RELIGIOUS LIFE IN GERMANY.
Attentive observers of religious life in Germany discern a singular phenomenon which is assuming more and more alarming proportions. On the one hand, statistics show that ecclesiastical habits are far from being lost, so far as concerns participation in traditional acts and ceremonies. At Hamburg, where there is the largest number of non-baptized children, it was in 1885 only 37 out of every 10,000; at Berlin, five out of every 10,000; in the whole of Germany, one; in Prussia, 14 per cent. amongst the Protestants, and 16 per cent. amongst the Catholics. In the census of 1871, those who registered themselves as professing no religion, amounted to 16,980; in 1880, to 30,249; and in 1885, this number sank brusquely to 11,075. In Prussia, in 1885, the number of religious marriages was 90 per cent.; that of mixed marriages, 12 per cent.; in 38 per cent. of the cases the husband was Protestant and the wife Catholic. No fluctuation is indicated in the ecclesiastical statistics for the year 1887, either for the number of religious burials (230,689), or for that of confirmations or first communions (293,563), or for that of communicants (5,745,771); alone the divorced persons who have demanded the nuptial benediction show an increase (1,047). There were 2,798 conversions to the Protestant church—2,023 Catholics, 240 Jews, 535 members of other communities; 254 conversions to Catholicism, nine to Judaism, 1,333 to other religious communities. On the other hand, almost everywhere there are complaints of notable diminution in church attendance. Many churches in the towns and in the countries are three-quarters empty. At Berlin, where there are only 47 churches and 27 chapels, with 50,000 seats, for a Protestant population of nearly a million, the church service is very little attended. People go to the cathedral to hear the fine music and to see the emperor. When the liturgical service is over, there is a considerable exodus; more than half the congregation goes away; and before the sermon is at an end there is a formidable rush toward the doors in order to get good places for seeing the imperial family go out. The service ends before empty benches; and at the celebration of the holy communion, which follows, there are often not a dozen communicants. Religion is no longer anything but a frame, or as it were, an empty vase from which the perfume has vanished. The place of religion has been taken by morality in some cases, and generally by what morality! In other cases, literary and æsthetic culture, especially music, with the exquisite joys it procures, the refinements to which it testifies, but also with its insufficiency from the point of view of inner discipline and moral hygiene, and for all that concerns firmness of principles and the strong tempering of character. For the great number religion has been replaced by the culte of the nation, of that nation which is in the act of bartering the treasures of science, poetry, and faith, through which it has been so great in history, in exchange for military and diplomatic glory, conquered by the sacrifices and exposed to the vicissitudes that all know, and which all prudent minds fear.—Harper's Magazine for August.