*o cc< -ct3< ccccc 2 dec cc ccc cc cc X CCC CCCCc cc c _ ' ' < c CC ( cc. cc c CC' c cc cccc« ,CCc cc cc xCccC ( C ccXi . c/fiiy, UJT Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library http://www.archive.org/details/calvinismsixstOOkuyp ^W w met, JUN 10 1924 ^ ____G&1y rrjsrc ■_ jQ .0 ^ ^.oea^i^^GCS^ ^l & FIRST LECTURE. CALVINISM IN HISTORY. A traveller from the old European Continent, disembark-, ing on the shore of this New World, feels as the Psalmist says, "his thoughts crowd upon him like a multitude". Compared with the eddying waters of this new stream of life, the old stream, in which he has moved seems, almost frostbound and dull; and while at home the stealing phan- tom of approaching Social Death now and then made him shiver for the horrors of the future, here the rippling and sparkling waves around him speak of an everhigher develop- ment of human life to come. Here, on American ground, he catches at once the magic spirit of Longfellow's "Ex- celsior". Here, for the first time, he realizes how so many divine potencies, hidden away in the bosom of mankind from our very creation, but which our old world was in- capable of developing, are now beginning to disclose their inward splendour, thus promising a still richer store of surprises for the Future. Not that you would ask me to forget the superiority which, in many respects, the Old World may still claim, in your eyes, as well as in mine. Old Europe remains even now the bearer of a longer historical past, and therefore stand- before you as a deeper CALVJNISM in history. rooted tree, hiding between its leaves the more matured fruits of life. In one word, you are yet in your Springtide, — we are passing through our Fall; — and the harvest of Autumn has an enchantment of its own. But, although, on the other hand, I fully acknowledge your privilege that (to use another simile) the train of life travels with you so immeasureably faster than with us, — leaving us miles and miles behind, — still we both feel that there is not a separate life in Old Europe and another here, but that it is one and the same current of human existence that rolls through both continents; — a vast unin- terrupted tide, which entered Europe from Asia, then passed from Europe to America, and is now further developing itself in this New World, ever moving westward. By virtue of our common origin you may call us bone of your bone, — we feel that you are flesh of our flesh, and although you are outstripping us in the most discouraging way, you will never forget that the historic cradle of 3 r our wondrous youth stood in our old Europe, and was rocked most gently in my once so mighty Fatherland. Moreover, besides this common parentage, there is an- other factor which, in the face of even a wider difference, would continue to unite your interests and ours. Far more precious to us, even than the development of human life, is the crown which ennobles it, and this noble crown of life for you and for me rests in the Christian name. That crown is our common heritage, and under the glory of that crown we are and feel united, in the closest and most holy brotherhood. It was not from Greece or Rome that the regeneration of human life came forth;— that mighty metamorphosis dates from Bethlehem and Golgotha; and if the Reformation, in a still more special sense, claims the love of our hearts, it is because it has dispelled the clouds of sacerdotalism, and has unveiled again to fullest view the glories of the cross. But, in deadly opposition to this Christian element, against this very Christian name, CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 3 and against its salutiferous influence in every sphere of life, has now arisen, with such a violent intensity, the storm of Modernism. . In 1789 the turning point was reached. Voltaire's mad cry "Ecrasez Pinfame" aimed at Christ himself, and this cry it was that gave utterance to the most hidden thought from which the French Revolution sprang. The fanatic outcry of another philosopher -'We no more need a God'', and the odious shibboleth "No God, no Master", of the Convention, — these were the sacrilegi- ous watchwords which at that time heralded the liberation of man as an emancipation from all Divine Authority. And if, in His impenetrable Wisdom, God employed that revolution as a means by which to overthrow the tyranny of the Bourbons, and to bring a judgment on the princes who abused His nations as their footstool, nevertheless the principle of that Revolution remains thoroughly anti- christian, and has since eaten its way like a cancer, dis- solving and undermining all that stood firm and consistent before our Christian faith. This anti-Christian power has since been strengthened ' by the richness of forms in which German Modernism un- folded itself, thereby rendering Pantheism so generally ac- ceptable that in Darwin's evolution — theory its idea of an uninterrupted process has been hailed as the physiological basis of every existing thing. And what is still more lamentable, even in the church of Christ itself this poison- ous toxin has forced an entrance, and under cover of a pious mysticism or in the garment of historic clearness, has attacked, first the sacredness of the church, after that the Holy Scripture, and at last even the holy person of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. No doubt therefore but that Christianity is emperilled by great and serious dangers. Two world-views are wrestling one with another, in mortal combat. Modernism is bound to build a world of its own from the data of the natural man, and to con- CALVINISM IX HISTORY. struct man himself from the data of nature, while, on the other hand, all those who reverently bend the knee to Christ and worship Him as the Son of the Living God are bent upon saving the "Christian Heritage" for the world at large, confident, by this heritage, to lead her up to a still higher development. This is the struggle in Eu- rope, this is the struggle in America, and this also, is the struggle for principles, in which my own country is enga- ged, and in which I myself have exhausted for nearly forty years every energy at my disposal. In this struggle Apologetics have advanced us no single step. Apologetics have invariably begun by abandoning the assailed breastwork, in order to entrench themselves in a ravelin behind it. Therefore, from the first, I have always said to myself: —"If the battle is to lie fought with honour and with a hope of victory, then principle must be arrayed against principle ; then it must be felt that in Modernism the vast energy of an all-embracing principle assails us, and then it must be understood that we have to take our stand in a principle of equally comprehensive and far-reaching power. And this powerful principle is not to lie invented nor formulated by ourselves, but it is to be taken and applied as it presents itself in life, with its roots in the past, and its branches spread over our present existence. It will not do therefore to say that this principle is Christianity itself. Such a general principle, taken in an absolute sense, necessarily remains a pure abstraction, and only in its his- torical, its farthest, and its purest revelation can it supply us with the needed vigor for resistance; — and when thus taken, I found and confessed, and I still hold, that this manifestation of the Christian principle is given us in Cal- vinism. ^ In Calvinism has my heart found rest. From Calvinism have I drawn the inspiration, firmly and resolu- tely to take my stand in the thick of this great conflict of principles. And therefore, when I was invited to give CALVINISM IX HISTORY. the Stone Lectures here this year, I could not hesitate a moment as to my choice of subject. Calvinism, as the only decisive, lawful, and consistent defence for Protestant nations against encroaching, and overwhelming Modernism, — this of itself was bound to be my theme. Not that my personal experience can be of interest to you, but because it is the same conflict which engages you here, and us in Europe, and because in such an universal struggle, the more a testimony is based upon personal experience, the higher its significance, and the richer its value. Allow me therefore, in six lectures, to speak to you on Calvinism. First on Calvinism in History, that we may clearly understand what Calvinism is. Then on Calvinism and Religion. Again on Calvinism as a political phenomen- on; — After that on Calvinism as a social force, first in Science, and then in Art. And, finally, on the hope which in Calvinism, is laid away for the Future. Clearness of presentation demands that in this first lec- ture I begin by fixing the conception of Calvinism historically. To prevent misunderstanding we must first know what we should not, and what we should, understand by it. Start- ing therefore from the current use of the term. I find that this is by no means the same in different countries and spheres of life. The name Calvinist is used in our times most generally as a sectarian name; this is not the case in Protestant, but in Romish countries, especially in Hungary and France. In Hungary the Reformed Churches have a membership of some two and one-half millions, and in both the Romish and Jewish press her members are constantly stigmatized by the non-official name of "Calvinists". A derisive name applied even to those who have divested themselves of all traces of sympathy with the taith of their fathers. The same phenomenon presents itself in France, especially in the Southern parts, where „Calviniste" is CALVINISM IN HISTORY. equally, and even more emphatically a sectarian stigma, which does not refer to the faith or confession of the stigmatized person, but is simply put upon every communicant of the Reformed Churches, even though he be an atheist. George Thiebaud, known for his anti-semitic propaganda, has at the same time revived the anti-Calvinistic spirit in France, and even in the Dreyfus case "Jews and Calvinists" were arraigned by him as the two anti-national forces as prejudi- cial to the ''esprit gaulois". This sectarian use of the name "Calvinist" is derived from the Romish polemists, who from the beginning were accustomed to attack by this ominous term what seemed to them the most dangerous form of Protestantism. This first significance however of the name "Calvinist" is of no importance whatsoever for the understanding and appreciation of Calvinism, because it is purely external, and independent of all spiritual con- fession. — Directly opposed to this is the second use of the word Calvinism, and this I call the confessional use. In this sense a Calvinist is represented exclusively as the outspoken subscriber to the dogma of fore -ordination. They who disapprove of this strong attachment to the doctrine of- predestination cooperate with the Romish polemist, in that by calling you "Calvinist" they represent you as a victim of dogmatic narrowness and what is worse still as being dangerous to the real seriousness of moral life. On the other hand there are theologians, who from fulness of conviction are open defenders of Predestination, and who count it their honor to be Calvinists, but who are so impressed with the disfavor attached to the "Calvinistic name", that for the sake of commending their conviction, they prefer to speak rather of Augustinianism than of Cal- vinism. This is what Hodge did— whose studies I so deeply appreciate. — The ecclesiastical title of some Baptists and Methodists indicates a third use of the name Calvinist. No less a man than Spurgeon belonged to a class of Baptists who in England call themselves "Calvinistic Baptists", and CALVINISM IX HI-. the Whitfield Methodists in Wales to this day bear the name of "Calvinistic Methodists". Thus here also it indicates a confessional difference, but is applied as the name for special church-denominations. Without doubt this practice would have been most severely criticized by Calvin himself. During his life-time no Reformed Church ever dreamed of naming the Church of Christ after any man. The Lutherans have done this, the Reformed Churches never But beyond this sectarian, confessional, and ecclesiastical use of the name "Calvinist", it serves moreover as a scientific term, either in an historical, philosophical or political sense. His- torically the name of Calvinism indicates the channel in which the Reformation moved, so far as it was neither Lutheran, Anabaptist nor Socinian. In the philosophical sense we understand by it that system of conceptions, which under the influence of the master-mind of Calvin raised itself to dominance in the several spheres of life. And as a political name Calvinism indicates that political movement which has guaranteed the liberty of nations in constitutional statesmanship; first in Holland; then in England; and since the close of the last century in the United States. In this scientific sense the name of Calvinism is especially current among German scholars. And the fact that this not only is the opinion of those who are themselve> ol Calvinistic sympathies, but that also scholars who have abandoned every confessional standard of Christianity never- theless assign this profound significance to Calvinism, appears from the testimony borne by three of our best men of science, the first of whom, Dr. Robbert Fruin declares that: "Calvinism came into the Netherlands consisting of a logical system of Divinity, of a democratic Church-order of its own, impelled by a severely-moral sense, and as enthu- siastic for the moral as for the religious reformation of mankind". Another historian, who was even more out- spoken in his rationalistic sympathies writes: "Calvinism is the highest form of development reached by the religious CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 8 and political principle in the 16th century". And a third authority acknowledges that Calvinism has liberated Swit- zerland, the Netherlands and England, and in the Pilgrim Fathers has provided the impulse to the prosperity of the United States And only in this last-named, strictly- scientific sense do I desire to speak to you on Calvinism as an independent general tendenc} r , which from a motherprinciple of its own has developed an independent form both for our life and for our thought among the nations of Western Europe and North America, and at present even in Southern Africa. The domain of Calvinism is indeed far broader than the narrow confessional interpretation would lead us to suppose. The aversion to naming the Church after a man gave rise to the fact, that though in France the Protestants were called " Huguenots ", in the Netherlands " Beggars", in Great Britain "Puritans" and "Presbyterians", and in North America "Pilgrim Fathers", yet all these products of the reformation which on 3 r our contiuent and ours bore the special Re- formed type .... were of Calvinistic origin. But the extent of the Calvinistic domain should not be limited to these purer revelations. Nobody applies such an exclusive rule to Christianit} r . Within its boundaries we embrace not only Western Europe, but also Russia, the Balkan States, the Armenians, and even Menelik's empire in Abyssinia. Therefore it is but just that in the same way we should include in the Calvinistic fold those churches also which have diverged more or less from its purer forms. In her 39 articles the Church of England is strictly Calvinistic, even though in her Hierarchy and Liturgy she has abandoned the straight paths, and has met with the serious results of this depar- ture in Pusyism and Ritualism. The confession of the In- dependents was equally Calvinistic, even though in their conception of the Church, the organic structure was broken by individualism. And if under the leadership of Wesley most Methodists became opposed to the theological inter- pretation of Calvinism, it is nevertheless the Calvinistic CALVINISM IN" HISTORY. spirit itself that created this spiritual reaction against the petrifying church-life of the times. In a given sense there- fore it may be said, that the entire field which in the end was covered by the Reformation, so far as it was not Lutheran and not Socinian, was dominated in principle by Calvinism. Even the Baptists applied for shelter at the tents of the Calvinists. It is the free character of Calvinism that accounts for the rise of these several shades and dif- ferences, and of the reactions against their excesses. By its hierarchy Romanism is and remains uniform. Luther- anism owes its similar unity and uniformity to the ascend- ency of the prince, whose relation to the Church is that of "summus episcopus" and to its "ecclesia docens". Cal- vinism on the other hand, which sanctions no ecclesiastical hierarchy, and no magisterial interference, could not develop itself except in many and varied forms and deviations, thereby of course incurring the clanger of degeneration, provoking in its turn all kind of one-sided reactions. With the free development of life, such as was intended by Calvinism, the distinction could not fail to appear between a centrum, with its fulness and purity of vitality and strength, and the broad circumference with its threatening declen- sions. But in that very conflict between a pure and less pure development the steady working of its spirit was guaranteed to Calvinism. Thus understood Calvinism is rooted in a form of religion which was peculiarly its own, and from this specific reli- gious consciousness there was developed first a peculiar theology, then a special church-order, and then a given form for political and social life, for the interpretation of the moral world-order, for the relation between nature and grace, between Christianity and the world, between church and state, and finally for art and science, and amid all these life-utterances it remained always the self-same Cal- vinism, in so far as simultaneouly and spontaneousl}' all these developments sprang from its deepest life-principle. CALVINISM IN HISTORY. lO Hence to this extent it stands in line with those other great complexes of human life, kwown as Paganism, Islamism, Romanism and Protestantism, by which we distinguish four entirely different worlds in the one collective world of human life. And if strictly considered you should coordinate Chris- tianity and not Protestantism with Paganism and Islamism, it is nevertheless better to place Calvinism in line with them, because Calvinism claims to embody the Christian idea more purel} T and accurately than could Romanism and Lutheranism. In the Creek world of Russia and the Balkan States the national element is still dominant, and therefore the Christian faith in these counties has not been able to produce a form of life of its own from the root of its nrystical orthodoxy. In Lutheran countries the interference of the magistrate has prevented the free working of the spiritual principle. Hence of Romanism only can it be said, that it has embodied its life-thought in a world of conceptions and utterances entirely its own. But by the side of Romanism, and in opposition to it, Calvinism made its appearance, not merely to create a different Church-form, but an entirely different form for human life, to furnish human societ} r with a different method of existence, and to populate the world of the human heart with different ideals and conceptions. That this had not been realised until our time, and is now acknowledged by friend and enemy in consequence of a better study of history, should not surprise us. This would not have been the case, if Calvinism had entered life as a well-constructed system, and had presented itself as an outcome of study. But its origin came about in an en- tirely different way. In the order of existence life is first. And to Calvinism life itself was ever the first object of its endeavours. There was too much to do and to suffer to devote much time to study. What was domi- nant was Calvinistic practice at the stake and in the field of battle. Moreover the nations among whom Calvinism gained the day,— such as the Swiss, the Dutch, the English CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 11 and the Scotch— were by nature not very philosophically predisposed. Especially at that time life among those nations was spontaneous and void of calculation, and only later on has Calvinism in its parts become a subject of that special study by which historians and theologians have traced the relation between Calvinistic phenomena and the all-embracing unity of its principle. It can even be said that the need of a theoretic and systematic study of so incisive and