths. 1 their confessions of faith a circumstance ver remarkable, and showing their sagacity, and deej insight into the human mind they do not eve: refer to the church of Rome and her doctrines or state how much of them they retain and ho\ much they reject, but lay down their own doc trine in propositions positive for the mind t embrace. It was an original contradiction, however, i Lutheran] sm, which Calvin in part, and Joh Knox altogether avoided, that it retained th forms of the church of Rome to a certain exten while it rejected the principle on which they ar founded. The cutting off from the forms c THE PUSEYITE CHURCH. 115 ceremonial which it retained, the splendour and weight from external material means, to which, if they were well founded and good for any thing at all in religious worship, they were in correct reasoning entitled, has been a canker eating away Lutheranism from its birth. If altars, lighted candles, crucifixes, altar-pieces, surplices, &c. are retained, the principle of a holiness in things is retained ; and the legitimate sequence, or deduc- tion from what is retained, is image worship, and all the idolatry and splendour of the Church of Rome. It is the same admitted principle carried out to its legitimate extent. If the Mass, or the repetition of the same liturgical prayers, words, and printed forms of divine service, be true wor- ship when performed once a week, it is impossible in sound reasoning to deny that they are true worship when performed every quarter of an hour, and the tale of the performances of this ceremonial worship kept upon a string of beads. If the altar, lighted candles, and crucifix be holy ithings, and something more than the work of human hands, something more than a stone cut by John Smith, or a pound of wax candles bought at the grocer's, or a piece of gilt wood made by the carver and gilder in the town, it is impossible to deny that they are entitled to all the bowings i 2 116 ON LUTHER ANISM and kneelings bestowed upon them. The Tracta- rian or Puseyite section of the Church of Eng- land, who hold doctrines on the sacraments, on the priestly ordination and office, on tradition, on the divine appointment of the church (that is, not merely of the body of doctrine contained in the Scripture, which is the church in its true sense, but of the body of clergy, which is the church in their sense), which are identical in principle with the doctrines of the Church of Rome, are bound, in honest reasoning, to adopt all that flows by sound and fair deduction from those doctrines, namely, all the ceremonial and usages of the Church of Rome. They all flow from the admitted doctrine of a holiness in things and in men. The wonder is not, that many Tractarians or Puseyites have openly gone over to the Church of Rome, but that any of them should want the honesty in their religious reasoning to do so. It is the consequence of this inherent contradic- tion in Lutheranism, and of its false position, from retaining a ceremonial shorn of all that gives it weight in the sister Church of Rome, a material external splendour, and a spiritual internal mean- ning, that in every Country the Lutheran church is dead. Its clergy and congregations are not imbued with that zeal and religious sentiment AS IT EXISTS IN GERMANY. 117 which exist at this day so strongly in that branch of Calvinism which at the Reformation repudiated all ceremonial worship, the branch established by Knox in Scotland. The progress of mind in society, as in an individual, makes men reject the address to the senses, in matter of religion, through barbarous show and ceremony, and gradually makes all prefer what is addressed to their intelligence and reason. It is not improbable, therefore, that in Christianity there will be, at no very distant period, only two churches the Presbyterian, the most simple, and opposed to all form and ceremonial worship and the Church of Rome, in the extreme of superstitious usages. There is no half-way house in religion ; and that which Luther built is tumbling to pieces. The Lutheran clergy preach, no doubt, excellent sermons, but the sermons are to illustrate moral truths, common to all men of all religions. Scrip- .ture may or may not be referred to for an illustra- [tion of the moral truth ; but no Christian truth, unless in as far as all moral truth is Christian, is heard from the German pulpit. This torpid state of Lutheranism, as a Christian church, justifies the doubt whether the public mind in Germany be in a state to embrace with zeal this new German Catholic church, which approaches nearest to a i 3 118 ON THE INCONSISTENCY Lutheranism without episcopacy, or a kind of congregational Lutheranism. If the Lutheran church be dead, this cannot be very lively. It is a peculiar feature of this religious move- ment, and one not very encouraging to the hope that it is to prove another reformation, that all the declarations of belief from the different con- gregations, as given above, may rather be called declarations of no belief; of no belief in certain errors, it is true ; but they are not declarations of belief in certain Gospel truths. If there be no explicit recognition and adoption of Scriptural doctrine totally incompatible with the errors and superstitions of the Church of Kome, it is doing nothing to renounce the errors and superstitions. It is doing worse than nothing, for it is leading men to hold principles, and renounce the legitimate consequences of the principles they hold, or else to leave doctrine and principle altogether behind in religion, and look only to the external practices. If purgatory, or a purification, step by step, of the soul in a future state, be true, then prayers for the dead, masses, intercession of saints, and all the superstitious practices built upon it, are the reasonable sequences of this doctrine, which can- not be rejected, if the doctrine be retained. If transubstantiation be true doctrine, then the OP THE GERMAN-CATHOLIC CHUKCH. 