general feeling. Parents feared to send their children to such dens of immorality: the numbers gradually diminished: the university of Basle, once so flourishing, became a desert within a few years: and at Erfurth, which at the outbreak of the Reformation had been in its highest reputation, the pupils, who in 1520 amounted to three hundred and eleven, fell to one hundred and twenty in 1522, then to seventy-two, and afterwards to thirtyfour, till, in 1527, the entrances amounted to but fourteen!"

The writer concludes his review of Döllinger's learned work, with the following general summary of the view of the Reformation taken by the reformers themselves, in regard to the influence of this great revolution on the interests of this world and on those of the next. The portraiture is, indeed, a very sad one; but none the less reliable, because drawn by the early friends and admirers of the Reformation, whose testimony is alleged for each statement.

"From the variety of these extracts, and the exceeding diversity of the sources from which they are taken, it will readily be believed that our difficulty has rather been to limit than to extend them. We had originally intended to pursue the inquiry on a similar plan through various other topics, as, the scandalous lives of its ministers, and the contempt and hatred with which, as a class, they were regarded by their flocks-the weariness of spirit, the remorse, the longing after death, even the miserable end, in many cases, by their own hands, which it entailed upon those who were actively engaged in it—the repining after the good old times, the longing for the revival of popery, and the habitual reference, on the part of the people, of all the evils which had overwhelmed the world to the new gospel which had been introduced. But we have already more than wearied out the reader's patience by these painful and revolting extracts, nor shall we venture to pursue the Reformation into the 'lower deeps' of sin and wretchedness to which it led. Even in the few, and perhaps ill-assorted extracts which we have hastily heaped together, there is enough and more than enough to fix its character as a movement claiming to be divinely directed. We are ready to allow its claims to be tested by any reasoning man, no matter how deeply prejudiced in its favor, upon these admissions of its own most zealous founders. Let him but contrast in the light of this evidence, imperfect and fragmentary as our narrow limits have made it, its great promise with its small performance, its magnificent anticipations with its miserable results-let him follow it in its career through the various countries where it found an entrance, and mark the fruits which it produced in each-where it promised peace and happiness, let him see it produce disor

der, insubordination, murder, rebellion, divisions of class against class, sanguinary war; where it promised piety, lukewarmness, impiety, blasphemy, irreligion; where it promised purer morality, debauchery, fornication, drunkenness, revolting indecency in young and old; where it promised all the social and domestic virtues, adulteries, divorces, bigamy, fraud, avarice, hardheartedness to the poor; where it promised the revival of true faith, confusion, skepticism, contempt of all religion, and utter unbelief; where it promised enlightenment, ignorance, barbarism, contempt of learning, and fanatical hatred of science;-let him but remember how all this is attested by those to whose dearest and most cherished hopes the admission was as gall and wormwood, and we defy him to resist the direct and palpable conclusion, that the finger of God was not in that unhappy movement-that the prestige of its success was hollow and unsubstantial, that its boasted advantages were a juggle and a delusion, that its lofty pretensions were but a silly mockery, and its very title a living and flagitious lie."

CHAPTER XVI.

INFLUENCE OF THE REFORMATION ON CIVILIZATION. Definition-Religion, the basis-Reclaiming from barbarism-British East India possessions-Catholic and Protestant conquests-Protestant missions-Sandwich Islands-The mother of civilization-The ark amid the deluge-Rome converts the nations--Early German civilization--Mohammedanism--The Crusades-The Popes-Luther and the Turks--Luther retracts--Religious wars in Germany-Thirty Years' War-General peace-Disturbed by the Reformation-Comparison between Protestant and Catholic countries.

To civilize, according to lexicographers, is "to reclaim from a state of savageness and brutality." According to its more common acceptation, however, the word civilization implies more than a mere reclaiming from barbarism. It embraces, as its more prominent constituent elements, enlightenment of the public mind, good government conducted on liberal principles, a certain refinement in public taste and manners, and a gentleness and polish in social intercourse.

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The more fully and the more harmoniously these elements are developed together, the higher the state of civilization.

