THIRD DIVISION. (Continued.) (continued 10)

Last of all among the German states affected by the Kulturkampf, the kingdom of Saxony, with only 73,000 Catholic inhabitants, at the instance of the second Chamber in 1876, came forward with a Catholic church law modelled upon the Prussian May Laws, with its several provisions modified, in spite of the contention of the talented heir to the throne, Prince George, that the power of the state in relation to the Catholic church could only be determined by a concordat with the Roman curia.

§ 198. Austria-Hungary.

To the emperor of Austria there was left, after the re-organization of affairs by the Vienna Congress, of the Roman empire, only the name of defender of the papal see, and the Catholic church, and the presidency of the German Federal Council. The remnants of the Josephine ecclesiastical constitution were gradually set aside and Catholicism firmly established as the state religion; yet the government asserted its independence against all hierarchical claims, and granted, though only in a very limited degree, toleration to Protestantism. The revolution year 1848 removed indeed some of these limits, but the period of reaction that followed gave, by means of a concordat concluded with the curia in 1855, to the ultramontane hierarchy of the country an unprecedented power in almost all departments of civil life, and prejudicial also to the interests of the Protestant church. After the disastrous issue of the Italian war in 1859, and still more that of the German war in 1866, the government was obliged to make an honest effort to introduce and develop liberal institutions. And after an imperial patent of 1861 had secured religious liberty, self-administration, and equal rights to the Protestant church, the constitutional legislation of 1868 freed Catholic as well as Protestant civil, educational, and ecclesiastical matters from the provisions of the concordat that most seriously threatened them, and by the declaration of papal infallibility in 1870 the government felt justified in regarding the entire concordat as antiquated and declaring it abolished. In its place a Catholic church act was passed by the state in 1874. But the Kulturkampf struggle which was thus made imminent also for Austria was avoided by pliancy on both sides.

§ 198.1. The Zillerthal Emigration.―In the Tyrolese Zillerthal the knowledge of evangelical truth had spread among several families by means of Protestant books and Bibles. When the Catholic clergy from 1826 had pushed to its utmost the clerical guardianship by means of auricular confession, an opposition arose which soon from the refusal to confess passed on to the rejection of saint worship, masses for the dead, purgatory, indulgences, etc., and ended in the formal secession of many to the evangelical church in 1830, with a reference to the Josephine edict of toleration. The emperor Francis I., to whom on the occasion of his visit to Innsbrück in 1832 they presented their petition, promised them toleration. But the Tyrolese nobles protested, and the official decision, given at last in 1834, ordered removal to Transylvania or return to the Catholic church. The petitioners now applied, as those of Salzburg had previously done (§ 165, 4), by a deputation to the king of Prussia, who, after by diplomatic communications securing the emperor’s consent to emigration, assigned them his estate of Erdmannsdorf in Silesia for colonization. There now the exiles, 399 in number, settled in 1837, and, largely aided by the royal munificence, founded a new Zillerthal.

§ 198.2. The Concordat.―After the revolution year 1848, the government were far more yielding toward the claims of the hierarchy than under the old Metternich régime. In April, 1850, an imperial patent relieved the papal and episcopal decrees of the necessity of imperial approval, and on August 18th, 1855, a concordat with the pope was agreed to, by which unprecedented power and independence was granted to the hierarchy in Austria for all time to come. The first article secured to the Roman Catholic religion throughout the empire all rights and privileges which they claimed by divine institution and the canon law. The others gave to the bishops the right of unrestricted correspondence with Rome, declared that no papal ordinance required any longer the royal placet, that prelates are unfettered in the discharge of their hierarchical obligations, that religious instruction in all schools is under their supervision, that no one can teach religion or theology without their approval, that in catholic schools there can be only catholic teachers, that they have the right of forbidding all books which may be injurious to the faithful, that all cases of ecclesiastical law, especially marriage matters, belong to their jurisdiction, yet the apostolic see grants that purely secular law matters of the clergy are to be decided before a civil tribunal, and the emperor’s right of nomination to vacant episcopal sees is to continue, etc. The inferior clergy, who were now without legal protection against the prelates, only reluctantly bowed their necks to this hard yoke; the liberal Catholic laity murmured, sneered, and raged, and the native press incessantly urged a revision of the concordat, the necessity of which became ever more apparent from concessions made meanwhile willingly or grudgingly to the “Non-Catholics.” But only after Austria, by the issue of the German war of 1866, was restricted to her own domain, and finally freed from the drag of its ultramontane Italian interests, found herself obliged to make every effort to reconcile the opposing parties within her own territories, could these views prove successful. But since the government nevertheless held firmly by the principle that the concordat, as a state contract regularly concluded between two sovereigns, could be changed only by mutual consent, the liberal majority of the house of deputies resolved to make it as harmless as possible by means of domestic legislation, and on June 11th, 1867, the deputy Herbst moved the appointment of a committee for drawing up three bills for restoring civil marriage, emancipation of schools from the church, and equality of all confessions in the eye of the law. The motion was carried by a hundred and thirty-four votes against twenty-two. The Cisleithan (i.e. Austrian excluding Hungary) episcopate, with Cardinal Rauscher of Vienna at their head, presented an address to his apostolic majesty demanding the most rigid preservation of the concordat, denouncing civil marriage as concubinage, and the emancipation of schools as their dechristianizing. An imperial autograph letter to Rauscher rebuked with earnest words the inflammatory proceedings of the bishops, and at the same time the ultramontane ambassador to Rome, Baron Hübner, was recalled. After the arrangement with Hungary was completed, the first Cisleithan, the so-called Burger, ministry was constituted under the presidency of Prince Auersperg, composed of the most distinguished leaders of the parliamentary majority. All the three bills were passed by a large majority, and obtained imperial sanction on May 25th, 1868. The papal nuncio of Vienna protested, the pope in an allocution denounced the new Austrian constitution as nefanda sane and the three confessional laws as abominabiles leges. “We repudiate and condemn these laws,” he says, “by apostolic authority, as well as everything done by the Austrian government in matters of church policy, and determine in the exercise of the same authority that these decrees with all their consequences are and shall be null and void.” But all Vienna, all Austria held jubilee, and the Chancellor von Beust rejected with energy the assumptions of the curia over the civil domain. The bishops indeed issued protests and inflammatory pastorals, and forbad the publication of the marriage act, but submitted to the threats of compulsion by the supreme court, and Bishop Rudigier of Linz, who went furthest in inciting to opposition, was in 1869 taken into court by the police, and sentenced to twelve days’ imprisonment, but pardoned by the emperor. Toward the Vatican Council Austria assumed at first a waiting policy, then in vain remonstrated, warned, threatened, and finally, on July 30th, 1870, after the proclamation of infallibility, declared that the concordat was antiquated and abolished, because by this dogma the position of one of the contracting parties had undergone a complete change.

§ 198.3. The Protestant Church in Cisleithan Austria.―Down to 1848 Protestantism of both confessions in Austria enjoyed only a very limited toleration. The storms of this year first set aside the hated official name of “Non-Catholics,” and won permission for Protestant places of worship to have bells and towers. But the repeated petitions for permission to found branches of the Gustavus Adolphus Union, the persistently maintained law that Catholic clergymen, even after they had formally become Protestants, could not marry, because the character indelibilis of priestly consecration attached itself even to apostates, and many such facts, prove that the government was far from intending to grant to the Protestants civil equality with the Catholics. But the unfortunate result of the Sardinian-French war of 1859, and the fear thereby increased of the falling asunder of the whole Austrian federation, induced the government to address itself earnestly to the introduction of liberal institutions, and also to do justice to the Protestant church. The presidency of the two Protestant consistories in Vienna, hitherto given to a Catholic, was now assigned to a Protestant; meetings of the Gustavus Adolphus Union were now allowed, and a share was given to the Protestant party in the ministry of public worship by the appointment of three evangelical councillors. After the entrance on office of the liberal minister Von Schmerling, an imperial patent was issued on April 8th, 1864, by which unrestricted liberty of faith, independent administration of all ecclesiastical, educational, and charitable matters, free election of pastors, even from abroad, full exercise of civil and political rights, and complete equality with Catholics was given to the Protestants of the German and Slavonian crown territories. Also in 1868, under the reactionary ministry of Belcredi, on the expiry of the legal term of the Evangelical Supreme Church Council, it was reorganized, two evangelical school councillorships were created, and the pecuniary position of the evangelical clergy considerably improved. But in spite of all privileges legally granted to the evangelical church, it continued in many cases, in presence of the concordat, which down to 1870 still remained in force, exposed to the whims and caprice, sometimes of the imperial courts, sometimes of the Catholic clergy.

§ 198.4. The Clerical Landtag Opposition in the Tyrol.―In the Tyrol, after the publication of the imperial patent of April, 1861, a violent movement was set on foot by clerical agitation. The Landtag, by a great majority, pronounced the issuing of it the most serious calamity which the country, hitherto honest, true, and happy in its undivided attachment to the Catholic faith, could have suffered, and concluded that Non-Catholics in the Tyrol should only by way of dispensation be allowed, but that publicity of Protestant worship and formation of Protestant congregations should be still forbidden. The Schmerling ministry, indeed, refused to confirm these resolutions. The agitation of the clergy, however, which fanned in all possible ways the fanaticism of the people, grew from year to year, until at last the Belcredi ministry of 1866 came to an agreement with the Landtag, sanctioned by the emperor, according to which the creation of an evangelical landed proprietary in the Tyrol was not indeed formally forbidden, but permission for an evangelical to possess land had in each case to be obtained from the Landtag. The ecclesiastical laws of 1868 next called forth new conflicts. Twice was the Landtag closed because of the opposition thus awakened, until finally in September, 1870, the estates took the oath to the new constitution with reservation of conscience. But now, when in December, 1875, the ministry of worship gave approval to the formal constituting of two evangelical congregations in the Tyrol, at Innsbrück and Meran, the clerical press was filled with burning denunciations, and the majority of the Landtag meeting in the following March thought to give emphasis to their protest by leaving the chamber, and so bringing the assembly to a sudden close. In June, 1880, the three bishops of the Tyrol uttered in the Landtag a fanatical protest against the continuance of the meanwhile established congregations, which the Landtag majority renewed in July, 1883.

