it was only half what the church was entirely. The Christian state 

 is the state undermined and sucked dry by the church. It is like a 

 towering tree brought to decay by the creeper that has fed on its sap. 

 But when the state decays the national consciousness is always in 

 danger of disappearing as well. 



With certain exceptions, however, things did not come to this pass 

 even in the Middle Ages. In the East the state found ways and 

 means of taking over important functions of theocratic government, 

 and of effecting an intimate fusion between church and nationality. 

 In the West the tension between church and state led to struggles 

 which promoted the progress of civilization; for at the very moment 

 when the church appeared to have attained its aim, the proof was 

 afforded that, however capable it may be of winning a victory, the 

 church is unable to keep possession of the field. Nay, the great 

 developments then began which led to the formation of our modern 

 states and of the Protestant churches. It is part of the very charac- 

 ter of modern states that they no longer are, or aim at being, Christ- 

 ian in the same sense as medieval states, and Protestant churches 

 have either wholly or in part given up all theocratic pretensions. 

 But in this connection we must not overlook the fact that even the 

 constitutions and ecclesiastical ideals of the Protestant churches, 

 although they derive their basis from the inherent nature of Protest- 

 antism and from the Bible, are in strict dependence on the political 

 theories and ideals which modern times have produced. The state 

 church, the national church, more particularly as it is developed in 

 Germany, offers in all its stages a precise parallel to the developments 

 of the modern state, and the various theories of the state. In the 

 same way, wherever free churches are formed, they are dependent 

 upon the republican and democratic ideas of the period. The converse, 

 it is true, has also happened : a Christian idea has preceded the polit- 

 ical idea; but it was the political idea which first produced an 

 ecclesiastical polity corresponding to it. The Christian idea, too, as 

 a rule, asserted itself only when political ideas akin to it came to its 

 aid. 



This shows us that the study of political history is the necessary 

 preliminary to the study of ecclesiastical history. Without it the 

 most important developments remain unintelligible. In the history 

 of the church, however, every stage of the political history of the last 

 two thousand years is still, as it were, actually present. In the two 

 great Catholic churches, the Roman and the Greeco-Russian, the 

 forms and tendencies of the Middle Ages are embodied; they still 

 live on in them and still threaten us to-day in Jesus Christ's name 

 - with that Babylonian theocracy which destroys all national and 

 individual freedom. We know how it came about that this universal 

 theocratic ideal could establish itself on Christian ground. A great 