comprehensive a phenomenon of life, only arises, when its first vitality has been exhausted, and when for the sake of maintaining itself in the future it is com- pelled to greater accuracy in the drawing of its boundary- lines. And if to this you add the fact that the stress of reflecting our existence in the mirror of our consciousness with unity of image is far stronger in our philosophical age than it ever was before, it is readily seen that both the needs of the present, and the care for the future, com- pel us to a deeper stud)- of Calvinism. In the Romish Church everybody knows what he lives for, because with clear consciousness he enjoys the fruit of Rome's interpre- tation of life. Even in Islam you find the same power of a conviction of life dominated by one principle. Protestant- ism alone wanders about in the wilderness without aim or direction, moving hither and thither, without making any progress. This accounts for the fact that among Protestant nations Pantheism, born from the New German Philosophy and owing its concrete evolution-form to Darwin, claims for itself more and more the supremacy in every sphere of human life, even in that of theolog} 7 , and under all sorts of names tries to overthrow our Christian traditions, and is bent even upon exchanging the heritage of our fathers for a hopeless modern Buddhism. The leading thoughts, that had their rise in the French Revolution at the close of the last, and in German philosophy in the course of the present century, form together a world- and life-view which is diametrically opposed to that of our fathers. Their CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 12 struggles were for the sake of the glory of God and a purified Christianity, the present movement wages war for the sake of the glory of man, being inspired not by the humble mind of Golgotha but by the pride of Humanism. And why did we, Christians, stand so weak, in the face of this Modernism? Why did w r e constantly lose ground? Simply because we were devoid of an ecmal unity of life-conception, such as alone could enable us with irresistible energy to rebuff the enemy at the frontier. This unity of life-conception however is never to be found in a vague conception of Protestantism winding itself as it does in all kind of tor- tuosities but you do find it in that mighty historic process, which as Calvinism dug a channel of its own for the power- ful stream of its life. By this unity of conception alone as given in Calvinism, you in America and w T e in Europe, might be enabled once again to take our stand, by the side of Romanism, in opposition to modern Pantheism. Without this unity of starting-point and historic interpretation of life the power must fail us to maintain our independent position, and our strength for insistence ebb away. The supreme interest here at stake however forbids our accepting without more positive proof the fact that Cal- vinism really provides us with such an unit}^ of life-con- ception, and that Calvinism is not a partial nor was a merely temporary phenomenon, but is an all-embracing system of principles, such as rooted in the past, is able to strengthen us in the present and to fill us with confi- dence for the future. Hence we must first ask what are the required conditions for such general systems of life, as Paganism, Tslamism, Romanism and Modernism, and then show that Calvinism really fulfills these conditions. These conditions demand in the first place that from a special principle a peculiar insight should arise into the three fundamental relations of all human life; viz., l.our CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 13 relation to God 2. our relation to man, and 3. our relation to the world. Hence the first claim demands : that such an action shall find its starting-point in a special interpretation of our relation to God. This is not accidental but imperative. If such an action is to put its impress upon our entire life, it must go out from that point in our consciousness, in which our life is still undivided and lies comprehended in its unity, — not in the spreading vines but in the root from which the vines spring. This point of course lies in the antithesis between all that is finite in our human life and the infinite that lies beyond it s Here alone we find the common source from which the different streams of our human life spring and separate themselves. Personally it is our repeated experience that in the depths of our hearts, at the point where we disclose ourselves to the Eternal One, all the rays of our life converge as in one focus, and there alone regain that harmony which we so often and so painfully lose in the stress of daily duty. In prayer lies not only our unity with God, but also the unity of our personal life. Movements in history therefore which do not spring from this deepest source are always partial and transient, and only those historical acts, which arose from these deepest depths of man's personal existence embrace the whole of life and possess the required permanence. This was the case with Paganism, which in its most general form is known by the fact, that it surmises, assumes and worships God in the creature. This applies to lowest Animism, as well as to highest Buddhism. Paganism does not rise to the conception of the independent existence of a God beyond and above the creature. But even in this imperfect form it has for its starting-point a definite inter- pretation of the relation of the infinite to the finite, and to this it owed its power to produce a finished form for human society. Simply because it possessed this significant starting- point was it able to produce a form of its own for the CALVINISM IX HISTORY. 14 whole of human life. It is the same with Islamism. which is characterized by its purely anti-paganistic ideal cutting off all contact between the creature and God. Mohammed and the Koran are the historic names, but in its nature the Crescent is only the absolute antithesis to Paganism. Islam isolates God from the creature, in order to avoid all commingling with the creature. As antipode Islam was possessed of an equally far-reaching tendenc\', and was also able to originate an entirely peculiar world of human life. The same is the case with Romanism. Here also the papal tiara, the hierarchy, the mass, etc., are but the out- come of one fundamental thought: viz., that God enters into fellowship with the creature by means of a mystic middle-link which is the Church ; not taken as a mystic organism, but as a visible, palpable and tangible institute. Here the Church stands between God and the world, and so far as it was able to adopt the world and to inspire it, Romanism also created a form of its own for human society. And now by the side of and over against these three, Calvinism takes its stand with a fundamental thought which is equally profound. It does not seek God in the creature, as Paganism ; it does not isolate God from the creature, as Islamism ; it posits no mediate communion be- tween God and the creature, as does Romanism ; but proclaims the exalted thought that although standing in high majesty above the creature God enters into immediate fellowship with the creature by means of his Holy Spirit. This is even the heart and kernel of the Calvinistic con- fession of predestination. There is communion with God. but only in entire accord with his counsel of peace from all eternity. Thus there is no grace, but such as comes to us immediately from God. At every moment of our exist- ence our entire spiritual life rests in God Himself. The Deo Soli Gloria was not the starting-point but the result, and predestination was inexorably maintained not for the sake of separating man from man, nor in the interest of CALVINISM IX HISTORY. 15 personal pride, but in order to guarantee from eternity to eternity a direct and immediate communion with the Liv- ing God. The opposition against Rome aimed therefore with the Calvinist first of all at the dismissal of a church, which placed itself between the soul and God. The church consisted not in an office, nor in an independent institute, the believers themselves were the Church, in as much as by faith they stood in touch with the Almighty. Thus as in Paganism, Islamism and Romanism, so also in Calvinism is found that proper, definite interpretation of the funda- mental relation of man to God, required as the first con- dition of a real life-system, that shall be able to create a form of its own for our human life. Meanwhile I anticipate two objections. In the first place it may be asked: whether I do not claim honors for Cal- vinism which belong to Protestantism in general. To this I reply in the negative. When I claim the honor for Calvinism of having reestablished the direct fellowship with God, I do not undervalue the general significance of Protestantism. In the Protestant domain, taken in the historic sense, Lutheranism alone stands b} r the side of Calvinism. Now I wish to be second to none in my praises of Luther's heroic initiative. In his heart, rather than in the heart of Calvin, was the bitter conflict fought which led to the world historic breach. Luther can be interpreted without Calvin, but not Calvin without Luther. To a great extent Calvin entered upon the harvest of what the hero of Wittenberg had sown in and outside Germany. But when the question is put who had the clearest insight into the refor- matory principle, worked it out most fully, and applied it most broadly, history points to the Reformer of Geneva and not to the hero of Wittenberg. Luther as well as Calvin contended for a direct fellowship with God, but he took it up from its subjective, anthropological side, and not from its objective, theological side as Calvin did. Luther's starting- point was the special-soteriological principle of a justifying CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 16 faith : while Calvin's extending far wider, lay in the general cosmological principle of the sovereignty of God. As a natural result of this Luther also restored the Church as the representative and authoritative '•teacher" between God and the believer, while Calvin was the first to seek the Church in the believers themselves. As far as he was able Luther still leaned upon the Romish view of the sacraments, and upon the Romish cultus, while Calvin was the first in both to draw the line which extended imme- diately from God to man and from man to God. Moreover in all Lutheran countries the Reformation originated from the princes rather than from the people, and thereby passed under the power of the magistrate, who took his stand in the Church officially as her "summus episcopus", and therefore was unable to change either the social or the political life in accordance with its principle. Lutheranism restricted itself to an exclusively ecclesiastical and theolo- gical character, while Calvinism put its impress in and outside the church upon every department of human life. Hence Lutheranism is nowhere spoken of as the creator of a peculiar life-form; even the name of " Lutheranism" is now rarely mentioned; while the students of history with increasing unanimity recognize Calvinism as the creator of a world of human life entirely its own. And if for this reason " Lutheranism " is of no account to us here, the general conception of "Protestantism" as such is of still less significance, because this indicates merely a negative idea, and is now valued most highly in those deviating circles in which the breach with our reformatory confession has become a final one. The second question which may be put by way of objection is: If it is true that every general development- form of life must find its starting-point in a peculiar interpretation of our relation to God,— how then do you explain the fact, that Modernism has led to such a general conception, although it sprang from the French Revolution CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 17 which broke with all religion on principle. The question answers itself. By excluding all reckoning with the Living God from your conceptions and practice, such as is implied in the cry: "no God no master", you certainly bring to the front an interpretation of your own for our relation to God. A government that recalls its ambassador and breaks every relation with another power, declares thereby that its relation to the government of that country is a strained relation, which generally ends in war. This is the case here. The leaders of the French Revolution, not being acquainted with any relation to God except that which existed through the mediation of the Komish Church annihilated all relation to God, because they wished to annihilate the power of the Church; and as a result of this they declared war against every religious confession. But this of course very really implied a fundamental and special interpretation of our relation to God. It was the declaration that henceforth God was to be considered as dead, if not yet to the heart, at least to the state, to society and to science. To be sure in passing from French into German hands, Modernism could not rest content with such a bare negation, but the result shows how from that moment it clothed itself in either pantheism or agnosticism, and under each disguise it maintained the expulsion of God from practical and theoretical life. The effect worked upon our life by our relation to God is of the highest importance to our processes of thought, and both by Pantheism and Agnosticism this precious element is reduced to nothing. All that is conceived and established by man under the inspiration of these two philosophical tendencies rests exclusively on the human factor, and is unable to rise above the low level of Humanism. Thus I maintain that the conception of our relation to God is the fundamental interpretation which dominates every general development-form of human life, and that for us this conception is given in Calvinism, thanks to its CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 18 fundamental interpretation of an immediate fellowship of God with man and man with God. To this I add that Calvinism has neither invented nor conceived this funda- mental interpretation, but that God himself implanted it in the hearts of its heroes and its heralds. We face here no product of a clever intellectualism, but the fruit of a work of God in the heart, or, if you like, an inspiration of history. This point should be emphasized. Calvinism has never burned its incense upon the altar of genius, it has erected no monument for its heroes, it scarcely calls them by name. One stone only in a wall at Geneva remains to remind one of Calvin. His very grave has been forgotten. Was this ingratitude? By no means. But if Calvin was appreciated, already in the 16 th and 17" 1 centuries the impression was vivid that it was One greaterthan Calvin, even God Himself, who had wrought here His work. Hence no general movement in life is so devoid of deliberate compact and conventionality of radiation as this. Simultaneously Calvinism had its rise in all the countries of Western Europe, and it appeared, among those nations not because the university was in its van, or because scholars led the people, or because a magistrate placed himself at their head, but it sprang from the hearts of the people themselves: with weavers and farmers, with tradesmen and servants, with women and young maidens ; and in every instance it exhibited the same characteristic: viz., strong Assurance of faith not only without the intervention of the Church, but even in opposition to the Church. The human heart had attained unto eternal peace with its God; strengthened by this Divine fellowship, it discovered its high and holy calling, to consecrate every department of life and every energy at its disposal to the glory of God; and therefore when those men or women, who had become partakers of this Divine life, were forced to abandon their taith, it proved impossible, they could not deny their Lord and thousands and tens of thousands burned at the stake, CALVINISM IX HISTORY. 19 not complaining but exulting, with thanksgiving in their hearts and psalms upon their lips. Calvin was not the author of this, but God Who through his Hoi}' Spirit had wrought in Calvin that which He had wrought in them. Calvin stood not above them, but as a brother by their side, a sharer with them of God's blessing. In this way Calvinism came to its fundamental interpretation of an immediate fellowship with God, not because Calvin inven- ted it, but because in this immediate fellowship God Himself had granted to our fathers a privilege, of which Calvin was the first to become clearly conscious. This is the great work of the Holy Spirit in history, by which Calvinism has been consecrated, and which interprets to us its wondrous energ}-. There are times in history when the pulse of religious life beats faintly; and there are times when its beat is bounding, and the latter was the case in the 16 th century among the nations of Western Europe. At the close of the middle ages the question of faith dominated every activity in public life. New history starts out from this faith, even as the history of our times starts from the unbelief of the French Revolution. What law this pulse- like movement of religious life obeys, we cannot tell, but it is evident that there is such a law, and that in times of high religious tension the inworking of the Holy Spirit upon the heart is irresistible. The apostle refers to it when he speaks of a divine force which is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And this mighty inworking of God was the experience of our Calvinists, Puritans and Pilgrim Fathers. It was not in all individuals to the same degree, for this never happens in any great movement, but they who formed the centre of life in those times, who were the promoters of that mighty change, they experienced this •-* CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 20 higher power to the fullest : and they were the men and women of every class of society and nationality who by God Himself were admitted into communion with the majesty of His eternal Being. Thanks to this work of God in the heart the persuasion that the whole of a mans life is to be lived as in the Divine Presence has become the fundamental thought of Calvinism. By this decisive idea, or rather by this mighty fact, it has allowed itself to be controlled in every department of its entire domain. It is from this mother-thought that the all-embracing life-view of Calvinism sprang. This brings us of itself to the second condition, with which, for the sake of creating a special form for human life every profound movement has to comply: viz., a fun- damental interpretation of its own touching the relation of man to man. How we stand toward God is the first, and how we stand toward man is the second principal question, which decides the tendency and the construction of our life. There is no uniformity among men, but endless multi- formity. In creation itself the difference has been established between woman and man. Physical and spiritual gifts and talents cause one person to differ from the other. Past generations and our own personal life create distinctions. The social position of the rich and poor also differs. These differences may be weakened or accentuated by our inter- pretation of life, and Paganism and Islamism, Romanism as well as Modernism, and so also Calvinism have all taken their stand in this question in accordance with their primordial principle, If as Paganism contends, God dwells in the creature, divine superiority is exhibited in what- ever is high among men. In this way it got its demi- gods, hero-worship, and finally its sacrifices upon the altar of Divus Augustus. On the other hand whatever is lower and godless gives rise to the systems of caste CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 21 in India and in Eg} r pt, and to slavery everywhere else, thereby placing one man under a base subjection to his fellowman. Under Islamism, which dreams of its paradise of houries sensuality usurps public authority, and woman is the slave of man, even as the kafir is the slave of the Mosliin. Romanism, rooting in Christian soil, over- comes the absolute character of distinction, and renders it relative, but in order to interpret every relation of man to man hierarchically. There is a hierarchy among the angels of God, a hierarchy in God's Church, a hierarchy iu life, and so it has an entirely aristocratic interpretation of life as the embodiment of the ideal. Finally Modernism, which