How much power and influence has the Church thereby been losing with the common people! With what bitterness do the three great parties into which we are now divided turn the one against the other!-the Extreme Left, on the one hand, inclining again to Rationalism, and the extreme Lutheran. Right on the other, both equally hostile to the Evangelical Centre and its evangelical Church Congress; those of the Left summoning against it the Congress of German Protestants, and those of the Right the Lutheran Church Congress! Is it not enough to destroy the confidence of thousands in a Church which they see thus torn asunder by internal strife? And let me add one thing more: How many of our clergy are still addicted to the evil habit of using, parrot-like, a round of religious phrases which have lost for the most part their original force and meaning!-a habit than which nothing is more fitted to steel men's consciences against reception of the truth, and alienate all persons of thought and education.

Still greater is the hostility now excited in the minds of many against both Church and Christianity, by the position so perversely taken by some of our friends on questions of politics. The true position of the Church with regard to such questions is surely this: to exhort each one fearlessly and impartially to the performance of his duties to God and man; to bear witness before high and low alike on behalf of truth and right, and against all manner of wrong and injustice; and so to constitute herself the conscience, as it were, both of Government and people. How much real gratitude would the Church have earned from all right-thinking men had she really done this! But the contrary has too often been the case. Men of both the extreme parties have in several instances given just offence by one-sided and partisan action in politics, while the inactivity and seeming indifference of others has done hardly less harm. We cannot here, of course, enter into details, or presume to judge in individual cases; but one thing we may remark, that nothing is more likely to alienate popular confidence from the Church as a body, than when its representatives are seen to be wanting in impartiality in dealing with different ranks in the social system: when clergymen, for instance, are found bold and uncompromising in rebuking the sins of the common people, but timid or reticent with the great and

powerful; and prepared to defend or advocate through thick and thin the line assumed by Government, whatever it may be. How often has it been remarked, with truth, that the feudal party in Prussia are only too ready to identify their cause with that of the gospel, and to range their own party principles under the sacred banner of the Cross! And have they not been greatly aided in this confusion of flesh and spirit by that portion of the clergy who, instead of maintaining the genuine impartiality which ought to characterize all teachers of truth, suffer themselves to be degraded into mere servants of a faction, and advocates of its prejudices? Christianity and the Christian Church cannot be incorporated with a single party, without subjecting itself to the liability of sharing all the odium and mortifications which in any political conflict that party may have to endure. Nor can we wonder that, under existing circumstances, the whole democratic section should be animated with a fanatical hatred to the Church, whose cause they see identified with that of the feudal aristocracy. Nothing has more powerfully contributed, since 1848, to the gradual and increasing alienation of the laity of the middle classes from the Church and its interests, than the belief that the clergy have entirely taken part with the upper classes against the interests of the people at large, and have no longer any heart for or sympathy with them in their endeavours to obtain redress even of the most crying abuses.

The other extreme party, that of the "Protestant " Congress, has fallen into the opposite mistake. Endeavouring to swim with the stream of political Liberalism, they not only oppose their brethren of the Conservative Church party with the utmost bitterness, but incur as much danger of truckling to the powers beneath as the others to those above them. Putting in the foreground the evangelical maxim of the universal priesthood of all Christians, they are apt to turn it into the maintenance of an ecclesiastical democracy, and an application to the Church of the theory of manhood suffrage. Proclaiming the great mass of the people just as it is to be truly Christian, and so, in fact, to constitute the Church, they remind one of the old watchword in the wilderness by which it was sought to overturn the government of Moses,-"You make too much. of yourselves: the whole congregation is holy, and the Lord is

among them," and seem quite to forget that it is not birth in a nominally Christian country, but the possession of Christ's spirit, which constitutes the Christian; and finally, by making common cause with the unscrupulous leaders of the party of progress, they give to their efforts a sort of ecclesiastical sanction, and drag down the Church as effectually as their opponents into the miry slough of political party warfare. The consequence of this is, that notwithstanding all their efforts to reconcile Christianity with modern culture and progress, inscribing as they do upon their banner, "Renovation of the Evangelical Church in unison with the general development of culture in our time," this so-called "Protestant" party does really contribute to the widening of the breach between such development and any positive form of Christianity. It works towards this end from the side of intellectual and social culture, even as the opposite extreme party from the side of a narrow-minded form of Christianity. It alienates the orthodox and devout portion of the community from the national cause and liberal interests, quite as surely as its opponents have alienated by their mistakes the national party from the cause of the Church. Adopting the tenets of the old rationalistic schools, it only confirms the already anti-religious liberalism of the time in its renunciation of all positive faith, betraying more and more clearly that the only reconciliation between the gospel and modern culture for which it has any heart, would consist in basing all the foundations of faith (so-called) on the dicta of that modern "consciousness" which aims as much as possible to dispense with any supernatural revelation. The natural consequence is, that many religious persons are rendered more and more mistrustful of anything calling itself culture or progress, and more opposed than ever to even the most moderate liberalism in Church or State; while not a few theologians, who in many principles might be inclined to coalesce with the members of the "Protestant Union," are deterred and disgusted by the excesses of their democratic radicalism.

