when science has done so much, and commerce, that great handmaid of
civilization, is opening a highway to the darkest recesses of the wide and
long-lost heathen land.

(M24) Some serious-minded Catholics of Germany, dreading lest a national
or schismatical church should come to be established in that country,
conceived the happy idea of organizing, under the auspices of Pius IX.,
associations of laymen, who made it their duty to assist the clergy in
everything that could tend to improve morals and education, relieve
suffering, and restore the liberty and rights of the church, whilst they
studied, at the same time, to impart a spirit of faith to the pursuits of
science, the arts, and even the more humble occupations of trade. The
chief founder of these associations, Mr. Francis Joseph Busz, has written
a book, in which he shows what progress they had already made in 1851, and
what it still remained for them to accomplish. They continued to prosper,
and gave birth to associations of a like nature. Thus, at Cologne, Abbe
Kolping, Vicar of the Cathedral, founded a society of _Catholic
Companions_, the object of whose institute was, that they should spend
their leisure hours together in a Christian manner, and increase the
knowledge suited to their state of life, instead of losing their time,
their money and their morals in taverns. By the year 1852, such
associations of workmen had taken root in no fewer than twenty-five cities
in Germany.

Ever since the Thirty Years' War, Germany had been distracted by religious
divisions. And yet the sectarian spirit does not appear to have been so
bitter as in some other countries. There was at least a desire for
religious peace and union. This is sufficiently expressed in the articles
of the treaty of Westphalia, which seems to have been intended as a
temporary arrangement for the pacification of the country, until peace
should be permanently established "by the agreement of all parties on
points of religion;" "until all controversies should be terminated by an
amicable and universal understanding." "But if, which God forbid! people
cannot come to such amicable agreement on the controverted points of
religion, that this convention shall, nevertheless, be perpetual, and this
peace always continue." Thus was the great treaty only a preliminary of
that lasting peace which can only be finally concluded when all minds and
hearts are united in the bonds of a common faith.

Whilst many go