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 Lutheran 
 
 flanual 
 
 BY 
 
 JUNIUS B. REMENSNYDER, D.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HEAVENWARD," "DOOM ETERNAL, 
 "SIX DAYS OF CREATION," ETC. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 JOSEPH A. SEISS, D.D., LL.D., L.H.D. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 BOSCHEN 5c WEFER COMPANY, 
 
 96-98 Fulton Street. 
 
 1893. 
 
 / 
 
 I 
 
Tnt Library 
 or Congress 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1893, 
 By BOSCH EN & WEFER CO. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THIS volume appears in answer to the question, 
 frequently asked, for a book setting forth in 
 simple style the main characteristics of the 
 Lutheran Church. It aims to promote the in- 
 terests and progress of the whole Church, with- 
 out regard to divisions or parties. Accordingly, 
 the doctrines, usages, spirit, and life, of the 
 Lutheran Church, are here set forth in such large 
 outline, as are common to all synods, branches, 
 and sections. Never was there a time so full of 
 promise and opportunity for our Church as the 
 present. And on every side she is rising to the 
 occasion. This great Lutheran awakening extends 
 to all classes. Our young people have caught it, 
 and are moving forward with enthusiasm. How 
 timely and important, then, that every member 
 be intelligently informed as to the distinctive 
 glories of the Church of his love and pride! 
 
 To this end we send forth this little volume, 
 trusting that it may contribute toward one, greats 
 undivided Evangelical Lutheran Church — that the 
 Ecclesiastical Mother of Protestantism may be 
 for America what she has been and is for the 
 world. 
 
 j. B. R. 
 
 New York, June 28th, i8gj. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE Lutheran Church, like Christianity itself, 
 of which it is a true and faithful exponent, 
 needs no apology. It is its own best evidence of its 
 right to existence. To know it thoroughly, is to 
 know the purest and fullest truth of God, given 
 for human enlightenment, guidance and salvation. 
 If the way of spiritual safety and eternal life can- 
 not be found in its confessions and teachings, 
 men will seek in vain for it. Protestant Christen- 
 dom lives upon the principles of faith which the 
 Lutherans first enunciated, and must die without 
 them. Even the Roman Catholic communion has 
 been largely reformed and refashioned by the 
 testimony of the Lutheran Reformers, and is the 
 better to-day by reason of the Lutheran Reforma- 
 tion, which effectually revoiced the teachings of 
 Apostles and Prophets for our modern world, and 
 started the springs of freedom for mankind. 
 
 It has been the habit of some to look upon the 
 Lutheran Church as a Church of foreigners. 
 Though in this country contemporaneously with 
 the oldest denominations in America, there has 
 
VI. 
 
 been a strange slowness of English speaking peo- 
 ple to take in what the Lutheran Church is, or to 
 recognize the Rock whence they were hewn. 
 Hence the necessity for the multiplication of 
 books of the kind here presented, that false im- 
 pressions may be done away, and facts brought 
 out for more intelligent appreciation. Even many 
 Lutherans themselves do not half realize what a 
 cause they represent, and what a heritage they 
 have. It is, therefore, a matter of congratulation 
 that so many pens of late years have been em- 
 ployed in the popular setting forth of the history, 
 faith, and cultus, of this firstborn of the great 
 Reformation, which is now so rapidly coming to the 
 front among the religious denominations in this 
 country. Nor will this Manual be the least in worth 
 for the giving of important information on the topics 
 to which it is devoted. Without assuming responsi- 
 bility for every detail of statement contained in 
 it, we take pleasure in commending it to the 
 attention of all who are in search of a brief exhi- 
 bition of the main features and spirit of our 
 Evangelical Lutheran Church, all so irenically 
 given, that few Lutherans, of whatever party, 
 will find occasion for serious dissent. 
 
 JOSEPH A. SEISS. 
 Philadelphia, July jisl, iSpj. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Name Lutheran, ...... I 
 
 II. The Lutheran an Historical Church, ... 8 
 
 III. The Lutheran Church the Source of the other 
 
 Protestant Churches, . . . . . 14 
 
 IV. The Lutheran Church and the Word of God, . . 21 
 V. Justification by Faith, the Central Lutheran Doctrine, 28 
 
 VI. The Sacraments, ....... 37 
 
 VII. Baptism, 44 
 
 VIII. The Lord's Supper, . 53 
 
 IX. Polity, or Government, ...... 62 
 
 X. Worship, 70 
 
 XL Rites and Festivals, 87 
 
 XII. The Lutheran an Orthodox Church, . . . 100 
 
 XIII. Lutherans ancLthe Church, . . . . . 113 
 
 XIV. Lutheran Piety, 127 
 
 XV. Christian Nurture, or Children in the Lutheran 
 
 Church, ........ 140 
 
 XVI. Our Young People, . . . . . . 149 
 
 XVII. Culture, 156 
 
 XVIII. Sacred Art, . . . . . . . . 164 
 
 XIX. Unity, .179 
 
 XX. English and Foreign-speaking Lutherans, . 193 
 
 XXL A World-wide, or truly Catholic Church, . . 202 
 
 XXII. Unparalleled Growth in the United States, . . 207 
 
 XXIII. Loyalty to the Lutheran Church, . . . . 214 
 
 XXIV. Our Future in America, . . . . • . 220 
 
THE LUTHERAN MANUAL. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE NAME LUTHERAN. 
 
