traveller in Germany, in Luther's time,
could learn but little of the moral state of that empire, if he shut his
eyes to the philosophy and the deeds of the reformers. If he saw nothing
in the train of nuns winding down into the valleys from their now
unconsecrated convent on the steep; if the tidings of the marriage of
Catherine de Boria came to him like any other wedding news; if he did
not mark the subdued triumph in family faces when the Book--Luther's
Bible--was brought out for the daily lecture; if the decrees of Worms
seemed to him like the common orders of the church, and the levelling of
altars and unroofing of crypts was in his eyes but masons' work, he was
not qualified to observe the people of Germany, and had no more title to
report of them than if he had never left home. Thus it is now, in less
extreme cases. The traveller in Spain knows little of the Spaniards
unless he is aware of the theological studies, and the worship without
forms, which are carried on in private by those who are keeping alive
the fires of liberty in that priest and tyrant-ridden country. The
foreigner in England will carry away but a partial knowledge of the
religious sentiment of the people if he enters only the cathedrals of
cities and the steepled churches in the villages, passing by the square
meeting-houses in the manufacturing towns, and hearing nothing of the
conferences, the assemblies, and the missionary enterprises of the
dissenters. The same may be said of observation in every country
enlightened enough to have shaken off its subservience to an
unquestioned and irresponsible priesthood: that is, of every country
advanced enough to maintain dissent.

The expressions of established forms of prayer convey more information
as to the state of the clergy than of the people; since these
expressions are furnished by the clergy, and continue to be prompted by
them, while the people have no means of dismissing or changing the words
of their framed prayers for long after the words may have ceased to
represent the feeling. The traveller will receive such objectionable
expressions as he may hear, not as indications of the then present
sentiments of the crowd of worshippers, but rather as evidencing the
disinclination of the clergy to change. It would be hard, for instance,
to impute to Moslem worshippers in general the formation of such desires
as are uttered by the school-boys of Cairo at the close of their daily
attendance. "O God!