State would leave me. I share these feelings with the mass of
the lower strata of the people, and I am not ashamed of their
society."

And then he spoke of the Christian State:

"It is as old as every European State; it is the ground in which
they have taken root; no State has a secure existence unless it
has a religious foundation. For me, the words, 'by the Grace of
God,' which Christian rulers add to their name, are no empty
phrase; I see in them a confession that the Princes desire to
wield the sceptre which God has given them according to the will
of God on earth. As the will of God I can only recognise that
which has been revealed in the Christian Gospel--I believe that
the realisation of Christian teaching is the end of the State; I
do not believe that we shall more nearly approach this end by the
help of the Jews.... If we withdraw this foundation, we retain in
a State nothing but an accidental aggregate of rights, a kind of
bulwark against the war of all against all, which ancient
philosophy has assumed. Therefore, gentlemen, do not let us spoil
the people of their Christianity; do not let us take from them
the belief that our legislation is drawn from the well of
Christianity, and that the State aims at the realisation of
Christianity even if it does not attain its end."

We can well understand how delighted Herr von Thadden was with his
pupil. "With Bismarck I naturally will not attempt to measure myself,"
he writes; "in the last debates he has again said many admirable
things"; and in another letter, "I am quite enthusiastic for Otto
Bismarck." It was more important that the King felt as if these words
had been spoken out of his own heart.

Among his opponents, too, he had made his mark; they were never tired of
repeating well-worn jests about the medieval opinions which he had
sucked in with his mother's milk.

At the close of the session, he returned to Pomerania with fresh
laurels; he was now looked upon as the rising hope of the stern and
unbending Tories. His marriage took place in August, and the young Hans
Kleist, a cousin of the bride, as he proposed the bridegroom's health,
foretold that in their friend had arisen a new Otto of Saxony who would
do for his country all that his namesake had done eight hundred years
before. Careless words spoken half in jest, which thirty years later
Kleist, then Over-President of the province, recalled when he proposed
th