denies and abolishes every differ- ence, cannot rest until it has made woman man and man woman, and, putting every distinction on a common level, kills life by placing it under the ban of uniformity. One type must answer for all, one uniform, one position and one and the same development of life ; and whatever goes beyond and above it, is looked upon as an insult to the common consciousness. In the same way Calvinism has derived from its fundamental relation to God a peculiar interpretation of man's relation to man, and it is this only true relation, which since the 16 th century has been gaining the day. If Calvinism places our entire human life im- mediately before God, then it follows that all men or women, rich or poor, weak or strong, dull or talented, as creatures of God, and as lost sinners, have no claim what- soever to lord it one over an other, aud that we stand as equals before God, and consequently equal as man to man. Hence we cannot recognize any distinction among men, save such as has been imposed by God Himself, in that He gave one to have authority over the other, or enriched one with more talents than the other, in order that the man of more talents should serve the man with less, and in him serve his God. Hence Calvinism condemns not merely all open slavery and systems of caste, but also all CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 22 covert slavery of woman and of the poor; it is opposed to all hierarchy among men, it tolerates no aristocracy save such as is able, either in person or in family, by the grace of God, to exhibit superiority of character or talent, and to show that it does not claim this superiority for self-aggrandizement or ambitious pride, but for the sake of spending it in the service of God. Hence Calvinism was bound to find its utterance in the democratic inter- pretation of life ; to proclaim the liberty of nations ; and not to rest until both politically and socially every man, simply because he is man, should be recognized, respected and dealt with as a creature created after the Divine likeness. This was no outcome of envy. It was not the man of lower estate who reduced his superior to his level in order to usurp the higher place, but it was a kneeling in concert of all men at the feet of the Holy One of Israel. This accounts for the fact that it made no sudden break with the past. Even as in its early stage Christianity did not abolish slavery, but undermined it by a moral judgment, so Calvinism allowed the provisional continuance of the conditions of hierarchy and aristocracy as traditions belong- ing to the Middle Ages. It was not laid up as a charge against him, that William of Orange was a prince of royal lineage; he was the more honored for it. But inwardly Calvinism has modified the structure of society not by the envying of classes, nor by an undue esteem for the possess- ions of the rich, but by a more serious interpretation of life. By better labor and a higher development of character the middle and working classes have provoked the nobility and the wealthier citizens to jealousy. First looking to God, and then to one's neighbor was the impulse, the mind and the spiritual custom to which Calvinism gave entrance. And from this holy fear of God and this united stand before the face of God a holier democratic idea has devel- oped itself, and has evermore gained ground. This result has been brought about by nothing so much as by fellow- CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 23 ship in suffering. When, though loyal to the Romish faith, the dukes of Egmont and Home ascended the same scaffold on which, for the sake of a nobler faith, the working-man and the weaver had been executed, in that bitter death the reconciliation between the classes received its sanction* By his bloody persecutions, Alva the Aristocrat advanced the prosperous development of the spirit of Democracy. To have placed man on a footing of equality with man, so far as the purely human interests are concerned, is the immor- tal glory which incontestably belongs to Calvinism. The difference between it and the Utopian dream of equality of the French Revolution is : that while in Paris it was one action in concert against God, here all were on their knees before God, consumed with a common zeal for the glory of His Name. The third fundamental relation which decides the inter- pretation of life is the relation which you bear to the world. As said before, there are three principle elements with which you come in touch : viz., God, man and the world. Having reviewed the relation in which Calvinism places you to God and to man, the third and last funda- mental relation is in order: viz., your attitude toward the world. Of Paganism it can be said in general, that it places too high an estimate upon the world, and therefore to some extent it both stands in fear of, and loses itself in it. On the other hand Islamism places too low an estimate upon the world, makes game of it and triumphs over it in reaching after the visionary world of a sensual paradise. For the purpose in hand however we need say no more of either, since both for Christian Europe and America the antithesis between man and the world has assumed the narrower form of the antithesis between the world and the Christian. The traditions of the Middle Ages gave rise to this. Under the hierarchy of Rome the Church and CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 24 the World were placed over against each other, the one as being sanctified and the other as being still under the curse. Everything outside the Church was in the hands of demons, and exorcism banished this demoniacal power from every- thing that came under the protection, influence and inspi- ration of the Church. Hence in a Christian country the entire social life was to be covered by the wings of the Church. The magistrate had to be anointed and confess- ionally bound, art and science had to be placed under ecclesiastical animation and censure, trade and commerce had to be bound to the Church by the tie of guilds, and from the cradle to the grave family life was to be placed under ecclesiastical guardianship. This was a gigantic- effort to claim the entire world for Christ, but one which of necessity brought with it the severest judgment upon every life-tendenc3 r which either as heretical or as demon- iacal withdrew itself from the blessing of the Church. Hence the stake was lit alike for witch and heretic, for in principle they lay under the same bam And this deadening theory was carried out with iron logic, not from cruelty, nor from any low ambition, but from the lofty purpose of saving the christianized world, i.e., the world as overshadowed by the Church. This of course avenged itself in the intro- duction of the world into the Church, and in the antithesis between the noisy carnival and the mystical absorption in the sufferings of Christ, the discord between spiritual aspirations and worldly sensualism came out in the most irritating wa}^. Escape from the world was the counterpoise in monastic and partly even in clerical orders, which emphasized holiness in the centrum of the Church in order to wink the more lightly at worldly excesses without. As a natural result the world corrupted the Church, and by its dominion over the world the Church proved an obstacle in the way of the world's free development of its life. Thus making its appearance in a well-ordered social state Calvinism has wrought an entire change in the CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 25 world of thoughts and conceptions. In this also, placing it self before the face of God, it has not only honored man for the sake of his likeness to the Divine image, but also the world as a Divine creation, and has at once placed to the front the great principle that there is a particular grace which works Salvation, and a common grace by which God, maintainsing the life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it, arrests its process of corruption, and thus allows the untrammeled development of our life in which to glorify Himself as Creator. Thus the Church receded in order to be nothing more nor less than the congregation of believers, and in every department the life of the world was not emancipated from God, but from the dominion ol the Church; so that from the high moral standard among God's people alone the world might receive the antidote to its indwelling corruption. Thus domestic life regained its independence, trade and commerce realized their strength in liberty, art and science were set free from every ecclesias- tical bond and restored to their own inspirations, and man began to understand the subjection of all nature with its hidden forces and treasures to himself as a holy duty, imposed upon him by the original ordinances of Paradise. Henceforth the curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life, life itself for the reason of its being secular being none the less divine. To praise God in the Church and serve Him in the world became the inspiring impulse, and in the Church, strength was to be gathered by which to resist temptation and sin in the world. Thus puritanic sobriety went hand in hand with the reconquest of the entire life of the world, and Calvinism gave the impulse to that new development which dared to face the world with the Roman thought: nil humanum a me alienum puto, although never allowing itself to be intoxicated by its poisonous cup. CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 26 Especially in its antithesis to Anabaptism Calvinism ex- hibits itself in bold relief. For Anabaptism adopted the opposite method, and in its effort to evade the world it confirmed the monastic starting-point generalizing it to a rule for all believers, and it was not from Calvinism, but from this anabaptistic principle, that Akosmism had its rise among certain Protestants in Western Europe. In fact Anabaptism adopted the Romish theor} r , with this difference: that it placed the kingdom of God in the room of the Church, and abandoned the distinction between the two moral standards, one for the clergy and the other for the laity. For the rest the Anabaptist's standpoint was: 1. that the unbaptized world was under the curse, for which reason he withdrew from all civil institutions; and 2. that the circle of baptized believers — with Rome the Church, but with him the kingdom of God — was duty bound to take all civil life under its guardianship and to remodel it; and so John of Leyden violently established his shameless power at Munster as King of the New Zion, and his devotees ran naked through the streets of Amster- dam. Hence on the same grounds on which Calvinism rejected Rome's theory concerning the world, it rejected the theory of the Anabaptist, and proclaimed that the Church must withdraw again within its spiritual domain, and that in the world we should realize the potencies of God's common grace in order that while emancipating the world from the Church we in our public life should feel bound by the holy ordinances of God. Thus it is shown that Calvinism has a sharply-defined starting-point of its own for the three fundamental relations of all human existence: viz., our relation to God, to man and to the world. For our relation to God: an immediate fellowship of man with the Eternal, independently of priest or church. For the relation of man to man : the recognition in each person of human worth, which is his by virtue of his creation after the Divine likeness, and therefore of the CALVINISM IX HISTORY. equality of all men before God and the legislation, each one occupying the position appointed him of God, and endowed with the talents divinely bestowed for divine purposes. And for our relation to the world: the recognition that in the whole world the curse is restrained by grace, that the life of the world is to be honored in its independence, and that we must, in every domain, discover the treasures and develop the potencies hidden by God in the world and in her life, the fear of God remaining our never failing guarantee against her corruption. This justifies us fully in our statement that Calvinism duly answers the three above- named conditions, and thus is incontestably entitled to take its stand by the side of Paganism, Islamism, Romanism and Modernism, and to claim for itself the glory of possessing a fixed well-defined principle of an all-embracing tendency. But even this is not all. The fact that in a given circle Calvinism has formed an interpretation of life of its own, from which both in the spiritual and secular domain a special system arose for domestic and social life, justifies it to assert itself as an independent formation ; but does not yet credit it with the honor of having led humanity as such up to a higher stage in its development, and there- fore has not as yet attained that standpoint which alone could give it the right to claim for itself the energy and devotion of our hearts. In China it can be asserted with equal right that Confucianism has produced a form of its own for life in a given circle and with the Mongolian race that form of life rests upon a theory of its own. But what has China done for humanity in general, and for the steady development of our race? Even so far as the waters of its life were clear, they formed nothing but an isolated lake. Almost the same remark applies to the high development which was once the boast of India and to the state of things in Mexico and Peru in the davs of Montezuma and CALVINISM W HISTORY. 28 the Iucas. In all these regions the people attained a high degree of development, but stopped there and, remaining ioslated, in no way proved a benefit to humanity at lai-ge. This applies more strongly still to the life of the colored races on the coast and in the interior of Africa ; a far lower form of existence reminding us not even of a lake but rather of pools and marshes. There is but one world- stream, broad and fresh, which from the beginning bore the promise of the future ; this stream had its rise in Middle -Asia and the Levant, and has steadily continued its course from East to West. From Western Europe it has passed on to your Eastern States and from thence to California. The sources of this stream of development are found in Babylon and in the valley of the Nile. From thence it flowed on to Greece. From Greece it passed on to the Roman Empire. From the Romanic nations it continued its way to the North-western parts of Europe, and so from Holland and England it reached at length your continent. At present that stream is at a standstill. Its Western course through China and Japan is impeded, meanwhile no one can tell what forces for the future may yet lie slumbering in the Slavic races which have thus far failed of progress. But while this secret of the future is still veiled in mystery, the course of this world-stream from East to West can be denied by none; and therefore I am justified in saying: that Paganism, Islamism and Romanism are the three successive formations which this development had reached, when its further direction passed over into the hands of Calvinism; and that Calvinism in turn is now denied this leading influence by Modernism, the daughter of the French Revolution. The succession of these four phases of development did not take place mechanically, with sharply outlined divisions and parts. This development of life is organic, and therefore each new period roots in the past. In its deepest logic Calvinism had already been apprehended by Augustine, had long CALVINISM IX HISTORY. 2!> before Augustine been proclaimed in Rome by the Apostle in the Epistle to the Romans, and from Paul goes back to Israel and its prophets, yea to the tents of the patriarchs. Romanism does not make its appearance suddenly, as b} r one stroke of magic, but is the joint product of the three potencies of Israel's priesthood, the cross of Calvary, and the world-organization of the Roman Empire. Islam joins itself to Israel's Monism, to the Prophet of Nazareth, and to the tradition of the Koraishites. And even the Pagan- ism of Babylon and Egypt on the one hand, and of Greece and Rome upon the other, stands organically related to what lay behind these nations, preceding the prosperity of their lives. But even so it is as clear as day that the supreme force in the central development of the human race moved along successively from Babylon and Egypt to Greece and Rome, then to the chief regions of the Papal dominion, and finally to the Calvinistic nations of Western Europe. If Israel flourished in the days of Babylon and Egypt, however high its standard, the direction and the develop- ment of our human race was not in the hands, of the sons ot Abraham but in those of the Belshassars and the Pharaohs. Again, this leadership does not pass from Ba- bylon and Egypt on to Israel but to Greece and Rome. However high the stream of Christianity had risen when Islam made its appearance, in the 8 th and 9 th centuries the followers of Mahomet were our teachers and with them rested the issue of the world. And though the hegemony of Romanism still maintained itself for a short time after the peace of Munster, no one questions the fact, that the higher development which we are now enjoying we owe neither to Spain nor to Austria, nor even to the Germany of that time, but to the Calvinistic countries of the Netherlands and to England of the 16 th century. Under Louis XIV Romanism arrested this higher development in France, but only that in the French Revolution it might exhibit a ghastly caricature of Calvinism, which in its sad conse- CALVINISM IX HISTORY. 3© quences broke the inner strength of France as a nation, and weakened its international significance. The fundamental idea of Calvin has been transplanted from Holland and England to America, thus driving our higher development ever more Westward, until on the shores of the Pacific it now reverently abides whatsoever God has ordained. But no matter what mysteries the future may yet have to disclose the fact remains that the broad stream of the development of our race runs from Babylon to San Fran- cisco, through the five stadia of Babylonian-Egyptian, Greek- Roman, Islamitic, Romanistic and Calvinistic civilization, and the present conflict in Europe as well as in America finds its main cause in the fundamental antithesis between the energy of Calvinism which proceded from the throne of God, found the source of its power in the Word of God, and in every sphere of human life exalted the glory of God, — and its caricature in the French Revolution, which proclaimed its unbelief in the cry of: no God no master; and which presently in the form of German Pantheism is reducing itself more and more to a modern Paganism. Thus you see I spoke none too boldly, when I claimed for Calvinism the honor of being neither an ecclesiastic, nor a theologic, nor a sectarian conception, but one of the prin- cipal phases in the general development of our human race ; and among these the youngest, whose high calling it still remains to influence the further course of human life. And I make this statement without in any way undervaluing the importance of its caricature in Modernism, — but of this T wile speak later on.