While the philosophers of Tubingen and other German universities were thus assailing the divine foundations of Christianity, another class of writers, Moleschott, Büchrer, Vogt, Löwenthal, and many Protestants, were turning to naturalism and atheistic materialism, the consequences of Hegelianism. The materialistic school, which was socialistic in politics, atheistic in religion, realistic in literature, had the impudence to present itself as the savior of society. It would have mattered little had these various systems been compelled to rely upon their un-Christian apostles for support; but the pity was that men who pretended to believe in Christianity, in the Bible, in revelation only too often listened with favor to their teachings and applauded them. Thus it was that by the time of the French War of 1870, the Protestant mind of Germany was deeply infected with rationalistic ideas, so far at least as to render it unfit to understand even the primary principles of Christianity. Under such conditions it is easy to perceive how the teachings of Catholicity, resting firmly upon the Gospels and drawing their vigor from the divinity of its Founder, could prove a very eyesore to a misguided generation. In Germany, in the course of the nineteenth century, until 1870, the Church suffered from a weak-kneed policy of many on whom she thought she could rely. The poison of Frebonianism was never quite eradicated, and made itself manifest from time to time in various wild disorders. Wessenberg and Dalberg strove to supplant the authority of the Holy See with a national church. Efforts were made to abolish clerical celibacy, to establish a new ritual, to inflate Catholic doctrine with a certain heretical mysticism, to destroy Catholic devotion and loyalty by means of Rongeism. These and a hundred similar movements were evidences of the continuing influence of old Frebonianism, suppressed in one place only to break out in another. And yet, if the disorders had merely confined themselves to such wild distortions of Catholic practices, it would have been only a matter of time to cause their ultimate disappearance. But it is a singular quality in such pseudo Catholic movements, that they lead their supporters insensibly to the region of absolute heresy. Indeed, as is the case with the Modernists of today, the votaries of these "advanced" Catholic notions are often actual pantheists and atheists, while proclaiming their loyalty to the Church and her teachings. The liberal Catholic of Germany will have much to answer for when judged for his part in leading to the persecutions of the Church in that country. In the first part of the century his presence was noted everywhere, in the court, in the schools, and especially in the universities. _LIBERAL CATHOLICS._