 AS the name Christian was first given the 
 disciples of Christ in derision, so those 
 who adhered to the pure gospel in the era of the 
 Reformation were derisively styled "Lutherans." 
 As Luther was the hero of the Reformation — 
 the Providential agent of that blessed work — 
 it was natural that those who clung to his 
 doctrines should be associated with his name. 
 Hence, as the Reformation spread throughout 
 distant quarters of the world, wherever one 
 would espouse the restored faith, the scornful 
 remark would be made : " He is a Lutheran," 
 and not only was it a mark of obloquy, but also 
 a badge of danger. 
 
As the truth advanced however, and gained 
 larger conquests, history repeated the lesson of 
 old. For, just as had occurred with the term 
 Christian, so it issued with Lutheran. That 
 which had been applied as an epithet of scorn, 
 became a synonym of honor. Thus, while the 
 Reformers used the official title : "The Evan- 
 gelical (from Evangelion, the Greek word for 
 gospel) Church,"* in common parlance it was called 
 "The Lutheran Church," and this popular title in 
 practice has virtually supplanted the official one. 
 This has been sometimes urged as objectionable. 
 It is said by opponents that the Church of Christ 
 should not be called after any human and imper- 
 fect person, no matter how illustrious. This 
 would be true if it at all were meant to supplant 
 the name Christian. But this it is not. It is first of 
 all, as termed in the Scripture : "The Church of 
 Christ;" "The Church of God;" or as called in 
 the Apostles' and Nicene Creed: "The Holy 
 Catholic and Apostolic Church." In this primary 
 and generic sense none other than a divine 
 name dare be applied to it. But for practical 
 uses, that the diverse phases of Christianity may 
 
 *"Its usual title is 'Evangelical Lutheran Church;' 'Evangel- 
 ical' being the name ; 'Lutheran' the surname :" Schaff-Herzg En- 
 cyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 1370. 
 
be distinguished from one another, it becomes 
 necessary to employ particular descriptive titles. 
 Such secondary appellatives, attached to the 
 generic christian name have accordingly become 
 universal. Thus we speak of the Romanist, 
 Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregation- 
 alism etc. churches, all of which secondary names 
 are based upon merely human forms of govern- 
 ment and administration. The name Lutheran is 
 no more objectionable on the ground of finite 
 limitations than any of these. But on the other 
 hand, it has this incomparable advantage over all 
 others, that it emphasizes and keeps in con- 
 spicuous view the pure evangelical doctrine 
 which Luther confessed, and for fidelity to which 
 he stood. This was illustrated in the noble 
 response made by the Margrave of Brandenburg, 
 who challenged for calling himself a Lutheran 
 Christian, answered: "I was not baptized in the 
 name of Luther: he is not my God and Savior; I do 
 not rest my faith in him, and am not saved by 
 him ; and therefore, in this sense I am no Luth- 
 eran. But if I be asked, whether with my heart 
 and lips, I profess the doctrines which God restored 
 to light by the instrumentality of His blessed 
 servant Luther, I neither hesitate, nor am ashamed 
 to call myself a Lutheran, In this sense I am, 
 
and, as long as I live, will remain a Lutheran!' 
 
 Another benefit of using this name arises from 
 Luther's unique and marvelous personality. 
 "Luther," said the great Melanchthon, "is all in all, 
 a miracle among men." Wrote Calvin: "Luther 
 is the trumpet which has roused the world from 
 its lethargy — it is not as much Luther who speaks 
 as God whose lightnings burst from his lips." 
 Says the great theologian, Dr. Dorner: "Luther 
 was the first christian of the modern world — one 
 of those rare historical figures in which whole 
 nations recognize their type." The eminent old 
 Catholic, Dr. Dollinger, testifies : "It was Luther's 
 over-powering greatness and wonderful many- 
 sidedness that made him the man of his age and 
 his people. His opponents were colorless and 
 feeble by the side of his transporting eloquence. 
 They stammered, he spoke." The secular histor- 
 ian, Froude, says of him: "Luther's eyes were 
 literally world-wide. Reading his Table-Talk, 
 one ceases to wonder that this remarkable man 
 changed the face of the world." The distin- 
 guished church historian, Dr. Schaff, writes of 
 him: "No man — save the apostles — deserves so 
 much to be held in grateful remembrance as 
 Martin Luther, remarkable alike as a man, as a 
 christian, as a theologian, as a Bible translator, 
 
