only those recognized by the minister and where the method of teaching has been approved by him. In a word, this system is simply the striking out of the word "Bishop" everywhere on the whole field of clerical education, and substituting the word "Minister of Public Worship," be he Jew, Turk, infidel, or heretic. Dr. Falk, when the Catholic Bishops and party resist this monstrous, law, asks with an air of injured innocence and enlightened pity for the Catholic obscurantism which must underlie their resistance, "Surely, gentlemen, you do not think that a priest will do his spiritual work less well because he is a man of science and of cultivation ?"* Hardly less offensive is the tone which he adopts regarding the education in Catholic schools generally. The words "national" and "patriotic" are used by him to designate a doctrine like that of Mr. Gladstone, viz., that no Catholic can be a loyal subject of the civil power. He would have the whole education of the Catholic body under his thumb, and what the pressure is likely to be no one who can read, and who chooses to read the avowed condition of Prussian religious thought, can for a moment doubt. "A few days ago," says Bishop v. Ketteler, "one of the most famous preachers of progress and science declared that the present civilized world no longer needed to be Christian. A former minister of public worship introduced Hegel's philosophy into all the Prussian universities, and at this moment the greater part of the professors in those universities are still further removed from Christianity than Hegel." What this further remove from Christianity is, we may, let us say in passing, practically estimate by the reflection, that moderate Hegelianism is best represented by that very remarkable doctor in divinity and precursor of Renan, Strauss, the author of the "Leben Jesu." "What we may expect from Dr. Falk," says the Bishop of Mainz, "has already been shown by the appointment of Dr. Schulte at Bonn. By pursuing this course we should soon be in the condition in which Catholics were in the grand duchy of Baden forty years ago, where the State appointed as teachers of theology, priests who were completely deficient in faith and in morals. We need only mention Dr. Schreiber, professor at Freiburg, who in his mock moral theology went so far as to represent to the theological students that celibacy was unnatural, illegal, immoral, and unchristian. We may also mention ReichlinMeldegg, who as professor of ecclesiastical history, habitually ridiculed the Church and all that she holds sacred and venerable, and Dr. Amanr, who in his lectures on canon law sought to instil into his auditors contempt for the Church, and to degrade the authority of the Pope. Archbishop Boll died of grief in his 80th year, on account of these odious proceedings, which he could not * Dr. Falk's Speech of January 17, 1874. VOL. XXIV.-NO. XLVII. C hinder, notwithstanding his unanswerable petition to the Grand Duke in July, 1830." The clergy, thus deprived of their faith by a systematic and obligatory infidel education, are however still not sufficiently "national" for Dr. Falk. They are to be further " emancipated in regard to all outer, or extra-national, control of superiors in the Church. It would seem at first sight that this involves only the renunciation of papal authority, but on inspection, we find that the terms of the new laws include all independent Episcopal or Church control whatever, under the name of "extra-national." They contain provisions for an entirely new system of installation or appointment, and deposition of the clergy; and also a whole series of penal enactments for the enforcement of these laws, and the appointment of a supreme appellate and ordinary Royal court of justice for all clerical affairs. Thus the State invades and nullifies all Episcopal jurisdiction in its most essential point; and this in a very insidious way, because it leaves the right of nomination to oures nominally to the Bishop, but checkmates him under pains and penalties for disobedience, by giving the State an absolute reto on all such appointments. This absolute veto, therefore, constitutes an unlimited right of patronage on the part of the State. These laws had already placed the nomination of Bishops to sees under the absolute control of the State, and that right (or wrong) is now extended to all ecclesiastical offices whatever. The roof and crown of this unstable heap of legal abominations is the Royal Court for Ecclesiastical affairs, which alone has the power of removing any and every ecclesiastic, Bishop, priest, or minister, from his office, "when his presence shall have become incompatible with public order." Here, of course, comes in the prospective use of Dr. Döllinger's sect. In the sense specified in Article 24, the Pope is not allowed to suspend Bishops or priests, who have openly rebelled against the Church. She would thus have to tolerate any worthless heretical and schismatical member, and see her faithful Bishops and pastors fined, imprisoned, and exiled, at the will of the State. Bishop von Ketteler justly reduces the consequences of these laws to five heads: 1. Separation of the Church from Rome, i.e. schism. 2. Annihilation of all episcopal power. 3. The break-up and dissolution of all authority in the Church. 4. Full and absolute sway of the State over the clergy. 5. An incalculable corruption and degradation of the whole Church in Prussia, and throughout the German Empire. And now let us conclude with some reflections, more or less practical, which seem to flow from what is attempted by the Prussian Church laws at the present time. I. We would say that the magnitude of the plot is an evidence of the extent and vitality of the power against which it is directed. Men do not break flies on wheels, or marshal armies to subdue the republic of San Marino. An obliging writer on the subject* not only tells us that Christianity is spontaneously disintegrating and vanishing away, but he also supplies us with a religion of the future, which is to take its place. Perhaps Herr v. Hartmann's appreciation of Christianity is not known to the Liberal party at large. At any rate their estimate of the resistance likely to be afforded by it seems higher, though in theory they probably agree with him,-a phenomenon not rare, and exemplified by that wellknown tale of the prophet who foretold the end of the world within ten years, and at the same time renewed the lease of his house in Bloomsbury for a far longer period, for fear of accidents. II. In pointing out the animus of these laws, we are not including all who promote or sympathize with them under the head of conscious enemies to the Church. Speaking of our own country, we should say that there is no doubt a great number of very good people who are quite at sea on the whole question. The jargon of the newspaper and other writers, especially Mr. Gladstone, about Ultramontane aggression quite misleads them. Educational and sentimental prejudice also comes in; and, to be honest, one must also confess that there is a great deal to lament in the mistakes