beginning of the reign of secularism. He says: "Up to the period of the
Thirty Years' War religion was the chief moving power of the time. The
question regarding the confession prevailed over everything, and even
secular questions, that they might excite interest and be carried, were
compelled to clothe themselves in the garb of religion. But the result
of the Thirty Years' War was indifference, not only to the confession,
but to religion in general. Ever since that period secular interests
decidedly occupy the foreground, and the leading power of Europe is
France."[20]

It shall now be our business to inquire into that dwarfed vitality which
Kahnis elevates so high as to denominate "religion." We believe that, in
all the course of ecclesiastical history on the Continent, no period of
equal intelligence is marked by the same degree of religious coldness
and petrifaction. Theology was a special sufferer. The most useful
departments were neglected, while the least essential were raised to
superlative importance. Andreae places the following language on the
neglect of the study of church history, in the mouth of Truth: "History,
since she is exiled with me, readily consents to be silent and laughs at
the experience of those who, because they can but relate their exploits
from the A. B. C. school to the Professor's chair, that is, from the rod
to the sceptre, dream that they are in possession of a compendium of the
whole world. Hence their city is to them a compendium of the world,
their class book a library, their school a monarchy, their doctor's cap
a diadem, their rod of office a lictor's staff, each scholastic rule an
anathema: in short everything appears to them exaggerated. Oh! the
hapless human learning that is shut up in these scholastic Athens, that
whatever offences may everywhere besides be committed by ignorance, all
the severest punishments are in store for these alone to overwhelm it."

Again, in his _Christianopolis_, or ideal Christian state, he says:
"Since the inhabitants of Christianopolis value the church above
everything else in this world, they are occupied in her history more
than in any other. For since this is the ark which contains those who
are to be saved, they prefer to busy themselves about it more than about
all the waters of the deluge. They relate then by what immense mercy of
God this soul flock was brought together, received into covenant, formed
by laws enforced by his word; by what we