— Just now however allow me to indicate another circumstance, which strengthens my prin- cipal statement, viz., the com mingling of blood as thus far the physical basis of all higher human development. From the high-lands of Asia our human race came down in groups, and these in turn have been divided into races and nations; CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 31 and in entire conformity to the prophetic blessing of Noah the children of Shem and of Japheth have been the sole bearers of the development of the race. No impulse for any higher life has ever gone forth from the third group. With the two other groups a twofold phenomenon presents itself. There are tribal nations which have isolated themselves and others which have intermingled. Thus on the one hand there are groups which have dominated exclusively their own inherent forces and on the other hand groups which by commingling have crossed their traits with those of other tribes, so having attained a higher per- fection. It is noteworthy that the process of human development steadily proceeds with those groups whose historic characteristic is not isolation but the commingling of blood. On the whole the Mongolian race has held itself apart, and in its isolation has bestowed no benefits upon our race at large. Behind the Himalayas a similar life secluded itself, and hence failed to impart any permanent impulse to the outside world. Even in Europe we find that with the Scandinavians and Slavs there was hardly any intermingling of blood, and, consequently having failedto de- velop a richer type, they have taken little part in the general de- velopment of human life. On the other hand the tablets from Babylon in our great Museums by the two languages of their inscriptions still show that in Mesopotamia the Aryan element of the Accadians mingled itself at an early period with the Semitic- Babylonian, and Egyptology leads us to conclude that in the land of the Pharaohs we deal from the beginning with a population produced lay the mingling of two different tribes. No one believes any longer the pretended race-unity of the Greeks. In Greece as well as in Italy we deal with races of a later date who have intermingled with the earlier Pelasgians, Etruscians and others. Islam seems to be exclusively Arabic, but a study of the spread of Islamism among the Moors, Persians, Turks and other series of subjected tribes, with whom intermarriage was CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 32 common, at once reveals the fact that especially with Ma- hometans the commingling of blood was even greater than with their predecessors. When the leadership of the world passed into the hands of the Romanic natious, the same phenomenon presented itself in Italy, Spain, Portugal and France. In these cases the Aborigines were generally Basques or Celts, the Celts in turn being overcome by the Germanic tribes, and even as in Italy the East-Gots and Lombards, so in Spain the West-Gots, in Portugal the Swabians and in France the Franks instilled new blood into debilitated veins and to this wonderful rejuvenation the Romanic nations owed their vigor until far into the 16 th century. Thus in the life of nations the same pheno- menon repeats itself which so often strikes the Historian as a result of international marriages among princely families, viz.. that the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons, the Oranges and the Hohenzollern, for instance, have been, centmy after century, productive of a host of most remarkable statesmen and heroes. The raiser of stock has aimed at the same effect in the crossing of different breeds, and botanists harvest large profits by obeying the same law of life with plants. And by itself it is not difficult to perceive that the union of natural powers, divided among different tribes, must be productive of a higher development. To this it should be added that the history of our race does not aim at the improvement of any single tribe, but at the devel- opment of mankind taken as a whole and therefore needs this commingling of blood in order to attain its end. For this reason we may expect that Calvinism also will obey this law, in fact history shows that the nations among whom Calvinism flourished most widely, exhibit in even way this mingling of races. In Switzerland the Cermans, united with Italians and French ; in France the Gauls, with Franks and Burgundians; in the Lowlands Celts and Welch with Germans ; so also in England the old Celts and Anglo- saxons, were afterwards raised to a still higher standard CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 33 of national life by the invasion of the Normans. Indeed it ma}- be said, that the three principal tribes of Western Europe, the Celtic, Romanic and Germanic elements under the leadership of the Germanic, give us the genealogy of the Calvinistic nations. In America, where Calvinism has come to unfold itself in a still higher liberty, this comm- ingling of blood is assuming a larger proportion than has ever yet been known. Here the blood flows together from all the tribes of the ancient world, and again we have the Celts from Ireland, the Germans from Germany and Scandinavia, united to tbe Slavs from Russia and Poland, who promote still farther this already vigorous intermingling of the races. This latter process takes place under the higher exponent that it is not merely the union of tribe with tribe, but that the old historic nations are dissolving themselves in order to allow the reunion of their members in one higher unity, constantly assimilated by the American type. In this respect also Calvinism fully meets the conditions imposed on every new phase of development in the life of humanity. It spread itself in a domain where it found the commingling of blood stronger than under Romanism, and in America raised this up to its highest conceivable realization. Thus it is shown that Calvinism does not only meet the necessary condition of the mingling of blood, but that in the process of human development it also represents, with respect to this, a further stadium. In Babylon this com- mingling of blood was of small significance ; it gains in importance with the Greeks and Romans; it goes further under Islamism ; is dominant under Romanism ; but only among Calvinistic nations does it reach its highest perfec- tion. Here in America it is achieving the intermingling of all the. nations of the old world. A similar climax of this process of human development is also exhibited lyy Cal- CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 34 viuism in the fact, that only under the influence of Cal- vinism does the impulse of public activity proceed from the people themselves. In the life of the nations also there is development from the under-age period to that of maturity. As in the family-life, during the years of childhood, the direction of affairs is in the hands of the parents, so also in the life of the nations it is but natural that during their under-age period first the Asiatic despot, then some eminent ruler, afterwards the priesthood, and finally both priest and magistrate together should stand at the head every movement. The history of the nations in Babylon oi and under the Pharaohs, in Greece and Rome, under Islamism and under the papal system, fully confirms this course of development. But it is self-evident that this could not be the permanent state of things. Just because by this progress of development the nations finally came of age, they must at length reach that stadium in which the people awoke, stood up for their rights, and originated the movement that was to direct the course of future events; and in the rise of Calvinism this stadium appears to have been reached. Thus far every forward movement had gone forth from the authorities in State, Church or Science, and from thence had descended to the people. In Calvinism on the other hand the people themselves stand out in their broad ranks and from a spontaneity of their own, press forward to a higher form of social life and conditions. Calvinism had its rise with the people. In Lutheran countries the magistrate was still the leader in public advances, but in Switzerland, among the Huguenots, in Belgium, in the Netherlands, in Scotland and now in America the people themselves created the impetus. They seemed to have matured; to have reached the period in which they were of age. Even when in some cases the nobility took an heroic stand for the oppressed, their activity ended in nothing, and the middle class alone, by its undaunted euergy, broke the barrier, and among these it CALVINISM IX HISTORY. 35 was the "common folk" to whose heroic initiative William the Silent as he hemself acknowledges owed the success of his undertaking. Hence as a central phenomenon in the development of humanity Calvinism is not only entitled to an honorable position by the side of Paganistic, Islamistic and Romanistic forms, since like these it represents a peculiar principle domin- ating the whole of life, but it also meets every required condition for the advancement of human development another stadium. And yet this would remain a bare possibility without any corresponding reality, if history did not testify that Calvinism has actually caused the .stream of human life to flow in another channel, and has ennobled the social life of the nations. And therefore in closing I assert that Calvinism not only held out these possibilities but has also understood how to realize them. To prove this, just ask yourselves what would have become of Europe and America, in case in the 16th century the star of Calvinism had not suddenly arisen on the horizon of Western Europe. In that case Spain would have crushed the Netherlands. In England and Scotland the Stuarts would have carried out their fatal plans. In Switzerland the spirit of half- heartedness would have gained the day. And the beginnings of life in this new world would have been of an entirely different character. And as a necessary sequence the balance of power in Europe would have returned to its former stand. Protestantism would not have been able to main- tain itself in politics. No further resistance could have been offered to the Romish-conservative power of the Hapsburgs, the Bourbons and the Stuarts ; and the free development of the nations, as seen in Europe and America, would simply have been prevented. The whole American continent would have remained subject to Spain; the history of both continents would have become a most mournful one and it ever remains a question whether the spirit of the CALVINISM IN HISTORY. 36 Leipzig Interim would not have succeded, by way of a romanized Protestantism, in reducing Northern Europe again to the sway of the old Hierarchy. The enthusiastic- devotion of the best historians of the second half of this century to the struggle of the Netherlands against Spain, as one of the finest subjects of investigation, only explains itself by the conviction, that if the power of Spain had not been broken by the heroism of the Calvinistic spirit, the history of the Netherlands, of Europe and of the world would have been as painfully sad and dark as now, thanks to Calvinism, it is bright and inspiriting. Professor Fruin rightly remarks that: "In Switzerland, in France, in the Netherlands, in Scotland and in England, and wherever Protestantism has had to establish itself at the point of the sword, it was Calvinism that gained the day."' Call to mind that this turn in the history of the world could not have been brought about except by the implant- ing of another principle in the human heart, and by the disclosing of another world of thought to the human mind ; that only by Calvinism the psalm of liberty found its way from the troubled conscience to the lips; that Calvinism has captured and guaranteed to us our constitutional civil rights; and that simultaneously with this there went out from Western Europe that mighty movement which promo- ted the revival of science and art, opened new avenues to commerce and trade, beautified domestic and social life, exalted the middle classes to positions of honor, caused philan- thropy to abound, and more than all this, elevated, purified and ennobled moral life by puritanic seriousness, and then judge for yourselves whether it will do to banish any longer this God-given Calvinism to the archives of history, and whether it is so much of a dream to conceive that Calvinism has yet a blessing to bring and a bright hope to unveil for the future. You know what has taken place in Southern-Africa these last twenty years. The struggle of the Boers in the Trans- CALVINISM IX HISTORY. 37 vaal against Albion's superior powers must often have reminded you of your own past. In what was achieved at Majuba or at the Spitskop, and recently in the invasion of Dr. Jameson by Kruger and his handful of faithful followers the heroism of old Calvinism was again brilliantly evident. If Calvinism had not been passed on from our fathers to the Boers, their blood would not have been so heroically shed, and no free republic would have arisen in the Sonth of the Dark Continent. This proves that Calvinism is not dead — that it still carries in its germ the vital energy of the days of its former glory. Even as a grain of wheat from the Sarcophagi of the Pharoahs, when again committed to the soil, bears fruit a hundredfold, so Calvinism still carries in itself a wondrous power for the future of the nations. What has been achieved in South Africa by the Boers, we Christians of both Continents should achieve in our still holier struggle for Christianity, marching under the banner of the Cross against the spirit of the times And for this purpose, of all Protestant tendencies Calvinism alone arms us with an inflexible principle, by the strength of that principle guaranteeing us a sure, though tar from easy victory. &1 c ~> A SECOND LECTURE. CALVINISM AND RELIGION. The conclusion arrived at in my first Lecture, was first, that, scientifically speaking, Calvinism means the completed evolution of Protestantism, resulting in a both higher and richer stage of human development. Further, that the world- view of Modernism, with its starting-point in the French Revolution, can claim no higher privilege than that of presenting an atheistic caricature of the brilliant ideal proclaimed by Calvinism, therefore being unqualified for the honor of leading us higher on. And, lastly, that who- soever rejects atheism, or to speak still more boldly, refuses to accept antitheism, as his fundamental thought, is bound to go back to Calvinism, not to repristinate it in its worn-out form, but once more to catch hold of the Calvinistic principles, in order to embody them in such a form as, suiting the requirements of our own century, may restore the needed unity to Protestant thought and the lacking energy to Protestant practical life. In my present Lecture, therefore, treating of Calvinism and Religion, first of all I will try to illustrate the domi- nant position occupied by Calvinism in the central domain of our worship of the Most High. The fact that, in the CALVINISM AND RELIGION. religious domain, Calvinism has occupied from the first a peculiar and impressive position, nobody will deny. As if by one magical stroke, it created its own Confession, its own Theology, its own Church Organisation, its own Church Discipline, its own Cultus, and its own Moral Praxis. And continued historical investigation proves with increas- ing certainty that all these new Calvinistic forms for our religious life were the logical product of its one fundamental thought and the embodiment of one and the same prin- ciple. Measure the energy which Calvinism here displayed by the utter incapability Modernism evinced in the same domain by the absolute fruitlessness of its endeavours. Ever since it entered its "mystical" period, Modernism also, both in Europe and in America, has acknowledged the necessity of carving out a new form for the religious life of our time. Hardly a century after the once glittering tinsel of Rationalism, now that Materialism is sounding its retreat in the ranks of science, a kind of hollow piety is again exercising its enticing charms, and every day it is becoming more fashionable to take a plunge into the warm stream of mysticism. With an almost sensual delight this mod- ern mysticism quaffs its intoxicating draught from the nectar-cup of some intangible infinite. It was even purposed that, on the ruins of the once so stately Puritanic building, a new religion, with a new ritual should be inaugurated, as a higher evolution of religious life. Already, for more than a quarter of a century, the dedication and solemn opening of this new sanctuary has been promised us. And yet it has all led to nothing. No tangible effect has been produced. No formative principle lias emerged from the imbroglio of hypotheses. Not even the beginning of an associative movement is as yet perceptible, and the long looked for plant has not even lifted its head above the barren soil. — Now, in contraposition to tin's, look at the giant spirit of Calvin, who, in the sixteenth century. with one master stroke, placed before the gaze of the CALVINISM AND RELIGION. astonished world an entire religious edifice, erected in the purest Scriptural style. So rapidly was the whole building completed that most of the spectators forgot to pay atten- tion to the wonderful structure of the foundations. In all that the religious modern thought has, I will not say created, as with a master hand, but heaped together, like an unsuccessful amateur, — not one nation, not one family, hardly one solitary soul has (to use Augustine's words), ever found the requiescat for his "broken heart," while the Reformer of Geneva, by his might)' spiritual energy, unto five nations at once, both then, and after the lapse of three centuries, has afforded guidance in life, uplifting of the heart unto the Father of Spirits, and holy peace, for ever. This naturally leads to the question — what was the secret of this wonderful energy? Allow me to present the answer to this question, — first in Religion as such, next in religion as manifested in the Life of the Church, and lastl} r in the fruit of Religion for Practical Life. First, then, we must consider Religion as such. Here four mutually dependent fundamental questions arise; — (1) Does Religion exist for the sake of God, or for Man ? (2) Must it operate directly or mediate!)/? (3) Can it remain partial in its operations or has it to embrace the whole of our personal being and existence? and, (4) Can it bear a normal, or must it reveal an exceptional, i.e. a soteriological character? To these four questions Calvinism answers : (1) Man's religion ought to be not egotistical, and for man, but ideal, for the sake of God. (2) It has to operate not mediately, by human interposition but directly, from the heart. (3) It may not remain partial, as running alongside of life, but must lay hold upon our whole existence. And (4) Its character should be soteriological, i.e., it should spring, not from our fallen and therefore abnormal nature, but from the new man, re- CALVINISM AND RELIGION. stored by palingenesis to his original standard. Allow we />u then successively to elucidate each of these four points. Modern religious philosophy ascribes the origin of religion to a potency, from which it could not originate, but which acted merely, as its supporter and preserver. It has mistaken the dead prop of the living shoot for the living shoot itself. Attention is called, and very properly, to the contrast between man. and the overwhelming power of the cosmos which surrounds him, and now religion is introduced as a mystical energy, trying to strengthen him against this immense power of the cosmos which inspires him with such deadly fear. Being conscious of the dominion which his own unseen soul exercises over his tangible body, he infers quite naturally, that Nature, also, must be moved by the impulse of some hidden spiritual being. Animistically, therefore, he first explains the movements of nature as the result of an indwelling army of spirits, and tries to catch them to conjure them, to bend them to his advantage. Then, rising from this atomistic idea to a more monistic conception, he begins to believe in the existence of personal gods, — first in the sense of a disorderly host of unconnected beings, but soon concentrated hierarchically, under some supreme Being, — expecting from these divine beings, who stand above nature, effectual assistance against the fiendish power of Nature. And finally, grasping the contrast between the spiritual and the material, he paj^s homage to the Primative and Supreme Spirit, as standing over against all that is visible, till, in the end. having abandoned his faith in such an extramuudane Spirit, as a personal being, and charmed by the loftiness of his own human spirit, he prostrates himself before some impersonal ideal of which in self- adoration, he deems himself to lie the worshipful bearer. But whatever may be the various stages in the progress of this egoistic religion, it never overcomes its subjective CALVINISM AND RELIGION. character, remaining always a religion for the sake of man. Men are religious in order to conjure the spirits hovering behind the veil of Nature, to free themselves from the oppressive sway of the cosmos, or to raise themselves above all that is visible, in the consciousness of their spiritual superiority. It matters not whether the Llama priest confines the evil spirits in his jugs, whether the nature-gods of the Orient are invoked to find shelter agaiust the forces of nature, whether the loftier gods of Greece are worshipped in their ascendency above nature, or whether, finally, idealistic philosophy presents the spirit of man himself as the real object of adoration;— in all these different forms it is and remains a religion fostered for man's sake, aiming at his safety, his liberty, his elevation, and partly also at his triumph over death. And even when a religion of this kind has developed itself into monotheism, the god whom it worships remains invariably a god who exists in order to help man, in order to secure good order and tranquillity for the State, to furnish assist- ance and deliverance in time of need, or to strengthen the nobler and higher impulse of the human heart in its ceaseless struggle with the degrading influences of sin. The conse- quence of this is that all such religion thrives in time of famine and pestilence, it flourishes among the poor and oppressed, and it expands among the humble and the feeble; but it pines away in the days of prosperity, it fails to attract the well-to-do, it is abandoned by those who are more highly cultured. As soon as the more civilized classes enjoy tranquillity and comfort, and by the progress of science feel more and more delivered from the pressure of the cosmos, they throw away the crutches of religion, and with a sneer at everything holy, go stumbling forward on their own poor legs. This is the fatal end of egoistic religion; — it becomes superfluous and dissappears as soon as the egoistic interests are satisfied. This was the course of religion among all non-Christian nations, in earlier times, and the CALVINISM AXD RELIGION. t. same phenomenon is repeating itself in our own century, among nominal Christians of the higher, more prosperous and more cultured classes of society. On the continent of Europe at least, the modern and civilized middle classes deem themselves to have outgrown all religion. Now the position of Calvinism is diametrically opposed to all this. It does not deny that religion has also its human and subjective side;— it does not dispute the fact that religion is promoted, encouraged and strengthened by our disposition to seek help in time of need and spiritual eleva- tion in the face of sensual passions ; but it maintains that it reverses the proper order of things to seek, in these accidental motives, the essence and the very purpose of religion. The Calvinist values all of these as fruits which are produced by religion, and as props which give it support, but he refuses to honour them as the reason of its existence. Of course, religion, as such, produces also a blessing for man, but it does not exist for the sake of man; — it exists for the sake of God. It is not (rod who exists for the sake of His Creation; — the Creation exists for the sake of God. For, as the Scripture says, He has created all things for Himself. For this reason God Even impressed a religious expression on the whole of unconscious nature, — on plants, on animals and also on children. "The whole earth is full of His glory.