BISMARCK; HIS DOINGS AND UNDOINGS.

"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night." Ps. II, 2.

A weird, wonderful and almost inexplicable human character is passing from human view. The work remains. It is so high, so deep, so far-reaching in results, so terrific in plan, that the more you study it the more are you surprised at what God can do with and by a man, as well as what the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ can do for a man.

Jesus Christ, in his life and teachings, furnishes the only true standard for measuring human character. What he likes, lives. What he rejects, dies. He that humbles himself is exalted, if the humiliation be for Christ, and be in the service of humanity. He that exalts himself, thinks of himself, at the expense of a cause, is a failure, now and forever. The story of Bismarck's life is crowded with lessons so tragic, so comic, so grand and so mysterious that fiction is eclipsed by fact. Volumes have been written in which attempts have been made to set forth the truth concerning the man. Let them be read. Let the truth be pondered. them to instruct, much to sadden as well as to inspire. Perhaps, more than any man of our time, he will stand as the riddle of history.

There is much in

Greater than a king, greater than a country, he has not only been the foremost man in Europe, but the foremost man in the world. Dynasties come and dynasties go; great men appear and combat him, retire and disappear; and this man, who stepped forth from obscurity panoplied and equipped for the battle, and laid his hand. upon the throat of principalities and powers and compelled them to help maintain the interests entrusted to his care at peril of their lives, is now, after the death of the great emperor and his greater son, on whom the whole world built in hope, holding the co

lossal power steady, that Germany, in the hands of a man who may be smitten with an incurable disease in an hour, may fulfil its mission.

At the time of his birth, Napoleon I had just returned from Elba to Paris, and Louis Napoleon was a lad of seven years. The echoes of the guns of Waterloo sounded about his cradle, thrilled the heart of his mother and caused her to consecrate her child to the service of the fatherland. A monarchist by education and conviction from his youth up, he has believed in the future of Prussia, whose history carries us back to 320 B. C., when the Phoenicians procured of that Lithuanian tribe amber on the shore of the Baltic sea. The name is derived from Po-Russi, behind the Russ, a part of the Memel. The Teutonic knights conquered them in 1283(?), founded cities, introduced German colonists and laws, and, by their firm but liberal rule, made her one of the most flourishing countries of the time. After a troublous period extending from 1450 to 1511, Albert the margrave of Brandenburg was elected grand master of the order. Luther was beginning to rise in his might for the Bible and the liberty born therefrom. Albert of Brandenburg became his coadjutor, introducing to his people new ideas, new hopes and a grand destiny.

The second half of the sixteenth century has been called the golden and classic age of German culture. The imperial crown was regarded as the collective property of the princes and estates, in whom the power of disposing of that dignity was vested. Each dukedom or kingdom was hedged in by laws and institutions peculiar to itself, and over them all ruled an emperor, elected not by the people but by the rulers of the people. Should he upon whom the dignity was conferred make use of the power with which it endowed him to increase the might of his own house, each individual prince felt himself fully justified in resistance.

It was because Austria tried to retain this power, which had given her supreme control over Prussia and the other German states, that the thirty years' war had its origin, during which Prussia maintained a neutrality, and was ravaged by contending armies and by the warring kingdoms of Sweden and Poland. From the lowest depths of degradation, the country was raised by the energy and wisdom of Frederick. William, the great elector, who reigned from

1640 to 1688. Frederick William, the third elector, reigned from 1688 to 1713. By consent of the emperor he assumed the title of king in Prussia.

Frederick William I reigned from 1713 to1740. He was noted for his professed piety and terrible brutality to his son Frederick, known as Frederick the Great, who reigned from 1740 to 1786 and won the title of king of Prussia. He annexed Silesia and a part of Poland, and left to his successor $50,000,000, an army of 220,000 men and an area of territory of 77,000 square miles. Frederick William II reigned from 1786 to 1797, and added 400,000 square miles. Frederick William III, father of the late Emperor William, reigned from 1797 to 1840, encountered the wrath of Napoleon, lost half of his territory, saw the overthrow of Europe's master, and regained possession of the territory which had been taken from him. Frederick William IV reigned from 1840 to 1861. He was a man of great natural talents and scholarship, but weak, pusillanimous and vindictive. He threw away the opportunity offered him in 1849 of becoming the head of a united German nation. For years, under his reign, the reactionary party of the country wielded a despotic power almost oriental. In 1857 his mental faculties gave way, and the opportunity for his brother arrived. Up to the time of his brother's death, Jan. 2, 1861, William was entrusted with the regency. He was born March 22, 1797; married, June 11, 1829, Mary Louisa Augusta Catherine of Saxe-Weimar; and October 18, 1861, refusing to recognize dukedoms or people, claiming that God made him king, he crowned himself in presence of his nobles. His eldest son was Frederick William Nicholas Charles, born October 18, 1831, and married January 25, 1858, to Victoria, princess royal of Great Britain. In private life the emperor was exemplary. He worshiped his mother Louisa, noted for her love of husband and children. She was the one woman Napoleon could not subdue. Her son was taught in his youth to love God and fatherland. It was his glory that he lived for the people and lived in them. He had been from his childhood a champion for Orthodox Christianity. Luther was not more devoted to the Bible nor more braye in its defense.