§ 198.5. The Austrian Universities.―Stremayr, minister of public worship, introduced in 1872 a scheme of university reorganization, by which the exclusively Catholic character which had hitherto belonged to the Austrian universities, especially those of Vienna and Prague, should be removed. Up to this time a Non-Catholic could there obtain no sort of academical degree, but this was now to be obtainable apart from any question of confession. The office of chancellor, held by the archbishops of Prague and Vienna, was restricted to the theological faculty, to the state was assigned the right of nominating all professors, even in the theological faculty, and the German language was recommended as the medium of instruction. Candidates of theology have to pass through a full and comprehensive course of theological science in a three years’ university curriculum, before they can be admitted into an episcopal seminary for practical training. In spite of the opposition of the superior clergy, the bill passed even in the House of Peers, and became law in 1873.―In Innsbrück, where according to ancient custom the rector was chosen from the four faculties in succession, the other faculties protested against the election when, in 1872, the turn came to the theological (Jesuit) faculty, and they carried their point. The new organization law gave the choice of rector to the whole professoriate, and a subsequent imperial order withdrew from the general of the Jesuits the right of nominating all theological professors.―Much was done, too, for the elevation of the evangelical theological faculty in Vienna by bringing able scholars from Germany, by giving a right to the promotion to the degree of doctor of theology, etc. But its incorporation in the university, though often moved for, was hindered by the continued opposition of the Catholic theologians as well as philosophers, and in 1873 it did not meet with sufficient support in the House of Peers. Even the use of certain halls in the university buildings, promised by the minister, could not yet be obtained.

§ 198.6. The Austrian Ecclesiastical Laws, 1874-1876.―At last the government in January, 1874, introduced the long-promised Catholic church legislation into the Reichstag, intended to supply blanks occasioned by the setting aside of the concordat. Its main contents are these:

The concordat, hitherto only diplomatically dealt with, is now legislatively annulled; the bishops have to present all their manifestoes not before but upon publication to the state government for its cognisance; every vacancy of an ecclesiastical office, as well as every new appointment to such, is to be notified to the civil court, which can raise objections against such appointment within thirty days; the minister of worship then decides on the admissibility or inadmissibility of the candidate; legal deposition of a church officer involves withdrawal of the emoluments; the performance of unusual practices in public worship of a demonstrative character can be prohibited by the civil court; any misuse of ecclesiastical authority in restraining any one from obeying the laws of the land or from exercising his civil rights is strictly interdicted.

The ecclesiastical revenues and the income of the cloisters are subjected to a progressive taxation on behalf of a religious fund, mainly for improving the condition of the lower clergy, for which the episcopate hitherto, in spite of all entreaties, had done practically nothing.

Newly formed religious societies received state recognition if their denomination and principles contain nothing contrary to law and morality or offensive to those of another faith.

The state grants or refuses its approval of the establishment of spiritual orders, congregations, and ecclesiastical societies; institutions and legacies for them amounting to over three thousand gulden require state sanction; any member is free to quit any order; all orders must report annually on the personal changes and disciplinary punishments that have taken place; at any time when occasion calls for it they may be subjected to a visitation by the civil court.551

In vain did the pope by an encyclical seek to rouse the episcopate to violent opposition, in vain did he adjure the emperor in a letter in his own hand not to suffer the church to be put into such disgraceful bondage; the House of Deputies approved the four bills, and the emperor in May, 1874, confirmed at least the first three, while the fourth was being debated in the House of Peers. The bishops now issued a joint declaration that they could obey these laws only in so far as they “were in harmony with the demands of justice as stated in the concordat.” But it did not go to the length of actual conflict. Neither to the pope and episcopate, nor to the government was such a thing convenient at the time. Hence the attitude of reserve on both sides, which kept everything as it had been. And when notwithstanding Bishop Rudigier of Linz, threatened with fines on account of his refusal to notify the newly appointed priests, appealed to the pope, he obtained through the Vienna nuncio permission to yield on this point, “non dissentit tolerari posse.” But all the more urgently did the nuncio strive to prevent the passing of the sweeping cloister law. In January, 1876, it was passed in the House of Peers with modifications, to which, however, the emperor refused his assent. Also the revised marriage law of the same date, which removed the hindrances to marriage incorporated even in the book of civil law, and no longer recognised differences of religion, Christians and non-Christians, the remarriage of separated parties of whom at the time of the first marriage only one party belonged to the Catholic church, higher consecration and the vows of orders, did not pass the House of Peers.

§ 198.7. The Protestant Church in the Transleithan Provinces.―In Hungary since 1833 the Reichstag had by bold action won for the Protestants full equality with the Catholics, but in consequence of the revolution, the military lordship of the Protestant Haynau in 1850 again put in fetters all independent life in both Protestant churches. The Haynau decree was, indeed, again abrogated in 1854, but full return to the earlier autonomy of the church, in spite of all petitions and deputations, could never be regained, all the less as Hungary in all too decided a manner rejected the constitutional proposals submitted by the Government in 1856. The liberal imperial patent of September 1st, 1859, which secured independent administration and development to the Protestant church in the crown possessions of Hungary, got no better reception. In the German-Slavonian districts of North Hungary, as well as in Croatia, Slavonia, and Austrian Servia, it was greeted with jubilation and gratitude, but the Magyar Hungarians declined on many, for the most part frivolous, grounds, mainly because it emanated from the emperor, and did not originate in an autonomous synod. When the government showed its intention of going forward with it, the opposition was carried to the utmost extreme, so that the emperor was obliged temporarily to suspend proceedings in May, 1860. Still the ecclesiastical joined with the political movement continued to increase until in 1867 the imperial chancellor, Von Beust, succeeded in quieting both for a time by the Hungarian Agreement. On June 8th of that year, the emperor, Francis Joseph, on ratifying the agreement, was solemnly crowned King of Hungary. The hated patent had been shortly before revoked by an imperial edict, with the direction to order church matters in a constitutional way. After a complete reconciliation, at a General Protestant Convention in December, 1867, with the Patent congregations, hitherto denounced as unpatriotic, it was concluded that to the state belonged only a right of protection and oversight of the church, which is autonomous in all its internal affairs, but to all confessions perfect freedom in law, and that there should be not a separate religious legislation for each, but a common one for all confessions. A committee first appointed in 1873 for this purpose, with the motto, “A Free Church in a Free State,” constituted, and then adjourned ad kalendas Græcas.

§ 199. Switzerland.

The Catholic church of Switzerland, after long continued troubles, obtained again a regular hierarchical organization in 1828. Since that time the Jesuits settled there in crowds, and assumed to themselves in most of the Catholic cantons the whole direction of church and schools. The unfortunate issue of the cantonal war of 1847 led indeed to their banishment by law, but, favoured by the bishops, they knew how still to re-enter by back doors and secretly to regain their earlier influence. The city of Calvin was the centre of their plots, not only for Switzerland, but also for all Cisalpine Europe, until at last the overstrained bow broke, and the Swiss governments became the most decided and uncompromising opponents of the ultramontane claims. In 1873 the papal nuncio, in consequence of a papal encyclical insulting the government, was banished.―In Protestant Switzerland, besides the destructive influence of the Illumination, antagonistic to the church, and radical liberalism, there appeared a soil receptive of pietism, separatism, and fanaticism, whose first cultivation has been ascribed to Madame Krüdener (§ 176, 2). In the Protestant church of German Switzerland the religious and theological developments stood regularly in lively connexion with similar movements in Germany, while those in the French cantons received their impulse and support from France and England. From France, to which they were allied by a common language, they learned the unbelief of the encyclopædists (§ 165, 14), while travelling Englishmen and those residing in the country for a longer period introduced the fervour and superstition of Methodism and other sects.

§ 199.1. The Catholic Church in Switzerland till 1870.―The ecclesiastical superintendence of Catholic Switzerland was previously subject to the neighbouring foreign bishoprics. But for immediate preservation of its interests the curia had appointed a nunciature at Lucerne in 1588. When now, in 1814, the liberal Wessenberg (§ 187, 3), already long suspected of heresy, was called as coadjutor to Constance, the nuncio manœuvred with the Catholic confederates till these petitioned the pope for the establishment of an independent and national bishopric. But when each of the cantons interested claimed to be made the episcopal residence negotiations were at last suspended, and in 1828 six small bishoprics were erected under immediate control of Rome. At the end of 1833 the diocesan representatives of Basel and St. Gall assembled in Baden to consult about the restoration of a national Swiss Metropolitan Union and a common state church constitution for securing church and state against the encroachments of the Romish hierarchy. But Gregory XIV. condemned the articles of conference here agreed upon, which would have given to Switzerland only what other states had long possessed, as false, audacious, and erroneous, destructive of the church, heretical, and schismatic, and among the Catholic people a revolt was stirred up by ultramontane fanaticism, under the influence of which the whole action was soon frustrated. On the occasion of a revision of the constitution of the canton of Aargau, a revolt, led by the cloisters, broke out in 1841. But the rebels were defeated, and the grand council resolved upon the closing of all cloisters, eight in number. Complaint made against this at the diet was regarded as satisfied by the Aargau Agreement of 1843 restoring three nunneries. An opposition was organized against the revision of the constitution of Canton Lucerne in 1841. The liberal government was overthrown, and the new constitution, in which the state insisted on its placet in ecclesiastical matters and the granting of cantonal civil rights to those only who professed attachment to the Roman Catholic church, was submitted to the pope for approval. At last, in 1844, the academy of Lucerne was given over to the Jesuits, for which Joseph Leu, the popular agitator, as member of the grand council, had wrought unweariedly since 1839. In Canton Vaud the parties of old or clerical and young Switzerland contended with one another for the mastery. The latter suffered an utter defeat in 1844, and the constitution which was then carried allowed the right of public worship only to the Catholic church. In consequence of this victory of the clerical party Catholic Switzerland with Lucerne at its head became a main centre of ultramontanism and Jesuitism. At the diet of 1844, indeed, Aargau, supported by numerous petitions from the people, moved for the banishment of all Jesuits from all Switzerland, but the majority did not consent. The Jesuit opponents expelled from Lucerne now organized twice over a free volunteer corps to overthrow the ultramontane government and force the expulsion of the Jesuits, but on both occasions, in 1844 and 1845, it suffered a sore defeat. In face of the threateningly growing increase of the excitement, which made them fear a decisive intervention of the diet, the Catholic cantons formed in 1845 a separate league (Sonderbund) for the preservation of their faith and their sovereign rights. This proceeding, irreconcilable with the Act of Federation, led to a civil war. The members of the Sonderbund were defeated, the ultramontane governments had to resign, and the Jesuits departed in 1847. The new Federal constitution which Switzerland adopted in 1848, secured unconditional liberty of conscience and equality of all confessions, and the expulsion of the Jesuits in terms of the law. But since that time ultramontanism has gained the supremacy in Catholic Switzerland, and in spite of the existing law against the Jesuits all the threads of the ultramontane clerical movements in Switzerland were in the Jesuits’ hands. These were never more successful than in Canton Geneva, where the radical democratic agitator Fazy leagued himself closely with ultramontanism to compass the destruction of the old Calvinistic aristocracy, and by bringing in large numbers the lower class Catholics from the neighbouring France and Savoy he obtained a considerable Catholic majority in the canton, and in the capital itself made Catholics and Protestants nearly equal.