Thousands also, it must be confessed, are alienated from the Church by the conduct of some so-called "pietists." To say that such are mere hypocrites is a crying injustice; but it must be allowed that one-sidedness of judgment and general

narrowness of views does in many cases help to alienate men of culture from Christianity thus caricatured. When men see how shy and unfriendly our pietists (unlike so many good evangelical Christians in England and America) show themselves towards all national aspirations and endeavours; when they observe their narrow-minded withdrawal from what they call the world and all secular interests and pursuits; when they remark that, instead of being, as the Lord enjoins, a light to the world, and therefore especially to their own fellowcitizens, they prefer to let their light shine in the narrow bounds of a conventicle; when they hear them passing ignorant judgments on matters of art and science, or condemning everything as antichristian which does not wear the colour of their particular section, harping always on one string-the sinfulness and impotence of the natural man, or the prophetic announcements of the glory of the latter day, as if these or the like were the whole of Christianity, it is not to be wondered at that such narrowness of views in professed Christians should make Christianity itself an object of dislike or suspicion. The man of general cultivation is led to imagine that he must give up his clearer insight, the patriot, that he must renounce his political aspirations,-if he would become what these people would alone recognise as an orthodox Christian; and this he is naturally not inclined to do.

What has been already said will be enough to show, that in our enumeration of the causes of the present breach between Culture and Christianity, we must add to those strictly ecclesiastical and found within the Church itself

d. Fourthly, Causes Political.-Our modern political development and aspirations are largely felt to be antagonistic to, or at least to lie outside, the sphere of Christianity. And this constitutes what has been truly called "a profound internal discord in our life as a state and as a nation,"-namely, that the Christian and Church element on the one hand, the national and freedom-loving element on the other, should be so violently opposed, some regarding Christianity as in itself a reactionary principle opposed to all modern progress, and others fearing all advances towards political freedom and independence as necessarily inimical to Christianity, whereas all history teaches that freedom comes and perishes with religion,

with faith, and that faith can only grow and flourish in conjunction with liberty. The two are, in the long run, inseparable.

"In many cases," says an English writer, "the true source of a man's irreligion will be found in his politics." With none is this more the case than with the German people. Whenever the Church sinks to a mere engine of the State, and advocate even of its errors and abuses, then the natural result is, that the opposition originally directed against the State is now turned against the Church and Christianity. Again, whenever the Church shows herself cold and indifferent, or even hostile to the legitimate aims and aspirations of the people, then also it will soon come to be generally regarded as a reactionary institution, and political dislike soon developes into infidelity. A striking example of this is lately exhibited in the relations of Italy and the Papacy. From the very beginning the latter has been wont to confound ecclesiastical and political interests, constantly making morality and religion subservient to its politics. The bitter fruits of these unhallowed confusions are now being reaped. The great spread of infidelity in Italy during the last decade is due. to the hatred felt for the anti-national policy of the Papal See.

Experience shows that some systems of government are specially favourable to the growth of infidelity. Among these we may reckon especially despotism and bureaucracy. Church history proves clearly that the more freedom is granted to Christianity, the more it developes, the stronger it grows; the more the State interferes with its organization, and endeavours to direct its movements, the more sickly it becomes. It is not in the atmosphere of genuine freedom, but in the close and sultry air of bureaucratic government, that infidelity will be found to flourish most luxuriantly. The close atmosphere of red-tapist administration is for unbelief what a hothouse is for a plant. Look at France under the old régime. The despotism of Louis XIV. and XV. was a perfect hotbed of infidelity and free-thinking. Look at Germany. Nothing like the old bureaucratic system to produce and foster rationalism, which in the fresh air of the War of Independence began to wither. Patriotic, liberal, and religious impulses were then for a time harmoniously united, and the irresistible force of that great