iness man is not wholly disinterested, that
the millionaire manufacturer is not a philanthropist; and the
apologists of the Hohenzollern might be reminded that a King of
Prussia in every generation has been wont to work mainly for himself.

XI.--THE HOHENZOLLERN AS THE CHAMPIONS OF PROTESTANTISM.

Treitschke urges as one of the chief claims of the Hohenzollerns that
they have been in modern Europe the champions of the Protestant
religion and at the same time the apostles of toleration. Is not the
Kaiser the supreme head of his Church and the Anointed of the Lord?
Does not he still preach edifying sermons to his soldiers and sailors?
And does he not at the same time extend his Imperial protection over
believers of every creed?

The truth is that the Hohenzollerns have never been the champions of
Protestantism, but have astutely and consistently exploited it for
their own purposes. They did espouse the Lutheran and Calvinistic
faith, but their conversion enabled them to appropriate the vast
dominions of the Church, a spoliation which might have presented some
difficulties if they had remained Catholic. We saw that, during the
Thirty Years' War, during the supreme crisis of Protestantism, William
George, Elector of Brandenburg, remained neutral and allowed the
Northern hero, Gustavus Adolphus, and Cardinal Richelieu to champion
the cause of the Protestant religion.

Not only did the Hohenzollerns not defend the Protestant religion;
they perverted it and debased it by subjecting it to the Prussian
State. Such subjection is the negation of Protestantism, as it is the
negation of Christianity. Christianity in a political sense has always
meant the separation of the spiritual and the temporal powers. It is
the essence of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism that it actually does
protest. It is of the essence of Nonconformity that it refuses to
conform. Prussian Protestantism has ceased to protest, and conforms to
whatever is demanded by the State. The Lutheran parson is the obedient
servant of the Hohenzollern. "_Cujus regio illius religio_": spiritual
allegiance must follow temporal allegiance.

The ultimate outcome of the confusion of spiritual and temporal powers
in Prussia has been that Prussia has become the Atheist State, and it
is because the Prussian State is an Atheist State and absolutely
indifferent to the interests of religion that it has come to practise
in its own peculiar way the political virtue of toleration. As t