§ 199.2. The Geneva Conflict, 1870-1883.―The Catholic church of Canton Geneva, on the founding of the six Swiss bishoprics by a papal bull, had been incorporated “for all time to come,” after the style of the concordat, with the bishopric of Freiburg-Lausanne. But the government made no objection when the newly elected priest of Geneva, Mermillod, a Jesuit of the purest water, assumed the title and rank of an episcopal vicar-general for the whole canton. But when in 1864 the pope nominated him bishop of Hebron in partibus and auxiliary bishop of Geneva, it made a protest. Nevertheless, when, in the following year, Bishop Marilley of Freiburg by papal orders transferred to him absolute power for the canton with personal responsibility, and in 1870 formally renounced all episcopal rights over it, so that the pope now appointed the auxiliary bishop independent bishop of Geneva, it was evident a step had been taken that could not be recalled. The government renewed its protest and made it more vehement, in consequence of which, in January, 1873, by a papal brief which was first officially communicated to the government after it had already been proclaimed from all Catholic pulpits, Mermillod was appointed apostolic vicar-general with unlimited authority for Canton Geneva, and the district was thus practically made a Catholic mission field. A demand made of him by the state to resign this office and title and divest himself of every episcopal function, was answered by the declaration that he would obey God rather than man. The Bund then expelled him from Federal territory until he would yield to that demand. From Ferney, where he settled, he unceasingly stirred up the fire of opposition among the Genevan clergy and people, but the government decidedly rejected all protests, and by a popular vote obtained sanction for a Catholic church law which restricted the rights of the diocesan bishop who might reside in Switzerland, but not in Canton Geneva, and without consent of the government could not appoint there any episcopal vicar, and transferred the election of priests and priests’ vicars to the congregations. The next elections returned Old Catholics, since the Roman Catholic population did not acknowledge the law condemned by the pope and took no part in the voting. By decision of the grand council of 1875 the abolition of all religious corporations was next enacted, and all religious ceremonies and processions in public streets and squares forbidden. Leo XIII. made an attempt to still the conflict, for in 1879 he gave Bishop Marilley the asked for discharge, and confirmed his elected successor, Cosandry, as bishop of Freiburg, Lausanne, and Geneva, without however removing Mermillod from his office of vicar apostolic of Geneva. But this actually took place after the death of Cosandry in 1882 by the appointment of Mermillod as his successor in 1883. As he now ceased to style himself a vicar apostolic, the Federal council removed the decree of banishment as the occasion of it had ceased, but left each canton free as to whether or not it should accept him as bishop. Freiburg, Neuenburg, and Vaud accepted him, and Mermillod had a brilliant entry into Freiburg, which he made his episcopal residence. But Geneva refused to recognise him, because it had already officially attached itself to the Old Catholic Bishop Herzog of Berne, and Mermillod went so far in his ostentatious love of peace as to declare that he would not in future enter Genevan territory.

§ 199.3. Conflict in the Diocese of Basel-Soleure, 1870-1880.―Bishop Lachat of Soleure, whose diocese comprised the Cantons Bern, Soleure, Aargau, Basel, Thurgau, Lucerne, and Zug, had been previously in conflict with the diocesan conference, i.e. the delegates of the seven cantons entrusted with the oversight of the ecclesiastical administration, on account of introducing the prohibited handbook on morals of the Jesuit Gury (§ 191, 9), which ended in the closing of the seminary aided by the government, and the erection of a new seminary at his own cost. Although the diocesan conference next forbad the proclamation of the new Vatican dogma, the bishop threatened excommunicated Egli in Lucerne in 1871, and Geschwind in Starrkirch in 1872, who refused. The conference ordered the withdrawal of this unlawful act, and on the bishop’s refusal, deposed him in January, 1873. The dissenting cantons, Lucerne and Zug, indeed declared that after as well as before they would only recognise Lachat as lawful bishop, the chapter refused to make the required election of administrator of the diocese, the clergy in Soleure and in Bernese Jura without exception took the side of the bishop, as also by means of a popular vote the great majority of Catholics in Thurgau. But amid all this the conference did not yield in the least. Lachat was compelled by the police to quit his episcopal residence, and withdrew to a village in Canton Lucerne. The council of the Bernese government resolved to recall the refractory clergy of the Jura, took their names off the civil register and forbad them to exercise any clerical functions. The outbreaks incited by rebel clergy in the Jura were put down by the military, sixty-nine clergymen were exiled, and, so far as the means allowed, replaced by liberal successors introduced by the Old Catholic priest Herzog (§ 190, 3) in Olten. In November, 1875, permission to return home was granted to the exiles in consequence of the revised Federal constitution of 1874, according to which the banishment of Swiss burghers was no longer allowed. The Bernese government felt all the more disposed to carry out this enactment of the National Council, as it believed that it had obtained the legal means for checking further rebellion and obstinacy among those who should return. On January, 1874, by popular vote a law was sanctioned reorganizing the whole ecclesiastical affairs of the Canton Bern. By it all clergy, Catholic as well as Protestant, are ranked as civil officers, the choice of whom rests with the congregations, the tenure of office lasting for six years. All purely ecclesiastical affairs for the canton rest in the last instance with a synod of the particular denomination, for the several congregations with a church committee, both composed of freely elected lay and clerical members. But if a dispute in a particular congregation should arise about a synodal decree, the congregational assembly decides on its validity or non-validity for the particular congregation. All decrees of higher church courts and pastorals must have state approval, which must never be refused on dogmatic grounds. If a congregation splits over any question, the majority claims the church property and pastor’s emoluments, etc. And this law was next extended in October 31st, 1875, in the matter of penal law by the so-called Police Worship Law. It imposes heavy fines up to 1000 francs or a year’s imprisonment for any clerical agitation against the law, institutions or enactments of the civil courts, as well as for every outbreak of hostilities against members of other religious bodies, refuses to allow any interference of foreign spiritual superiors without leave granted by government in each particular case, forbids all processions and religious ceremonies outside of the fixed church locality, etc. In the same year the first Catholic Cantonal Synod declared its attachment to the Christian or Old Catholic church of Switzerland. But it was otherwise after the newly elected Grand Council of the canton of its own accord, on September 12th, 1878, granted the returned Jura clergy complete amnesty for all the past, and on the assumption of future submission to existing laws of state, recognised them again eligible for election to spiritual offices which had previously been denied them. Not only did the Roman Catholic people regularly take part in elections of priests, church councils, and synods, undoubtedly with the approval of the new pope Leo XIII., who had in February addressed a conciliatory letter to the members of the Federal Council, but also the extremest of the Jura now submitted without scruple to the new election required by the law, and won therein for the most part the majority of votes. In the Catholic Cantonal Synod convened in Bern, in January, 1880, were found seventy-five Roman Catholics and only twenty-five Old Catholic deputies. The latter were naturally defeated in all controversies. The synod declared that the connexion with the Christian Catholic national bishopric was annulled, that auricular confession was obligatory, that marriages of priests were forbidden, etc. Since now the law assigns the state pay of the priest as well as all the church property in the case of a split to the majority for the time being, the inevitable consequence was that Old Catholics of the Jura district were deprived of all share in these privileges, and had to make provision for their own support. Also in Canton Soleure, the law that all pastors must be re-elected after the expiry of six years, came in force in 1872, and then the thirty-two Roman Catholic clergymen concerned were with only two exceptions re-elected, while, on the other hand, the Old Catholic priest Geschwind of Starrkirch was rejected.―But all efforts to restore the bishopric of Basel-Soleure came to grief over the person of Bishop Lachat, whom the curia would not give up and the Federal Council would not again allow, until at last a way out of the difficulty was found. The canton Tessin, which previously in church matters belonged to the Italian dioceses of Milan and Como, was, in 1859, by decree of the Federal Council, detached from these. But Tessin insisted on the founding of a bishopric of its own, while the Federal Council wished to join it to the bishopric of Chur. Thus the matter remained undecided, till in September, 1884, the papal curia came to an understanding with the Federal Council that Lachat should be appointed vicar-apostolic for the newly founded bishopric of Tessin, and that to the vacated bishopric of Basel-Soleure the “learned as well as mild” Provost Fiala of Soleure should be called. In this way all the cantons referred to, with the exception of Bern, were won.552

