in Prussia than in almost any part of Europe? It is no uncommon event in the family of a respectable tradesman of Berlin to find upon his breakfast table a little baby, of which, whoever may be the father, he has no doubt at all about the maternal grand-father. Such accidents are so common in the class in which they are least common with us-the middle class, removed from ignorance or indigence-that they are regarded but as accidents, as youthful indiscretions, not as disgraces affecting, as with us, the respectability and happiness of all the kith and kin for a generation."

In a note, he gives the following statistical facts on this subject: "In 1837, the number of the females in the Prussian population between the beginning of their sixteenth and the end of their forty-fifth year-that is, within child-bearing age-was 2,983,146; the number of illegitimate children born in the same year was 39,501; so that one in every seventy-five of the whole of the females of an age to bear children had been the mother of an illegitimate child." He adds: "Prince Puckler Muskau (a Prussian) states in one of his late publications (Südöstlicher Bildersaal, 3 Thel. 1841) that the character of the Prussians for honesty stands lower than that of any other of the German populations."

When we weigh well all these facts, and remember also that from a parliamentary report, made two years ago, it appeared that in Protestant London upwards of 80,000 females had forgotten to be virtuous, we will be enabled to estimate properly what has been the moral influence of the reformation.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE REFORMATION ON PUBLIC WORSHIP.

General influence of the reformation on worship—Audin's picture of it -Luther rebukes violence-But wavers-Giving life to a skeletonTaking a leap-Mutilating the sacraments-New system of Judaism -Chasing away the mists-Protestant inconsistencies—A dreary waste-No altars nor sacrifice-A land of mourning-Protestant plaints-And tribute to Catholic worship-A touching anecdote— Continual prayer-Vandalism rebuked-Grandeur of Catholic worship-Churches always open-Protestant worship-The Sabbath day—Getting up a revival-Protestant music and prayer-The pew system-The fashionable religion-The two forms of worship compared-St. Peter's church-The fine arts.

IN nothing perhaps was the influence of the reformation. more pernicious, than in the changes which it caused to be introduced into public worship. It stripped the ancient Catholic service of all its beauty and simple grandeur: it dried up the deep fountains of its melody-hushed its organs, muffled its bells, and put out its lights. It rudely tore away the ornaments of its priesthood, stripped its altars, and chased away the clouds of its ascending incense. It did more. It destroyed the beautiful paintings and sculptures, with which art, paying tribute to religion, had decorated the walls of her churches; it entirely removed those sacred emblems of piety. Tearing them in shreds or breaking them in pieces, it gave them to the flames, and then scattered their ashes to the winds. And, as if these feats of vandalism were not enough to prove its burning zeal for religion, it aimed a mortal blow at the very substance of worship: it abolished the daily sacri

fice, removed the altars, and annihilated the priesthood. And then, exhausted with its labors, Protestantism lay down and fell asleep amidst the ruins it had caused !*

M. Audin gives the following graphic description of the effects of early reformation zeal on public worship. "Throughout the whole of Saxony, no more canticles were heard; no more incense, no more lights on the altars, no more organs combining their melody with the infant's hymn, or sacerdotal anthem. The church walls were bare; the light had no longer to steal through the painted windows, for they had all been broken, under the pretext that they favored idolatry. The Protestant temple resembled every thing but the house of God. The magnificence and poetry of Catholic worship, the loss of which modern Protestants deplore, every where disappeared."t

Luther at first disapproved of the intemperate zeal of Karlstadt and other hotheaded disciples, who, during his absence from Wittemberg, had abolished the mass, and removed by violence the paintings and statues from the church. Yet his disapproval did not, it would seem, proceed so much from a horror of the act itself, as of the violence which had attended it; and more particularly from the circumstance, that this innovation had taken place without his having been previously consulted. In his harangue against those new Iconoclasts, he said: "you ought to know that you are to listen to no one but to me. With the help of God, Doctor Martin Luther has advanced. first in the new way; the others followed after him: they ought to exhibit the docility of disciples, as their duty is to obey. It is to me that God has revealed his word; it is out of my mouth that it has proceeded free from all stain... Was I at such a distance that I could not be consulted? Am I no longer the source of pure doc

"Le Protestantisme fatigué s'est endormi sur des ruines!" Abbé De Lamenna's.

† Life of Luther, p. 331.

3

trine? . . . . It is neither commanded nor prohibited to keep images. I wish that superstition had not introduced them amongst us; but however, they ought not to be removed by tumult."*

But Luther, however he might deplore, could not curb the destructive spirit of his disciples. He could not prevent them from wielding the weapons himself had placed in their hands. He could not control the storm which he himself had put in motion. The work of destruction went on, till scarce a vestige of the venerable and time honored Catholic worship remained behind. He himself was uncertain and wavering, as to the portion of Catholic worship he should retain. The people of Wittemberg murmured, when the chapter of the church of All Saints in that city abolished the mass. Luther restored it: not however as a sacrifice, but as a mere popular symbol. He took from it the offertory and the canon, and all the forms of sacrifice; while he retained the elevation of the bread and wine by the priest, the sacerdotal salutation to the assistants, the mixture of water and wine, and the use of the Latin language."+

To enliven somewhat this mutilated skeleton of the old service, he retained many of the Catholic proses and hymns, uniting with them some compositions of the old German poets. "He himself composed some to replace our hymns and proses, which are precious monuments of the poetry of the early ages of Catholicism. Those sweet and simple melodies which were by turns joyous and austere, gay and melancholy, according to the occasion, were now replaced, in the Protestant churches, by a monotonous drawl. The reformed church thus lost the poems, inspirations and symbols of the Catholic muse."‡

The liturgy was not the only subject on which the re

* Apud Audin, Ibid. pp. 237, 238.

† Audin, Ibid. p. 333. Ibid. For some beautiful and charming reflections on this subject, see an article "on prayer and prayer-books," in a late number of the Dublin Review.

former hesitated. His whole career in fact is marked with hesitancy and doubt, as to what he should reject, and what he should retain, of the old Catholic institutions. He found himself often in trying and difficult positions. His disciples sought to drag him down the declivity of reform faster than the sturdy monk wished to travel. Sometimes he listened to their clamors; sometimes he sternly rebuked them for their too ardent zeal. Hence his perpetual inconsistencies. On the subject of auricular confession, he contradicted himself more than once: at times he recognized its divine origin, and proclaimed its great utility to society: again he would call it the invention of Satan, and "the executioner of consciences."* He betrayed similar doubts and inconsistencies as to the number of the sacraments instituted by Christ. He stood on the brink of a precipice, and yielded at times to dizziness, ere he took the fatal leap from the summit level of Catholicity, into the yawning abyss, the boiling and hissing noise of whose troubled waters already grated on his ears!

But his disciples were not so scrupulous. They boldly rejected five out of the seven sacraments, and even stripped the two they retained-baptism and the Lord's Supper-of every life giving principle. They did not any longer view them as the channels of grace, through which the waters of life eternal flow into the soul of the Christian. This they rejected with horror as a popish superstition. They denied that the sacraments had, from the design and institution of Christ, any intrinsic efficacy whatever : they were the mere external symbols of a grace, which they were not the instruments for imparting. They were mere signs and figures, lifeless in themselves, and usefu and available, only through and in proportion to the faith and other acts, of the recipient. In fact they were brought down, in every respect, to a level with the ancient Jewish

See his Treatise-De ratione confitendi. Tom. vi, edit. Altenb. Tom. i, opp. edit. Jena.