It is a fact that should encourage parents to see to it that their children are rooted and grounded in their love for the word of God.

The lessons learned by William in Pomerania when banished from Berlin remained. Bismarck delights to call attention to the striking contrasts in the lives of Emperor William and his father. He was humbled into the very dust, his capital captured, his palace plundered and his family sent into exile by Napoleon I. The other broke the power of Napoleon III, drove him from his capital and sent him and his into a life-long exile. One cannot think of Emperor William riding through Paris at the head of a victorious army, without going back in imagination to 1806, when, with his brave mother, he rode through the Pomeranian forests in search of a shelter and a home.

It is said that the father of Hannibal led his youthful son into the temple at Carthage, up to the high altar on which lay an ox just slain, whose hot blood still coursed in his veins and throbbed in his beating heart. The father took the hands of the boy, placed them in the hot blood, and then caused him to lift them to heaven and swear eternal hostility to Rome. That early oath fashioned the life of the man.

In fancy we picture Louisa and her boys, as tidings came to them of Napoleon's reveling in their palace at Berlin, sending off to Paris the sword and clock of the great Frederick, and dismantling the capital of Prussia of its trophies of art that he might adorn with them the capital of France. Nine years later, in Schonhausen, a boy was born who was to do for the younger son what Hardenberg and Von Stein did for his father.

Otto Edward Leopold Bismarck was born at Schonhausen April 1, 1815. He comes from a noble Prussian family whose origin carries us back to that early period in the life of Germany when the twilight of superstition blends with the serener light of history. Two of his family were members of the cabinet of the Great Frederick. Handsome in feature, well formed in person, of great courage and of an iron constitution, he revealed immense power as a student and graduated with high honor. He acquires languages without difficulty, converses readily in every language of Europe and is a perfect master of the English tongue.

In 1836, Bismarck left the department of justice for that of administration, and studied diplomacy in Belgium, Paris and London. He tired of travel and went back to his estates. There was not much

in his youth that gave promise of the marvelous life he was to live in the world. He was wild, desperate and wayward, a compound of audacity and craft, of candor and cunning. So long as poverty held him in its grip he did well, but with competence came dissipation, and mad Bismarck became the terror of the region. It was then he fell in love. It is a familiar phrase, but the language describes the occurrence. He fell in love with Miss Von Putt Kommer, and Miss Von Putt Kommer fell in love with him. Like two dew-drops shaken by a single breath, they slipped gently down and became one. Then books in parcels and in boxes began to come to his home. He read and worked and wrought. Like Saul of Tarsus, he was converted. The desperate leader became the Paul of the apostolate. He read history, philosophy, theology. Married July 28, 1847, he was henceforth distinguished for his studious habits and for the religious trend of his life. He was elected a member of the diet the same year.

Liberalism was in the air. Those who expect to see him side with the revolutionists, like Mazzini and others, will be disappointed. The key that unlocks his character is the fact that he believes in and has worked for German unity and German ascendency. What would help, he has used; what would hinder, he has opposed. That stinging tongue, arrogant intellect and ruthless will make this typical German, the war man; and this man of Titanic force is yet a gentle, genial, human-hearted man, witty, winning, loving, the idol of his home and the pride of his household. His His king was his king. The nobility welcomed him.

Wonderfully diplomacy had fitted him for his position. Bismarck knew every monarch in Europe. They knew that he was ready to woo or to fight as the necessity might require. The work achieved can only be glanced at. When he became the champion of the policy which made Prussia great, he found himself opposed by the people and by the diet. He began at once to make the army what it should be. He was helped by Prince Carl, Von Moltke and others. They were there before, and the army was weak. Bismarck came,

and the army was powerful, and soon stood forth the mightiest force in Europe. How the people opposed him has become history. In his first speech he said: "As long as we choose to wear heavy armor we must not fail to make use of it. The problems of the time will