and fought and conquered. The German Protestants,
formerly mentioned in these addresses, fought with faith in this
promise. Did they not perhaps know that nations might also be governed
with the old faith and be held in legal order, and that a good
livelihood might be found under this faith also? Why, then, did
their princes thus determine upon armed resistance, and why did their
peoples lend themselves to it with enthusiasm? It was heaven and
eternal happiness for which they gladly shed their blood. Yet what
earthly power could then have penetrated into the inmost sanctuary of
their souls and have been able to eradicate the faith which had now
once sprung up within them, and on which alone they based their hope
of salvation? It was not, therefore, their own happiness for which
they struggled--of that they were already assured; it was the
happiness of their children, of their grandchildren still unborn,
and of all posterity. These, too, should be brought up in the same
doctrine which alone seemed to them to bring salvation; they, too,
should share in the salvation which had dawned for them. It was this
hope alone that was threatened by the foe; for that hope, for an order
of things which should bloom above their graves long after they were
dead, they shed their blood thus joyfully. If we grant that they were
not entirely clear to themselves, that in their designation of the
noblest they verbally mistook what was within them, and with their
mouths did injustice to their souls; if we willingly acknowledge that
their confession of faith was not the sole and exclusive means of
attaining heaven beyond the grave--yet, this, at least, is eternally
true that more heaven on this side of the grave, a more courageous and
more joyous lifting of the gaze above the earth, and a freer impulse
of spirit have come through their sacrifice into all the life of
succeeding ages; and the descendants of their opponents, as well as
we ourselves, their own descendants, enjoy the fruits of their labors
unto this day.

In this belief our oldest common ancestors, the parent nation of
civilization, the Teutons whom the Romans called Germans, boldly
opposed the advancing world-dominion of the Romans. Did they not then
see before their eyes the higher bloom of the Roman provinces near
them, the more refined enjoyments in them, and, in addition, laws,
judgment-seats, rods, and axes in superabundance? Were not the Romans
willing enough to allow them