Have we possibly been mistaken in him all this time? Have we had another Luther lurking beneath the person of the burly Chancellor? Has his aim been all along not merely to create a German empire, but a German religion and a German popedom? Has his zeal been inspired by religion? In his speech the other day he protested against the pretensions of the Pope “as a Protestant and an evangelical Christian.” We congratulate the evangelical Christians, whoever they may be, on their new apostle. For ourselves, we could not help laughing, and thinking that the height of solemn farce had at length been reached. The words reminded us of one Oliver Cromwell, who, in common with a well‐known kinsman of his, had a knack of “citing Scripture for his purpose.” No; we confess it, notwithstanding this solemn affirmation from his own mouth, and before the German parliament too—(we think the printer must have omitted the “laughter” at the end)—we cannot bring ourselves to look upon the Chancellor as a “vessel of election,” though he may be a “vessel of wrath.” We consider that his worst enemy could scarcely say a harder thing of him than that he was a religious man. His is “Ercles’ vein: a tyrant’s vein.” The Emperor “is more condoling.” Now he presents the picture of a religious man _par excellence_. Why, his nostrils discerned a sanctified odor rising up from those reeking fields of France; and he could pray—how well!—after he had won the victory. But his Chancellor is a man of another complexion. He found a rich humor in it all. We have not forgotten that grim joke of his yet about the starving and doomed city. Is he not the prince of jesters? No, however bad may be our opinion of him, we will not accuse him of religiousness. Where, then, lies the difficulty between them? The answer to this necessitates a review of the whole present question of Bismarck with the Papacy; and we must beg our readers’ indulgence in carrying them over such beaten ground in order to get at the root of it all, fix it in our minds, and keep it there, so that no specious reasoning may blind us to the reality of it, to the true point at issue.