There can be no doubt that religion lies at the basis of all true civilization. A mere glance at the past history and present condition of the world must satisfy any impartial man of this great truth. Those countries only have been blessed with a high degree of civilization which have been visited by the Christian religion. Those which have not had this visitation, or which have rejected it, are in a state of barbarism, or at least of semi-barbarism. If Europe is more highly civilized than any other quarter of the globe, it is precisely because she has been brought more fully under the softening and humanizing influence of Christianity. If Africa is the lowest in the scale, it is because her people have been to a very great extent excluded from, or have shut their eyes to the blessed light of the gospel.

Asia occupies an intermediate ground between barbarism on the one hand, and a state of high civilization on the other. That portion of her population which has never received the Christian religion, still continues in a state of unmitigated barbarism. That portion which once received, but has since in a great measure lost sight of, or rejected the doctrines of Christianity, may in general be pronounced to be in a state but half-civilized. No more striking proof of the soundness of these remarks can perhaps be given, than the incontestable fact that all western Asia, embracing Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Bythinia, Mesopotamia, and Armenia, which was, during the early ages of Christianity, in a high state of civilization, has since sunk into a state of semi-barbarism, after Christianity had been either extinguished or paralyzed in its influence by Mohammedanism. Constantinople, Antioch, and Ephesus, once the centers of civilization, and the radiating points of learning, are now the seats of barbarism-all their laurels withered, and all their glory fled, perhaps for ever! Egypt and northern Africa were also, during the first ages of the Church, far advanced in civilized life. But what is their

condition now, and what has it been for many centuries, since the overthrow of Christian institutions by those of Islamism? The dark night of barbarism still broods heavily over them, though a cheering twilight of the coming dawn is beginning to brighten in Algeria. And, in Europe, those countries precisely have advanced the least in civilization which-as Russia and other more northern nations—have been less fully and powerfully acted on by the principles of the Christian religion, as unfolded from its center.

From the facts already established in the previous chapters, we may easily gather what was the influence of the Reformation on these two leading elements of civilization-free government and literary enlightenment. We think that every impartial man who will take the trouble to weigh well the Protestant evidence already accumulated on those subjects, will come to the conclusion that, so far at least as these are concerned, the influence of the Reformation was most injurious. We would not, however, be understood as denying that Protestantism subsequently exercised, at least occasionally and to some extent, a beneficial influence on the progress of society. We freely admit that Protestants have done something for the social advancement of the human race: but we maintain that Catholics have done much more, and that without the Reformation, the world would have advanced much more rapidly in civilization than it has done with its cooperation.

To begin with the first idea implied by the term—a reclaiming from barbarism—what nation or people, we would ask, has Protestantism ever reclaimed from a barbarous to a civilized condition? What nation, or even considerable portion of a nation, has it ever converted from heathenism to Christianity? It has indeed caused many to abandon the old system of religion, and to embrace its own crude and new-fangled notions: but we have yet to learn that it has brought one entire heathen people into the Christian fold. Many barbarous nations and tribes have been crushed or exterminated by

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the onward march of its own peculiar system of exclusive civilization; but not one, so far as our information extends, has been converted to Christianity, or even ameliorated in social condition, through its agency.

And yet Protestantism has had ample power in its hands for this purpose, as well as ample verge for its operations. With her almost unbounded power by sea and by land, England, to say nothing of other Protestant governments, might, it would seem, have converted whole nations to Christianity, and thereby reclaimed them from barbarism. With her vast power and influence in the East Indies, she might have made at least an effort to bring the teeming nations, with their tens of millions of inhabitants, which there acknowledged her sway, into the beautiful fold of Christian civilization. But what has she actually accomplished? Has she ameliorated - the civil condition of the seventy millions whom she holds in political thralldom in the east? Has she even made a serious effort, in her political capacity, to bring about this result? Have the obscene and wicked rites of paganism vanished before her powerful influence?

She has indeed crushed or exterminated whole tribes by her arms, or ground them in the dust by her tyranny, and impoverished them by her exactions! She has done much to render Christian civilization odious in their eyes: she has done little or nothing to render it amiable or attractive. She has lately goaded them to rebellion by her cruel exactions and selfish policy; and then crushed out the insurrection by the strong arm guided by superior discipline. A lust of power and of money has been the all-absorbing principle of her policy and its effects are visible in the abiding degradation of the millions who unwillingly bow beneath her yoke. It is deemed unnecessary to multiply proofs to establish what must be apparent to every one who has even glanced at the history of the conquests and policy of England in her East India possessions. Her own writers and the official acts of parliament have boldly proclaimed these iniquities to the