perceptible in every sphere of human life, and not least in the realm
of faith.

The Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages had consecrated the life
of every individual by a multitude of pious usages, and shut it up in
an aristocratic spiritual state, in which the spirit of the individual
was fast bound in rigid captivity, with little spontaneous action. The
Reformation destroyed in the greater part of Germany these fetters of
the popular mind; it set freedom of decision and mental activity in
opposition to the outward constraint and splendid mechanism of the old
Church. But Protestantism gave a system of doctrine, as well as freedom
and depth, to the German mind. In the great soul of Luther, both these
tendencies of the new faith were in equilibrium; the more passionately
he struggled for his explanation of holy writ and the dogmas of his
school, the stronger and more original was the mental process through
which, after his own way, he sought his God in free prayer. It is,
nevertheless, clear that the great progress which accrued to the human
race from his teaching, could not fail to result in forming two
opposite tendencies in Protestantism. The two poles of every religion,
knowledge and the emotions of the soul, the intellectual boundaries of
religious knowledge and the fervid resignation of self to the Divine,
must prevail in the soul with varying power, according to the wants of
the individual and the cultivation of the period; now one, now the
other will preponderate, and the time might arrive when both tendencies
would come into strife and opposition. At first Protestantism waged war
against the old Church, and against the parties that arose within
itself,--a necessary consequence of greater freedom and independence of
judgment.

It is difficult to judge how far this liberal tendency of Protestantism
would have led the nation, if adversity had not come upon them. The
great war, however, gave rise to a peculiar apathy even in the best.
Each party engaged bore a token of their faith upon their banners, each
brought endless misfortune upon the people, and in all, it was apparent
how little baptism and the Lord's Supper availed to make the professors
of any confession good men. When the flames of war were dying away, men
were much inclined to attribute a great portion of their own misery and
that of the country to the strife of the contending persuasions. It
naturally followed that the colder children of the worl