This was to be the end of the doctrine of the Christian State.

With Gneist, Lasker, Virchow, he was subduing the Church to this new idol of the State; he was doing that against which in the old days he had struggled with the greatest resolution and spoken with the greatest eloquence.

Not many years were to go by before he began to repent of what he had done, for, as he saw the new danger from Social Democracy, he like many other Germans believed that the true means of defeating it was to be found in increased intensity of religious conviction.

It was, however, then too late.
He, however, especially in the Prussian Upper House, threw all the weight of his authority into the conflict.

It was, he said, not a religious conflict but a political one; they were not actuated by hatred of Catholicism, but they were protecting the rights of the State.
"The question at issue," he said, "is not a struggle of an Evangelical dynasty against the Catholic Church; it is the old struggle ...