** "How excellent is Thy Name oh God, in all the earth." "The Heavens declare the gloiy of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork." "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast ordained praise." Frost and hail, .snow and vapour, the abyss and the hurricane, — everything must praise God. But just as the entire creation reaches its culminating point in man, so also religion finds its clear expression only in man who is made in the image of God, and this not because man seeks it, but because God Him- self increated in man's nature the real essential religious expression, by means of the seed of religion, as Calvin defines it, sown in our human heart. CALVINISM AND RELIGION. God Himself makes man religious by means of the sen- sus divimtatis i.e. the sense of the Divine, which He causes to strike the chords on the harp of his soul. A sound of need interrupts the pure harmony of this divine melody, but only in consequence of sin. In its original form, in its natural condition, religion is exclusively a sentiment of admiration and adoration, which elevates and unites, not a feeling of dependence which severs and depresses. Just as the anthem of the Seraphim around the throne is one uninterrupted cry of "Holy, — Holy, —Holy"! so also the religion of man upon this earth should consist in one echoing of God's glory, as our Creator and Inspirer. The starting-point of every motive in religion is God and nut Man. Man is the instrument and means, God alone is here the goal, the point of departure and the point of arrival, the fountain, from which the waters flow, and at the same time, the ocean into which they finally return. To be irreligious is to forsake the highest aim of our existence, and on the other hand to covet no other existence than for the sake of God, to long for nothing but for the will of God, and to be wholly absorbed in the glory of the name of the Lord, such is the pith and kernel of all true religion. "Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy Will be done." is the threefold petition which gives utterance to all true religion. Our watchword must be.— "Seek first the kingdom of Cod," and after that think of your own need. First stands the confession of the absolute sovereignty of the Triune God; for of Him, through Him, and unto Him are all things. And therefore in prayer remains the deepest expression of all religious life. This is the fundamental conception of religion as maintained by Calvinism, and hitherto, no one has ever found a higher conception. For no higher conception can be found. The fundamental thought of Calvinism, at the same time the fundamental thought of the Bible, and of Christianity itself, leads, in the domain of religion to the realization of the highest CALVINISM AND RELIGION*. 8 ideal. Nor has the philosophy of religion in our own century, in its most daviug flights, ever attained a higher point of view nor a more ideal conception. The second principal question in all religion is whether it must be direct, or mediate. Must there stand a church. a priest, or, as of old, a sorcerer, a dispenser of sacred mysteries, between God and the soul, or shall all interven- ing links be cast away, so that the bond of religion shall bind the soul directly to God. Now we find that in all non-Christian religions, without any exception, human intercessors are deemed necessary, and in the domain of Christianity itself the intercessor intruded again upon the scene, in the saints of the cloisters, in the Blessed Virgin, in the host of angels, and in the priestly hierarchy of the clergy; and although Luther took the field against all priestly mediation, vet the church which is called by his name, renewed by its title of "eclesia docens" the office of mediator and steward of mysteries. On this point also it was Calvin, and he alone, who attained to the full realiza- tion of the ideal of pure religion. Religion as he conceived it must "nullis rnediis interpositis" ', i.e. without any creatu- rely intercession realize the direct communion between God and the human heart. Not because of any hatred against priests, as such, not because of any undervaluing of the saints, nor underestimating the significance of angels, but solely because Calvin felt bound to vindicate the essence of religion and the glory of God in that essence, and absolutely devoid of all yielding or wavering, he waged war, with holy indignation, against everything that interposed itself between the Soul and God. Of course he clearly perceived that in order to be fitted for the true religion, fallen man needs a Mediator, but such a mediator could not be found in any fellow-man. Only the God-man,— only God Himself could be such a mediator. And this mediatorship could be con- CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 9 firmed not by us, but only from the side of God, by the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit in the heart of the regenerated. In all religion God Himself must be the active power. He must wake us religious. He must give us the religious disposition, nothing being left to us but the power to give form and expression to the deep religious sentiment which He, Himself, stirred in the depth of our heart. There we see the mistake of those who regarded Calvin as only an Augustinus redivivus. Notwithstanding his sublime confession of God's holy grace, Augustine remained the Bishop. He kept his position between the Triune God and the layman. And although promenent among the most pious men of his time, he had so little insight into the real claims of thorough-going religion on behalf of laymen that in his dogmatics he lauds the church as the mystical Purveyor, into whose bosom God caused all grace to flow and from whose treasure all men had to accept it. Only he, therefore, who superficially confines his attention to predestination can confuse Augustinianism and Calvinism. Religion for the sake of wan carries with it the position that man has to act as a mediator for his fellow-man. Religion for the sake of God inexorably excludes every human mediatorship. As long as it remains the chief purpose of religion to help man, and as long as man is understood to deserve grace by his devotion, it is perfectly natural that the man of inferior piety should invoke the mediation of the holier man. Another must procure for him what he cannot procure for himself. The fruit on the brandies hangs too high, and, therefore, the higher-reaching man has to pluck it, and hand it down to his helpless comrade. If. on the contrary, the demand of religion is that every human heart must give glory to God, no man can appear before God on behalf of another. Then every single human being must appear personally, for himself, and religion achieves its aim only in the general priesthood of believers. Even the new-born babe must have received the seed of CALVINISM AND RELIGION. IO religion from God Himself; and in case it dies without being baptized, it must not be sent off to a limbus tnnocentium, but, if elected, enter, even as the long-lived, into personal communion with God. for all eternity. The importance of this second point, in the question (if religion, culminating, as it does, in the confession of per- sonal election, is incalculable. On the one hand, all religion must tend to make man free, that by a clear utterance he may express that general religious impression stamped, by God Himself, upon unconscious nature. On the other hand, every appearance of an interposing priest or enchanter in the domain of religion fetters the human spirit, in a chain which presses the more woefully the more the piety in- creases in fervor. In the Church of Rome, even at the present day, the dons catholiques are most closely confined in the fetters of the clerus. Only the Catholic whose piety has decreased, is able to secure for himself a partial liberty by loosening more than half-way, the tie which connects him with his church. In the Lutheran churches the clerical fetters are less confining, y%t far from being loosened, entirely. And only in churches which take their stand in Calvinism, do we find that spiritual independence which enables the believer to oppose, if need be, and for God's sake, even the most powerful office-bearer in his church. Only he who personally stands before God on his own account, and enjoys an uninterrupted communion with God, can properly display the glorious wings of liberty. And both in Holland and in France, in England as well as in America, the historic result affords most undeniable evidence of the fact that despotism has found no more invincible antagonist, and liberty of conscience no braver, no more resolute champions than the followers of Calvin. In the last analysis, the cause of this phenomenon lies in the fact that the effect of every clerical interposition in- variably was, and must be, to make religion external and to smother it with sacerdotal forms. Only where all priestly CALVINISM AND RELIGION. II intervention disappears, where God's sovereign election binds the inward soul directly to God Himself, and the ray of divine light enters straightway into the depth of our heart, only there does religion, in its most absolute sense, gain its ideal realization. This leads me, naturally, to the third religious question : Is religion partial, or is it all-subduing, and comprehen- sive, — universal in the strict sense of the word ? Now, if the aim of religion is found in man himself and its realization is made dependent on clerical mediators, religion cannot be but partial. In that case it follows logically that every man confines his religion to those occurrences of his life by which his religious needs are stirred, and to those cases in which he finds human intervention at his disposal. The partial character of this sort of religion shows itself in three particulars: in the religious on/an through which, in the sphere in which, and in the group of persons among which religion thrives and flourishes. Recent controversy affords a pertinent illustration of the first limitation. The wise men of our generation maintain that religion has to retire from the precinct of the human intellect. It must seek to express itself either by means of the mystical feelings, or else by means of the practical will. Mystical and ethical inclinations are hailed with enthusiasm, in the domain of religion, but in that same domain the intellect, as leading to metaphysical hallucinations must be muzzled. Metaphysics and Dog- matics are increasingly tabooed, and Agnosticism is ever more loudly acclaimed as the solution of the great enigma. On the rivers of sentiment and of feeling, navigation is made duty-free; and ethical activity is becoming the only touch-stone for testing the religious gold; but Metaphysics are avoided as drowning us in a swamp. Whatsoever announces itself with the pretension of an axiomatic dogma, CALVINISM AND RELieiON. 12 is rejected as irreligious contraband. And although that same Christ Whom these very scholars honour as a religious genius has taught us most emphatically : ''Thou shalt love God, not only with all thy heart and with all thy strength, but also with all thy mind", } r et they, on the contrary, venture to dismiss our mind, or intellect, as unfit for use, in this holy domain, and as not fulfilling the requirements of a religious organ. Thus the religious organ being found, not in the whole of our being, but partially, being confined to our feelings and our will, consequently also the sphere of religious life must assume the same partial character . Tieligion was excluded from science, and its authority from the domain of public life; henceforth the inner chamber, the cell for prayer, and the secrecy of the heart should be its exclusive dwelling place. By his du solid, Kant limited the sphere of religion to the ethical life. The mystics of our own times banish religion to the retreats of sentiment, and the result is that, in many different ways, religion, once the central force of human life, is now placed alongside of it, and far from the thriving of the world, is understood to hide itself in a distant and almost private retreat. This brings us naturally to the third characteristic note of this partial view of religion; — religion as pertaining not to all, but only to the group of pious people among our generation. Thus the limitation of the organ of religion brings about the limitation of its sphere, and the limitation of its sphere consequently brings about the limitation of its group or circle among men. Just as art is understood to have an organ of its own, a sphere of its own, and therefore, also, its own circle of devotees, so also, according to this view . must it be with religion. Tt so happens that the great bulk of the people are almost devoid of mystical feeling, and energetic strength of will. For this reason they have either no perception of the glow of mysticism, or are in- capable of realty pious deeds. But there are also those whose inner life is overflowing with a sense of the Infinite, or who CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 13 are full of holy energy, and among such it is that piety and religion flourish most brilliantly both in their imaginative power, and in their realizing capability. — From a quite different standpoint, Rome gradually and increasingly came to favour the same partial views. She knew religion only as it existed in her own church, and considered the influence of religion to be confined to that portion of life which she had consecrated. I fully acknowledge that she tried to draw all human life as far as possible into the holy sphere, but everything outside this sphere, everything not touched by baptism, nor aspersed by her holy water, was devoid of all genuine religious efficiency. And just as Rome drew a boundary line between the consecrated and the profane sides of life, she also subdivided her own sacred precincts according to different degrees of religious intensity ;— the clergy and the cloisters constituting the Holy of Holies, the pious laity forming the Holy Place, thus leaving the Outer Court to those who, although baptized, continued to prefer to church-devotion the often sinful pleasures of the world; — a system of limitation and division, which for those in the Outer Court, ended in setting nine tenths of practical life outside of all religion. So religion was made partial, by carrying it from ordinary days to days of festival, from days of prosperity to times of danger and sickness, and from the fulness of life to the time of ap- proaching death. A dualistic system which has found its most emphatic expression in the praxis of the Carnival, giving Religion a full -way over the soul during the weeks of Lent, but leaving to the flesh a fair chance, before descending into this vale of gloom, to empty to the dregs the full cup of pleasure, if not of mirth and folly. Now this whole view of the matter is squarely antagonized by Calvinism, which vindicates for religion its full universal character, and its complete universal application. If every- thing that is exists for the sake of God, then it follows that the whole creation must give glory to Cod. The sun. CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 14 moon, and stars in the firmament, the birds of the air, the whole of Nature around us, but, above all, man himself, who, priestlike, must consecrate to God the whole of crea- tion, and all life thriving in it. And although sin has deadened a large part of creation to the glory of God, the demand, — the ideal-remains unchangeable, that every creature must be immersed in the stream of religion, and end by lying as a religious offering on the altar of the Almighty. A religion confined to feeling or will is there- fore unthinkable to the Calvinist. The sacred anointing of the priest of creation must reach down to his beard and to the hem of his garment. His whole being, including all his abilities and powers, must be pervaded by the sensus divinitatis, and how then could he exclude his rational con- sciousness, — the Xoyoi which is in him, — the light of thought which comes from God Himself to irradiate him? To possess his God for the underground world of his feelings, and in the outworks of the exertion of his will, but not in his inner self, in the very centre of his consciousness, and his thought: — to have fixed starting-points for the study of nature and axiomatic strongholds for practical life, but to have no fixed support in his thoughts about the Creator Himself, all of this was, for the Calvinist. the veiy denying of the Eternal Logos. The same character of universality was claimed by the Calvinist for the sphere of religion and its circle of influence among men. Everything that has been created was, in its creation, furnished by God with an un- changeable law of its existence. And because God has fully ordained such laws and ordinances for all life, therefore He demands that all life be consecrated to His service, in strict obedience. A religion confined to the closet, the cell, or the Church, therefore, Calvin, and with him every Calvinist, abhors. With the Psalmist, he calls upon heaven and earth, he calls upon all peoples and nations to give glory to God. God is present in all life, with the influence of His omnipresent and almighty power, and no sphere of human CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 15 life is conceivable in which religion does not maintain its demands that God shall be praised, that God's ordinances shall be observed, and that every labora shall be permeated with its ora in fervent and ceaseless prayer. Wherever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever be may apply his hand, in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry. or his mind, in tbe world of art. and science, he is. in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before tbe fare of his God, he is employed in the service of his God, be has strictly to obey bis God, and above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God. Consequently, it is impossible for a ( 'alvinist to confine religion to a single group, or to some circles among men. Religion concerns the whole of our human race. This race is the product of God's creation. It is His wonderful workmanship, His absolute possession. Therefore the whole of mankind must be imbued with the fear of God, — old as well as young, — low as well as high, not only those who have become initiated into His mysteries, but also those who still stand afar off. For not only did God create all men, not only is He all for all men, but His grace also extends itself, not only as a special grace, to the Elect, but also as a common grace (gratia communis), to all mankind. To be sure there is a concentration of religious light and life in the Church, but then in the walls of this church, there are wide open windows, and through these spacious win- dows the light of the Eternal radiates over the whole world. Here is a city, set upon a hill, which every man can see afar off.