no sinner ever did or ever will repent, believe, and become what God requires, of his own free choice, without such divine intervention overruling his hereditary predisposition to evil; that whatever apparent and commonly understood good an unregenerate person may do, it is no ground of hope. for acceptance with God as true righteousness; that all persons who die in sin, out of Christ, must be lost forever. Even those most opposed to the doctrines of Predestination agreed substantially with their opponents in believing that God clearly foresaw the Fall in Adam, the hereditary depravity of all his posterity and consequent doom; He clearly foresaw precisely whom and the exact number that the Divine Spirit would interpose to regenerate and save, and also the remediless perdition of all the rest. They furthermore agree with them in believing that God, foreseeing all this, and knowing all this, yet proceeded to create incalculable multitudes of sentient beings whose only possible destiny was never-ending sin and misery. Now what essential difference is there between the doctrines of the two parties indicated; what difference in the nature of things as respects either the moral obligation and practical duty of men on the one hand, or the character and honor of God on the other? And yet these parties kept up for generations and indeed in their successors still keep up a vigorous and oftentimes a bitter dispute on such questions-questions growing out of their metaphysical, abstract, speculations as (1) Whether or not God fore-ordained the specific results which

(2)

He foresaw would inevitably come to pass ;· Whether or not man can do any kind of good that will be acceptable to God; anything to put himself in the way of being regenerated by the Holy Spirit in spite of his hereditary depravity;-(3) Whether Christ made an atonement for all mankind or for those only who should be finally saved according to the foreknowledge of God;-(4) Whether he has any natural ability, though with moral ability, to do anything to further his own regeneration and redemption; (5) Whether or not Ministers of Christ, believing that God either fore-ordained or foresaw what the end would be who and what number would be saved and who and what number would be damned- ought to address all men indiscriminately, sinners and saints alike, in that practical, common-sense way which assumes that they each and all possess a certain freedom of will, have some power to do what God requires, to know and obey His commandments. On these and kindred topics, growing out of the Lutheran and Calvinist, or Calvinist and Arminian speculative hypotheses, have discussions been going on and belligerent attitudes been maintained in different branches of the Protestant Church from near the beginning of its existence. And to what purpose? What practical, moral, or spiritual difference; I ask again, is there between the opposing forces in the conflict? Both are in the wrong, if not in the mystical tenets which distinguish and separate them from each other, yet palpably so in the far more important ones in which they are united. On that common ground neither

of them can stand approved in the great judicatory of eternal Truth.

4. In regard to the distinctive ecclesiastical features of the Lutheran Church, it seems to me that it proved itself weak and ineffective, accomplishing little in the way of honoring and promoting in the world that "liberty wherewith Christ maketh free." It threw off the tyranny of the Pope and his allied sovereigns but entered into relations with. temporal princes and potentates scarcely less exacting in their demands, for the sake of their patronage and help. "The supreme rulers of every Lutheran State," says Mosheim, "are clothed with the dignity and perform the functions of supremacy in the church." Thus, while holding theoretically to the doctrine of "the universal priesthood of all believers" and maintaining that "all hierarchical organizations are unchristian" these Sixteenth Century reformers became voluntarily subject to the civil power, even in the administration of religious affairs. They had no scruples against the union of church and state and none in calling upon the the state to aid them by force and arms in carrying out their various designs. As in the days of Constantine the cross led the sword through blood to victory, so was it not infrequently with them under the new dispensation. They trusted much to the civil power of the countries in which they predominated, paid it willing homage in return for favors received, allowed its sovereign head to convene by royal decree their ecclesiastical councils and its respresentatives to participate in them, and

yielded cheerful obedience to its requirements. They seemed to regard the church practically as the servant and handmaid of the state, to give it sanctity and support, and in no wise to interfere with its ambitious projects, or hold up to it a high ideal of civic and national righteousness. So dependent did the church of that day come to be upon the state, and so subservient to it, that much of its power for good in the world, by way of advancing a pure and transforming Christianity, was lost. In the particular respect under notice-in respect to the attitude of the German Reformed Church toward civil government based upon military force and the war-making power, it had little to commend it to the favor of those richly imbued with the spirit of Christ; it had made but a short day's march from the Babylon of Romanism whence it came.

5. And much the same judgment must be rendered concerning that church if we consider thoughtfully the theological doctrines which it avowed and promulgated. As has been already stated it declared unhesitatingly and unqualifiedly its adhesion to the three ancient creeds held as authoritative in the Roman communion. Nor did it in any of its statements or confessions of faith ever proclaim or profess anything essentially different more reasonable, more just, more Scriptural, more Christly. From none of those statements or confessions does it appear that God ever purposed or desired to save more than a favored minority of the human and salvation consist in morally and spiritually

or that regeneration making men and women

Christlike in thought, in deed, in character, but chiefly in preparing them for and taking them to the heaven of a future world; that personal righteousness is in itself of any great importance; that obedience to the law of love to God and man is the paramount obligation; but that to believe certain dogmas and to observe certain rites is indispensable to acceptance with God here and hereafter. Nor does it appear from any of them that the church can or ought to attempt to institute an order of social and civil life essentially higher and better than that which now exists more fraternal, beneficient, and divine; or that the church has any authority or commission to lead all other agencies and activities in bringing the kingdom of righteousness, brotherhood, and peace into the world. In this particular there is little to give the Reformed Lutheran Church pre-eminence; little to justify the claim made for it, that its rise and the movement it represented marked one of the most important and noteworthy events in human history the opening of a transcendently glorious era in the progress of mankind.

6. But if the movement thus represented is not entitled to the celebrity and renown generally ascribed to it by reason of its ecclesiasticism, its general policy in relation to civil government, its theology, or its maintenance of a high standard of personal and social righteousness, is it entitled to them for any reason that can satisfy a highminded Christian man; one who is resolved to test all things by the principles of eternal truth as seen