and inadequacies of those who represent the right side. The question at home is perhaps too burning to touch it more in detail. We will but illustrate our meaning from beyond seas, by recalling the convention of 1834 between the Archbishop of Cologne, predecessor of the illustrious Clement Augustus Droste v. Vischering, and the Prussian Government. His concession of the condition for mixed marriages laid down in that document was clearly beyond his competency; but what a mass of scandal, embarrassment, and suffering did he not thus entail on the Church and on his successor, whose conscientious and necessary re-assertion of true principle and practice in this matter, thus had the appearance of a new claim, and an aggression on the State. But besides these causes there is one which greatly tends to prevent English people from recognizing the true character of the struggle between Church and State. Accustomed as they are to the existing settlement of the relations between what they believe to be the Church and the State, which once for all gave the plenitude of ecclesiastical as well as civil power to the Crown, secured also to a very great extent from any stringent use of this prerogative by the long course of restrictions which have so effectually fettered its exercise in that, * "Die Selbstzersetzung des Christenthums und die Religion der Zukunft. Von E. V. Hartmann. Berlin, Dunker. as well as in every other direction, the whole practical inconvenience, and great part of the moral turpitude of an utter dependence of religion on the civil power have gradually disappeared from men's minds. Short of blasphemy and Atheism, there is no shade of opinion which the clergy of the Church established by law need refrain from holding, or even from expressing, with a moral certainty that the Crown's correctional police will leave both their opinion and themselves in quiet possession of benefice or cure. And this condition of things, in itself the most complete condemnation of the Establishment which we can formulate, is also the very means of hiding the moral degradation of such a situation from the eyes of the clergy. All who have positive convictions can boast that they freely hold and set them forth, but this very freedom, they forget, is purchased by an equal immunity to others to hold doctrines diametrically opposed and destructive of all belief. Such a chaotic state never before, so far as history tells, passed by the name of a "religion," and its very excesses seem how to provoke a further interference, which can but augment the evil, if (which seems doubtful) it has any effect at all. If, however, new legislation, on the accession to power of a strong Liberal party administration, should recall the active and coercive measures of police which are so much admired by some of our papers when wielded by a Bismark against Papists, many would be led to take a new view of their position, and question the absolute truth of their first principles. In view of such a contingency, it may not have been an unwise contrivance on the part of those who would deprecate this result, to fly an expostulatory kite in some other direction than that of the dovecotes of national establishments, and see whether the lightning which is in the air may not thus be diverted from many a peaceful hearth to fall with due force upon the heads of those, at once domestic and foreign, owners of a "divided allegiance," who have been, it should seem, hitherto loved not altogether wisely but too well by the great educators of the Liberal party. Whether such a future party is to make its running in the race for governance by an onslaught on the principle and fact of establishment of religion by the State, or by a modification of it in the sense indicated by the German Liberals, it is clear that Catholics can have no sympathy with it. That excess of disappointed affection which seems to have prompted Mr. Gladstone's late utterance, reminds one rather of a jingle in an old play, where some one remonstrates on such a course, saying: 'Twas all very well to dissemble your love, If it has no other result, it will still do good, should it convince Catholics at large how unnaturally and ephemerally they have been "unequally yoked together with the workers of" Liberalism. An alliance with politicians not Catholic, but who hold the same premises as we do on such vital points as the necessity of the State being Christian, and of Christian education, may be sometimes difficult, because the conclusions drawn by such persons will probably often differ from our own, but there is still not that great gulf fixed between us and them which divides us from those who would actively unchristianize the School and the State. From the former we are divided more on questions of degree and of fact than of principle, for no possible leaders of the Conservative interest can at this time of day revive or create anew among their supporters the idea of the absolute power and right of the State to rule in the sphere of beliefs of conscience which underlies the liberalism of this age. When exorcised, it speaks plain, and the plain speech is the old one, "écrasons l'infâme!" III. This leads us to a third reflection, which we have already somewhat anticipated when we said that our enemies, one and all, blame the Vatican definition as the cause of their new manœuvres. We would say, then, to those among us who are not quite so sure as they might be what to think of the "opportune"-ness of this definition, what is the reason for the persistent bitterness with which it is and has been denounced by all the enemies of the Church ever since it became an article of faith? They one and all would allow that they are enemies of the Roman Church, or of the Pope, or of "those behind his throne," or of "the myrmidons of the Apostolic Chamber," or of "the Jesuits," or of "the monsignori," as they variously phrase it. Mr. Gladstone, especially, a master of diction if ever man was so, gives us several choice phrases of this kind. He is, however, nowhere happier than in the "myrmidons of the Apostolic Chamber." "Myrmidon " is good, as Polonius says of "mobled Queen"; myrmidon is very good, and we think for the same reason, viz., because no one has an exact idea (unless Mr. Gladstone himself has) of what myrmidon means. It is a sort of word that makes one uncomfortable, because you feel you may perhaps be a myrmidon (as M. Jourdan had always talked prose) without knowing it; and, clearly, to be a myrmidon is not the right thing, for it is never used in a good sense. "Apostolic Chamber" is equally good, or even better. Apostolic by itself is indeed not yet a term of positive opprobrium, but then "Chamber" is distinctly malè sonans. Star Chamber and Chamber of Horrors are redolent of thumbscrews, and Prynne's ears, and arbitrary power, to say nothing of scaffolds and guillotines and lettres de cachet. "Apostolic Chamber," therefore, is a Popish chamber of horrors, secret and most likely murderous, at least in regard to its myrmidons. As a fact, the Apostolic Chamber was a tribunal of the fisc, which had none but |