§ 199.4. The Protestant Church in German Switzerland.―Among all the German cantons, Basel (§ 172, 5), which unweariedly prosecuted the work of home and foreign missions, fell most completely under the influence of rationalism and then of the liberal Protestant theology. While pietism obtained powerful support and encouragement in its missionary institutions and movements, and there, though developing itself on Reformed soil, assumed, in consequence of its manifold connection with Germany, a colour almost more Lutheran than Reformed, the university by eminent theological teachers of scientific ability represented the Mediation school in theology of a predominantly Reformed type. In the Canton Zürich, on the other hand, the advanced theology, theoretical and practical, obtained an increasing and finally an almost exclusive mastery in the university and church. But yet, when in 1839 the Grand Council called Dr. David Strauss to a theological professorship, the Zürich people rose to a man against the proposal, the appointment was not enforced, the Grand Council was overthrown, and Strauss pensioned. The victory and ascendency of this reaction, however, was not of long continuance. Theological and ecclesiastical radicalism again won the upper hand and maintained it unchecked. In the other German cantons the most diverse theological schools were represented alongside of one another, yet with steadily increasing advantage to liberal and radical tendencies. The theological faculty at Bern favoured mainly a liberal mediation theology, and an attempt of the orthodox party in 1847, to set aside the appointment of Professor E. Zeller by means of a popular tumult, miscarried. From 1860 ecclesiastical liberalism prevailed in German Protestant Switzerland, frequently going the length of the extremest radicalism and showing its influence even in the cantonal and synodal legislation. The starting of the “Zeitstimmen für d. ref. Schweiz,” in 1859, by Henry Lang, who had fled in 1848 from Württemberg to Switzerland, and died in 1876 as pastor in Zürich, marked an epoch in the history of the radical liberal movement in Swiss theology. In Fred. Langhans, since 1876 professor at Bern, he had a zealous comrade in the fight. During 1864-1866, Langhans published a series of violent controversial tracts against the pietistic orthodox party in Switzerland, which zealously prosecuted foreign missions, and in 1866 he founded the Swiss Reform Union, while Alb. Bitzius, son of the writer known as Jer. Gotthelf (§ 174, 8) started as its organ the “Reformblätter aus d. bernischen Kirche,” which was subsequently amalgamated with the Zeitstimmem.―After more or less violent conflicts with pietistic orthodoxy, still always pretty strongly represented, especially in the aristocracy, the emancipation of the schools from the church and the introduction of obligatory civil marriage were accomplished in most cantons, even before the revised Federal constitution of 1874 and the marriage law of 1875 gave to these principles legal sanction throughout the whole of Switzerland. In almost all Protestant cantons the re-election or new election to all spiritual offices every six years was ordained by law, in many the freeing of the clergy from any creed subscription with the setting aside of confessional writings as well as of the orthodox liturgy, hymnbooks and catechisms was also carried, and the withdrawing of the Apostles’ Creed from public worship and from the baptismal formula was enjoined. The Basel synod in 1883, by thirty-six to twenty-seven votes, carried the motion to make baptism no longer a condition of confirmation; and although the Zürich synod in 1882 still held baptism obligatory for membership in the national church, the Cantonal Council in 1883, on consulting the law of the church, overturned this decision by 140 against 19 votes.

§ 199.5. The Protestant Church in French Switzerland.―The French philosophy of the eighteenth century had given to the Reformed church of Geneva a prevailingly rationalistic tendency. Notwithstanding, or just because of this, Madame Krüdener, in 1814, with her conventicle pietism, found an entrance there, and won in the young theologian Empaytaz a zealous supporter and an apostle of conversion preaching. In the next year a wealthy Englishman, Haldane, appeared there as the apostle of methodistic piety, and inspired the young pastor Malan with enthusiasm for the revival mission. Empaytaz and Malan now by speech and writing charged the national church with defection from the Christian faith, and won many zealous believers as adherents, especially among students of theology. The Vénérable Compagnie of the Geneva clergy, hitherto resting on its lees in rationalistic quiet, now in 1817 thought it might still the rising storm by demanding of theological candidates at ordination the vow not to preach on the two natures in Christ, original sin, predestination, etc., but thereby they only poured oil on the fire. The adherents of the daily increasing evangelical movement withdrew from the national church, founded free independent communities and Réunions under the banner of the restoration of Calvinistic orthodoxy, and were by their enemies nicknamed Momiers, i.e. mummery traders or hypocrites. The government imprisoned and banished their leaders, while the mob, unchecked, heaped upon them all manner of abuse. The persecution came to an end in 1830. Thereafter settling down in quiet moderation, it founded in 1831 the Société évangélique, which, in 1832, established an Ecole de Théologie, and became the centre of the Free church evangelical movement. From that time the Eglise libre of Geneva has existed unmolested alongside of the Eglise Nationale, and the opposition at first so violent has been moderated on both sides by the growth of conciliatory and mediating tendencies. Since 1850, two divergent parties have arisen within the bosom of the free church itself, which without any serious conflict continued alongside of one another, until in May, 1883, the majority of the presbytery resolved to make a peaceful separation, the stricter forming the congregation of the Pelisserie, and the more liberal that of the Oratoire. At the same time a committee was appointed to draw up a confession upon which both could unite in lasting fellowship. But when this failed, a formal and complete separation was agreed upon at the new year.―From Geneva the Methodist revival spread to Vaud. The religious movement got a footing, especially in Lausanne. The Grand Council, however, did not allow the contemplated formation of an independent congregation, and in 1824 forbad all “sectarian” assemblies, while the mob raged even more wildly than at Geneva against the “Momiers.” The excitement increased when, in 1839, by decision of the Grand Council, the Helvetic Confession was abrogated. When in 1845 a revolutionary radical government came into office at Lausanne, the refusal of many clergymen to read from the pulpit a political proclamation, caused a thorough division in the church, for the preachers referred to were in a body driven out of the national church. A Free church of Vaud now developed itself alongside of the national church, sorely oppressed and persecuted by the radical government, and spread into other Swiss cantons. It owed its freedom from sectarian narrowness mainly to the influence of the talented and thoroughly independent Alex. Vinet, who devoted his whole energies and brilliant eloquence to the interests of religious freedom and liberty of conscience and to the struggle for the separation of church and state. Vinet was from 1817 teacher of the French language and literature in Basel, then from 1837 to 1845 professor of practical theology at Lausanne, but on the reconstruction of the university he was not re-elected. He died in 1847.553―In the canton Neuchatel the State Council in 1873 introduced a law, which granted unconditional liberty of conscience, freedom in teaching and worship without any sort of restriction on clergy, teachers and congregations. The Grand Council by forty-seven votes to forty-six gave it its sanction, notwithstanding the almost unanimous protest of the evangelical synod, and refused to appeal to a popular vote. When an appeal to the Federal Council proved fruitless, somewhere about one half of the pastors, including the theological professors and all the students, left the state church, and formed an Eglise libre; while the other half regarded it as their duty to remain in the national church so long as they were not hindered from preaching God’s word in purity and simplicity. Both parties had a common meeting point in the Union évangélique, and a law originally passed in favour of the Old Catholics, which secured to all seceders a right to the joint use of their respective churches, proved also of advantage to the Free church.―The canton Geneva issued, in 1874, a Protestant law of worship, which with dogma and liturgy also threw overboard ordination, and maintained that the clergy are answerable only to their conscience and their electors. Yet at the new election of the consistory in 1879, at the close of the legal term of four years, the evangelical and moderate party again obtained the supremacy, and a law introduced by the radical party in the Grand Council, demanding the withdrawal of the budget of worship and the separation of church and state, was, on July 4th, 1880, thrown out by universal popular vote, by a majority of 9,000 to 4,000.

§ 200. Holland and Belgium.

Among the most serious mistakes in the new partition of states at the Vienna Congress was the combining in one kingdom of the United Netherlands the provinces of Holland and Belgium, diverse in race, language, character, and religion. The contagion of French Revolution of July, 1830, however, caused an outbreak in Brussels, which ended in the separation of Catholic Belgium from the predominantly Protestant Holland. Belgium has since then been the scene of unceasing and changeful conflicts between the liberal and ultramontane parties, whose previous combination was now completely shattered. And while, on the other hand, in the Reformed state church of Holland, theological studies, leaning upon German science, have taken a liberal and even radical destructive course, the not inconsiderable Roman Catholic population has fallen, under Jesuit leading, more and more into bigoted obscurantism.

§ 200.1. The United Netherlands.―The constitution of the new kingdom created in 1814 guaranteed unlimited freedom to all forms of worship and complete equality of all citizens without distinction of religious confession. Against this the Belgian episcopate protested with bishop Maurice von Broglie, of Ghent, at their head, who refused, in 1817, the prayers of the church for the heretical crown princess and the Te Deum for the newborn heir to the throne. As he went so far as to excite the Catholic people on all occasions against the Protestant government, the angry king, William I., summoned him to answer for his conduct before the court of justice. But he eluded inquiry by flight to France, and as guilty of high treason was sentenced to death, which did not prevent him from his exile unweariedly fanning the flames of rebellion. The number of cloisters grew from day to day and also the multitude of clerical schools and seminaries, in which the Catholic youth was trained up in the principles of the most violent fanaticism. The government in 1825 closed the seminaries, expelled Jesuit teachers, forbad attendance at Jesuit schools abroad, and founded a college at Louvain, in which all studying for the church were obliged to pass through a philosophical curriculum. The common struggle for maintaining the liberty of instruction promised by the constitution made political radicalism and ultramontanism confederates, and the government, intimidated by this combination, agreed, in a concordat with the pope in 1827, to modify the obligatory into a facultative attendance at Louvain College. The inevitable consequence of this was the speedy and complete decay of the college. But the confederacy of the radicals and ultramontanes continued, directing itself against other misdeeds of the government, and was not broken up until in 1830 it attained its object by the disjunction of Belgium and Holland.

