At the Basle Conference in 1879, Dr. Cremer, of Griefswald, reviewing the religious condition of Germany, said that, "when the tercentenary of the Reformation was celebrated there was a general revival of religious observances. This had been followed by a development of infidelity, and now the war between Christianity and infidelity was raging, and nowhere had the Evangelical Church such a fierce battle to sustain as in Germany. Worship of Mammon and forgetfulness of God overwhelmed all religious and moral questions." * Centenaries in connection with the Reformation and every circumstance that greatly moves the national life of Germany seem attended with an outburst of religious feeling. Thus an American lady, writing about Germany in the winter of 1883-84, which commenced with the fourth century of Luther's birth, says, with reference to the universal belief founded on all kinds of testimony that church-going as a popular habit has almost fallen into desuetude: "By a winter's residence in Berlin we have seen a contrary state of things. The churches are always full. No matter where we were, in the city, town or village, we never saw any but crowded churches." † But now, ten years later, Mr. W. H. Dawson tells us, in his work entitled, "Germany and the Germans " (1894), that, "taking Berlin as a whole, every service, as far as space is concerned, might be attended by tens of thousands of additional worshippers." Herr Stöcker, the most famous living clergyman in the Evangelical Church, considers the whole mass of Social Democrats as lost to religion and the Evangelical Church. He says: "Adherence to-day to Social Democracy means alienation from faith in God and eternity. In workmen's circles and where the red flag flutters the work of the Church is manifestly impossible. From the commencement Social Democracy has proclaimed war on Christendom and the Church. The Socialists hold the Church as the obstacle to their designs, and their aim may be summed up in the words: Écrasez l'infâme.'”‡ To the Social Democrats he adds the Progressives or Radicals, of whose programme he says: "Hatred, hostility to the Church, is almost a part." Of course, he considers the Jews, who number about half a million in Germany, and the Press they dominate, as sworn enemies to the Church; and as they mostly belong to the Progressive or Radical party," where it dominates, there is," he says, "no hope for the Gospel and the Confession, for the Church and the Inner Mission." Herr Stöcker's utterances ought not, perhaps, to be taken too literally. But other testimony may be quoted, showing that the vast masses of the people, influenced by the Social Democratic movement, * 66 Evangelical Christendom," 1879, p. 307. are, as a whole, to be regarded as completely alienated from the Evangelical Church. The impression Pastor Göhre gives of the result of his experience as a factory hand at Chemnitz, in Saxony, is that the great mass of working men and women have so entirely severed themselves from the Evangelical Lutheran Church that they no longer trouble themselves at all about it, regarding both it and the clergy with indifference and contempt. Some one more than usually just, he says, will admit that there are men both good and clever among its clergy, but even he will add, “They get a living out of Christianity, and not a bad one either.” "The Church," a workman told him, "is nothing but a State institution well calculated to stupefy people." "For the dislike to the Church," said another, "the parsons themselves are to blame." The black smocks are no longer hated, only despised. They are looked upon as idle people who do no real work." As to the regular attendants at church, said a machine adjuster, "they are so lifeless that their parson paid a compliment to one who openly seceded because he was true to his convictions. The rest had none whatever, they were indifference itself." + Has this worse than hostile feeling to the Evangelical Church on the part of the German working class any justification? It must be admitted that it has. The epitome of the history of the working classes up to within our own time is given in the parable of the Good Samaritan. "A certain man went down to Jericho and fell among thieves "the ravenous horde who live upon the toil of others. And "the priest and the Levite," who are they but that department of the State which men with unconscious irony call "the Evangelical Church"? The plundered, wounded, half-dead sons and daughters of labour had no help until the Spirit of Humanity appeared and tried its best to repair the evil done. Herr Göhre's experiences in Chemnitz soon convinced him of the wretched living accommodation which respectable, intelligent working men are obliged to put up with. A two-windowed room with an adjoining one-windowed recess is all the home a Chemnitz working man has. Sometimes the recess becomes a little room, but the other is apparently the rule. Then above, below, and adjoining the four walls of this "stube" are other lodgers, their rooms mostly crowded. No rest can be had in these noisy, nerve-destroying hives, derisively called "mode! lodging-houses," in which the labouring bees of modern industry have to swarm. The more refined the people become the greater the torture. Deprived of sleep, glad to be anywhere but at home, full of vexations, mostly resulting from the suffering every one inflicts on everybody, many destroy themselves. There are 400 suicides annually in Berlin alone, and every year the number "Drei Monate Fabrikarbeiter," pp. 163, 164. † Liem, pp. 165, 175, 176, 185. increases. "Why not?" they argue; "I am unhappy now; then I shall sleep, and it will be all over." The Church has looked on these things and then passed by on the other side. It might itself have to enter into a struggle with the thieves who had brought labour into this miserable condition; at any rate, it would be wiser to leave such matters to the secular authorities. And this would have gone on until the present moment had not the handwriting on the wall in 1890 recalled that which had so alarmed their predecessors in 1848. So complete had been the ignorance on the subject that, when Herr Göhre published his experiences, a German Conservative paper said that "it was as if some one had come from the heart of Africa and described the ways and habits of a great and hitherto unknown nation.” * But the failure of the authorities in the Evangelical Church to discover and cope with evils which have so rapidly developed as those in town centres, is capable of considerable justification compared to its failure to discover and cope with miseries of much longer standing in the rural districts. At the sixth annual conference of the Deutschen Sittlichkeitsverein (Society for the Promotion of Morality), held at Colmar, September 20, 1894, Pastor C. Wagner, of Pritzherbe, in the Mark of Brandenburg, gave appalling accounts of the low condition of morality in the rural districts of certain parts of Germany, brought about by the crowded state of the little cottages. Other testimony, clerical and medical, confirmed Herr Wagner's account, the latter giving woeful details of the wretched condition of rural homes—the owners