119 celibacy of the clergy, and their personally divine character as a consecrated body, are right and reasonable. It would be a monstrous desecration to imagine that the priest, who by his divine office was first transubstantiating, then handling, eating, and drinking in our behalf the ipsissima corpora, the very flesh and blood, of our Saviour, was a man just risen from the marriage bed from the gratification, it might be, of animal concu- piscence. Celibacy is a necessary sequence from transubstantiation in religious reasoning. Religion is the great schoolmistress of nations. The mental faculties of a people are formed by her, and they who neglect her school generally turn out dunces, considered as a mass of people, with a few bright examples of superior genius shining among them. Much of the apathy of the German people about all social and political affairs may be traced to their apathy and indifference about religion. The difference of the intellectual culture of a people is manifested strongly in these confessions of faith of the middle educated class of the German Roman Catholics. We would probably not find three among them whose taste and judgment in the fine arts are not more highly cultivated than in any of the same class in Scot- land ; yet we would scarcely find three ploughmen i 4 120 ON THE PUBLIC MIND IN GEEMANY. or workmen in Scotland who could not draw out a much more soundly reasoned confession of faith than any of these, giving the principles and Scrip- tural grounds on which they reject or retain practices and doctrines, exercising judgment and knowledge in forming their opinions. The public mind with us is habitually exercised on higher intellectual, moral, and social interests ; and the cultivation of the public mind in Germany turns more upon subjects of taste, upon those which address themselves through the senses to the ima- gination. It may reasonably be doubted if the public mind in Germany be in a state to embrace with zeal and to sustain a true church, that is, a body of pure Christian doctrine. A very important social structure may, how- ever, be raised by this movement. It will not be a true church, but it will have all the machinery of a true church, viz., congregations and a clergy formed on just principles of social economy. The congregations are voluntary ; they elect their pas- tors from suitably educated men; they support them ; and they and their clergy acknowledge no connection with or control from the state. These are sound principles of social economy. Although not united by any common Christian doctrine, ON THE GERMAN-CATHOLIC CHUECH. 121 holding doctrines, in fact, which cannot be amal- gamated, they are united by these principles into one social body, which may check or even annihi- late, in many localities, among the upper classes, the power of the Church of Rome and her priest- hood. They may cut down the weeds, although not sowing any valuable crop in their stead. It is of importance, in the history of modern society, to trace this movement, and to estimate its pro- spects and chances of success. To estimate these, it is necessary to consider the social and political state of the people of Germany ; to see how the different classes in the social body are connected with each other ; and whether their way of living together in their social state produces a common feeling for common interests a public spirit and union capable of supporting the new German- Catholic church. 122 SOCIAL STATE OF GERMANY VI. ABOUT fifty years ago, before the French revolu- tion roused the world from the dormant and ab- ject state into which all society on the continent of Europe had fallen, the lowest class in the social body of Germany, the labouring country people, were leibeigen, that is, held in body- property. They belonged to the owner of the land on which they were born, were bought and sold with the estate, and were in law and in reality attached to the soil. They paid to the owner, or tacksman of the land, a certain number of days' work in the week, or a certain number of hours' work each day, and had to perform a number of services in extra work, when required. For their subsist- ence they had a patch of land allowed them, to produce rye for bread, and flax for clothing ; had grazing for a cow and a few sheep : and had turf or wood for fuel, and a dwelling. Time had set- tled, by long use and wont, the kind and amount of services and subsistence on each barony into a tacit law or right, which might be but, from the nature of agricultural labour, which comes round BEFOKE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 123 , in a regular routine with the seasons, seldom was very outrageously infringed. The master had i the right to imprison his leibeigen vassals, and to s flog them for neglect of work ; and had a prison, the hundsloch, or doghole, it was called, and a ground officer, or baillie, to execute his com- i mands. The leibeigen had, however, a sort of I protection from any gross ill-usage or oppression, i in the justiciary who was appointed or approved of by government, and dwelt on each estate or barony, independent in some degree of the owner, though paid out of the estate, and who was i always a man bred at an university to the profes- ^sion of law, removeable only by government, and Booking only to government, not to the baron, for ^his professional advancement. Above these local ^government officers was the amtman superintend- ing a small circle of them, and receiving their ^official protocols of the proceedings before them. [No bodily punishment, beyond a certain number >of stripes, or three days' imprisonment in the black hole, could be inflicted without a regular ^sentence by the justiciary, subject to revisal by [the amtman. The minister, also, living in the parish, or on the estate, if it was a considerable barony, and paid out of it, but independent of the owner after appointment to his living, was a 124 SOCIAL STATE OF GERMANY kind of moral check on very grievous tyranny. The influence of public opinion too, his character of being a hard and oppressive, or indulgent and good master, was felt even in this state of society. The great kindness and good nature inherent in the German character, also made very gross ill- usage of the serf the exception rather than the rule. In sickness, the landowner had to support his serf, and had to keep a doctor on his estate. The infirm, the aged, the widows, orphans, and, in case of bad crops, from weather, floods, or other calamities, the people themselves had to be subsisted by their proprietor. They could not change their residence, they could not go else- where to seek work for money-wages ; but work elsewhere was not to be got, unless in the great towns. A leibeigen man found beyond the bounds of his barony without a written leave, or pass, was taken up and punished as a deserter. The system of passports did not arise, as some suppose, from the conscription and other circum- stances in the French revolution, but only the extension of it to the higher classes. The thing itself is coeval with the feudal system. If the leibeigen escaped into one of the free towns, such as Hamburgh, Lubeck, Frankfort, he could not be reclaimed ; and, after a year and a day, the city BEFORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 125 gave him the right and protection of natives, even beyond her own walls, and against his former master. In the vicinity of Hamburgh and Lu- beck, so late as 1795, the roads were patrolled by cavalry to prevent the escape of vassals from the estates in Holstein, into the territories of those cities. But at greater distances, the labour in husbandry, the only work to be got, or with which they were acquainted, was filled up by people in their own condition, and no work for wages was to be found. There was no temptation to change their condition, as the change would have been from servitude, indeed, but