ted just alarm
in the minds of many friends of religious and civil liberty. This feeling
is but too well warranted by the open hostility which the promoters of
that reaction, having thrown away the mask of liberalism, are manifesting
to the above-mentioned liberties. I shall, moreover, add, that the
political complications in which Europe is now involved may be taken
advantage of by the reactionary party in order to advance its schemes,
whilst the public attention, particularly of this country, will be
absorbed by the events of the present war; and therefore I think that all
true Protestants should, instead of relaxing, increase their vigilance, in
respect to the movements of the ecclesiastical reactionists. But the
dangers which threaten from that quarter are, at least in this country, of
a purely moral character, though they are doing much mischief in families,
and may throw some obstruction into the legislative action of the
government. They must therefore be combated with moral and intellectual
means,--with spiritual, and not carnal weapons,--and they may be completely
annihilated by a vigorous and skilful application of such means. The Pope
of Rome, though claiming a spiritual authority over many countries, cannot
maintain himself in his own temporal dominion without the assistance of
foreign powers, and is obliged to court the favour of secular potentates,
instead of commanding them, as had been done by his predecessors. The case
is quite different with the Imperial Pope of Russia, who commands a
million of bayonets, and whose authority is supported, not by canon, but
by cannon law, and not by bulls, but by bullets. The material force which
he has at his disposal is immensely strengthened by his spiritual
authority over the ignorant masses of the Russian population, upon whose
religious feelings he may act with great facility, because his orders to
the clergy are as blindly obeyed as his commands to the army; and it is
with the object of extending and consolidating this authority over all his
subjects without exception that those measures of persecution and
seduction against the Roman Catholics and Protestants, which I have
mentioned above, have been adopted. The probable consequence of this
religious centralization, and the condition of the church whose exclusive
dominion it is sought to establish in Russia, have been sketched in the
following graphic manner by an accomplished German writer, who, having
resided man