young birds, not to speak of old cocks and
hens left, to begin with over again.

A feature of the political situation, which scarcely enters into
political calculations in America, is the sharp division between
Protestants and Catholics, with a political party of Catholics
numbering one fourth of the total members, in the Reichstag. In 1905
there were 37,646,852 Protestants and 22,109,644 Catholics in Germany,
the Roman Catholics being in a majority in Baden, Bavaria, and
Alsace-Lorraine. In the past these religious differences have entailed
all the most repulsive features of war, waged to the point of
extermination. "Lieber Rom als Liberal," is still a punning war-cry
marking the dislike of Rome and the fear of Socialism.

With us religion has become largely an organized attempt, using
charity as patronage, to reconcile piety and plenty, with the result
that with the exception of the Catholic Church dealing with the lately
arrived immigrants, and the Methodists and Baptists dealing with the
ignorant masses, black and white, in the South, religion in the sense
of an organized church has little hold upon the people, especially in
the large cities.

In America the indifference to religion is the result of suspicion.
The congregations are too largely black-coated and white-collared, and
the lay officers of the churches much too solemnly sleek and serenely
solvent to attract the weak, the unfortunate, the sorrowing, and the
sinner. The mere appearance of the congregation in a prosperous
Protestant church in an American city is a mockery of Christianity.
Any man who preaches to men who can own a seat in God's house is a
craven opportunist. Until the doors of the churches are open all the
week, and the seats in the churches free, to claim that the Christ is
there is little short of blasphemy. It is no wonder that those who
need Him most, never dream of seeking for Him in these ecclesiastical
clubs.

In Germany half-baked thinking, following upon, and as the result of,
the barracks and corporal methods of education, have turned the
Protestant population from the churches. The slovenly and patchy
omniscience of the partly educated, leads them to believe that they
know enough not to believe. Renan, though a doubter himself, saw the
weakness of this form of disbelief when he wrote: "There are in
reality but few people who have a right not to believe in
Christianity."

The people living upon this ethnographical chess-board