— Here is a holy salt that penetrates in every direction, checking all corruption. And even he who does not yet imbibe the higher light, or maybe shuts his eyes to it, is never- theless admonished, with equal emphasis, and in all things, to give glory to the name of the Lord. All partial religion drives the wedge of dualism into life/but the true ('alvinist never forsakes the standard of religious monism. One supreme calling must impress the stamp of one-ness upon all human life, because one God upholds and preserves it, CALVINISM AMD RELIGION. 16 just as He created it all. Yea, even sin, the utter and absolute reverse of religion, cannot be excluded from the monism of His Providence. The ego of God sets the crea- tion as the non-ego over against Him, and when this non-ego, in the case of man, developes into a contra-ego it will be found that, in the gloomy way of sin and misery . even the painful severance from God shall kindle the most ardent longing for His renewed Communion. This brings us, without any further transition, to our fourth main question, viz., Must religion be normal, or soteriologicaV\ I am aware that the nomistic conception of religion is usually considered as the opposite of the soteriological, but this latter distinction belongs to another order of conceptions. The dis- tinction which I have in mind here is concerned with the ques- tion whether in the matter of religion we must reckon de facto with man in his present condition as normal, or as having fallen into sin, and having therefore become abnormal '. In the latter case religion must necessarily assume a soterio- logical character. Now the prevailing idea, at present, favours the view that religion has to start from man as being normal. Not of course as though our race as a whole should conform already to the highest religious norm. This nobody affirms. Everyone knows better than to make such an absurd statement. As a matter of fact, we meet with much irreligiousness, and imperfect religious development continues to be the rule. But precisely in this slow aud gradual progress from the lowest forms to the highest ideals, the development demanded h\ this normal view of religion contends that it has found confir- mation. According to this view, the first traces of religion are found in animals. They are seen in the dog who adores his master, aud as the homo sapiens developes out of the Chimpanzee, so religion only enters upon a higher stage. Since that time religion has passed through all the notes CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 17 of the gamut. At present it is engaged in loosening itself from the hands of Church and dogma, to pass on to what is again considered a higher stage, namely, the unconscious feeling for the Unknown Infinite — This whole theory is opposed by that other and entirely different theory, which, without denying the preformation of so much that is human, in the animal, or the fact that (if you will allow me to say so) auimals were created after the image of man, just as man was created after the image of God, never- theless maintains that the first man was created in perfect relations to his God. i.e. as imbued by a pure and genuine religion, and consequently explains the many low, imperfect and absurd forms of religion found in Paganism, not as the result of his creation but as the result of his Fall. These low and imperfect forms of religion their second theory understands not as a process that leads from a lower to a higher, but as a lamentable degeneration,— a degeneration, which, in the nature of the case, makes the restoration of the true religion possible only in the soteriological way. Now in the choice between these two theories Calvinism allows no hesitation. Standing himself, with this question, too, before the face of God, the Calvinist is so impressed with the holiness of God that the consciousness of guilt immediately lacerates his soul, and the terrible nature of sin presses on his heart as with an intolerable weight. Every attempt to explain sin, as an incomplete stage on the way to perfection, arouses his wrath, as an insult to the majesty of God. He confessed, from the beginning, the same truth which Buckle has demonstrated empirically in his "History of Civilization in England", viz. that the forms in which sin makes its appearance may show us a gradual refinement but the moral condition of the human heart, as such, has remained the same throughout all the centuries. To the de profundis with which, thirty centuries ago, the soul of David cried unto God, the troubled soul of every child of God in the CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 18 sivteentb century still sounded a response with undi- minished power. The conception of the corruption of sin as the source of all human misery was nowhere more profound than in Calvin's environment. Even in the assertions which the Calvinist made, in accordance with Holy Scripture, concerning Hell and damnation, there is no coarseness, no rudeness, hut only that clearness which is the result of the utmost seriousness of life, and the undaunted courage of a deeprooted conviction of the holiness of the most High. Did not He, from Whose lips flowed the most tender, and the most winning words, — did not He, Himself also speak most decidedly and repeatedly of an "outer darkness*', of a "fire that cannot he quenched", of a "worm that dieth not"? And in this. also. Calvin was right, for to refuse to assent to these words is nothing but a lack of thorough- going consistency. It shews a want of sincerity in our confession of the holiness of God, and of the destructive power of sin. And on the contary, in this spiritual experience of sin, in this empirical consideration of the misery of life, in this lofty impression of the holiness of God, and in this staunchness of his convictions, which led him to follow his conclusions to the bitter end, the Calvinist found the roots of the necessity first of regeneration, for real existence, and secondly, the necessity of Revelation for clear consciousness. Now my subject does not induce me to speak in detail of regeneration, as that immediate act b}- which God, as it were, sets right again the crooked wheel of life. But it is necessary that I say a few words concerning Revelation, and the authority of the Holy Scriptures. Very improperly, the Scriptures have been represented, by Schweizer and others, as only the formal principle of the Reformed con- fession. The conception of genuine Calvinism lies much deeper. The meaning of Calvin was expressed in what he called the necessitas S. Script tirae; i. e. the need of Scriptural revelation. This necessitas 8. S. was for Calvin the unavoidable expression for the all-dominating authority of CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 19 the Holy Scriptures, and even now it is this very dogma which enables us to understand why it is that the Calvinist of to-day considers the critical analysis and the application of the critical solvent to the Scriptures as tantamount to an abandoning of Christianity itself. In Paradise, before the Fall, there was no Bible, and there will be no Bible in the future Paradise of glory. "When the transparent light, kindled by Nature, addresses us directly, and the inner word of God sounds in our heart in its original clearness, and all human words are sincere, and the function of our inner ear is perfectly performed, why should we need a Bible? What Mother loses herself in a treatise upon the "love of our children" the very moment that her own clear ones are playing about her knee, and God allows her to drink in their love with full draughts? But, in our present condition, this immediate communion with God by means of nature, and of our own heart is lost. Sin brought separation instead, and the opposition which is manifest nowadays, against the authority of the Holy Scriptures is based on nothing else than the false supposition that, our condition being still normal, our religion need not be soteriological. For of course, in that case, the Bible is not wanted, it becomes, indeed, a hindrance, and grates upon your feelings, since it intercedes a book between God and your heart. For what husband corresponds with his wife by writ, while she is sitting at the family table, beside him? Oral com- munication excludes writing. But like the ocean, the cm-rent of religion has its periods of high tide and low tide; and in our days this tide is low, just as, in the days of our fathers it was high. Hence it is that the sense of sin is so feeble in our hearts, and that conditions which, in times of great religious activity, every pious man felt as abnormal and degenerate, are now considered normal and proper. When the sun shines in your house, bright and clear, you turn off the electric light, but when the sun disappears, below CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 20 the horizon, you feel the necessitas luminis artificiosi, and the artificial light is kindled in every dwelling. Now this is the case in matters of religion. When there are no mists to hide the majesty of > the divine light from our eves, what need is there then for a lamp unto the feet, or a light upon the path ? But when history, experience and consciousness all unite in stating the fact that the light of Heaven has disappeared, and that we are groping about in the dark, then, a different, or if you will, an artificial light must be kindled for us;— and such a light God has kindled for us in His Holy Word. For the Calvinist, therefore, the necessity of the Holy Sriptures does not rest in ratiocination, but on the immediate testimony of the Holy Spirit, — on the testimonium spiritus Saudi. His insight into inspiration is the product of bis- torical deduction, and so is also every canonical declar- ation of the Scriptures. But the magnetic power with which the Scripture influences his soul, and draws it to itself, just as the magnet draws t he steel, is not derived, but immediate. All of this takes place in a manner, which, is not magical, nor unfathomably mystical, but clear, and easy to be understood. God regenerates us, — that is to say he rekindles in our heart the lamp sin had blown out. The necessary consecpience of this regeneration is an irre- conciliable conflict between the inner world of our heart and the world outside, and this conflict is ever the more intensified the more the regeneration principle pervades our consciousness. Now, in the Bible, God reveals, to the regenerate, a world of thought, a world of energies, a world of full and beautiful life, which stands in direct oppo- sition to his ordinary world, but which proves to agree in a wonderful way with the new life that has sprung up in his heart. So the regenerate begins to guess the identity of what is stirring in the depth of his own soul, and of what is revealed to him in Scripture, thereby learning both the inanity of the world around him. and the divine CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 21 reality of the world of the Scriptures, and as soon as this has become a certainty to him, he has personally received the testimony of the Hohj Spirit. Everything that is in him thirsted for the Father of all Lights and Spirits. Outside the Scripture, he discovered only vague shadows. But now as he looks upward, through the prism of the Scriptures, he rediscovers his Father and his God. For this reason he puts no shackles on science. If a man wants to criticize, — let him criticize. Such criticism even holds the promise that it will deepen our own insight into the structure of the scriptural edifice. Only no Calvinist ever allows the critic to dash out of his hand, for a moment, the prism itself which broke up the divine ray of light into its brilliant tints and colours. No appeal to the grace bestowed inwardly, no pointing to the fruits of the Holy Ghost, can enable him to dispense with the necessitas which the soteriological standpoint of religion among sinners carries with it. As mere entities we share our life with plants and animals. Unconscious life we share with the children, and with the sleeping man, and even with the man who has lost his reason. That which distinguishes us, as higher beings, and as wide awake men is our full self-consciousness, and there- fore, if religion, as the highest vital function, is to operate also in that highest sphere of self-consciousness, it must follow that soteriological religion next to the necessitas of inward palingenesis demands also the necessitas of an assistant light of revelation to be kindled in our twilight. And this assistant light, coming from God Himself, but handed to us by human agency, beams upon us in His holy Word. Summing up the results of our investigations thus far, I may express my conclusion as follows. In each one of the four great problems of religion, Calvinism has expressed its conviction in an appropriate dogma, and each time has made that choice which even now, after three centuries, satisfies the most ideal wants, and leaves the way open CALVINISM ANT) RELIGION. for an ever richer development. First, it regards religion, not in an utilarian, or eudaimonistic sense, as existing for the sake of man, but for God, and for God alone. This is its dogma of God's sovereignty. Secondly In religion there must be no intermediation of any creature between God and the soul; — all religion is the immediate work of God Himself, in the inner heart. This is the doctrine of Election. Thirdly, religion is not partial but universal : —this is the dogma of common or universal grace. And, finally, in our sinful condition, religion cannot be normal, but has to be soteriological ; — this is its position in the twofold dogma of the necessity of regeneration, and of the necessitas S. Scripturae. Having considered Religion as such, and coming now to tin- Church, as its organized form, or its phenomenal appearance, I shall present, in successive stages, the Calvi- nistic conception of the essence, the manifestation and the purpose of the Church of Christ upon earth. In its essence, for the Calvinist, the Church is a spiritual organism, including Heaven and earth, but having at present, its centre, and the starting-point for its action, not upon earth, but in Heaven. This is thus to be understood: God created the Cosmos geocentrically, i. e. He placed the spiritual centre of this Cosmos on our planet, and caused all the divisions of the kingdom of nature, on this earth, to culminate in man, upon whom, as the bearer of His image He called to consecrate the Cosmos to His glory. In God's creation, therefore, man stands as the prophet priest and king, and although sin has disturbed these high designs, yet God pushes them onward. He so loves His world that He has given Himself to it, in the person of His Son, and thus He has again brought our race and through our race. His whole Cosmos, into a renewed contact with eternal life. To be sure, many CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 23 branches and leaves off the tree of the human race shall fall away, yet the tree itself shall be saved ; on its new- root in Christ, it shall once more blossom gloriously. For regeneration does not save a few isolated individuals, finally to be joined together mechanically as an aggregate heap ; Regeneration saves the organism, itself, of our race. And therefore all regenerate human life, forms one organic body, of which Christ is the Head, and whose members are bound together by their mystical union with Him. But not before the Parousia, shall this new all-embracing organism manifest itself as the centre of the cosmos; at present it is hidden. Here, on earth it is only as it were its silliouet that can be dimly discerned. In the Future, fhi* new Jerusalem shall descend from God, out of Heaven, but at present it withdraws its beams from our sight in the mysteries of the invisible. And therefore the true sanc- tuary is now above; — on high are both the Altar of Atonement, and the incense Altar of Prayer; and on high is Christ, as the only priest who, according to MelchizedekV ordinance, ministers at the Altar, in the sanctuary, before God. Now, in the middle ages, the Church had more and more lost sight of this heavenly spiritual character;— she had beco- me worldly in her nature. The Sanctuary was again brought back to earth, the Altar was rebuilt of stone, and a priestly hierarchy had reconstituted itself for the ministra- tions of the Altar. Next of course it was necessary also to renew the tangible sacrifice on earth, and this at last brought the church to inveut the unbloody offering of the Mass. Now against all this, Calvinism opposed itself, not to contend against priesthood on principle, or against altars as such, or against sacrifice in itself, because the office of priest cannot perish, and everyone knowing the fact of sin realizes in his own heart, the absolute need of a propitiatory sacrifice, but in order to do away with all this worldly paraphernalia, and to call believers to lift up their eyes again, on high, to the real sanctuary, where CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 04 Christ, our only priest, ministers at the only real altar. The battle was waged, not against the sacerdotmm, but against the sacerdotalism, and Calvin alone fought this battle through to the end, with thorough .consistency. Lutherans and Episcopalians rebuilt a kind of altar, on earth; Calvinism alone dared to put it away, entirely. Consequently, among the Episcopalians, the earthly priest- hood was retained, even in the form of a hierarchy : in Lutheran lands the sovereign became summits episcopus and the divisions of ecclesiastical ranks were maintained; but Calvinism proclaimed the absolute equality of all who engaged in the service of the church, and refused to as- cribe to its leaders and officebearers any other character than that of Ministers, (i.e. servants.) That which, under the shadows of the Old Testament dispensation, furnished prophetical and visible instruction, now that the types were fulfilled, had become to Calvin, a detriment to the glory of Christ, and lowered the heavenly nature of the Church. Therefore, Calvinism could not rest until this worldly tinsel had ceased to charm and attract the eye. Only when the last grain of the sacerdotal leaven had been eliminated, could the Church on earth again become the outer court, from which believers could look up and onward to the real sanctuary of the living God. The Westminster Confession beautifully ets forth this heavenly all-embracing nature of the Church, when it says : — "The Catholic or Universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be, gathered into one, under Christ the Head, thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." Only thus was the dogma of the invisible church religiously consecrated and apprehended in its cosmological, and enduring significance. For, of course, the reality and fulness of the Church of Christ cannot exist on earth. Here is found, at most, one generation of believers at a time, in the portal of the Temple;— all pre- CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 25 vious generations, from the beginning and foundation of the world, had left this earth, and had gone up on high. Therefore, those who remained here, were, eo ipso, pilgrim*, meaning thereby that they were marching from the portal unto the Sanctuary itself, no possibility of salvation after death being