with bread, a home, and the common lot of all around them to absolute starvation. So far from considering their condition of leibeigenschaft very miserable, there was great repugnance and opposition, rising almost to revolt among them, to its abolition in the territories in which it was most rigorous in Holstein, and Schleswig, and other parts of the north of Germany. Labour is a kind of money in the two hands of the labouring man, and they saw no advantage, but the contrary, in changing this money into coin, to be paid to their masters for rent, and to make provision themselves for sickness, old age, their widows and infants, in case of death, and against bad crops and the like, when they 126 IMPROVEMENT IN THE SOCIAL had the same land and subsistence, and a provi- sion made for them against future wants and casualties, much more certain, by paying their labour direct to their masters. They were not, perhaps, so very wrong in their reasoning. A class immediately above this proletaire class were peasants on the estate holding a little more land than was necessary for family subsistence, and paying a rent, partly in services higher than bodily labour, such as horse and cart work, plough work, &c., with their own utensils and cattle, and partly in kind, that is, in corn, flax, wool, and other farm products. A higher class still, were peasants who had acquired a fixity of these rents, and a legal per- petual right to their land, for payment of these fixed feu rents to the owner of the barony. The great reform, the beneficial revolution in the social state of Prussia, by Prince Hardenberg, in 1809, and carried on during fifteen succeeding years, was the giving these three classes a perma- nent interest in the defence of the country, by giving every man of them a permanent legal right at once to the land he then occupied, for the quit- rent he was then paying; the labour and pay- ments in kind for the preceding three years being taken as the rent, and valued by royal commis- I STATE OF PRUSSIA. 127 sioners sent to each district. This was the fixity of rent, the measure which, in all probability, must be adopted in Ireland, Scotland, and per- haps England, at no distant period, and it was carried into effect with much less difficulty than was expected. The next step in this reform was making the land, thus parcelled out into small estates among the people, their own, at such a rate or price as was not illusory for them. It would evidently have been but an illusory measure to give them land in property and perpetuity, which had to pay such a heavy quit-rent to the original owner, every year, as left nothing to the new peasant-proprietor but a bare subsistence, such as She derived from it before as leibeigen on the land. His condition would have been no better, and his interest in the soil no greater, than before ; and however low the conversion into money by the royal commissioners might be made of those quit-rents of labour, and products in kind, not only would his condition have been no better, but, taking the small chance of markets in an agri- cultural country in which all are producers, and considering the new burdens imposed on him of providing for sickness, age, losses, &c., he would in reality have been worse off as proprietor than as leibeigen on the land. The second step in the 128 THE IMPROVEMENT process of this great social revolution provided a remedy for this evil. The land of each lot was valued, as well as the quit-rents it had to pay, and each new proprietor was entitled by law to redeem his quit-rents at a certain small number of years' purchase, either by the payment of money, if he had it, or by resigning a portion of his land to the original owner or feudal lord of it. This measure enabled the great landowner to round his estate, and to bring it into large farms, and gave the small peasant-proprietor his land free of all quit-rents or burdens but the public taxes. It is evident that such a measure involved the direct violation of all the rights of property, and could only be justified by the most extreme ne- cessity for the very preservation of society, or of the state itself. But this necessity had, as re- gards the existence of Prussia, evidently set in. The campaigns of the preceding years had already shown, that although Prussia could bring armies into the field, her people had nothing to fight for, had no interest in the soil they were called out to defend ; but, on the contrary, the people were much better off in Westphalia, and the provinces occupied by the French, than under their German social system. A similar necessity exists in Ire- APPLICABLE TO IEELAND. 129 land for a similar measure. The sacred rights of property themselves must give way before the necessity of the preservation of society from a state of anarchy and barbarism ; and if the rents and estates of a few thousand great landowners on one side, and the existence in a civilised state of nine millions of inhabitants on the other side, are to be weighed against each other, it is evident that either by some sudden convulsion tearing up society by the roots, or by the timely interposi- ion of government, while it has the power, and las no external enemies, the same revolution in he state of landed property, that has been effected n Prussia, must take place at no distant period in reland. Another still higher class of peasant-proprietors n Germany existing from the earliest times, and erhaps more ancient than the feudal system tself, are the proprietors of free peasants' farms frei bauerenhofe), neither paying nor receiving my feudal quit-rents or servitudes. Their land las probably never been feudalised ; or else, under protection of the church, or of some other influ- ence, has escaped from the grasp of the feudal loble. They are, in many parts of Germany, a vealthy class of peasantry, occupying considerable racts of country, as between the mouths of the K 130 ESTATES NOBLE AND NOT NOBLE. Elbe and the Eyder, with scarcely any admixture of noble estates, or those having feudal privileges. These bauerenhofe are in general sprinkled over the country ; and their owners are equivalent to the old, almost extinct, class of English yeomen. If several of these small properties have been bought and consolidated into one estate, it forms one of the not noble-estates^ which alone persons not noble by birth were entitled to buy. Until the French revolution, in most parts of Germany nobles only could buy or hold noble estates ; that is, estates having leibeigenschaft over the peasants, baronial courts and privileges, and exemption from taxes and public or local burdens affecting the bauerenhofe, and those non-noble estates having no feudal privileges. The highest class of proprietors the barons, counts, and nobles hold, or rather held, large estates, noble, and endowed with feudal rights and privileges. The war, the change in the expense of living, the abolition in general of the feudal payments of former times, and of the social importance of the nobles, the distribution of land among the peasantry in Prussia, and the extinc- tion almost everywhere of leibeigenschaft, have, together with their own extravagance, reduced this class, from the kind of petty sovereignty and THE HIGHEST CLASS IN GEKMANY. 