“elsewhere,” said Knox, speaking of Geneva, “the word of God is taught as purely, but never anywhere have I seen God obeyed as faithfully.”[12] Reprobating and lamenting that the great reformer depended upon the use of the sword for the extirpation of heresy, let us remember that Calvin was not only the “founder of a sect, but foremost among the most efficient of modern republican legislators; and that his genius infused enduring elements into the institutions of Geneva, and made it for the modern world the impregnable fortress of popular liberty, the fertile seed-plot of democracy.” That “theological city,” called by some the Jerusalem of Switzerland, seems to be pervaded by an endemic influence inciting to religious discussion and agitation; the eager, irrepressible spirit of John Calvin walks abroad from his unknown sepulchre as the _genius loci_. The Reformation contributed in Switzerland to the enlightenment of the people and to the maintenance of a spirit of freedom; but in a political point of view it was the cause of the gravest evils, which continued long after the original convulsions. To differences of race and language it added divisions of religious faith and the conflict of hostile churches. For some time there was an alliance of clerical aggressiveness and ambition, with the employment of religion as a political influence. The radical government of Zurich was violently overthrown on the 6th of September, 1839, in consequence of the nomination of Dr. Strauss to a chair of theology; thousands of peasants, led by their pastors and singing hymns, armed with scythes and clubs, entered Zurich, and the government was forced to dissolve itself. As late as the war of the Sonderbund, in 1847, religious intolerance appeared to threaten the integrity of the Confederation; and by an article in the Constitution of 1848, and re-enacted in that of 1874, the Jesuits and all affiliated societies were interdicted throughout the Confederation. Hostility to the Jesuits was not regarded as hostility to the Catholic religion. The order of Jesuits, as then existing in Switzerland, could not be considered purely religious, but partly political, partly sectarian and controversial, its direct aim being to aggrandize the Church at the expense of the state, and the Catholic religion at the expense of the Protestant. From the first of these two tendencies, it was repugnant to a large portion even of the Catholic world. The whole history of the Jesuits in Switzerland betokened an organized and systematic teaching of religion, not exclusively for religious ends, but largely as a means for procuring political and social ascendency; even to the extent of reducing it to rule, craft, and professional duty. It was against this tendency, not against any matters essential to the Catholic religion, that even the Catholic world protested. The growth of the Old Catholics, after the Vatican Council of 1870, caused many disturbances