d England, cities and villages
were generally spared. Civilization in those countries has scarcely ever
been retarded for more than a generation; but it was put back in Germany
for a century. Yet the enormous sacrifice of life and property would
seem to show the high value which Providence places on the great rights
of mankind, in comparison with material prosperity or the lives of men.
What is spiritual is permanent; what is material is transient. The
early history of Christianity is the history of martyrdom. Five millions
of Crusaders perished, that Europe might learn liberality of mind. It
took one hundred years of contention and two revolutions to secure
religious toleration in England. France passed through awful political
hurricanes, in order that feudal injustice might be removed. In like
manner, twelve millions of people perished in Germany, that despotism
might be rebuked.

Fain would we believe that what little was gained proved a savor of life
unto life; that seeds of progress were planted in that unhappy country
which after a lapse of one hundred years would germinate and develop a
higher civilization. What a great Protestant power has arisen in
northern Germany to awe and keep in check not Catholicism merely, but
such a hyperborean giant as Russia in its daring encroachments. But for
Prussia, Russia might have extended her conquests to the south as well
as to the west. But for the Thirty Years' War, no such empire as Prussia
would have been probable, or perhaps possible. But for that dreadful
contest, there might have been to-day only the Catholic religion among
the descendants of the Teutonic barbarians on the continent of Europe.
But for that war, the Austrian Empire might have retained a political
ascendency in Europe until the French Revolution; and such countries as
Sweden and Denmark might have been absorbed in it, as well as Saxony,
Brandenburg, and Hanover. What a terrible thing for Germany would have
been the unbroken and iron despotism of Austria, extending its Briarean
arms into every corner of Europe where the German language is spoken!
What a blow such a despotism would have been to science, literature, and
philosophy! Would Catholic Austria, supreme in Germany, have established
schools, or rewarded literary men? The Jesuits would have flourished and
triumphed from Pomerania to Wallachia; from the Baltic to the Danube.

It may have taken one hundred years for Germany to rally after such
miseri