[95]. It is now being debated there under the direct orders of the emperor and the chancellor.
[96]. We give this passage literally, in order to furnish an indisputable evidence of the animus of Dr. Bamberger when he writes of the church or of Catholics. We shall see, as we go along, how this spirit colors his reasoning.
[97]. Dr. Bamberger utterly misrepresents the attitude of the Roman Catholics in Germany towards the socialists. In the debate of May 23-24 in the Reichstag, on the proposed restrictive measures against the socialists, the Catholic members aided in defeating the government’s bill: on the very rational ground that the laws already in existence were sufficiently strong to accomplish all that the government required, if only they were properly applied. In any case it is to be hoped that a man may defend freedom of speech and public assembly without necessarily being ranked among the socialists. Men may defend right principles without at all defending a wrong application of them. The Protestants and National Liberals who, in this instance, joined with the Catholics in condemning what was essentially a tyrannous measure, were not “hypocrites.” All condemned alike the wicked attempt on the life of the German emperor. But even that attempt did not justify what practically amounted to a wholesale gagging of the German people.—Ed. C. W.
[98]. As a matter of fact, Mr. Eccarius could not have gone to this congress at all had not the London correspondent of one of our New York journals furnished him with the necessary funds for his journey, taking his letters as payment. Mr. Eccarius, who is an able writer and personally an estimable man, made excellent use of his visit, as the London Times took his letters from the congress and paid him at the rate of £2 a column for them.
[99]. Here Dr. Bamberger portrays at great length and in a bantering manner the demands of those who believe that the state can remedy all evils, and describes with humor the various programmes for state administration of domestic life, public amusements, education, and what not. He quotes the Italian proverb that “a fool in his own house is smarter than a wise man in another’s mansion,” and says that the state falls into folly when it penetrates the houses of its subjects and regulates for them their domestic economy.
[100]. St. Eucher.
[101]. Le Oranti of the archæologists.
[102]. John xvi. 26.
[103]. The Natural History of Atheism. By John Stuart Blackie, Professor of Greek at the University of Edinburgh. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1878.
[104]. Children dying in original sin, though children of wrath, are not necessarily “hell-deserving sinners,” as the author objects. Most Catholic theologians maintain with good reasons that they will be in a state of natural happiness, though debarred from the vision of God.