catechist and hymnist, as the bold champion of 
 the freedom of conscience, and as the chief leader 
 of the Reformation"* Wrote Carlyle: "I will 
 call this Luther a true Great Man : Great, not as 
 a hewn obelisk ; but as an Alpine mountain. A 
 right spiritual Hero and Prophet, for whom these 
 centuries and many that are to come, will be 
 thankful to Heaven "f The great critic Lessing 
 uttered this high eulogy : "In such reverence do I 
 hold Luther, that I rejoice in having been able to 
 find some defects in him, for I have been, in fact, 
 in imminent danger of making him an object of 
 idolatrous veneration;" and even the Roman 
 Catholic Count Stolberg feels compelled to bear 
 this testimony to him: "Against Luther's person 
 I would not cast a stone. In him, I honor, not 
 alone one of the grandest spirits that have ever 
 lived, but a great religiousness also, which never 
 forsook him." 
 
 When Elijah was caught away in a chariot of 
 fire to heaven, Elisha implored that a double 
 portion of the mighty prophet's spirit might fall 
 upon him, and so it is of incalculable benefit to 
 the Church of Christ militant that the spirit of so 
 
 * Symposiac on Martin Luther, p. 21. 
 f Heroes and Hero Worship, p. 127. 
 
unique a hero of the Lord as this should still in- 
 spire her columns. The faith, the reverence, the 
 courage, and the keen spiritual vision of Luther, 
 are what Christendom needs at all times, and 
 what are specially required to meet the crises and 
 perils of our day. And experience shows that the 
 name Luther, attached to our Church, has kept 
 his commanding figure at our head, and that its 
 influence has been a constant and beneficial in- 
 spiration. Much of the unswerving loyalty of 
 the Lutheran Church to the scriptures, and to the 
 pure gospel of the Reformation, is owing to the 
 manner in which the rare personality of Luther 
 has perpetually been held up before her. 
 
 Whether then, we consider the name Lutheran, 
 in its origin, or in the light of the history and 
 achievements which three-and-a-half centuries 
 have gathered about it, there is nothing in it to 
 be defended, or apologized for, but it is a name to 
 be proud of, and to inscribe boldly on our eccle- 
 siastical banners. Other distinctive denomina- 
 tional names are empty and colorless by the side 
 of it. No title is so fitted to awaken spiritual 
 enthusiasm as that of the Evangelical Lutheran 
 Church, and every worthy member of this great 
 communion can say with a just pride : "I glory in 
 the name Lutheran; so rich a heritage of spiritual 
 
7 
 
 blessing has this title bequeathed to our Church, 
 that we cannot but believe that its selection was 
 the handiwork of Providence." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LUTHERAN AN HISTORICAL CHURCH. 
 
 THAT the purpose of God to bring salvation to 
 the world might be carried out, He established 
 the Church. Under the Old Testament dispen- 
 sation this existed as the Jewish Church. At 
 the coming of Christ it was transformed into the 
 Christian Church. This Christian Church has un- 
 dergone many vicissitudes, but never has it been 
 destroyed. For about three centuries, during the 
 era of the Roman persecutions, we speak of it as 
 the Early or Primitive Church. Thence from the 
 era of Constantine it gradually assumes the 
 Mediaeval form, the Church of the Middle Ages. 
 About the tenth century occurred the great 
 schism between the Greek and Roman wings of 
 the Church. 
 
 When the Roman Catholics contend that 
 theirs alone is the one old historic Church, the 
 answer is that the "Greek or Oriental Church is 
 the oldest in Christendom, and for several cen- 
 turies was the chief Nearer of our religion. She 
 
still occupies the sacred territory of primitive 
 Christianity, and claims most of the Apostolic Sees, 
 as Jerusalem, Antioch, and the Churches founded 
 by Paul and John."* She produced the first 
 christian literature and used the language spoken 
 by Christ and His apostles. Did any branch of 
 Christianity possess the exclusive claim to the 
 descent from the original historic tree, it would 
 then be the Greek rather than the Romish 
 branch. 
 
 The great Reformation of the sixteenth century 
 from which issued the Lutheran Church, did not 
 originate any new thing. It was a Re-formation, 
 not a creation. It only restored the old. It tore 
 away the heap of Mediaeval rubbish of supersti- 
 tion and ceremonial under which the pure faith 
 and simple ritual of the Church had been buried. 
 It was by the study of the writings of the early 
 Church fathers, as Augustine, etc., that Luther 
 was largely led to break free from Romish error. 
 And therefore his aim was to return to the purity 
 of the Primitive and Apostolic Age. He simply 
 built upon the old "foundation of the apostles and 
 prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief 
 corner-stone." "That is exactly what we mean by 
 
 *Schaff-Herzg Encyclopedia — Greek Church, Vol. II, p. 900. 
 
