rifice all worldly interests for the sake of my salvation."

His father, the Emperor Ferdinand, was so much displeased with his son's
advocacy of the Protestant faith, that after many angry remonstrances he
threatened to disinherit him if he did not renounce all connection with
the reformers. But Maximilian, true to his conscience, would not allow
the apprehension of the loss of a crown to induce him to swerve from his
faith. Fully expecting to be thus cast off and banished from the
kingdom, he wrote to the Protestant elector Palatine:

"I have so deeply offended my father by maintaining a Lutheran preacher
in my service, that I am apprehensive of being expelled as a fugitive,
and hope to find an asylum in your court."

The Catholics of course looked with apprehension to the accession of
Maximilian to the throne, while the Protestants anticipated the event
with great hope. There were, however, many considerations of vast moment
influencing Maximilian not to separate himself, in form, from the
Catholic church. Philip, his cousin, King of Spain, was childless, and
should he die without issue, Ferdinand would inherit that magnificent
throne, which he could not hope to ascend, as an avowed Protestant,
without a long and bloody war. It had been the most earnest dying
injunction of his father that he should not abjure the Catholic faith.
His wife was a very zealous Catholic, as was also each one of his
brothers. There were very many who remained in the Catholic church whose
sympathies were with the reformers--who hoped to promote reformation in
the Church without leaving it. Influenced by such considerations,
Maximilian made a public confession of the Catholic faith, received his
father's confessor, and maintained, in his court, the usages of the
papal church. He was, however, the kind friend of the Protestants, ever
seeking to shield them from persecution, claiming for them a liberal
toleration, and seeking, in all ways, to promote fraternal religious
feeling throughout his domains.

The prudence of Maximilian wonderfully allayed the bitterness of
religious strife in Germany, while other portions of Europe were
desolated with the fiercest warfare between the Catholics and
Protestants. In France, in particular, the conflict raged with merciless
fury. It was on August 24th, 1572, but a few years after Maximilian
ascended the throne, when the Catholics of France perpetrated the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, perhaps the most a