left for those who had not been united to Christ, during this present life. No room could be left for masses for the dead, nor for a call to repenteuce on the other side of the grave, as German Theologians are now advocating. For all such processional, and gradual transi- tions, were regarded by Calvin as destroying the absolute contrast between the essence of the Church in Heaven, and its imperfect form, here on earth. The church on earth does not send up its light to Heaven, but the Church in Heaven must send its light down to the Church on earth. There is now, as it were, a curtain stretched, before the eye, which hinders it from penetrating while on earth, into the real essence of the Church. Therefore, all that remains possible to us on earth is hist, a mystical communion with that real Church, by means of the Spirit, and in the second place the enjoyment of the shadows which are dis- playing themselves on the transparent curtain before us. Accordingly, no child of God should imagine that the real Church is here on earth, and that behind the curtain there is only an ideal product of our imagination ; but, on the con- trary, he has to confess that Christ in human form, in our flesh, has entered into the invisible, behind the curtain; and that, with Him, around Him, and in Him, our Head, is the real church, the real and essential sauctuary of our salvation. After having thus clearly grasped the nature of the Church, in its bearing upon the re-creation both of our human race and of the Cosmos as a whole, let us now turn our attention to its form of manifestation, here on earth. CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 26 As such it displays, unto us, different congregations of believers, groups of confessors, living in some ecclesiastical union, in obedience to the ordinances of Christ Himself. The Church on earth is not an institution for the dispensation of grace, as if it were a dispensary of spiritual medicines. There is no mystical, spiritual order, gifted with mystical powers to operate with a magical influence upon laymen. There are only regenerated and confessing individuals, who, in accordance with the Scriptural command, and under the influence of the sociological element of all religion, have formed a so- ciety, and are endeavouring to live together in subordina- tion to Christ as their king. This, alone, is the Church on earth,— not the building, — not the institution,— not a spiritual order. For Calvin, the Church is found in the confessing individual* themselves, — not in each individual separately, but in all of them taken together, and united, not as they them- selves see fit, but according to the ordinances of Christ. In the church on earth, the universal priesthood of believers must lie realized. Do not misunderstand me. I do not say: The Church consists of pious persons united in groups for relig- ious purposes. That, in itself, would have nothing in common with the church. The real, heavenly, invisible church must manifest itself in the earthly church. If not, you will have a society, but no church. Now the real, essential church is and remains the body of Christ, of which regenerate persons are members. Therefore the Church on earth consists only of those who have been incorporated into Christ, who bow before Him, live in His Word, and adhere to His ordin- ances; and for this reason the church on earth has to preach the Word, administer the sacraments, and exercise discipline, and in everything to stand before the face of God.— This at the same time determines the form of government of this church on earth. This government, like the church itself, originates in Heaven, in Christ. He most effectually governs His church by means of the Holy Spirit, by whom He works in His members. Therefore, all being equal under CALVINISM AXD RELIGION. 27 Him, there can be no distinctions of rank among believers; there are only ministers, who serve, lead and regulate; a thoroughly Presbyterian form of government; the Church power descending directly from Christ Himself, into the congregation, ascending from the congregation to the ministers, and by them being administered unto the brethren. So the sovereignty of Christ remains absolutely monarchical, but the government of the Church on earth becomes democratic to its bones and marrow; a system leading logically to this other sequence, that all believers and all congregations being of an equal standing, no Church may exercise any dominion over another, but that all Churches are of equal rank, and as manifestations of one and the same body, can only be united synod ically, i. e. by way of confederation. Now let me draw your attention to another most important consequence of this same prin- ciple, viz. to the multiformity of denominations as the necessary result of the differentiation of the churches, according to the different degrees of their purity. If the church is considered to be an institute of grace, independent of the believers, or an institute in which a hiearchical priest hood distributes the treasury of grace entrusted to him, the result must be that this hierarchy extends itself through all nations and imparts the same stamp to all forms of ecclesiastical life. But if the church consists in the congregation of believers, if the churches are formed by the union of confessors, and are united only in the way of confederation, then the differences of climate and of nation, of historical past, and of disposition of mind come in to exercise a widely variegating influence, and multiformity in ecclesias- tical matters must be the result. A result, therefore, of very far-reaching importance, because it annihilates the absolute character of every visible Church, and places them all side by side, as differing in degrees of purity, but always remaining manifestations of one holy and catholic- church of Christ in Heaven. I do not say that Calvinistic CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 28 theologians have proclaimed this full consequence from the beginning. The desire for ruling power lurked also at the door of their heart, and even apart from this dangerous disposition it was right and natural for them theoretically to judge each church according to the stand- ard of their own ideals. But this does not in the least detract from the great significance of the fact that by regard- ing the Church, not as a hierarchy or institution, but as the gathering of individual confessors, they started for the life of the church, as well as for the life of the state, and civil society, from the principle not of compulsion, but of liberty. For, of course by virtue of this starting-point there was no other church-power superior to the local churches, save only what the churches themselves consti- tuted, by means of their confederation. Hence it followed of necessity that the natural and historic differences between men should also, wedgelike, force their way into the phe- nomenal life of the church upon earth. National differences of morals, differences of disposition and of emotions, differ- ent degrees in depth of life and insight, necessarily resulted in emphasizing first one, and then another side of the same truth. Hence the numerous sects and denominations into which the external church-life has fallen by virtue of this principle. So on our side there are denominations which may have departed from the rich deep and Ml Calvinistic Confession, in no small degree, even such as bitterly oppose more than one capital article of our con- fession; yet they all owe their origin to a deep-rooted opposition to sacerdotalism, and to the acknowledgment of the church as the '-congregation of believers," the truth in which Calvinism expressed its fundamental con- ception. And although this fact unavoidably led to much unholy rivalry, and even to sinful errors of conduct ; yet, after an experience of three centuries it must be confessed that this multiformity, which is inseparably connected with the fundamental thought of Calvinism, has been much more CALVINISM AXI> RELIGION. 29 favourable to the growth and prosperity of religious life than the compulsory uniformity in which Rome sought the very basis of its strength. And fruit is to be expected more abundantly still in the future, provided only that the principle of ecclesiastical liberty does not degenerate into indifference, and that no church, which, in its name and confession still upholds the Calvinistic banner, omits to fulfil its holy mission of recommending to others the superiority of its principles. Still another point must be brought forward in this connection. The conception of the Church as the "congre- gation of believers" might lead to the conception that it included the believers only, without their children. This, however, is by no means the teaching of Calvinism : it- teaching on the subject of infant baptism showing quite the contrary. Believers who meet together do not thereby sever the natural bond that binds them to their offspring. On the contrary, they consecrate this bond, arid by baptism incorporate their children in the communion of their church, and these minors are kept in this Church communion until, when of age, they become themselves confessors, or sever themselves from the church by their unbelief. This is the so-important Calvinistic dogma of the Covenant; a prominant article of our confession, showing that the waters of the Church do not flow outside the natural stream of human life, but cause the life of the church to proceed hand in hand with the natural organic reproduction of succeeding generations. Covenant and Church are inseparable, — the covenant binding the church to the race, and God Himself sealing in it the connection between the life of grace, and the life of nature. Of course Church discipline must come in here, in order to preserve the purity of this Covenant as soon as the mutual permeating of grace by nature tends to lower the purity of the Church. From the Calvinistic view T - point, therefore, it is impossible to speak of a nationalChurch, as being destined to embrace all the inhabitants of the whole CALVINISM AND RELIGION. SO country. A national Church, i. e. a church comprising only one nation, is a Heathen, or at most, a Jewish conception. The Church of Christ is not national but ecumenical. No1 one single state, but the whole world is its domain. And when the Lutheran Reformers at the instigation of their sovereigns, nationalized their churches, and Calvinistic churches allowed themselves to deviate in the same track, they did not ascend to a higher conception than that of Rome's world-church, but descended to distinctly lower ground. Happily I may conclude by bearing witness that both the Synod of Dort, and the not less venerable West- minster Assembly, have honoured again the ecumenical character ofour Reformed Churches, thereby censuring as unpardonable, every deviation from the only right principle. Having thus far given an outline of the nature of the ( 'liurch, and the form of its manifestation, let me now draw your attention in the last place to the purpose of its appear- ance on earth. I shall not say anything for the present on the separation of Church and state. This will naturally find place in the next Lecture. At present. I confine myself to the purpose that has been assigned to the Church in its pilgrimage through the world. That purpose cannot be human— egoistic, to prepare the believer for Heaven. A regenerate child, dying in the cradle, goes straight to Heaven, without any further preparation and wheresoever the Holy Ghost has kindled the spark of Eternal life in the soul, the perseverance of the saints assures the certainty of eternal salvation. Nay, upon earth also, the Church xists merely for the sake of God. Regeneration is sufficient for the elect man, to make him sure of his eternal destiny, but it is not enough to satisfy, the glory of God in His work among men. For the glory of our God it is necessary to have regeneration, followed by conversion, and to this conversion the Church must contribute, CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 31 by means of the preaching of the Word. In the regenerate man glows the spark, but only in the converted man does the spark burst into a blaze, and that blaze radiates the light from the church into the world, that, according to our Lord's commandment, our Father, which is in Heaven, may be glorified. And both our conversion and our sanctification in good works are only then marked by the lofty character which Jesus demands, when we make them serve, in the first place, not the guarantee of our own salvation, but rather the glorifying of God. In the second place, the Church must fan this blaze, and make it brighter, by the communion of the saints and by the Sacraments. Only when hundreds of candles are burning from one candelabrum, can the full brightness of the soft candle-light strike us, and in the same way it is the communion of saints which has to unite the many small lights of the single believers so that they may mutually increase their brightness, and Christ, walking in the midst of the seven candlesticks, may sacramentally purify the glow of their brightness to a still more brilliant fervour. Thus the purpose of the Church does not lie in us, but in God, and in the glory of His name. — From this solemn purpose originates, in the same way, the severely spiritual cultus which Calvinism tried te restore in the services of the Church. Even Von Hartman, the far-from- Christian philosopher, perceived that cultus becomes more religious just in proportion as it has the courage to despise all external show, and the energy to evolve itself from symbolism, in order to clothe itself in beauty of a much higher order, — the inward, spiritual beauty of the wor- shipping soul. Sensual church services tend to soothe and flatter man religiously, and only the purely spiritual service of Calvinism aims at the pure worship of God, and at ador- ation of Him in spirit and in truth. — The same tendency leads our church discipline, that indispensible element of every genuine Calvinistic church activity. Church disci- pline was also instituted in the first place, not to prevent CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 32 scandals, nor even primilarily to prune the wild branches, but rather to preserve the sanctity of the Covenant of God, and ever to impress upon the outside world the solemn fact that God is too pure to look upon evil. — Finally we have the service of Church philanthropy, in the Diaconate which Calvin alone understood, and restored to its primordial honor. Neither Rome nor the Greek Church, neither the Lutheran nor the Episcopal Church, caught the real meaning of the Diaconate. Calvinism alone has restored the Diaconate to its place of honor, as an indispensable and constitutive element of ecclesiastical life. But. in this Diaconate, also, the lofty principle must prevail that it may not glorify those who give alms, but only the name of Him who moves the hearts of the people to liberality. The Deacons are not our servants, but servants of Christ. That which we commit to them we simply give back to Christ, as stewards of what is His property ; and in His name it must be distributed to His poor, — our brothers and sister The poor church -member, who thanks the Deacon and the giver, but not Christ, actually denies Dim who is the real and divine Giver, and who through his deacons, pur- poses to make it manifest that He is a Savior, not for the soul alone, but also for the body, — or to express it more pointedly, that for the whole man, and for the whole of life He is the Christus Consolator, the heavenly Redeemer, anointed and appointed by God Himself, for our fallen race, from all eternity. And so, as you see, the result proves incontestably that in Calvinism, the fundamental conception of the Church fits perfectly to the fundamental idea of Religion. All egoism and eudaimonism are excluded from both, even unto the end. Always and ever we have a Religion, and a Church, for the sake of God, and not for the sake of man. The origin of the Church is in God, its form of manifestation is from God, and from beginning to end, its purpose is and remains to magnify God's glory. CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 33 Now finally, I come to the fruit of religion in our practical life, or the position taken by Calvinism in the question of morals; — the third and last division, with which this lecture on Calvinism and Religion will naturally conclude. Here, the first thing that attracts our attention is the apparent contradiction between a confession, which, it is alleged, blunts the edge of moral incentives, and a practice, which, in moral earnestness exceeds the practice of all other religions. The Antinomian and the Puritan seemed to be mingled in this field like tares and wheat, so that at first sight it seemed as though the Antinomian were the logical result of the Calvinistic confession, and as though it were only by a fortunate inconsistency that the Puritan could infuse the warmth of his moral earnestness, into the all congealing chill emanating from the dogma of predestination. Romanists, Lutherans, Remonstrants and Libertines have ever charged against Calvinism that its absolute doctrine of predes- tination, culminating in the perseverance of saints, must necessarily result in a too easy conscience and a dan- gerous laxity of morals. But Calvinism answers this charge, not by opposing reasoning against reasoning, but by putting a fact of world-wide reputation over against this false deduction of fictitious consequences. It simply asks : — "What rival moral fruits have other religions to oppose if we point to the high moral earnest- ness of the Puritans?" "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound*' is the old diabolical whisper which the evil spirit hurled against the Holy Apostle himself in the childhood of the Christian Church. And when, in the sixteenth century the Heidelburg Catechism had to defend Calvinism against the shameful charge; — "Does not this doctrine lead to caieless and ungodly lives?" Ursinus and Olevianus had to deal with nothing else than the echoing and monotonous repetition of the same old slander. Certainly the ungodly lust to persist in, and even to foster, indwelling sin, yea even Antinomionism itself, again and again abused the CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 34 Calvinistic confession, seizing it like a shield, to hide the carnal appetites of the unconverted heart. But as little as the mechanical repetition of a written confession had ever anything in common with genuine religion, just so little may the Calvinistic Confession he made responsible for those reverberating stone pillars, echoing Calvin's fomulas, but without a grain of Calvinistic earnestness in their heart. He only is the real Calvinist, and may raise the Calvinistic banner, who in his own soul, personally, has been struck by the Majesty of the Almighty, and yielding to the over powering might of his eternal Love, has dared to proclaim this majestic love, over against Satan, and the world, and the worlclliness of his own heart, in the personal conviction of being chosen by Cod Himself, and therefore of having to thank Him and Him alone, for every grace everlasting. Such an one could not but tremble before the might and the majesty of Cod. as a matter of course accepting His Word as the ruling principle of His conduct in life; — a principle which has led so far that for its strong attachment, to the Scriptures. Calvinism has been censured, as being nnuiiii- stic religion, but without any warrant. Nomistic is the appropriate name for a religion which proclaims salvation to be attained by the fulfilment of the law, while Calvi- nism, on the fother hand, in a thoroughly soteriological sense, never derived salvation but from Christ and the atoning fruit of His merits. But it remained the special trait of Calvinism that it placed the believer before the face of God, not only in His church, but also in his personal, family, social, and political life. The majesty of God, and the authority of God press upon the Calvinist in the whole of his human existence. He si a pilgrim, not in the sense that he is marching through a world with which he has no concern, but in the sense that at every step of the long way he must remember his responsibility to that God so full of majesty, who awaits him at his journey's end. In front of the Portal which CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 35 opens for him, on the entrance into Eternity, stands the Last Judgment, and that judgment shall be one broad and comprehensive test, to ascertain whether the long' pilgrim- age has been accomplished with a heart that aimed at God's glory, and in accordance with the ordinances of the Most High. What now does the Calvinist mean by his faith in the ordinances of God? Nothing less than the firmly rooted conviction that all life has first been in the thoughts of God, before it came to be realized in Creation. Hence all created life necessarily bears in itself a law for its existence, instituted by God Himself. There is no life outside us in Nature, without such divine ordinances,— ordinances which which are called the laws of Nature ; — a term which we are willing to accept, provided we understand thereby, not laws originating from Nature, but laws imposed upon Nature. So, there are ordinances of Heaven for the firmament above, and ordinances for the earth below, by means (if which this world is main- tained, and, as the Psalmist says, these ordinances are the servants of God. Consequently there are ordinances of God for our bodies, for the blood that courses through our arteries, and veins, and for our lungs as the organs of respiration. And even so are there ordinances of God, in Logic, to regulate our thoughts; ordinances of God for our imagination, in the domain of aesthetics; and so, also, strict ordinances of God for the whole of human life in the domain of moral*. Not moral ordinances in the sense of summary general laws, which leave the decision in concrete and detailed instances to ourselves, but just as the ordinance of God determines the course of the smallest asteroid, as well as the orbit of the mightiest star, so also these moral ordinances of God descend to the smallest and most particular details, stating to us what in every case is to be considered as the will of God. And those ordinance- of God, ruling both the mightiest problems and the smallest trifles, are urged upon us, CALVINISM AND KELIGION. 