§ 200.2. The Kingdom of Holland.―In the prevailingly Reformed national church rationalism and latitudinarian supernaturalism had to such an extent blotted out the ecclesiastical distinctions between Reformed, Remonstrants, Mennonites, and Lutherans, that the clergy of one party would unhesitatingly preach in the churches of the others. Then rose the poet Bilderdijk, driven from political into religious patriotism, to denounce with glowing fury the general declension from the orthodoxy of Dort. Two Jewish converts of his, the poet and apologist Isaac da Costa, and the physician Cappadose, gave him powerful support. A zealous young clergyman, Henry de Cock, was theological mouthpiece of the party. Because he offended church order, especially by ministering in other congregations, he was suspended and finally deposed in 1834. The greater part of his congregation and four other pastors with him formally declared their secession from the unfaithful church, as a return to the orthodox Reformed church. As separatists and disturbers of public worship, they were fined and imprisoned, and were at last satisfied with the recognition granted them of royal grace in 1839, as a separate or Christian Reformed Church. It consists now of 364 congregations, embracing about 140,000 souls, with a flourishing seminary at Kampen. The Reformed State Church, with three-fourths of all the Protestant population, persevered in and developed its liberalistic tendencies. The State Synod of 1883 expressly declared that the Netherland Reformed Church demands from its teachers not agreement with all the statements of the confessional writings, but only with their spirit, gist, and essence; and the synod of 1877, by the vote of a majority, stated that no sort of formulated confession should be required even of candidates for confirmation. Yet even amid such proceedings from various sides, a churchly and evangelical reaction of considerable importance set in. Three great parties within the state church carried on a life and death struggle with one another:

The Strict Calvinists, whose leader is Dr. Kuyper, formerly pastor in Amsterdam;

The so-called Middle Party, which falls into two divisions: the, just about expiring, Ethical Irenical Party, with the Utrecht professor Van Oosterzee (died 1882), and the Evangelical Party with the Gröningen professor Hofstede de Groot, since 1872 Emeritus, as leaders, of which the former, subordinating the confession, regards the Christian life as the main thing in Christianity, and the latter declares itself prepared to take the gospel alone for its creed and confession; and

The so-called Modern Party, which, with Professors Scholten and Kuenen as leaders, has its centre at Leyden, and in theology carries out with reckless energy the destructive critical principles of the school of Baur and Wellhausen (§ 182, 7, 18).

The “Moderns” are also the founders and leaders of the “Protestant Federation” after the German model (§ 180), with its annual assemblies since 1873, in opposition to which a “Confessional Union” holds its annual meetings at Utrecht, and operates by means of evangelists and lay preachers in places where there are only “Modern” pastors. The higher and cultured classes in the congregations mostly favour the Gröningen and some also the Leyden school, but the great majority of the middle and lower classes are adherents of Kuyper, and have frequently secured majorities in the Congregational Church Council.―The Dutch school law of 1856 banished every sort of confessional religious education from public schools supported by the state, and so called forth the erection of numerous denominational schools independent of the state, and the founding of a “Union for Christian Popular Education,” which has spread through the whole country. The university law sanctioned, after violent debates in the chamber, in 1876, establishes in place of the old theological faculties, professorships for the science of religion generally, with the exception of dogmatics and practical theology, and left it with the Reformed State Synod to care for these two subjects, either in a theological seminary or by founding for itself the two theological professorships in the universities and supporting them from the sums voted for the state church. The synod decided on the latter course, and appointed to the new chairs men of moderate liberal views. The adherents of the strict Calvinistic party, however, founded a Free Reformed University at Amsterdam, which was opened in autumn, 1880. Its first rector was Kuyper.―The Lutheran Church of fifty congregations and sixty-two pastors, with about 60,000 souls, has also had since 1816 a theological seminary. In it neological tendencies prevail.

§ 200.3. The founding of the Free University at Amsterdam, referred to above, led to a series of violent conflicts which threatened to break up the whole Reformed church of the Netherlands by a wild schism. The Reformed State Synod, consisting mainly of Gröningen theologians, but also numbering many members belonging to the Modern or Leyden school, and constituting the supreme ecclesiastical court, had, in spite of its eleventh rule, which makes “the maintenance of the doctrine” a main task of all church government, for a long time admitted the principle of unfettered freedom of teaching, and ordained that even evidence of orthodoxy on the part of candidates for confirmation would no longer be regarded as a condition of their acceptance, their examination referring only to their knowledge, the examining clergy and not the assisting elders being judges in this matter. When now the Free University had been founded in direct opposition to the synod, the latter resolved to reject all its pupils at the examination of candidates, and when, in the summer of 1885, its first student presented himself, actually carried out this resolution. Thereupon the university transferred the examination to a committee, elected by itself, consisting of orthodox Reformed pastors and elders, and a small village congregation agreed to elect the candidate for its poorly endowed, and so for seventeen years vacant, pastorate. But the synod refused him ordination. Therefore the director of a strict Calvinistic Gymnasium, formerly a pastor, performed the ceremony, and the congregation announced its secession from the synodal union. At the same time in Amsterdam a second conflict arose over the question of candidates for confirmation. Three pastors of the “modern” school demanded the elders subject to them, among them Dr. Kuyper, to take part as required in the examining of their candidates; but these refused to give their assistance, because the previous training had not been according to Scripture and the confession, and also the majority of the church council approved of this refusal, as the parents had complained, and declared that the certificate of morality demanded by other pastors could be made out only if candidates for confirmation had previously formally and solemnly confessed their genuine and hearty faith in Jesus Christ as the only and all-sufficient Saviour, which these, however, in accordance with the Dutch practice of the eighteenth century, declined to do. The controversy was carried by appeal through all the church courts, and finally the State Synod ordered the church council to make delivery of the certificates within six weeks on pain of suspension. But this was brought about before the expiry of that period by the outbreak of a far more serious conflict over matters of administration. In Amsterdam the administration of church property lay with a special commission, responsible to the church council, consisting of members, one half from the church council and the other half from the congregations. If in the beginning of January, 1886, the threatened suspension and deposition of the church council should be carried out, in accordance with proper order until the appointment of a new council all the rights of the same, therefore also that of supervising that commission, would fall to the “classical board” (§ 143, 1) as the next highest court. In order to avoid this, the fateful resolution was passed on December 14th, 1885, to alter § 41 of the regulations, so that, if the church council in the discharge of its duty to govern the community in accordance with God’s word and the legalized church confession, it would be so hindered therein that it might feel in conscience obliged to obey God rather than man and accept suspension and deposition, and a church council should be appointed, the administrative commission would be obliged to remain subject, not to this, but to the original commission. The “classical board” annulled this resolution, suspended on January 4th, 1886, for continued obstinacy the previous church council, and constituted itself, pending decision on the part of discipline, interim administrator of all its rights and duties. The suspended majority, however, called a meeting for the same day, and when it found the doors of its meeting place closed, sent for a locksmith to break them open. They were prevented by the police, who then, by putting on a safety lock, strengthening the boards of the door by mailed plates, and setting a watch, greatly reduced the chances of an entrance. But the opposition sent to the watchers a letter by a policeman demanding that the representatives of the church council should be allowed to pass; upon which these, regarding it as an order of the police, withdrew. They then had the mailed plates sawn, took possession of the hall and the archives and treasure box lying there, and refused admission to the classical board. While then the question of law and possession was referred to the courts of law, and there the final decision would not be given before the lapse of a year, the disciplinary procedure took its course through all the ecclesiastical courts and ended in the deposition of all resisting elders and pastors. The latter preached now to great crowds in hired halls. From the capital the excitement increased by means of violent publications on both sides, spread over the whole land and produced discord in many other communities. Wild and uproarious tumults first broke out in Leidendorf, a suburb of Leyden. The pastor and the majority of the church council refused to enter on their congregational list two girls who had been confirmed by liberal churchmen elsewhere, and with by far the greater part of the congregation seceded from the synodal union. The classical board now, in July, 1886, declared the pastorate vacant, and ordered that a regular interim service should be conducted on Sundays by the pastors of the circuit. The uproar among the people, however, was thereby only greatly increased, so that the civil authorities were obliged to protect the deputed preachers, by a large military escort, from rude maltreatment, and to secure quiet during public worship by a company of police in church. And similar conflicts soon broke out on like occasions and with similar consequences in many other places throughout all parts of the land. In December, 1886, the Amsterdam church council also declared its secession from the state church, and a numerously attended “Reformed Church Congress” at Amsterdam, in January, 1887, summoned by Kuyper in the interests of the crowd of seceders, resolved to accept the decision of the law in regard to church property.554

§ 200.4. Even after the separation of Belgium there was still left a considerable number of Catholics, about three-eighths of the population, most numerous in Brabant, Limburg, and Luxemburg, and these were, as of old, inclined to the most bigoted ultramontanism. This tendency was greatly enhanced when the new constitutional law of 1848 announced the principle of absolute liberty of belief, in consequence of which the Jesuits crowded in vast numbers, and the pope in 1853 organized a new Catholic hierarchy in the land, with four bishops and an archbishop at Utrecht, under the control of the propaganda. The Protestant population went into great excitement over this. The liberal ministry of Thorbecke was obliged to resign, but the chambers at length sanctioned the papal ordinance, only securing the Protestant population against its misapplication and abuse.―On the withdrawal of the French in 1814 there were only eight cloisters remaining; but in 1861 there were thirty-nine for monks and 137 for nuns, and since then the number has considerably increased.―The Dutch Old Catholics (§ 165, 8), on account of their protest against the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (§ 185, 2), enjoined upon the Catholic church by the pope, were anew excommunicated, and joined the German Old Catholics in rejecting the decrees of the Vatican Council (§ 190, 1).

§ 200.5. The Kingdom of Belgium.―Catholic Belgium obtained after its separation from Holland a constitution by which unlimited freedom of religious worship and education, and the right of confessing opinion and of associating, were guaranteed, and to the state was allowed no interference with the affairs of the church beyond the duty of paying the clergy. Also in Leopold I., 1830-1865, of the house of Saxe-Coburg, it had a king who though himself a Protestant was faithful to the constitution, and, according to agreement, had his children trained up in the Roman Catholic church. The confederacy of radicalism and ultramontanism, however, was broken by the irreconciliable enmity and violent conflict in daily life and in the chambers among clerical and liberal ministers. The ultramontanes founded at Louvain in 1834 a strictly Catholic university, which was under the oversight of the bishops and the patronage of the Virgin; while the liberals promoted the erection of an opposition university for free science at Brussels. That the Jesuits used to the utmost for their own ends the liberty granted them by the constitution by means of missions and the confessional, schools, cloisters, and brotherhoods of every kind is what might have been expected. But liberalism also knew how to conduct a propaganda and to bring the clergy into discredit with the educated classes by unveiling their intrigues, legacy-hunting, etc., while these exercised a great influence chiefly upon bigoted females. The number of cloisters, which on the separation from Holland amounted only to 280, had risen in 1880 in that small territory to 1,559, with 24,672 inmates, of whom 20,645 were nuns.

