The task of becoming familiar with the history of those times is formidable; but its performance will amply repay the careful and thoughtful student, inasmuch as the events which then transpired materially influenced the subsequent condition of the world. Especially did they influence that current of affairs which caused the most enlightened nations to drift towards religious freedom and popular government, the two great and inseparable factors in modern progress. At the period here referred to, true Christian civilization, as inspired by the charity and gentleness exhibited in the life of Christ, seemed to hang, for a time, at equipoise in the balance. The struggle for mastery between the light of the Reformation and the darkness of the Middle Ages was long and fierce, and occasionally doubtful. One can not fail to see that the spirit of liberty had been so nearly crushed out by the monarchism of Church and State, that it required the finger of Providence to point out the way to the revival of primitive Christianity, and the restoration of its beneficial influences upon the consciences and lives of the vast multitudes who had been long held in inferiority. The student will find the conflict instructive at every point. It will bring into view perfidy and treachery where there ought to have been confidence and fair dealing, shameful betrayals of the cause of truth and justice, and the heartless sacrifice of many thousands of inoffensive people. It will show popes and kings uniting their power in the cause of oppression and wrong, and shamelessly practicing vices condemned equally by the laws of God and man. Many figures conspicuous in history will appear, among them that of the great Emperor Charles V. He will be seen procuring imperial dominion over a people he did not know, and whose language he could neither speak nor understand; quarreling with the pope one day and threatening to subvert his throne, and becoming reconciled the next, in order that monarchism should be strengthened; sending savage hordes of armed men to crush out the spirit of religious liberty in his native Netherlands by blood and murder; promising protection to the German Protestants in order to obtain their assistance in his war against the Turks, and afterwards betraying and persecuting them for heresy; uniting for a time with the pope against the king of France, and then with the king of France against the pope; forcing the pope to convene a General Council, and pretending to grant by his famous "_Interim_" some shadowy rights to Protestants, in order that they might ultimately be compelled to accept the faith as the Council should decree; and at last, when his successes were turned into adversities and his tortuous policy involved him in disappointment, abdicating his royal authority, retiring to a monastery, and confiding the infamous work of persecuting Protestants and desolating his native land to his cold-blooded and murderous son.