131 rude power and social importance which they en- joyed over all Germany, immediately previous to the French revolutionary war, to depend for a living, or for social distinction, on office, civil or military. They are the higher functionary-class in the civil service, the officer-class in the military service of every German government. The office is often, under the functionary system, made for the official holding it a superfluous office as far as the ends of good government are concerned, but affording a living to one of a class of func- tionaries who are now to the crown what the class of landed nobility were formerly. The throne is now, in every continental kingdom, surrounded by a personal, official, not an hereditary nobility. They have nothing hereditary but their pride. Their social importance is derived, not from their fixed stake in the country as landed proprietors or capitalists, but from their personal standing in the civil or military service, and from the personal distinction of decorations, orders, and function. The day of trial has not yet appeared, in which 1 this new arrangement of society, which has been gradually forming since the final settlement of Europe in 1815, this division of the social body in Germany into two classes only, the governing or functionary class, and the governed, will be K 2 132 FUNCTIONARY CLASS IN GERMANY. proved. Its effects as yet have been to keep the people in a low moral, intellectual, and political condition, in a thraldom of mind, person, property, and industry, to a great body of functionaries living upon them, supported at their expense, yet altogether unnecessary for their good government. A class of independent country gentlemen or nobility, or middle-rank capitalists, or sturdy in- dependent artizans or workmen, living without government employment, not caring for it, bound to their State, and supporting it from higher con- siderations than salary or official duty, and think- ing and acting for themselves in religion, politics, and business, according to their own judgment, good sense, and free will, does not exist in Ger- many. WANT OF COMMON FEELINGS. 133 VII. BETWEEN the higher and lower classes in such a social body as the German, the intercourse, and even familiarity, may be great, yet the common feeling and interchange of opinion very small. It is as in a ship, or a regiment, in which the officers know the men only through their duties and dis- cipline, know them well in that one capacity, but know in reality less of them as their fellow citizens or their fellow men, less of their opinions, their sentiments, and home affairs, than any third person who stands in no such artificial relation to them. This kind of military relation between the different classes of society keeps men far more apart from each other in reality, although in appearance there may be more of familiarity be- tween them, than in our less feudalised structure of society in England. The want of a common feeling and common interests and objects is best illustrated by the effects it has produced in the German language. The usages, or idiomatic ex- pressions, of the language of a people, display, perhaps, better than any other indication, the K 3 134 THE SOCIAL RELATIONS social relations of the different classes in a country. In English and French the same form of language is used in addressing all, from the sovereign to the meanest beggar. All are addressed equally by the personal pronoun you, or vous. In French the singular number of the pronoun is used from fondness or familiarity tu, and, although rarely, it is sometimes used to inferiors. The usage of the English language admits of no such difference of expression, no such inferiority between the classes of society, or between man and man, as entitles the highest to address the lowest in any other terms than are used in communication be- tween equals. The German language has no less than four very distinct modes and gradations of expressing the different relative social positions of the person addressed. Sie, the third personal pronoun in the plural number, is the equivalent to you or vous, the plural of the second personal pronoun used in English or French, and is used in the same way between equals. Du is also equivalent to the French tu in expressing not only affection between the persons speaking, but also, when applied to an inferior, in expressing the inferiority of the person spoken to, as when an officer speaks to a private soldier. The use of du in speaking to the privates in the Prussian land- EXPRESSED BY THE LANGUAGE. 135 wehr by their officers, is at present highly re- sented, and a subject of great dispute, it being considered degrading, because the ranks of the landwehr are filled by gentlemen often superior to their officers in birth, education, and fortune, and who think themselves therefore entitled to be addressed by their officers with sie, not du. But German has two forms of speech more in ad- dressing inferiors, and marking the difference of social station between the speaker and the person he is speaking to. The third person singular er is used instead of sie by a person of the higher class addressing an inferior. It is an usage of language, not the pride or arrogance of the in- dividual, and is formed from the state of society. The person of the upper class addresses the per- son of the lower with er, the master his menial, the noble or man of rank the non-noble or inferior. A still more contemptuous form of expression for indicating the distance between the talker and the person addressed, in social station, is man y viz. one, used instead of er or sie. The inferior is not addressed in the personal pronoun when speaking to him, but as a thing having no personal station or existence, man. The noble addresses his labourer or menial with man: his bailiff, tenant, tradesman with er, his equal with sie: but it K 4 136 HIGHER AND LOWER CLASSES would be a gross insult if he were to use er to an equal, or to a person claiming to be above the lower or middle classes, and still more if he were to address such a person with man ; yet he applies these forms to persons of the lower and middle classes by the usage of the language, without perhaps any personal pride or arrogance in the speaker. This form of language may be thought a matter very unimportant in itself, a mere gram- matical difference from the English or French ; but language is the expression of mind, of the public mind ; and it indicates more truly than any other expression of it, the manners and state of society, the civilization and independence, and the social spirit of a people. These forms of expres- sion mark a distance, a non-intercourse, a want of mutual communication and feeling, and of inter- change of ideas, and sympathies, and knowledge of each other, between the classes using them. They indicate the state of society in Germany the relations between its classes. An important impediment, arising from lan- guage also, to the opinions and feelings of the upper, educated, and enlightened class working downwards to the lowest class, and spreading through the mass of the people ; and to those of the lowest class working upwards, and becoming USE DIFFEKENT LANGUAGES. 