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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

proportions, the reflection of their own; and thus his name has survived, not merely as that of a great man, the mightiest of his age, but as the type of a whole period in the history of the German people, the centre of a new world of ideas, the personification of those religious and ethical opinions which the country follo\ved, and \vhose influence even their a4versaries could not escape. His writings have long ceased to be popular, and are read only as monuments of history; but the memory of his person has not yet gro\vn dim. His name is still a po\ver in his own country, and from its magic the Protestant doctrine derives a portion of its life. In other countries men dislike to be described by the name of the founder of their religious system, but in Germany and Sweden there are thousands who are proud of the name of Lutheran. The results of his system prevail in the more influential " and intelligent classes, and penetrate A the mass of the modern literature of Germany. The Reformation had introduced the notion that Christianity was a failure, and had brought far more suffering than blessings on mankind; and the consequences of that movement were not calculated to impress educated men with the belief that things were changed for the better, or that the reformers had achieved the \vork in which the Apostles were unsuccessful. Thus an atmosphere of unbelief and of contempt for every- thing Christian gradually arose, and Paganism appeared more cheerful, more human, and more poetical than the repulsive Galilean doctrine of holiness and privation. This spirit still governs the educated class. Christianity is abominated both in life and in literature, even under the form of believing Protestantism. In Germany theological study and the Lutheran system subsisted for t\VO centuries together. The controversies that arose from time to time developed the theory, but brought out by degrees its in\vard contradictions. The danger of biblical studies was well understood, and the Scriptures were almost universally excluded from the universities in the seventeenth century; but in the middle of the eighteenth Bengel revived the study of the Bible,