When Jehovah spoke to Moses on the mountain, his law became the groundwork of a higher moral law, to the hordes in the desert; when Jesus proclaimed to the apostles the gracious message of love, his teaching was a holy treasure for the human race. Since then, the Jews have continued unweariedly to solemnize their Passover; still do they shun the meat of the swine, and swing the young cocks on atonement day; but the foundation of their faith has long vanished, also their pastoral state on the borders of the Syrian wilderness. For many centuries also, the pious fathers of the Roman Catholic church have offered their holy sacrifice daily; but they also, have already ceased to be the most pre-eminent of those who live under the law of the new covenant. The Bohemian peasant, who benevolently raised up the sick Jew on the high road, without tormenting the soul of the stranger with efforts to convert him, was more Christian than they; that man of science, who risked his life under the anger of the Church, that he might understand how the lightning was made by God, and the earth caused to revolve, was more a proclaimer of the Eternal, than they; and that citizen who died for his duty, in order to teach that the general weal is of more value than that of individuals, was nearer the most perfect pattern, than they. Among them also, undoubtedly, were many good high-minded men; the Jesuit, Friedrich Spee, met his death in a pesthouse, like that sailor in the flames. But those who thus lived, are precious to us because they showed themselves to be good men; whether they were considered good priests we know not. When this same Spee protested so vehemently against the burning of witches, which his Church so zealously carried on, he published his writings, without his name, in a Protestant place.
Since Moses, and since the first feast of Pentecost, the Lord had never left himself without witnesses; he had given the nations of the earth a new culture, had led them to a higher civilisation. He had given them a new code of morals, he had unlocked the other half of the earth, he had willed that the new spirit in men should be contained in the narrow space of one book, which might pass from hand to hand, from one soul to another, from one century to every succeeding one. Restlessly and unceasingly did the Divine Spirit agitate and stir the hearts of men; ever more mighty and more holy did these manifestations of the Eternal, appear to men of powerful intellect; it was a different manifestation to that of the old writings, it was also another word of God, another aspect of the Eternal, which was discovered. Thus men now sought the God of the human race, of the earth, of the universe, not only in the old faith but also in science. Together with the Jesuits and Jews there was Leibnitz.
This new culture has elevated the Jews; their fanaticism has vanished since the Christian zeal which persecuted them has ceased, and the descendants of that wandering Asiatic race have become our countrymen and fellow combatants. But the ecclesiastical community of the Society of Jesus, already once expelled, then revived again, remains to this day what it was at the beginning of its emigration into Germany--alien to the German life.
CHAPTER XII.
THE WASUNGER WAR.
(1747.)
The great century of enlightenment began with blood and the thunder of cannon. The Spanish war of succession raged on the western frontier, within the distracted realm. Bavaria and Cologne fought under the ban of the Empire, in alliance with Louis XIV. against the house of Hapsburg.
The constitution of the Empire had become weak. In the east the Hohenzollerns already held a powerful position by the side of the Hapsburgers; from the beginning of the century they had become kings independent of the Empire, and the Electoral house of Saxony, had shortly before obtained the insecure possession of the Polish Electoral throne.
Condemned witches were still burnt on the funeral pile; the ecclesiastics of three persuasions still carried on a wearisome strife; the intolerance of the Church, the pressure of poverty, want of great political interests, and the pitifulness of the small sovereigns and their courts, still weighed upon the masses.
Ever wider became the separation of classes. Etiquette only permitted the princes to have intercourse with the citizens in particular cases, and under prescribed forms. It therefore occurred sometimes that a good paternal ruler disguised himself as a private man, withdrew into a chamber apart, put on his old dressing-gown, and took a pipe in his mouth, in order to be enabled to have direct intercourse with his citizens, and thus learn their wishes from themselves. During such hours his princely dignity was, to a certain degree, suspended, but instantly he quitted the room he was again within courtly interdict.
Yet it was just at this period that numerous mesalliances took place. Among many of the higher nobility, wild nature broke through the restraint of court usage, and more than once a city maiden had the doubtful advantage of becoming the persecuted wife of a Prince of old family. Seldom did the wife obtain from the Emperor the rights of equal birth; the marriages were generally morganatic, and the children refused the succession.