more Christian than they; that man of
science, who risked his life under the anger of the Church, that he
might understand how the lightning was made by God, and the earth
caused to revolve, was more a proclaimer of the Eternal, than they; and
that citizen who died for his duty, in order to teach that the general
weal is of more value than that of individuals, was nearer the most
perfect pattern, than they. Among them also, undoubtedly, were many
good high-minded men; the Jesuit, Friedrich Spee, met his death in a
pesthouse, like that sailor in the flames. But those who thus lived,
are precious to us because they showed themselves to be good men;
whether they were considered good priests we know not. When this same
Spee protested so vehemently against the burning of witches, which his
Church so zealously carried on, he published his writings, without his
name, in a Protestant place.

Since Moses, and since the first feast of Pentecost, the Lord had never
left himself without witnesses; he had given the nations of the earth a
new culture, had led them to a higher civilisation. He had given them a
new code of morals, he had unlocked the other half of the earth, he had
willed that the new spirit in men should be contained in the narrow
space of one book, which might pass from hand to hand, from one soul to
another, from one century to every succeeding one. Restlessly and
unceasingly did the Divine Spirit agitate and stir the hearts of men;
ever more mighty and more holy did these manifestations of the Eternal,
appear to men of powerful intellect; it was a different manifestation
to that of the old writings, it was also another word of God, another
aspect of the Eternal, which was discovered. Thus men now sought the
God of the human race, of the earth, of the universe, not only in the
old faith but also in science. Together with the Jesuits and Jews there
was Leibnitz.

This new culture has elevated the Jews; their fanaticism has vanished
since the Christian zeal which persecuted them has ceased, and the
descendants of that wandering Asiatic race have become our countrymen
and fellow combatants. But the ecclesiastical community of the Society
of Jesus, already once expelled, then revived again, remains to this
day what it was at the beginning of its emigration into Germany--alien
to the German life.

CHAPTER XII.

THE WASUNGER WAR.