both of them, it is peace which transcends everything in their opinion, but this is disturbed only by the continuance of the struggle.  The slave, therefore, puts forth every effort to end it quickly; he will yield and submit—­and why should he not?  He never had a higher purpose, and he has never expected anything more from life than the continuance of his existence under endurable conditions.  The promise of a life lasting, even here, beyond the duration of earthly life—­this alone is what can inspire him to death for the fatherland.

Thus it has always been.  Wheresoever real government has existed, where serious struggles have been fought out, where victory has been won against mighty resistance, it has been the promise of eternal life that governed and fought and conquered.  The German Protestants, formerly mentioned in these addresses, fought with faith in this promise.  Did they not perhaps know that nations might also be governed with the old faith and be held in legal order, and that a good livelihood might be found under this faith also?  Why, then, did their princes thus determine upon armed resistance, and why did their peoples lend themselves to it with enthusiasm?  It was heaven and eternal happiness for which they gladly shed their blood.  Yet what earthly power could then have penetrated into the inmost sanctuary of their souls and have been able to eradicate the faith which had now once sprung up within them, and on which alone they based their hope of salvation?  It was not, therefore, their own happiness for which they struggled—­of that they were already assured; it was the happiness of their children, of their grandchildren still unborn, and of all posterity.  These, too, should be brought up in the same doctrine which alone seemed to them to bring salvation; they, too, should share in the salvation which had dawned for them.  It was this hope alone that was threatened by the foe; for that hope, for an order of things which should bloom above their graves long after they were dead, they shed their blood thus joyfully.  If we grant that they were not entirely clear to themselves, that in their designation of the noblest they verbally mistook what was within them, and with their mouths did injustice to their souls; if we willingly acknowledge that their confession of faith was not the sole and exclusive means of attaining heaven beyond the grave—­yet, this, at least, is eternally true that more heaven on this side of the grave, a more courageous and more joyous lifting of the gaze above the earth, and a freer impulse of spirit have come through their sacrifice into all the life of succeeding ages; and the descendants of their opponents, as well as we ourselves, their own descendants, enjoy the fruits of their labors unto this day.