Catholicism was a compound of early Christianity and the thought and life of Græco-Roman civilization. The medieval church was a kind of ghostly aftermath of the Roman empire and the popes were inspired by the genius of Cæsar as much as by the spirit of Christ. The north European peoples first accepted this latinized Christianity, partly because they were attracted by those universal elements in it which have made their appeal to all peoples, and particularly those of the Western world, and partly because it was for them the symbol of the ordered civilization of Rome which they first envied, then destroyed, and finally tried to rebuild. In time they reacted against the ecclesiastical, international and feudal solidarities of this whole politico-religious world, prompted no doubt by the untamed spirit of liberty which characterized the northern peoples and which resented the tyranny by which the middle ages achieved their high measure of social cohesion. Thus Protestantism became the handmaiden of a budding nationalism which was impatient of the restraints of an international papacy, as it has since been impatient of every other type of international control. In time it also came to be the peculiar spiritual possession of those classes among the northern peoples who developed modern commerce and industry. The affinity between its sanctification of the principle of liberty and the necessary individualism of classes which were intent upon destroying the traditional restraints of the ancient world for the sake of giving unhampered play to a growing commercial and industrial life, has been so perfect that it is hardly possible to decide which of the two is cause and which effect. Max Weber[6] has made an interesting analysis of commercial and industrial superiority of Protestant nations. It may be that the aptitude for commercial and industrial pursuits and an inclination to the Protestant form of the Christian faith are concomitant characteristics of north European peoples rather than casually related phenomena. Yet they have become so intimately related in history that the most typical commercial classes and nations are most generally Protestant, and most uniquely Protestant. In England the nonconformist sects are almost identical with the commercial middle classes, while the established church with its semi-Catholic genius has spiritual affinities both with the old Tories and the new world of the industrial worker. In Germany there is a similar alignment with Catholic and agrarian Bavaria on the one hand and the highly industrialized and Protestant Prussia on the other. The contrast between Protestant and industrial Ulster and Catholic and agrarian south Ireland is equally significant. Everywhere in Western civilization, and nowhere more than in America, Protestantism with its individualism became a kind of spiritual sanctification of the peculiar interests and prejudices of the races and classes which dominate the