§ 200.6. After the ultramontane party had enjoyed eight years of almost unchallenged supremacy, the Malou ministry favourable to it was overthrown in June, 1878, and a liberal government, under the presidency of Frère-Orban, took its place. Then began the Kulturkampf in Belgium. The charge of public education was taken from the ministry of the interior, and a special minister appointed in the person of Van Humbeeck. He began by changing all girls’ schools under the management of sisters of spiritual orders into communal schools, and in January, 1879, brought in a bill for reorganizing elementary education, which completely secularized the schools; deprived the clergy of all official influence over them, and relegated religious instruction to the care of the family and the church, the latter, however, having the necessary accommodation allowed in the school buildings. The chambers approved the bill, and the king confirmed it, in spite of all protests and agitation by the clergy. The clerical journals put a black border on their issue which published it; the provincial councils under clerical influence nullified as far as possible all money bequests for the public schools, and the bishops assembled in August at Mechlin resolved to found free schools in all communities, and to refuse absolution to all parents who entrusted their children to state schools and all teachers in them, in order thus to cause a complete decay of the public schools, which indeed happened to this extent that within a few months 1,167 communal schools had not a single Catholic scholar. On complaint being made by the government to Leo XIII., he expressed through the Brussels nuncio his regret and disapproval of the proceedings of the bishops; but, on the other hand, he not only privately praised them on account of their former zeal in opposing the school law, but also incited them to continued opposition. When this double dealing of the curia was discovered, the government in June, 1880, broke off all diplomatic relations with the Vatican by recalling their ambassador and giving the nuncio his passports. The ministerial president publicly in the chamber of deputies characterized the action of the Holy See as “fourberie.” Whereupon the pope at the next consistory called princes and peoples as witnesses of this insult. In May, 1882, the results of the inquiry into clerical incitements against the public was read in the chamber, where such startling revelations were made as these: Priests taught the children that they should no longer pray for the king when he had committed the mortal sin of confirming the school law; the ministers are worse than murderers and true Herods; a priest even taught children to pray that God might cause their “liberal” parents to die, etc. Amid such conflicts the Catholic party in parliament split into the parties of the Politici, who were willing to submit to the constitution, and that of the Intransigenti, who, under the direction of the bishops and the university of Louvain, held high above everything the standard of the syllabus. The latter fought with such passionateness, that the pope felt obliged in 1881 to enjoin upon the episcopate “that prudent attitude” which the church in such cases always maintains in “enduring many evils” which for the time cannot be overcome. But undeterred, the government continued to restrict the claims of the clergy, so far as these were not expressly guaranteed by the constitution.―In June, 1884, as the result of the elections for the chamber of deputies, the clerical party again were in power. Malou was once more at the head of a ministry in favour of the clericals, caused the king to dissolve the senate, and in the new elections won there also a majority for his party. No sooner were they in power than the clerical ministry, in conjunction with the majority in the chambers, proceeded with inconsiderate haste, amid the most violent, almost daily repeated explosions from the now intensely embittered liberal and radical section of the population, which only seemed to increase their zeal, to employ their absolute power to the utmost in the interest of clericalism. The restoration of diplomatic relations with the papal curia in the spirit of absolute acquiescence in its schemes was the grand aim of the reaction, as well as a new school law by which the schools were completely given over again to the clergy and the orders. But when at the next communal elections a liberal majority was returned, and protests of the new communal councils poured in against the school law on behalf of the vast number of state certificated teachers reduced by it to hunger and destitution, the Malou ministry found itself obliged to resign in October, 1884. Its place was taken by the moderate ultramontane Beernaert ministry, which sought indeed to quiet the excitement by mild measures, but held firmly in all essential points to the principles of its predecessor.

§ 200.7. An exciting episode in the Belgium Kulturkampf is presented by the appearance of Bishop Dumont of Tournay, who, previously an enthusiastic admirer of Pius IX. and a vigorous defender of the infallibility dogma, also a zealous patron of stigmatization miracles at Bois d’Haine (§ 188, 4), now suddenly turned round on the school question and refused to obey the papal injunction. For this he was first suspended, and then in 1880 formally deposed by the pope. He afterwards wrote letters in the most advanced liberal journals with violent denunciations of the pope, whom he would not recognise as pope, but only as Bishop of Rome, and so styled him not Leo, but only Pecci. In these letters Dumont makes the interesting communication that the virgin Louise Lateau, favoured of God, has threatened with excommunication the “intruder” Durousseaux, nominated by the pope as his successor, because she continues to reverence Dumont as the only legitimate Bishop of Tournay. The Vatican pronounced him insane, and the chapter appealed to the civil authorities to have him declared incapable in the sight of the law, which, however, they refused, because they could not regard Dumont’s insanity as proved. On the other hand, Dumont refused to renounce his episcopal office, and accused Durousseaux of having by night, with the help of a locksmith, obtained entrance to his episcopal palace, and having taken forcible possession of a casket lying there, which, besides the diocesan property to the value of five millions, contained also about one and a half millions of his own private means. Pending the issue of the conflict, as to which of the two should be regarded as the true bishop, the palace was now officially sealed up. The attempt to arrest the robbed casket had to be abandoned, because meanwhile the canon Bernard, as keeper of the treasures of the diocese, had fled with its contents to America. He was, however, on legal warrant imprisoned in Havanna and brought back to Belgium in 1882. In April, 1884, the dispute of the bishops was definitively closed by the judgment of the supreme tribunal, according to which Dumont, having been legitimately deposed, has no more claim to the title and revenues of his earlier office; and in 1886 the supreme court of appeal at Brussels condemned Bernard “on account of serious breach of trust” to three years’ imprisonment.

§ 200.8. The Protestant Church was represented in Belgium only by small congregations in the chief cities and some Reformed Walloon village congregations. But for several decades, by the zealous exertions of the Evangelical Society at Brussels with thirty-four pastors and evangelists, the work of evangelization not only among Catholic Walloons, but also among the Flemish population, has made considerable progress, notwithstanding all agitation and incitement of the people by the Catholic clergy, so that several new evangelical congregations, consisting mostly of converts, have been formed. In two small places indeed the whole communities, roused by episcopal arbitrariness, have gone over.―The pastor Byse employed by the Evangelical Society at Brussels has taken up the idea that all men by the fall have lost their immortality, and that it could be restored again by faith in Christ, while all the unreconciled are given over to annihilation, the second death of Revelation ii. 11, xx. 15. So long as he maintained this theory merely as a private opinion the society took no offence at it, but when he began to proclaim it in his preaching and in his instruction of the young, and declined to yield to all advice on the matter, the synod of 1882 resolved upon his dismissal. But a great part of his congregation still remain faithful to him.

§ 201. The Scandinavian Countries.

Notwithstanding the common Scandinavian-national and Lutheran-ecclesiastical basis on which the civil and religious life is developed, it assumed in the three Scandinavian countries a completely diversified course. While in Denmark the civil life bore manifold traces of democratic tendencies and thereby the relations between church and state were loosened, Sweden, with a tenacity almost unparalleled in Protestant countries, has for a long period held fast in exclusive attachment to the idea of a state church. On the other hand Denmark was far more open to influences from without hostile to the church, on the one side those of rationalism, on the other, those of the anti-ecclesiastical sects, especially of the Baptists and Mormons, than Sweden, which in its certainly barren, if not altogether dead orthodoxy till after the middle of the century was almost hermetically sealed against all heterogeneous influences, but yet could not altogether over-master the pietistically or methodistically coloured movements of religious yearning that arose among her own people. Norway, again, although politically united with Sweden, has, both in national character and in religious development, shown its more intimate relationship with Denmark.

§ 201.1. Denmark.―From the close of last century rationalism has had a home in Denmark. In 1825 Professor Clausen, a moderate adherent of the neological school, published a learned work on the opposition of “Catholicism and Protestantism,” identifying the latter with rationalism. First of all in that same year Pastor Grundtvig (died 1872), “a man of poetic genius, and skilled in the ancient history of the land,” inspired with equal enthusiasm for the old Lutheranism of his fathers and for patriotic Danism, entered the lists and replied with powerful eloquence, lamenting the decay of Christianity and the church. He was condemned by the court of justice as injurious, after he had during the process resigned his pastoral office. A like fate befell the orientalist Lindberg, who charged Clausen with the breach of his ordination vow. The adherents of Grundtvig met for mutual edification in conventicles, until at last in 1832 he obtained permission again to hold public services. Not less influential was the work of Sören Kierkegaard (died 1855), who, largely in sympathy with Grundtvig, without ecclesiastical office, in his writings earnestly pled for a living subjective piety and unweariedly maintained an uncompromising struggle against the official Christianity of the secularized clergy. The wild, unmeasured Danomania of 1848-1849, during the military conflict with Germany, drew opponents together and made them friends. Grundtvig declaimed against everything German, and of the two factors, which he had formerly regarded as the pivots on which universal history turned, Danism and Lutheranism, he now let go Lutheranism as of German origin. He therefore proposed the abrogation of the distinctive German-Lutheran confessions, placed the Apostles’ Creed before and above the Bible and, pressing in a one-sided manner the doctrine of baptismal grace, demanded a “joyous Christianity,” denied the necessity of continued preaching and exercise of repentance, and wished especially to introduce into the schools the Norse mythology as introductory to the study of Christianity. His adherents wrought with the anti-church party for the abolition of the union of church and state. The Danish constitutional law of 1849 abolished the confessional churches of the state church, and Catholics, Reformed, Moravians, and Jews were granted equal civil rights with the Lutherans. Since then the Catholic church has made slow but steady progress in the country, and the increasing Baptist movement was also favoured by a law of the Volkthing of 1857, which abolished compulsory baptism, and only required the enrolment of all children in the church books of their respective districts within the period of one year. Civil marriage had also been granted to dissenters in 1851, and in 1868 the peculiar institution of “electing communities” was founded, by means of which twenty families from one or more parishes which declare themselves dissatisfied with the pastors appointed them, may, without leaving the national church, form an independent congregation under pastors chosen by themselves and maintained at their own cost. The Schleswig-Holstein revolution in 1848, occasioned enormous confusion and disturbance in the ecclesiastical conditions of the district. Over a hundred German pastors were expelled and forty-six Schleswig parishes deprived of the use of the German language in church and school. In 1864 both provinces were at last by the Austrian and Prussian alliance rent from the Danish government, and in consequence of the German war of 1866 were incorporated with Prussia.