36 not like the statutes of a law book, not like rules ■which may be read from paper, not like a codification of life, which could even for a single moment, exercise any authority of itself, — but they are urged upon us as the constant will of the omnipresent and almighty God, who at every instant is determining the course of life, ordaining its laws, and continually binding us by His moral authority. The Calvinist does not, like Kant, ascend in his reasoning from the "Da So/is/" (Thou shalt) to the idea of a lawgiver, but, because he stands before the face of God, because he sees God, and walks with God, and feels God in the whole of his being and existence, therefore he cannot withdraw his ear from that never silenced "Thou sfialt", which proceeds continually from his God, in Nature, in his body, in his reason, and in his action. Thence it follows that he adjusts himself to these ordinances not by force, as though they were a yoke of which he would like to rid himself, but with the same readiness with which we follow a guide through the desert, recognizing that ice are ignorant of the path, which the guide knows, and therefore acknowledging that there is no safety but in closely following in his footsteps. When our respiration is disturbed, we try irresistibly and immediately to remove the disturbance, and to make it normal again, i. e. to restore it, b} r bringing it again into accordance with the ordinances which God has given for man's respiration. To succeed in this gives us a feeling of unspeakable relief. Just so, in every disturbance of the moral life the believer has to strive as speedily as possible to restore his spiritual respiration, according to the moral commands of his God, because only after this restoration can the inward life again thrive freely in his soul, and renewed energetic action become possible. Therefore every distinction between general moral ordinances, and more special christian com- mandments is unknown to him. Can we imagine that at one time God willed to rule things in a certain moral CALVINISM AND RELIGION". 37 order, but that now, in Christ, He wills to rule it otherwise? As though He were not the Eternal, the Unchangeable, who, from the hour of creation even unto all eternity had willed, wills, and shall will and maintain one and the same firm moral world-order! Verily Christ has swept away the dust with which our sinful limitations had covered up this world-order, and has made it glitter again in its original brilliancy. Verily Christ and He alone has disclosed to us the eternal love of God, which was, from the beginning; the moving- principle of this world order. Above all, Christ has streng- thened in us the ability to walk in this world order with a firm, unfaltering step. But the world-order itself remains just what it was from the beginning. It lays full claim, not only to the believer (as though less were required from the unbeliever), but to every human being and to all human relationships. Hence Calvinism does not lead us to philo- sophize on a so-called moral life, as though ice had to create, to discover, or to regulate this life. Calvinism simply places us under the impress of the majesty of God, and subjects us to His eternal ordinances and unchangeable commandments. Hence it is that, for the Calvin ist, all ethical study is based on the Law of Sinai, not as though at that time the moral world-order began to be fixed, but to honour the Law of Sinai, as the divinely authentic summary of that original moral law which God wrote in the heart of man, at his creation, and which God is re-writing on the tables of every heart at its conversion. The Calvinist is led to submit himself to the conscience, not as to an individual lawgiver, which every person carries about in himself, but as to a direct sensus divinitatis, through which God Himself stirs up the inner man, and subjects him to His judgment. He does not hold to religion, with its dogmatics, as a separate entity, and then place his moral life with its ethics as a second entity alongside of religion, but he holds to religion, as placing him in the presence of CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 38 God, Himself, Who thereby embues him with His divine will. Love, and adoration are, to Calvin, themselves the motives of every spiritual activity, and thus the fear of God is imparted to the whole of life as a reality, — into the family, and into society, into science and art, into personal lie, and into the political career. A redeemed man who in all things and in all the choices of life is controlled solely by the most searching, and heart-stirring reverence for a God who is ever present to his consciousness, and who ever holds him in his eye: — thus does the Calvinistic type present itself in history. Always and in all things the deepest, the most sacred reverence for the ever present God as the rule of life, — this is the only true picture of the original Puritan. The avoidance of the world has never been the Calvinistic mark, but the shibboleth of the Anabaptist. The specific, anabaptistical Dogma on "avoidance" proves this. According to this dogma, tin: Anal taptists, announcing them- selves as "saints", were severed from the world. They stood in opposition to the world. They refused to take the oath; they abhorred all military service; they condemned the holding of public offices. Here already, they shaped a new world, in the midst of a worldof sin, but which had nothing to do with this present world. They rejected all obligation and responsibility towards the old world, and they avoided it systematically, for fear of contamination, and contagion. But this is just what the Calvinist always disputed and denied. It is not true that there are two worlds, a bad one and a good, which are fitted into each other. It is one and the same person whom God created perfect and who afterwards fell, and became a sinner; — and it is this same "ego" of the old sinner who is born again, and who enters into eternal life. So, also, it is one and the same world which once exhibited all the glory of Paradise, which was afterwards smitten with the curse, and which, since the Fall, is upheld by common grace ;— which has now been redeemed and saved by Christ, in its centre, and which CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 39 shall pass through the horror of the judgment into the state of glory. For this very reason, however, the Calvinist cannot shut himself up in his church and ahandon the world to its fate. He feels, rather, his high calling to push the development of this world to an even higher stage, and to do this in constant accordance with God's ordinance, for the sake of God, upholding, in the midst of so much pain- ful corruption, everything that is honourable, lovely, and of good report among men. Therefore it is that we see in History (if I may be permitted to speak of my own ancest- ors), that scarcely had Calvinism been firmly established in the Netherlands for a quarter of a century, when there was a rustling of life in all directions, and an indomitable energy was fermenting in every department of human activ- ity, and their commerce and trade, their handicrafts and industry, their agriculture and horticulture, their art and science, flourished with a brilliancy previously unknown, and imparting a new impulse for an entirely new development of life, to the whole of Western Europe. This admits of only one exception, and this exception I wish both to maintain and to place in its proper light. What I mean is this. — Not every intimate intercourse with the unconverted world is deemed lawful, by Calvinism, for it placed a barrier against the too unhallowed influence of this world by putting a distinct ''veto"' upon three things, card-playing, I heal res, and dancing; — three forms of amusement which I shall first treat separately, and then set forth in their combined influence. — Card-playing has been placed under a ban by Calvinism, not as though games of all kinds were forbidden, nor as though something demoniacal lurked in the cards themselves, but because it fosters in our heart the dangerous tendency to look away from God, and to put our trust in Fori inn- or L/,f/r. A game which is decided by keenness of vision, quickness of action, and range of experience, is ennobling in its character, but a game like cards, which is chiefly decided by the way in which the CALVINISM A\"l> RELIGION. 40 cards are arranged in the pack, and blindly distributed, induces us to attach a certain significance to that fatal imaginative power, outside of God, called Chance or Fortune. To this kind of unbelief, every one of us is inclined. The fever of stock-gambling shews daily how much more strongly people are attracted and influenced by the nod of Fortune, than by solid application to their work. There- fore the Calvinist judged that the rising generation should be guarded against this dangerous tendency, whereas, by. means of card-playing it would be fostered. And since the sensation of God's ever-enduring presence was felt by Calvin and his adherents as the never-failing source from which they drew their stern seriousness of life, they could not help loathing a game which poisoned this source by placing Fortune above the disposition of God, and the hankering after chance above the firm confidence in His will. To fear God, and to bid for the favors of Fortune seemed to him as irreconcilable as fire and water. Entirely different objections were entertained against Theatre-going. In itself there is nothing sinful in fiction;— the power of the imagination is a precious gift of God Himself. Neither is there any special evil in dramatic imagination. How highly did Milton appreciate Shakespeare's Drama, and did not he himself write in dramatic form? Nor did the evil lie in public theatrical representations, as such. Public performances were given for all the people at Geneva, in the Market Place, in Calvin's time, and with his approval. No, that which offended our ancestors was not the comedy or tragedy, nor should have been the opera, or the operetta, in itself, but the moral sacrifice which as a rule was demanded of actors and actresses, for the amusement of the public. A theatrical troop, in those days especially, stood, morally, very low\ This low moral standard resulted partly from the fact that the constant and ever-changing presentation of the character of other people, finally hampers the moulding of your per- CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 41 sonal character; and partly because, unlike the Greeks, modern Theatres have introduced the presence of women on the stage, the prosperity of the Theatre being too often gauged by the measure in which a woman jeopardizes the most sacred treasures God entrusts to her, — her stainless name, and irreproachable conduct. Certainly, a strictly moral Theatre is very well conceivable, but with the exception of a few large cities, such Theatres would neither be sufficiently patronized nor could exist financially, and the actual fact remains that, taking all the world over, the prosperity of a Theatre often increases in proportion to the moral degradation of the actors. For often therefore the pros- perity of Theatres is purchased at the cost ot manly char- acter, and of female purity; and to purchase delight for the ear and the eye at the price of such a moral hetacomb, the Calvinist, who honoured whatever was human in man, for the sake of God, could not but condemn. Finally, so far as the dance is concerned, even worldly papers, like the parisian "Figaro", at present justify the position of the Calvinist. Only recently an article in this paper called attention to the moral pain with which a father takes his daughter into the Ball-room for the first time. This moral pain, it declared, is evident, in Paris at least, to all who are familiar with the whisperings, indecent looks and actions prevalent in those pleasure-loving circles. Here, also, the Calvinist does not protest against the Dance itself, but exclusively, against the impurity to which it is often in danger of leading. With this I return to the barrier of which I spoke. Our fathers perceived excellently well that it was just these three,— Dancing, Card-playing, and Theatres, — with which the world was madly in love. In worldly circles these pleasures were not regarded as secondary trifles, but honoured, as all-important matters; and whoever dared to attack them, exposed himself to the bitterest scorn and enmity. For this very reason, they recognized, in these three, the Rubicon which no CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 42 true Calvinist could cross without sacrificing his earnestness to dangerous mirth, and the fear of the Lord to often far from spotless pleasures. And now may I ask, — has not the result justified their strong and brave protest ? Even yet after a lapse of three centuries, you will find, in my Calvinistic country, entire social circles into which this world - liness is never allowed to enter, but in which the richness of human life has turned, from without, inward, and in which, as the result of a sound spiritual concentration, there has been developed such a deep sense of everything high, and such an energy for everything holy as to excite the envy even of our Antagonists. Not only has the wing of the Butterfly in those circles been preserved intact, but even the gold-dust upon this wing shines as brilliantly as ever. This now is the proof to which I invite your respectful attention. Our age is far ahead of the Calvinistic age in its overflowing mass of ethical essays and treatises and learned expositions. Philosophers and Theologians really vie with one another in discovering for us, or in hiding from us, just as you may be pleased to put it, the straight road in the domain of morals. But there is something that all this .host of learned scholars have not been able to do. They have not been able to restore moral firmness to the enfeebled public conscience. Rather must we complain that ever more and more the foundations of our moral building are gradually being loosened and unsettled, until finally there remains not one stronghold left of which the people in their wider ranks can feel that it guarantees moral certainty for the Future. Statesmen and Jurists are openly proclaiming the right of the strongest ; the ownership of property is called steal- ing; free love has been advocated, and honesty is ridiculed. A pantheist has dared to put Jesus and Nero on the same footing; and Van Nietzsche, going further still, deemed Christ's blessing of the meek to be the curse of humanity. Now compare with all this the marvellous results of CALVINISM AND RELIGION. 43 three centuries of Calvinism. Calvinism understood that the world was not to be saved by ethical philosophizing, but only by the restoration of tenderness of conscience. There- fore it did not indulge in reasoning, but appealed directly to the soul, and placed it face to face with the Living God, so that the heart trembled, at His holy majesty, and in that majesty, discovered the glory of His love. And when, going back in this historical review, you observe how thoroughly corrupt and rotten Calvinism found the world, to what depth moral life at that time had sunken, in the courts, and among the people, in the clerg} T , and among the leaders of science, among men and wonen, among the higher and the lower classes of society : — then what censor among you will dare to deny the palm of moral victory to Calvinism, which in one generation, though hunted from the battlefield to the scaffold, created, throug- hout five nations at once, wide serious groups of noble men and still nobler women, hitherto unsurpassed in the loftiness of their ideal conceptions and unequalled in the power of their moral self-control. }\CUudUX , Mt^ THIRD LECTURE. CALVINISM AND POLITICS. My third lecture leaves the sanctuary of religion and enters upon the domain of the State; the first transition from the Sacred Circle to the secular field of human life. Only now therefore we proceed, summarily and in prin- ciple, to eradicate the wrong idea, that Calvinism represents an exclusive^ ecclesiastical and dogmatic movement. The religious momentum of Calvinism has placed, beneath political Society, a fundamental conception, all its own, just because it did not only prune the branches and clean the stem, but reached down to the very root of life. That this had to be so becomes evident at once to everyone, who is able to appreciate that a political scheme has never become dominant, which was not founded in a specific religious conception. And that this has been the fact, as regards Calvinism, may appear from the political changes, which it has effected in those three historic lands of political freedom, the Netherlands, England and America. Every competent historian will without exception confirm the words of Bancroft:— "The fanatic for Calvinism was a fanatic for liberty, for in the moral warfare for freedom, CALVINISM AND POLITICS. his creed was a part of his army, and his most faithful ally in the battle." l And Groen van Prinsterer has thus expressed it: "in Calvinism lies the origin and guarantee of our constitutional liberties." That Calvinism has led public law into new paths, first in Western Europe, then in two Continents, and to-day more and more among all civilized nations, is admitted by scientific students, if not yet fully by public opiniou. But for the purpose I have in view, the mere statement of this important fact is insufficient. In order that conviction may be aroused and the influence of Calvinism on our political development guaran- teed for the future, it must be shown, — for what fundamental political conceptions Calvinism has opened the door, and how these political conceptions sprang from its root in religion. Allow me to argue this matter in detail by pointing out to you a threefold Sovereignty:— 1. the Sovereignty in the sphere of the State; 2. the Sovereignty in the sphere of Social life ; and 3. the Sovereignty in the sphere of the Church. First then Sovereignty in that political sphere, which is defined as the State. And then we admit that the impulse to form states arises from man's social nature, which was expressed already by Aristotle, when he called man a l %aov ^olirixov." God might have created men as disconnected individuals, standing side by side and without genealogical coherence. Just as Adam was separately created, the second and third and every further man might have been individually called into existence; but this was not the case. 1 History of the Unile