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prosperity and internal improvement of the country. Extensive lines of railway and post-roads were opened, the river navigation was greatly facilitated, treaties of commerce were formed with foreign countries, great expansion was given to the Prussian and North German Zollverein, the army was put upon a footing of hitherto unprecedented efficiency of arms and artillery, and the educational system of the country was still further de- veloped. The political freedom of Prussia cannot, how- ever, be said to have made equal advance. The Cham- bers which met for the discussion and framing of a constitutional mode of government were constantly in- terrupted and obstructed m the prosecution of their task ; and the constitution, which is now established by law, was modified every year between 1850 and 1857, until it may be said to retain few of its original features.
In the Church also the great storm of 1848 wrought destructively. An ecclesiastical administration became odious, and count Schwerin, the minister for public wor- ship, saw himself obliged to keep watch over the actions of the consistories, which finally so displeased him that j he dissolved the superior consistory. He then appoint- ' ed a committee to devise a synodal constitution, to be submitted to an imperial synod which should soon after be convened, that thus the Church might construct her future organization for herself. The outline of the elec- toral law for the appointment of synods was published, and defended by counsellors of the crown versed in ec- clesiastical law. It proposed that the deputies should be elected by the congregations, but that the existing syn- ods should be made use of in the western provinces, and that district and provincial synods should be arranged so as to serve for electoral bodies in the eastern. Be- fore the appointed synod could have its meeting, the revolution was throttled, and the government again abandoned all these liberal measures. It even denounced the clamor for a synodal constitution as an ill-concealed enmity to Christ (!), and the whole scheme of an election by the people as a denial of God (!). The constitution of Jan. 31, 1850, retained, with respect to religion, the whole essential spirit of the German fundamental laws. A collegiate supreme ecclesiastical council to decide in- ternal affairs of the Church was formed by order of the king from the evangelical portion of the ministry of public worship, and a system of rules for the regulation of congregational affairs was bestowed upon the six eastern provinces. The supreme ecclesiastical council from that period governed the Church in the king's name; and Von Eaumer. the minister for public worship, in the presence of the Chambers, declared that the new doctrine was that the Evangelical Church exercises her constitutional right independently to regulate and ad- minister her affairs, by entire separation from and con- sequent independence of the State, and by government according to her ancient constitution by the sover- eign as her most prominent member. By this happy thought anxiety for the independence of the Church was tranquillized, and the Chambers succeeded in re- pelling all complaints about violations of those articles of the fundamental law of the State which relate to the independence of the Evangelical Church. The plan for congregational government, which was looked upon as the basis of true ecclesiastical freedom, contained a sus- picious limitation of the power of choosing the vestries, and an extraordinary requisition that the private mem- bers should be bound by the three principal creeds, the, confessions of the Reformation, and certain general laws for the Church which were yet unknown. In some of the eastern provinces this plan was protested against by parties opposed to each other, but it was at last gradually admitted into most of the congregations. The free congregations (numbering about forty in Prus- sia and the contiguous countries), which had in 1848, like almost all associations, taken some part in politics, and whose leaders had to some extent been involved in the movements of the day, had nearly all their houses of worship closed by the police under the new law against
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political societies. These proceedings were partially confirmed by the judicial court.-; but sumo measures of the police seemed so inconsistent with the freedom of conscience guaranteed by t lie fundamental laws thai inquiries were instituted respecting them even in the Chambers (1852), where the government had avowed its determination to exterminate by every legal means the whole system of dissent. The supreme ecclesiasti- cal council excommunicated all the free congregations, without reference to the various tendencies among them, and pronounced their baptisms invalid, while the civil courts punished every official act of their ministers as an invasion of the clerical office. Still there was con- flict between civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and the crown saw itself perplexed daily with t lit; disadvanta- ges of dissent. By royal edicts of March 6, L852, and July 12, 1853, the union movement was again given a new lease of life, the king having determined to do away with religious differences among all Protestants. The result was far from gratifying. In the very next fall (October, 1853) Dr. Rupp started a new congrega- tion, in which the Bible was accepted as the original source of truth, and the imitation of Chrisl was made the supreme end of life. All ecclesiasticism was ig- nored. In 185G (Nov. 4-Dec. 5) a general conference assembled to remedy these dissensions, but it faded to accomplish anything. The king remained summits episcqpus, bul the Protestants retained by the constitu- tion of Jan. 31, 1850, tit. ii. an. 12, liberty of conscience, and the more recent immigrations from foreign lands have made Prussia the home of Protestants of all shades of religious opinion.