137 known to the higher, is that, throughout the greater part of Germany, the lower classes speak, in reality, a different language from the German of the upper educated class. The difference is not merely, as in the different provincial dialects ! of France or England, a difference in the pro- i nunciation, and in the use of obsolete words and phrases, but a radical difference in the construction and forms. The Platt Deutsch used by the lower, and even the middle classes over all the north of Germany, is a language as distinct as its sister languages, the Dutch or the Danish, from the cultivated German used in literature, and by the higher classes. It has not been latinised in the middle ages, and is without the distinctions of genders, and cases, declensions, and the artificial construction and collocation of words in the sen- tence, which characterise the modern cultivated German. The latter is in reality an acquired language, not a mother tongue, to the mass of the people, one in which they do not think or com- municate freely as in a native tongue. With us, if the common man does not understand your language, it is because his ear has not been ac- customed to your pronunciation of the words. Pronounce the vowels in his country way, and he understands you. In Germany, it is not 138 THE CLASSES MOKE DISTINCT merely the ear, but the mind of the common man that has to acquire the language, not in common use by him, of the upper classes ; and the com- munications between them are consequently con- strained, as between persons conversing together in a foreign tongue. The occupations and amusements of the upper classes in Germany, being much more sedentary and refined than with us, consisting principally in music, reading, theatrical entertainment, con- versation, visiting, and social enjoyment, and much less in hunting, shooting, riding, racing, boating, and all the active 'rough sports and tastes which occupy our young men of the higher classes, and bring them into daily familiar intercourse with the lower, as assistants and partakers in their common pursuit, keep those classes in Germany much more apart from, and ignorant of, each other than they are in England. The son of a nobleman or country gentleman of the largest fortune and highest family in England, is intellectually, and in his tastes and habitual enjoyments, not very different, or rather is very much the same as the son of a farmer or of a man of the lower class. The difference is more in the means and scale of. enjoyment, than in the tastes of the two persons at the extreme ends of our social body. They THAN IN ENGLAND. 139 have many object s, pursuits, feelings, occupations, sports, in common, and bringing them together. These are, perhaps, low in taste, and denote a low standard of intellectual development among our higher classes, but they bring the lower up to that standard, establish a wholesome intercourse and exchange of ideas between them for the, lowest can understand and talk of horses, dogs, guns, or yachts, as well as the highest and denote a higher social state of the whole, than if the upper class were so far refined and edu- cated beyond the mass of the people below, as to be, as in Germany, a froth without spirit or flavour, swimming on the surface, and altogether different in substance from the good liquor at the bottom. The social state of Germany is similar to that of British India. The upper enlightened class, consisting of civil and military functionaries, law- yers, judges, and officers connected with the ad- ministration of law and collection of revenue, bankers, merchants, and professional men, is different in language, habits, ideas, and feelings, from the Hindoo people whom it governs ; is little acquainted with them does not mix with them has little knowledge of them but what circum- stances may force upon its notice, yet governs 140 SOCIAL STATE OF GEKMANY. them tolerably well, and the great mass of the inert Indian population below it is submissive, and contented with the state of pupillage in which they exist. To this great lower mass of the people in Ger- many, the opinions, political or religious, of the upper class scarcely penetrate. They do not at all take up the German Catholic church. On the contrary, they are evidently in the same intellec- tual and religious condition in which they were four centuries ago quite as ready for pilgrim- ages, or crusades, or whatever superstition or belief the church of Rome may impose on them. They are not ripe for this movement. THE CHUKCH OF EOME. 141 VIII. IT is to be remembered, also, that in all Catholic and mixed Catholic and Protestant countries Sunder autocratic government, the church of Rome is, and always in the middle ages has been, the (church of liberty; that is to say, its clergy, drawn s mainly from the lower classes, are the only class in the social body independent of the autocratic government. Historians are courtiers. Their readers D swell with indignation at their descriptions of the pomp, and pride, and haughtiness of the popes |and prelates of the middle ages, of an emperor doing penance in his shirt, and suing for forgive- ness, a Henry on his kneeSj before a Becket : but they forget that these priests represented and were upheld by the popular feeling, the feeling for independence. The church of Rome, in which the lowest-born man of the lowest class might ispire to the highest dignity, and at once, in the lowest station of the priesthood, attained a position .ndependent of the despotism, misrule, and auto- matic governments of the age, was the asylum of ivil rights, was popular because it was the only 3arrier against universal slavery. If church and 142 THE CHURCH OF ROME state had been united under the sovereign of the country in the middle ages, all Europe would have been, with regard to civil rights and political institutions, what Russia, or the Turkish empire, is at the present day. The church of Rome, with her clergy depending upon the Pope alone, was the only check upon the monarch, and the nobles or governing class. The British constitution may be traced to a spirit of independence in- herited from the Saxons or the Northmen; but that spirit was kept alive by the church of Rome, by her independence of and struggles against the authority of the despotic government; and Becket and the popish priesthood, by fostering that spirit of independence and of resistance to the will of the sovereign, contributed more perhaps than any of the Henrys, and more than any other social institution existing in those times, to its subsequent formation. At the present day, in Prussia and the other kingdoms in Germany of mixed religion, the church of Rome is still in the same popular position as in the middle ages, an independent institution standing between the autocratic sove- reign and his subjects, is still the only asylum of independent feeling, is still the only power in the social body independent of cabinet orders and public functionaries. It is but half a dozen A CHECK ON DESPOTISM. 