r. _Arcades ambo_.

Some people will think we have written too plainly. We beg to tell them
that we have had to practise self-restraint. The fat would be in the
fire with a vengeance if we gave free expression to our disgust. The
only hope for the future of society lies in the absolute extermination
of Christianity. That is the superstition which fools and degrades
Europe, and we must fight it to the death.

MARTIN LUTHER.

Reformation Day, as it is called, was celebrated on October 31
throughout the Protestant part of Germany. Three hundred and
seventy-five years have rolled by since Martin Luther broke from the
Roman Catholic Church. Emperor William went to Wittenberg, with a great
array of Evangelical personages; and, as usual, the Emperor made a
speech, which for him was excellent. "There is no coercion," he said,
"in matters of religion. Here only free conviction of the heart is
decisive, and the perception of this fact is the blissful fruit of the
Reformation."

This is a fine-sounding declaration, but it has the misfortune to be
untrue. Liberty of conscience is not the fruit of the Reformation,
but an indirect and unintended result. Nor is liberty of conscience
a reality in any part of the German empire. Christians are allowed to
differ among themselves, but Freethinkers are prosecuted for dissenting
alike from Catholic and Protestant. Since the present Emperor's
accession there have been many blasphemy prosecutions, sometimes for
what would be regarded in other countries as very mild expressions of
disbelief. Several men and women have been sentenced to severe penalties
for exercising the right of free speech, which, in the land of Goethe,
Heine, Strauss, and Schopenhauer, is still confined to professed
Christians.

The Reformation, in fact, was a superficial movement. Except for its
moral revolt against the sale of indulgences, it touched no deep and
durable principle. It merely substituted an infallible Bible for an
infallible Church. Differences of opinion crept into the Protestant
fold, but that was an accident, arising from the varied and discordant
nature of the Bible itself. Every new Protestant sect had to fight as
strenuously for its right to exist as ever Martin Luther fought against
the Catholic Church. Protestantism, in short, was one priesthood saying
to another priesthood "We are right and you are wrong." The Catholic
Church had an immense advantage in its central organisation; the
P