GERMANY AND THE CHURCH.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:]
SIR, —Me following rough translation of a fragment of Goethe may not be unacceptable to the readers of your truthful apprecia- tions of the present religious troubles in Germany. The universal poet seems to me to have touched the key-note of the whole contro- versy,—the strong determination of independent thought that underlies even the Catholicism of the German people, and which the Roman Council has failed to suppress :—
" The German people—the Chronicle saith- Had never much taste for the Christian faith, Till Karl the Great with his sacred sword Baptised the lusty Saxon horde.
Yet even then they struggled enough, And to Pope and Priest were a morsel tough ; And when once fairly under the yoke They growled in their sleep till Luther woke, And made the Bible a German book, From which each scholar his hero took ; Saint Paul, as being somewhat knightly, Was a figure no one thought unsightly ; Still here each heart for Freedom pants, For we are the natural Protestants."
—I am, Sir, &c.,
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