143 years ago that the late king of Prussia abolished by a cabinet order the very name of the Protestant church, amalgamated its two branches, Luthe- ranism and Calvinism, into a new thing called the Evangelical church, without any precise doctrine, and with a service and liturgy of his own forma- tion. The Lutherans who adhered to their ancient doctrine and service were persecuted, their ministers were imprisoned, troops were quartered upon them to force them into conformity, and above six thousand of these poor Protestant peasantry were forced to fly from their country, to abandon their little properties, and seek a refuge in America from the tyranny and op- pression of their sovereign. Although that sove- reign will be consigned in the history of this century to the infamy of having broken his solemn promise to give his subjects a representative constitution, and to the still deeper infamy of having been the last European sovereign who, in an enlightened age and country, persecuted men for their religion, yet such is the abject state of the public mind in Germany, that the literary sycophants, the most eminent men in Europe for literary and scientific attainments, whom like ' another Augustus he had gathered round his throne exhaust themselves in adulation of his 144 THE CHUKCH OF ROME memory; and because he was the best of patrons^ to them, would make posterity believe that he was the best of kings to his people. His persecution or interference in any way with the religious opinions of his subjects could not have taken place, if the Protestant church in Prussia had had a head out of the country like the Roman Catholic church, acknowledged by the priest and people, and to which alone in matters of faith they would yield obedience. The literary men at Berlin could not give that protection to Lutherans which the poorest popish priest in Prussia could give to his congregation. This external support is the only check in the autocratic countries at the present day, against the most fearful despotic sway over the mind and body of every subject. How powerfully this barrier against despotism protects the mass of the people, is seen in this very event of the pilgrimage to Treves, Proces- sions and pilgrimages are strictly prohibited in Prussia by law ; Bishop Arnoldi of Treves set at defiance the arbitrary law which interfered with what he considered a religious right and privilege. He proclaims this pilgrimage to Treves, arranges the order and succession of the innumerable pro- cessions, takes all proper means to secure the public peace, and prevent coufusion and disorder, A CHECK ON DESPOTISM. 145 and laughs at the cabinet order. Public meetings of the people are so strictly prohibited in Prussia, that in some parts, as in Konigsburg, family ^meetings of more than five people cannot come together without leave. The priests, and a million sand a half of people, of the church of Rome, set at defiance this arbitrary law, break through in a ^moment all the restraints upon personal freedom ;of movement imposed by the police system and military organisation of the population, and repair to Treves, as freely as the Londoners would repair to Ascot races. The power of the jhurch of Rome was here that barrier against arbitrary interference with civil freedom of action, which liberty and constitutional government are with us. Among a people without civil liberty and constitutional government, the spark of inde- pendence, in spiritual affairs at least, kept alive in the church of Rome, could not be extinguished with social and political advantage to the people. The religious advantage to the people from a separation from the church of Rome would depend altogether upon the people being in a state to embrace a purer religion. If the question is reduced to what really are its terms in Germany at present Catholicism, with all its superstitions, errors, and idolatry or no religion at all, that is L 146 RELIGIOUS STATE OF GERMANY. to say, not avowed infidelity, but the most torpid apathy, indifference, and neglect of all religion it may be doubted if the latter condition of a people be preferable. The Lutheran and Cal- vinistic churches in Germany and Switzerland are in reality extinct. The sense of religion, its influence on the habits, observances, and life of the people, is alive only in the Roman Catholic population ; and this pilgrimage to Treves proves the great mass of this population to be now, in the 19th century, in the same intellectual and religious state as in the 12th. EDUCATION IN PRUSSIA. 147 IX. what has education been about ? where are the effects of the grand national system of educa- tion established in Prussia some five-and-twenty years ago ? Of the million and a half of pilgrims to the holy coat at Treves, allowing the odd half- million for exaggeration and for foreigners from Belgium or France, a million, or some very large number estimated at a million, must have come from those provinces of Prussia in which the Prussian system of national education has been in full operation for more than the average duration of a human generation. Of the million of pilgrims from the adjacent Prussian provinces, not so many as five hundred could have been uneducated, not taught in national schools, by masters carefully trained in normal schools, to read, write, cipher, sing psalms and hymns, say catechisms and pray- ers according to the forms of their own church, dance the Polka, march, countermarch, and halt, and all according to the most approved system of national education. We are told by M. Cousins that a perfect system of school machinery for diffusing education among the people has been L 2 148 EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE established in Prussia a minister of state for public education normal schools for instructing masters, parish schools, town schools, gymnasia, learned schools, military schools, commercial schools, universities, government schools of every kind in every locality none but approved mas- ters allowed to teach and all children, even of the poorest class, obliged, under penalties on the parents, to attend some school and the religious instruction of the youth, according to the tenets of their parents, particularly attended to ; and it is the boast of statistical writers, that it would be difficult to find in Prussia an individual, not inca- pable of instruction from mental defect, who could not read, write, and say his catechism according to his own church. What has all this school quack- ery produced ? Among ourselves there are en- lightened philanthropic persons who would will- ingly have seen a similar system of national edu- cation under a minister of state, adopted in this country. They should go, with M. Cousins at their head, on a pilgrimage to the holy coat at Treves, and confess that they have been imposed upon themselves, and have been imposing upon the world that the holy coat itself is not a greater deception in religion, than the Prussian school system is in the true education of the people. IN PRUSSIA A FAILURE. 