§ 201.2. Sweden.―In Sweden there was formed in 1803, in opposition to the barren orthodoxy of the state church, a religious association which, if not altogether free of pietistic narrowness, was yet without any heretical doctrinal tendency, and exercised a quiet and wholesome influence. From the diligent reading of Scripture and the works of Luther that prevailed among its members it obtained the name of Läsare. The state proceeded against its members with fines and imprisonment, according to the old conventicle law of 1726, and the mob treated them with insults and violence. But in 1842 a fanatical tendency began to show itself under the leadership of a peasant, Erich Jansen, who induced many “Readers” to quit the church and to cast into the fire even Luther’s Postils and Catechism as quite superfluous alongside of Holy Scripture. They mostly emigrated to America in 1846. The law of the land since 1686 threatened every Swede who seceded from the Lutheran state church with imprisonment and exile, loss of civil privileges and the right of inheritance. As might therefore be supposed the French Marshal Bernadotte, who in 1818, under the name of Charles XIV., ascended the throne of Sweden, had been previously in 1810 obliged to repudiate the Catholic confession. Even in 1857 the Reichstag rejected a royal proposal to set aside the Secession as well as the Conventicle Act. But in the very next year, the holding of conventicles under clerical supervision, and in 1860, the secession to other ecclesiastical denominations, were allowed by law. The constitution of 1865 still indeed made adherence to the Lutheran confession a condition of qualification for a seat in either of the chambers. The Reichstag of 1870 at last sanctioned the admission of all Christian dissenters and also of Jews to all offices of state as well as to the membership of the Reichstag. On behalf of dissenters, especially of the numerous Baptists and Methodists, the right of civil marriage was granted in 1879. In 1877, Waldenström, head-master of the Latin school at Gefle, without ecclesiastical ordination, began zealously and successfully by speech and writings (to secure the widest possible circulation of which a joint stock company with large capital was formed) to work for the revival of the Christian life in the Lutheran national church. He vigorously contended against the church doctrine of atonement and justification, repudiating the idea of vicarious penal suffering, and broke through all church order by allowing the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to be dispensed by laymen. He thus put himself, with his numerous following, directed by lay preachers in their own prayer meetings and mission halls, into direct opposition to the church, but by the wise forbearance of the ecclesiastical authorities he has not yet been formally ejected.555

§ 201.3. Norway.―In Norway, toward the end of last century, rationalism was dominant in almost all the pulpits, and only a few remnants of Moravian revivalism raised a voice against it. But in 1796, a simple unlearned peasant Hans Nielsen Hauge, then in his twenty-fifth year, made his appearance as a revival preacher, creating a mighty spiritual movement that spread among the masses throughout the whole land. He had obtained his own religious knowledge from the study of old Lutheran practical theology, and arising at a period of extraordinary spiritual excitement, “his call,” as Hase says, “to be a prophet was like that of the herdsman of Tekoa.” From 1799 he continued itinerating for five years, persecuted, reproached, and calumniated by the rationalistic clergy, ten times cast into prison, under a law of 1741, which forbad laymen to preach, and then set free, until he had gone over all Norway even to its farthest and remotest corners, preaching unweariedly everywhere in houses and in the open air often three or four times a day, and nourishing besides the flame which he had kindled by voluminous writings and an extensive correspondence. He directed his preaching not only against the rationalism of the state clergy, but also against the antinomian religion of feeling, of “Blood and Wounds” theology introduced in earlier days by the Moravians, with a one-sided emphasis and exaggeration indeed, but still in all essentials maintaining the basis and keeping within the lines of Lutheran orthodoxy. In 1804 he was charged with tendencies dangerous to church and state, obtaining money from peasants on false pretences, inciting the people against the clergy, etc., and again cast into prison. The trial this time was carried on for ten years, until at last in 1814 the supreme court sentenced him on account of his invectives against the clergy to pay a fine, but pronounced him not guilty on the other charges. Broken down in spirit and body by his long imprisonment, he could not think of engaging again in his former work. He died in 1824. Numerous peasant preachers, however, issuing from his school were ready to go forth in his footsteps, and till this day the salutary effects of his and their activity are seen in wide circles. The law of 1741 which had been made to tell against them was at last abrogated by the Storthing in 1842. In 1845 the right of forming Christian sects was recognised, and in 1851 even the Jews were allowed the right of settlement previously refused them, and the security of all civil privileges. Since that time even in Norway the Catholic church has made considerable progress; in June, 1878, it had eleven churches and fourteen priests.

§ 202. Great Britain and Ireland.

During the course of the century a breach from without was made upon the stronghold of the Anglican established church and its legal standing throughout the United Kingdom. The strong coherence of the Anglican episcopal church had already been weakened internally by the rise within its own bosom of High, Low, and Broad tendencies. The advance of the first-named party to tractarianism and ritualism opened the door to Romish sympathies, while in the last-named school German rationalism and criticism found favour, and the low church party was not ashamed to go hand-in-hand with the evangelical pietistic and methodistic tendencies of the dissenters. There followed numerous conversions to Rome, especially from the aristocratic ranks of the upper ten thousand. The Emancipation Act of 1829 opened the door to both Houses of Parliament to the Catholics, and in 1858 the same privileges were extended to the Jews. Also the bulwarks which the state church had in the old universities of Oxford and Cambridge were undermined, and in 1871 were completely overthrown by the legal abolition of all confessional tests. Down to 1869 the hierarchy of the episcopal state church, though clearly alien to the country, maintained its legal position in Catholic Ireland, till at last the Irish Church Bill brought it there to an end. Repeatedly have bills been introduced in the House of Commons, though hitherto without success, by members of the incessantly agitating Liberation Society, to disestablish the churches of England, Scotland, and Wales.556

§ 202.1. The Episcopal State Church.―The two opposing parties of the state church corresponded to the two political parties of Tories and Whigs. The high church party, which has its most powerful representatives in the aristocracy, holds aloof from the dissenters, seeks to maintain the closest connexion between church and state, and eagerly contends for the retention of all old ecclesiastical forms and ordinances in constitution, worship, and doctrine. On the other hand the evangelical or low church party, which is more or less methodistically inclined, holds free intercourse with dissenters, associating with them in home and foreign mission work, etc., and with various shades of differences advocates the claims of progress against those of immobility, the independence of the church against its identification with the state, the evangelical freedom and general priesthood of believers against orthodoxy and hierarchism. From their midst arose a movement in 1871, occasioned by the Oxford “Essays and Reviews” and the works of Bishop Colenso, which resulted in the publication, under the authority of the bishops, of the “Speaker’s Commentary,” so-called because suggested by Denison, who had long been speaker of the House of Commons. It is a learned, thoroughly conservative commentary on the whole Bible by the ablest theologians of England. On the revision of the English translation of the Bible see § 181, 4. Besides these two parties, however, there has arisen a third, the broad church party. It originated with the distinguished poet and philosopher, Coleridge (died 1834), and includes many of the most excellent and scholarly of the clergy, especially those most eminent for their acquaintance with German theology and philosophy. They do not form an organized ecclesiastical party like the evangelicals and high church men, but endeavour not only to overcome the narrowness and severity of the former, but also to secure a broader basis and a wider horizon for theology as well as for the church.557―The struggle for the legalizing of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister has been energetically pressed since 1850, but though the House of Commons has repeatedly passed the bill, it has been hitherto by small majorities, under the influence of the bishops, rejected by the House of Lords.―A non-official Pan-Anglican Council of English bishops from all parts of the world, excluding the laity and inferior clergy, with pre-eminently anti-Romish and anti-ritualistic tendencies, was held in London in 1867 (cf. § 175, 5). When it met the second time in 1878, it was attended by nearly one hundred bishops, one of them a negro. Of the three weeks’ debates and their results, however, no detailed account has been published.

§ 202.2. The Tractarians and Ritualists.―The activity of the dissenters and the episcopal evangelical party’s attachment to them stirred up the adherents of the high church party to vigorous guarding of their interests, and drove them into a one-sided exaggerated accentuation of the Catholic element. The centre of this movement since 1833 was the university of Oxford. Its leaders were Professors Pusey and Newman, its literary organ the Tracts for the Times, from which the party received the name of Tractarians. This was a series of ninety treatises, published 1833-1841, on the basis of Anglo-Catholicism, which sought, while holding by the Thirty-nine Articles, to affirm with equal decidedness the genuine Protestantism over against the Roman papacy, and, in the importance which it attached to the apostolical succession of the episcopate and priesthood and the apostolical tradition for the interpretation of Scripture, the genuine Catholicism over against every form of ultra-Protestantism. In this way, too, their dogmatics in all the several doctrines, as far as the Thirty-nine Articles would by any means allow, was approximated to the Roman Catholic doctrine, and indeed by-and-by passed over entirely to that type of doctrine. Newman’s Tract 90 caused most offence, in which, with thoroughly jesuitical sophistry, it was argued that the Thirty-nine Articles were capable of an explanation on the basis of which they might be subscribed even by one who occupied in regard to the church doctrine and practice an essentially Roman Catholic standpoint. The university authorities now felt obliged to declare publicly that the tracts were by no means sanctioned by them, and that especially the application of the principles of Tract 90 to the conduct of students in the matter of subscription of the Thirty-nine Articles is not allowable. Bishop Bagot of Oxford, hitherto favourable to the tractarians, refused to permit the continued issue of the tracts. The other bishops also for the most part spoke against them in their pastorals, and a flood of controversial pamphlets roused the wrath of the non-Catholic populace. But on the other hand tractarianism still found favour among the higher clergy and the aristocracy. In 1845 Newman went over to the Catholic church, and has since led a retired life devoted to theological study. Pius IX. paid him no attention, but in 1879 Leo XIII. acknowledged and rewarded his services to the Catholic church by elevating him to the rank of cardinal. The majority of the tractarians disapproved of Newman’s step and remained in the Anglican church. Thus acted Pusey (died 1882), the recognised leader of the party, after whom they were now called Puseyites. Many, however, followed Newman’s example, so that by the end of 1846 no less than one hundred and fifty clergymen and prominent laymen were received into the widely opened door of the Catholic church.558―The following twelve years, 1846-1858, were occupied by two dogmatico-ecclesiastical conflicts vitally affecting the interests of the tractarians.

