· of Christlikeness of character and conduct, as the great end and object for which the church exists and to the development and perfecting of which in its adherents and in the world its chief energies should be directed and its multiform activities employed. How unlike is it in this respect to the teachings of the Master and his early Apostles! How little is there in it of the Sermon on the Mount, of the great law of love to God and man! The things that Jesus talked about most, that he most emphasized in precept, parable, injunction, command, and appeal, it omits altogether or refers to only by inference or implication. This is a fatal defect one that carries with it inevitable condemnation one that forever precludes it from acceptance as the standard or platform of the reconstructed church of Christ, in that new order of human life which shall some day be established on the earth, and under which

"All crimes shall cease and ancient frauds shall fail,
Returning justice lift aloft her scale;

Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend,

And white-robed innocence from heaven descend."

DISCOURSE XXII.

BELIEFS OF THE GERMAN PROTESTANT

CHURCHES.

"He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh; But he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God."- Rom. ii. 28, 29.

When Martin Luther, the celebrated German Reformer of the Sixteenth Century, and his devoted co-adjutors had roused multitudes of their fellowcountrymen from slumbering acquiescence in respect to the general polity and decretals of the Roman ecclesiasticism, and inspired them with enthusiastic and irreconcilable hostility to the Pope and his subordinate prelates, they very naturally soon became possessed with the idea of organizing a new movement, under which independent churches should be established in the various civil and political divisions of territory where they, by virtue of numbers and royal favor, exercised predominating authority and power. It was not the intention of Luther himself, at the outset of his crusade, to break wholly away from the Catholic hierarchy and set up an opposing establishment of any sort; but the stern logic of events ere long made such a result

inevitable. Nor, when he saw the issue approaching and became thoroughly convinced that the hoped for reconcilation of the opposing forces was an utter impossibility, did he wish that the reconstructed ecclesiasticism or any organization under it should take his distinctive name. Nevertheless, his followers and those sympathizing with them soon came to be called Lutherans, first by Eck, one of the most bitter of the great Reformer's opponents, then by Papists generally, and finally by common consent of all parties.

But circumstances never favored the organic unity of the dissenting and seceding multitudes, nor the adoption of a uniform title by which all classes of them should be designated and known. They never withdrew their allegiance to the several civil governments under which they lived, and their polity and course of conduct were greatly modified by the ruling power in each and every given case. So that, in different provinces or princedoms of Germany, and in different countries of northern Europe outside of German Supremacy, whatever churches were formed assumed certain provincial or national characteristics, grew up in a certain degree of independency of one another, and not infrequently took upon themselves different names. There seemed to be in the beginning a preference. among all classes of reformers for the term Evangelical, which continues largely to this day. At the diet of Spire in 1529, where a formal protest was made against the usurpations of the Papal chair, they received the comprehensive name of Protestants,

which, at a later day, became employed to designate all those, whether disciples of Luther or not, who rejected the claims and authority of the See at Rome. In Poland and Austria the Reformed Church was known by the official title of "The Church of the Augsburg Confession," of which Confession more will be said presently. But the most widely accepted designation of the great majority of those who trace their ecclesiastical lineage back to the distinguished German leader, is "the Evangelical Lutheran Church," which may be regarded as including, in a general way, all those who claim to be the legitimate descendants and representatives of him whose name they bear.

The several churches or branches of the Protestant Church that were founded in the time of the Reformation or immediately afterward, and have continued unto the present day, all have a form of mongrel or modified episcopacy for an ecclesiastical polity or mode of government; but from the beginning those in Europe have, as already suggested, been so wedded to the state as to be not only subject to the patronage but to the authority of those occupying places of temporal power in the respective countries or sovereignties within. whose jurisdiction they have had a place. These crowned heads of greater or less dignity and impor tance, emperors, kings, princes, dukes, or whatever the titles they have borne, have in most cases, claimed to be ex-officio bishops of high degree in the church, but have usually condescended to transfer their rights and prerogatives to Consis

tories - bodies composed of the clergy and representatives of the laity, in which was vested all power of church government, both legislative and administrative.

Much diversity not to say divergence of opinion has prevailed, not only in the general Lutheran communion but in its various subordinate branches, and controversies in different departments of church life have rendered it impossible to establish any very detailed, coherent, and generally accepted church polity, numerous changes having been made from time to time in the past, and still likely to be made, in their recognized formularies. It is not my intention to treat these matters at any length but simply to allude to them as existing in this as in other departments of the nominal church of Christ. They concern the incidentals of prevailing ecclesiasticism; my business is with its fundamentals and to them I now pass.

So far as I am informed or can ascertain the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany, and its offshots or corresponding churches in other countries, departed far less from the theology and established doctrines of the Roman Catholics than any other of the several religious bodies or schools of thought, which, like that, may properly claim to derive their origin from the great upheaval of the Sixteenth Century known in history as The Reformation; the leading ones being those founded by Calvin, Zuingli, Arminius, Socinus, and Menno, in France, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium. The German churches accepted as substantially true the