149 The upper enlightened classes in Germany, who were sitting perfectly satisfied that the edu- cational system of Prussia had banished ignorance from the land, and had raised her lower classes far beyond the intellectual condition of the same classes in any other country, were struck with astonishment at the unexpected phenomenon of this pilgrimage, at this display of the most gross and universal superstition which led almost one third of the total population of the most educated provinces of Prussia to adore the holy coat at Treves. The fact appears not altogether so surprising to those who have always maintained that the education of a people does not consist in teaching them reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and the catechism, but in teaching them to think, judge, and act for themselves in their several situations in society ; and that this can only be taught to a people by themselves, by giving them civil liberty, free use and exercise of mind, body, property, and industry, in their own affairs, with- gut the interference and superintendence of, and reference to, government functionaries, in all social and individual action; in a word, by emancipating the people from the state of pupilage in which they are held. The value of reading, writing, and L 3 150 WHY NATIONAL EDUCATION all other school attainments, cannot be too highly rated ; but still they are but the means, not the end, in mental cultivation ; and this pilgrimage proves that they are useless as means, if the mind has not freedom to think, judge, and act for itself in life, which is true education, and not the getting by heart the multiplication table or the catechism. The catechism, with all the doctrine belonging to it, explained, got by heart, and understood by the scholar, does not make him a Christian, any more than the multiplication table makes him a banker. He is but a repeating machine, if his own mind is inert, and does not apply, or, from the nature of the functionary social system in Germany, is pre- vented from applying, its own powers of thinking, judging, and acting as an independent rational being. This pilgrimage has solved one great and very important question in political philosophy, and will be considered, by every reflecting observer of the historical events of our age, as one of the most remarkable facts in this half-century. At the great struggle against the power of France and the Emperor Napoleon, in 1814, the late king of Prussia solemnly and distinctly promised his peo- ple a constitution, civil liberty, and a representa- tive legislature. The people fought for it, won IN PRUSSIA HAS TAILED. 151 it, and were defrauded of it. The royal promise was not kept. A people may do without political liberty, that is, a voice in the enactment of their own laws by a representative constitution, if laws suitable to their condition be made and well ad- ministered; but civil liberty, that is, the unre- strained, uncontrolled freedom of mind, person, property, and industry, interfered with only on the rare occasions in which the public safety would be endangered by the individual's exercise of this freedom, is what men cannot exist without in social union, unless as slaves. This civil liberty has also been denied to the German people. Since the peace of 1815, a system of interference and state-regulation in all private action, of mili- tary duty imposed on all and robbing men of half their lives, of censorship on all opinion, of check on all movement in ordinary life, by a body of functionaries, civil, military, ecclesiastical, and literary, so numerous as to constitute the upper and middle classes, has been fully established in the Prussian and other German states, and has reduced all the social body in Germany to two classes, the governed, and the instruments of governing. A class of nobility, country gentle- men, independent capitalists, or men living by trade or manufacture, unconnected with govern- L 4 152 WHY NATIONAL EDUCATION ment function, or with any thing that govern- ment can give or take away, scarcely exists. The measures of this autocratic government,, carried into effect through cabinet orders and func- tionaries, are often wise, good, and beneficial to the material interests of the people. No pains are spared to cast a lustre on this kind of auto- cratic, or, as it is called, paternal rule, and to blind the present generation and posterity to its defects. All useful discoveries or undertakings in science all great works in the fine arts are liberally patronised. Men of distinguished talent in every country and class have been honoured with letters, decorations, and even pensions. Humboldt, Tiek, Schlegel, and many other men of the highest philosophical and literary eminence, whose names reflect a lustre on the Prussian throne, have been seated on its steps. No means have been spared to elevate the intellectual cha- racter of the government, and to give the people an education to appreciate the encouragement lavished on the fine arts by their government. The education of the people has been systema- tically attended to. Prussia took the lead in ap- pointing a minister of state for public instruction, and in educational arrangements for the whole population. The question of the political philo- IN PRUSSIA HAS FAILED. 153 sopher still was is it possible to educate a na- tion of slaves ? Individuals of great natural capacity, talent, and acquirements may start :up in a state of slavery, as in a state of liberty, and did so in ancient Greece and Rome. Indi- viduals of great talent and literary name may flourish, as Humboldt, Tick, and many other of i the first literary and scientific men of our times, tido now, as dependents on the autocratic ruler of a I people without liberty a people of slaves ; but still the question stands is it possible to edu- cate a nation of slaves ? This pilgrimage of a million of people from the most educated of the Prussian provinces, to wor- - ship the holy coat at Treves, answers the ques- tion It is not possible. The public mind, when i not allowed free action in society, cannot be t educated. Giving it reading, writing, and reli- L gious instruction, without civil liberty, is giving the means and denying the use of them is giving a man a pair of spectacles, and shutting him up in total darkness. The holy coat has proved that the public mind is in the same state of intellectual darkness in the nineteenth century, in Germany, as in the twelfth, and from the same cause, the want of free exercise of mind in all social aifairs, the want of civil and political liberty. 