The Gorham Case. The Thirty-nine Articles took essentially Lutheran ground in treating of baptism, recognising it as a vehicle of regeneration and divine sonship, and the tractarians laid uncommonly great stress upon this article. So also the Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Philpotts, refused to institute the Rev. Cornelius Gorham because of his views on this subject. Gorham accused him before the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the Court of Arches decided in favour of the bishop. The Court of Appeal, however, the judicial committee of the Privy Council, annulled the episcopal judgment, and ordered that Gorham should be installed in his office. In vain did Philpotts, by a protest before the Court of Queen’s Bench, and then before the Court of Common Pleas, against the jurisdiction of the Privy Council in this case, in vain, too, did Blomfield, Bishop of London, insist upon the revival of Convocation, which for one and a half centuries had been inoperative as a spiritual parliament with upper and lower houses, and in vain did a tractarian assembly of more than 1,500 distinguished clergymen and laymen lodge a solemn protest. The judgment of the Privy Council stood, and Gorham was inducted to his office in 1850. Many of the protesters now went over to the Catholic church, and about 600 others, like the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers 230 years before (§ 143, 4), under ecclesiastical oppression, emigrated to New Zealand.

The Denison Eucharist Case.―The Puseyite Archdeacon Denison of Taunton, in the diocese of Bath and Wells, had in 1851 in open defiance of the Thirty-nine Articles, which represent Calvin’s views of the Lord’s Supper, affirmed in preaching and writing that unbelievers as well as believers eat and drink the body and blood of the Lord. Over this he was involved in a sharp discussion with a neighbouring clergyman called Ditcher. In 1854 Ditcher accused Denison before his bishop, who, after vain efforts to reconcile the parties, referred the matter to the Court of Arches, which sought, but in vain, to end the strife by compromise. Ditcher now in 1856 brought his complaint before the Queen’s Bench, which obliged the archbishop to take up the matter again. A commission appointed by him declared that the complaint was quite justifiable, and threatened Denison, when he refused any sort of retraction, with deposition. But the Court of Appeal in 1858 stayed the judgment on the ground of a technical error in procedure, and Denison remained in office.

§ 202.3. From the middle of 1850 the tractarians, who had hitherto confined themselves to the development of the Romanizing system of doctrine, began to apply its consequences to the church ritual and the Christian life, and so won for themselves the name of Ritualists, which has driven out their earlier designation. Wherever possible they showed their Catholic zeal by introducing images, crucifixes, candles, holy water, mass dresses, mass bells, and boy choristers, urged the restoration of the seven sacraments, especially of extreme unction, auricular confession, the sacrificial theory and Corpus Christi day, of prayers for the dead and masses for souls, invocation of saints and the blessed Virgin; they also praised celibacy and monasticism, etc. Ritualism has from the first shown singular skill in party organization. The English Church Union, founded in 1860, has now nearly 200,000 members, of these about 3,000 clergymen and 50 bishops, and it embraces 300 branches over the whole domain of the Anglican church. Numerous brotherhoods and sisterhoods, guilds and orders, organized after the style of Roman Catholic monasticism, promote the interests of ritualism, and zealously prosecute home and foreign mission work. The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament originated in 1862, was able in 1882 to celebrate Corpus Christi day in 250 churches along with the Romish church, dispensing only with the procession. The Society of the Holy Cross, founded in 1873 consists only of priests, and forms a kind of directory for all branches of the ritualistic propaganda. The English Order of St. Augustine has a threefold division, into spiritual brothers who are preparing for priests’ orders, lay brothers who are being qualified as lay preachers, both under the strictest vows, and a sort of tertiaries, who are free from vows. Among the sisterhoods which already supply nurses to all the great hospitals of the capital, the most important is that called “by the name of Jesus.” They take, like the Beguines of the middle ages, the three vows, but not as binding for life. By the ultra high church party the genuine apostolic succession of the ordination of the first Protestant archbishop, Matthew Parker, and so the genuineness of all subsequent ordinations going back to him, were doubted; three Anglican bishops are said to have had episcopal consecration anew conferred on them by a Greek Catholic bishop. The reckless and wilful procedure of the ritualists in imitating the Roman Catholic ritual in public worship called forth frequent violent disturbances at their services, and noisy crowds flocked to their churches. Most frequent and violent were the riots in 1859 and 1860 in the parish of St. George’s, London, where scarcely any service was held without disgraceful scenes of hissing, whistling, stamping, and cries of “No popery.” The offscouring of all London flocked to the Sunday services as to a public entertainment. Instead of hymns, street songs were sung, instead of responses blasphemous cries were shouted forth, while cushions and prayer-books were hurled at the altar decorations, etc. These unseemly proceedings were caused by the ritualistic rector, Bryan King, who had introduced the objectionable ceremonial, and obstinately continued it in spite of the decided opposition and protests of his colleague, Mr. Allen. King’s removal in 1860 first put an end to these disturbances, which police interference proved utterly unable to check. The ritualistic Church Union, called into existence by these proceedings, was opposed by an anti-ritualistic Church Association, and from both multitudes of complaints and appeals were brought before the ecclesiastical and civil tribunals. The first case they brought up was that of Rev. A. H. MacConochie, of Holborn, who, having been admonished by the ecclesiastical courts on account of his ritualistic practices in 1867, appealed to the Privy Council. And although this court decided in 1869 that all ceremonies not authorized by the prayer-book are to be regarded as forbidden, he and his followers continued to act on the principle that whatever is not there expressly prohibited ought to be permitted. The Public Worship Regulation Bill, introduced by Archbishop Tait, and passed by Parliament, which legislatively determined the procedure in ritualistic cases, did not prevent the constant advance of this movement. The Court of Arches now issued a suspension against the accused, and condemned them to prison when they continued to officiate, until they declared themselves ready to obey or to demit their office. Tooth of Hatcham, Dale of London, Enraght of Bordesdale, and Green of Miles Platting were actually sent to prison in 1880. But the first three were soon liberated by the Court of Appeal finding some technical flaw in the proceedings against them, while Green, in whose case no such flaw appeared, lay in confinement for twenty months. The ritualists still persistently continued their practice, and their opponents renewed their prosecutions; these were followed by appeals to the higher courts, presenting of petitions to both the Houses of Parliament, addresses with vast numbers of signatures for and against to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to Convocation which had meanwhile been restored, to the Cabinet, to the Queen, etc. The result was that many cases were abandoned, some obnoxious parties transferred elsewhere, and a very few deposed.

§ 202.4. Liberalism in the Episcopal Church.―The more liberal tendency of the broad church party had also many supporters who scrupled not to pass beyond the traditional bounds of English orthodoxy. In opposition to the orthodoxy zealousy inculcated at Oxford, rationalism found favour at the rival university of Cambridge, and vigorous support was given to the views of the Tübingen school of Baur in the London Westminster Review. And even in high church Oxford, there were not wanting teachers in sympathy with the critical and speculative rationalism of Germany. Great excitement was caused in 1860 by the “Essays and Reviews,” which in seven treatises by so many Oxford professors contested the traditional apologetics and hermeneutics of English theology, and set a sublimated rationalism in its place. In Germany these not very important treatises would probably have excited little remark, but in the English church they roused an unparalleled disturbance; more than nine thousand clergymen of the episcopal church protested against the book, and all the bishops unanimously condemned it. The excitement had not yet subsided when from South Africa oil was poured upon the flames. Bishop Colenso of Natal (died 1883), who had zealously carried on the mission there, but had openly expressed the conviction that it is unwise, unscriptural, and unchristian to make repudiation by Caffres living in polygamy, of all their wives but one, a condition of baptism, had occasioned still greater offence by publishing in 1863 in seven vols. a prolix critical disquisition on the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua, in which he contested the authenticity and unconditional credibility of these books by arguments familiar long ago but now quite antiquated and overthrown in Germany. During a journey to England undertaken for his defence he was excommunicated and deposed by a synod of the South African bishops in Capetown. The Privy Council, as supreme ecclesiastical court in England, cleared him, as well as the authors of the Essays, from the charge of heresy. An important aid for the dissemination of liberal religious views is afforded by the Hibbert Lectureship. Robert Hibbert (died 1849), a wealthy private gentleman in London, assigned the yearly interest of a considerable sum for “the spreading of Christianity in its simplest form as well as the furthering of the unfettered exercise of the individual judgment in matters of religion.” The Hibbert trustees are eighteen laymen who dispense the revenues in supplementing the salaries of poorly paid clergymen of liberal views, in providing bursaries for theological students at home and abroad, and in other such like ways, but since 1878 especially, by advice of distinguished scholars, in the endowment of annual courses of lectures, afterwards published, on subjects in the domain of philosophy, biblical criticism, the comparative science of religion and the history of religion. The first Hibbert Lecturer was the celebrated Oxford professor, Max Müller, in 1878. Among other lecturers may be named Renan of Paris in 1880; Kuenen of Leyden in 1882; Pfleiderer of Berlin, in 1885. The battle waged with great passionateness on both sides since 1869 for and against the removal of the Athanasian Creed, or at least its anathemas, from the liturgy has not yet been brought to any decided result.