The new ecclesiastical laws of which Prussia is so proud
were promulgated in the Official Gazette of Thursday, and now at last the Church of Prussia is a mere department of the Civil Service. and that in a sense in which it would be absurd to say the same of any other State Church in the world, except perhaps that of Switzerland, which is being modelled on the same type. On the same day the Times' correspondent telegraphed from Berlin that the German State Council (we suppose the Council of German Princes, or Bundesrath, is indicated) had determined unanimously to expel the Monastic Orders of " the Redemptorists, the Lazarists, and the Congregations of the Holy Ghost and the Most Holy Heart," "as coming under the law against the Jesuits." We have a very indistinct conception what the latter and apparently mystical Orders really are, but surely the Redemptorists are about as closely connected with the Jesuits as the University of London with the Royal Artillery, both being institutions under the Crown, and not otherwise connected at all. It would be more manly to make the observance of the Roman Catholic religion in Germany penal at once. That is evidently the goal to which cautious advances are being made. And when it is reached, the German Roman Catholics will have lost all doubt of their faith in the pride and glow of their spiritual sacrifices.
