Bismark and the Roman Catholic Church.
The German government is rapidly following up its hostile policy toward the Catholic church. That policy, it is now quite evident, has not been adopted in consequence merely of the zeal of the ultramontane bishops in dealing with the German Catholics opposed to the infallibility dogma, but is undoubtedly the result of far-sighted and comprehensive statesmanship. The undisguised hostility which the proceedings of the Œcumenical Council excited in Germany, and the strenuous opposition with which the efforts of the ultramontane bishops met in the most intelligent districts of Germany, must have satisfied the Chancellor that a separation of the ultramontane and the liberal Catholics had become inevitable, and that, when it should occur, the interests of Germany required it to take sides with the liberals and to oppose to the best of its powers the schemes of the ultramontanes. Prince Bismark has often been called the political Luther of the nineteenth century. The enthusiasm which his new policy in regard to the ultramontane movements of the German bishops has excited in all parts of Germany, and the haste with which the South-German governments have imitated the example he has set them in throwing down the gauntlet to the Roman Catholic church, shows very plainly that he fully comprehends the tendency of the German mind in regard to the great religious question which now agitates the country, and that he may add to the fame of having restored the unity of Germany that of establishing a German church, independent of the holy see at Rome, and repudiating the recent dogmas which the Vatican has grafted upon the Catholic creed.—Sel.