Year: 1868

From the valuable observations on Flu ropean society contributed by Dr. Bellows to the Liberal Christian, we clip the follow ing in regard to Berlin, now one of the more prominent representative cities of the world:

 Berlin has 600, 900 inhabitants, of whom at least 55O,00O are nominal Protestants It does not number over fifty places of Protestant worship, including every chapel in hospital or barracks. The average Sun day attendance on Protestant worship is estimated at less than 10000, of whom two thirds would doubtless prove to be women and children. The great common life of the German people and the Prussian peo- pie has left the Church high and dry. The people have unhappily become accustomed to living without religious observances and without church going. They have discov cred, too, that morality may exist and does exist independently of churches and Sun day instructions. The people are not ir- reverent in tone and speech, among the better classes, and, so far as I can see, are not unbelievers in the essential truths of Christianity. There was time when the philosophy of Hegel and Schelling led ma- ny savans to Pantheism, and the science of Vogt and Virchou encouraged many others to adopt atheistic opinions. But the de- cline of metaphysical speculatlons and tran scendental mysticism, under the brilliant meridian of physical science, has favored return from Pantheistic wanderings, while the more advanced Scientists seem to be growing so far religious, as the result of their own studies into matter as to have discovered that God is not to be ciphered or crucibled out of the Universe.

 In regard to the general morals of Ber- lin, a representative city, 1t is unques- tionably place of extraordinary order and decency-a place where tradesmen and mchanics keep their word, where crime is unfrequent, and where drunkenness or fu- rious orgies, such as we have in England or America, are rare. At one season of the year they go into the country and drink buck-beer for few days, a very potent liquor, and indulge in akind of saturnalia. There is an immense festivity always going on in beer gardens where the people flock especially on Sunday and festivals Wine and beer and schnapps have an immense consumption, but either because the tenn perament of the people is more lymphatic or because they have learned by experience to regulate their appetites. or because there is more domestic companionship in their pleasures, there does not seem to be the same tendency to perilous excess From careful inquiry at the Municipal Bureau of Statistics, and from the National Bureau

 over which the celebrated Dr. Engel pre- sides, have obtained the data for some interesting comparisons touching the use of alchoholic stimulents, and of wine and beer. By the concession of all, intemper- ance has abated in Germany. Five and twenty years ago gin-palaces and brandy saloons were as prominent and active in Berlin as in London or New York. They have been supplanted by beer-shops, which have steadily increase in number and in responsibility, while brandy-saloons have been driven out of sight, into cellars or back streets. It is not considered decent to visit places where only brandy or strong drinks are sold.