gular, were not more so than those of any other Council in the past.

The action of the Government in supporting the Old Catholics may,
however, be attributed to another motive. The Catholics maintained that
Bismarck desired to take this opportunity of creating a national German
Church, and reunite Protestants and Catholics. To have done so, had it
been possible, would have been indeed to confer on the country the
greatest of all blessings. We cannot doubt that the thought had often
come into Bismarck's mind; it would be the proper and fitting conclusion
to the work of creating a nation. It was, however, impossible; under no
circumstances could it have been done by a Protestant statesman; the
impulse must have come from Bavaria, and the opposition of the Bavarian
bishops to the Vatican decrees had been easily overcome. Twice an
opportunity had presented itself of making a national German Church:
once at the Reformation, once after the Revolution. On both occasions it
was lost and it will never recur.

The result, however, was that a bitter feeling of opposition was created
between Church and State. The secessionist priests were maintained in
their positions by the Government, they were excommunicated by the
bishops; students were forbidden to attend their lectures and the people
to worship in the churches where they ministered. It spread even to the
army, when the Minister of War required the army chaplain at Cologne to
celebrate Mass in a church which was used also by the Old Catholics. He
was forbidden to do so by his bishop, and the bishop was in consequence
deprived of his salary and threatened with arrest.

The conflict having once begun soon spread; a new Minister of Culture
was appointed; in the Reichstag a law was proposed expelling the Jesuits
from Germany; and a number of important laws, the so-called May laws,
were introduced into the Prussian Parliament, giving to the State great
powers with regard to the education and appointment of priests; it was,
for instance, ordered that no one should be appointed to a cure of
souls who was not a German, and had not been brought up and educated in
the State schools and universities of Prussia. Then other laws were
introduced, to which we have already referred, making civil marriage
compulsory, so as to cripple the very strong power which the Roman
Catholic priests could exercise, not only by refusing their consent to
mixed marriages, but also by refusing to marry Old