refusing any improvement. A startling letter was read from the secretary of the Berlin Verein fur Arbeitlose, in which he said: There "Our society tries to find work for old men and young ones. come to us such accounts of the frightful immorality of the country that we can only send men there under great anxiety. Here in our sinful BabylonBabel, prostitutes follow our young men, but there it is the serving-girls who behave themselves shamefully. We have accounts from Mecklenburg which beggar all description. Pray tell me what to do. Upon the little estates things are yet tolerable, but on the larger ones it appears that unchastity by day and night is fully sanctioned." † The working people know these things-they are forced to know them; and what resentment must they feel with reference to a Church whose very reason of existence is to prevent such moral disorders eating up the life of a State. For what reason does the State endow the Church with houses and lands, and impart to it a portion of its authority, if it is not to protect the people from all this misery and corruption. An Established Church is the legal and authorised "Three Months in a Workshop," Prefatory Note by Professor R. T. Ely. +"Die Neue Zeit," 1895, p. 594: also Appendix III., "Moralité des populations rurales de l'Est de l'Allemagne," G. Blonde', 1897, pp. 420-423; See also "Die Arbeiterfrage in der deutschen Landwirthschaft," Dr. K. Frankenstein. 1893, pp. 300-305. opponent of all oppression and immorality. But as long as the source of its authority is not the People, but the Emperor and the upper classes, it never will take its truly glorious position of tribune of the people. But while the Evangelical Church in its official capacity has played the part of the priest and the Levite, it must not be forgotten that "the Good Samaritan" has, during the last fifty years, been splendidly represented in Germany by many lay and clerical members of the Evangelical Church. "It is impossible," said Immanuel Wichern, "to say what love and pity have been manifested in Germany for many years past in order to bring the poor, and especially the young, under the influence of religion." Wichern originated the principal work of Christian philanthropy in connection with the Evangelical Church-the Inner Mission. The original idea in starting the Inner Mission was the evangelisation of the masses, but this was found impossible as long as the people were the victims of a system which, in order to allow a few to make fortunes and live in luxury, sacrifices the many, giving them up to a life of torture and degradation with consequent discontent, irreligion, atheism, and prospective insurrection. The Inner Mission, therefore, devoted itself to ameliorating the sufferings of the people, taking their little ones into infants' schools and nurseries, and the weak and ailing, physically, morally, and mentally, into asylums and reformatories. It started Sunday-schools, Young Men's Christian Associations, relieved the distressed, nursed the sick, provided healthy and cheap lodgings, instituted savings banks and temperance societies, visited prisoners in jails, looked after them on coming out, circulated Bibles and Christian books, and struggled to protect Sunday as a day of rest. It has watched over the young journeymen on tramp, and cared for classes long forgotten and outcast, such as the prostitutes on the streets. It has tried, in fact, by organisation and most devoted service, to bind up the wounds of the vast mass of unfortunates, knocked down and trampled on by robbers, protected by law and custom. But philanthropy, however magnificent and beautiful, cannot make up for injustice. One Act of real justice passed through the national Legislature does more to heal the wounds of the sufferers from oppression than philanthropy can possibly effect. At least, so the vast mass of the German people seem to think, if we compare their trust in the Social Democratic leaders to that which they put in an institution in connection with which nearly all these great works of charity have been carried on. For the Social Democratic agitation has not only brought about the industrial legislation already mentioned, but it has at last converted the supreme authorities in the Evangelical Church to the necessity of not only permitting, but of encouraging the clergy to study social and political questions. But this was only so recently as 1890, when the elections revealed the fact that in three years the Social Democrats had nearly doubled the number of their votes-763,128 having become 1,427,298—while their eleven members in the Reichstag had increased to thirty-five. And in taking this resolution the Supreme Church Council appears to have been animated not so much by any regard to the wrongs suffered by the vast mass of the German people as by an anxious desire to stop the further progress of Social Democracy, for they call upon the clergy "to render witness to Christian truth, and to come out by word and writing in opposition to the enemies of the throne and the altar." This appears a perilous move, for if the Evangelical Church becomes a political party its fate is sealed. For the enemy whom it thus denounces will on vital occasions find allies, not only in the Progressive or Radical parties, but also in the Centre or Catholic party. Should a critical occasion arrive on which the three parties combinedand none seems so likely as any attempt of the Evangelical Church to renew the political war against Social Democracy-it might possibly end in serious results for German Protestant Christianity. Moreover, the Social Democrats must naturally be flushed with continued success, having arrived at that period of the struggle when the prospect of final victory begins to loom on the horizon. The ability and political capacity of the leaders of the Social Democratic party have so far been remarkable, and, if with years, with experience and with success there is any abatement of energy, the slackening of the pace onwards may prove no real disadvantage to a movement which depends largely on education. While bringing its forces into an extraordinary discipline, Social Democracy appears to have spared no pains to train them mentally, and to make them feel that its aim is not merely a political and social one, but that it extends to the whole of life. According to Herr Göhre, the working men at Chemnitz are ardent students of natural science, their teachers being pure materialists who labour with much earnestness to instruct their disciples in a ception of life, from which all supernatural ideas are eliminated, and which is wholly occupied with things secular. The Press, the lecture-hall, and the debating club are brought into requisition. From the former teem manuals of elementary science, apparently suited to the workman's wants, for he buys them greedily and studies them religiously. In Chemnitz three bookshops were wholly devoted to the sale of Socialist literature. As to Social Democratic newspapers and magazines, no less than 130 were in 1892 published in Germany. Lecturers are sent all over the country, finding halls and club-rooms in all the great centres. The institution which must |