154 LITERARY MEN TO BLAME With what feelings must Schlegel, then ap- proaching his death-bed, have looked out from his window at Bonn, and seen banner after banner of long processions of pilgrims, have heard chaunt after chaunt in the breeze, as they moved, in a cloud of dust, like dark streams of lava through the land all tending to the common centre, the white flag with a red cross waving on the tower of the cathedral at Treves? How bitter must have been his reflection, that this is all the end, this all the advance of the human mind, that he, and Goethe, and all the great men with whom he had lived, and of whom he was almost the last, had effected by their labours during three quar- ters of a century, for elevating the intellectual condition of the people of Germany; and that possibly the failure lay with them, with their want of bold decided character, with their undue cultivation of the imaginative and speculative in the public mind, rather than of reason, judgment, and common sense, applied to the realities of life, and with their facile acquiescence in autocratic power, and functionarism, in times when a voice from Weimar might have given civil freedom to Germany ! Goethe, with the inspiration of his great genius, often touches and lays bare the most important truths, without being himself aware of FOR THIS LOW SOCIAL STATE. 155 their importance, tendency, and application. He was in his world of ideas, like an Indian in the mines of the new world, throwing out gold or diamonds, without caring for them but as shining things, without valuing them for their social use. 1 Goethe himself, in one of his unconnected, unused maxims, or memorandums of thoughts, says, " Welche Regierung das beste sey ? Diejenige i;die uns lehrt uns selbst zu regieren." "What ' government is the best ? That which teaches us : to govern ourselves." Had Goethe expanded, and applied this text, had he given the power of i his genius and name to the elucidation of the [great truth it contains, that without self-go vern- i ment and self-action the public mind makes no i real progress, society no improvement ; that with i the people in a state of pupilage in all social and i individual movement, the mind, property, industry, and even the personal freedom of each member of i the community, being under the surveillance, ; -guidance, and restraint of government, the ends of all good government, the moral, social, and material well-being of the people, cannot be ' attained; that education and knowledge at schools cannot give self-government to people bred and kept in pupilage of mind and body ; had he explained all that lies under his brief aphorism, it 156 THE EDUCATION TOO AESTHETIC AL. would have been the most useful of his works : he would have given civil freedom to Germany ; he would at least have sanctioned an irresistible demand for it : while now, Goethe's example, works, and life sanction a passive apathy of the public mind to public affairs, a contentedness with any social condition in which theatres, music, painting, and the other fine arts are patronised and enjoyed, in which autocratic governments may do what they please, provided they give the people panem et ludos. ' A great part of the education in Germany, and almost all mind, is directed to aesthetic objects, to the cultivation of the fine arts, to taste and production in poetry, dramatic works, romance, and other imaginative or speculative literature, to music, theatrical representation, painting, archi- tecture, and all that comes under the name of the ^Esthetic, all the intellectual objects that em- bellish civilised life, and add to its enjoyments. Valuable as the ^Esthetic is, when it is a flower growing spontaneously out of a high state of civilisation, it is but a poor crop to cultivate, instead of more essential things. We do not care to see a bed of tulips, where the wheat and potato crops have evidently been robbed of manure, and neglected, in order to raise them. The ^Esthetic WANT OF VIGOUE OF MIND. 157 is not the Moral, nor the Religious, nor, in many of its objects, such as music, painting, architecture, the Intellectual, in a people or in an individual, and it may be cultivated at the expense of higher objects and principles. This is particularly true with regard to education in Germany. The public mind, debarred from free action in public interests or private affairs, naturally occupies itself in those secondary pursuits which alone are open to it, and the autocratic governments in their educational systems, favour the cultivation and diffusion of taste in the fine arts, of the development of the ; -ZEsthetic among the multitude, as a means of keeping them contented and happy. It is the old Roman policy of providing games and bread 'for the people, to keep them quiet under the mis- trule of the emperors. The preponderance of the ? -ZEsthetic in the education, literature, and daily I life of the German people, has not worked favour- ably on the present generation. It has diffused a weakness and ' frivolity of character, a turn for sease and present enjoyment, and a disregard for, t or ignorance of, higher objects than it presents to i the mind. Their education, in fact, suits well such ^a religion as the Roman Catholic, with all its i superstitions, which addresses itself to the imagina- tion and taste not to the reasoning and judging 158 THE GERMAN MIND MORE faculties. It may be doubted if the people of Germany are capable of adopting a purely intel- lectual religion, like that of the Scotch people, or have mind enough to embrace doctrine unsup- ported by ceremony, show, and splendour. The whole tenor of their education, in schools and private life, cultivates imagination and taste, and leaves dormant the judgment and reason. The Evangelical and Lutheran churches suffer from this cause ; for although more full of ceremonies than the Church of England even on the Puseyite model, with their altars, lighted candles, crucifixes, dresses, chauntings, and mass, they do not address themselves sufficiently to the senses for the state of the German mind. They are government establishments ; but, as churches, are without fol- lowing, or zeal, compared to the Church of Rome in Germany. Rationalism, and total indifference to all religion, prevail much more; and, owing greatly t x^'*^ ojr^ LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERS xf^Sx 6V QJ/~M) E UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA /ft) oy^ LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERS 6V ^