IO 
 
 the German Reformation, which was not a new 
 development of Christianity, but simply the pro- 
 cess of scraping off the barnacles that had been 
 accumulating for fifteen hundred years, and more 
 and more obstructing Christianity's progress 
 through the midst of this storm-tossed world that 
 it was set here to sail on."* 
 
 Had Luther been a destructive radical, reck- 
 lessly going on a career of innovation, he would 
 not have been followed and supported by millions 
 of the best and wisest of christians. But he was 
 a judicious conservative, who revered the past. 
 He knew that there had always been, and always 
 would be, a true visible Church of Christ. There- 
 fore he did not by any means break with the 
 historical continuity of the Christian Church. 
 When he renounced the Pope this was not re- 
 nouncing the true Church, but only declaring the 
 more truly and loyally for it. So he and his fol- 
 lowers never severed themselves from the ancient 
 Christian tree, but the decayed and corrupt 
 branches severed from them, and left them the 
 representatives of pure historic Christianity. 
 ''Whilst Luther emended the gravest errors and 
 vices of the Church of Rome, and restored the 
 
 ♦Orthodoxy— C. H. Parkhurst, D.D. 
 
1 1 
 
 Church to a happier condition, he did not frame a 
 new Church," says Budeus. "When the Luther- 
 ans renounced the Papacy and its abominations, 
 they took with them the same Bible, the same 
 Catholic Confessions, the same Holy Faith, and 
 the same Apostolic Ministry and Sacraments, 
 which distinguished the Church in the beginning, 
 and hence the same historic Church-life, which 
 took its rise in the incarnation of the Son of God, 
 which trickled feebly through the rubbish and 
 darkness of the middle ag-es, and which never 
 was, or could be, entirely lost."* 
 
 Had the Lutherans rejected anything simply 
 because Rome held or used it — the position of 
 some ultra- Protestants — they would thereby, to 
 that extent have cut themselves off from the true 
 visible Church. But whatever of ancient Chris- 
 tianity, both in faith and usage, had come down 
 through the middle ages, pure and incorrupt, 
 they reverently and lovingly retained. And only 
 that which was unscriptural and a perversion of 
 the Gospel, did they reject. "The sacred treas- 
 ure of true Catholicity, which the Church of early 
 times had nurtured in the form of Greek- Roman 
 culture, is taken over — freed from excrescences, 
 
 *Dr. Seiss. in Ecclesia Lutherana, p. 34. 
 
12 
 
 and enriched by those acquisitions of the Middle 
 Ages that had stood the proof. Its vocation was 
 to set forth the happy mean."* This left the Lu- 
 theran not only a living branch, but the main trunk 
 of the historical Christian Tree. It was not the 
 Lutheran, but the Romish phase, which severed 
 itself from pure primitive Christianity. If there 
 was an apostacy, a falling away, from the Church 
 of Christ in the Reformation, it was Rome, and 
 not the Lutherans who were guilty of it. 
 
 And as, then, the Evangelical Lutheran Church 
 is built upon the pure Word of God and Sacra- 
 ments of the Lord Jesus Christ and his holy 
 Apostles ; and as her Ministry is descended in 
 unbroken line from apostolic ordination ; and as 
 she retains the devout usages of the Church in 
 her primitive purity ; she is without doubt a true 
 historical Christian Church. It is a fact capable 
 of demonstration that no Church in Faith, Worship, 
 and Order, is in such accord with the Church 
 framed by Christ and the Apostles, as the Luth- 
 eran. With all charity and fraternal feeling toward 
 christians of other households we may yet truly 
 say that to no other communion applies so fitly as 
 to the Lutheran, the title: "The Holy Catholic 
 
 *Church History, Kurtz, Vol. Ill, p. 144. 
 
13 
 
 and Apostolic Church." 
 
 In her we see in its most glorious and perfect 
 form the visible kingdom of God — the gate to 
 the holy Jerusalem and heavenly temple above. 
 And he who adds himself to her membership 
 may do so in the full confidence that in her is 
 fulfilled this great investiture of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ: "Upon this rock I will build My 
 Church : and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against it. Matt, xvi: 18. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE LUTHERAN CHURCH THE SOURCE OF THE 
 OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 
 
 PROTESTANT and Lutheran were originally 
 synonyms. It was the Lutherans alone 
 who made the famous protest at Spire in 1529 
 from which they were called Lutherans. And 
 the indelible connection of this title Protestant 
 with all the non-Romish Churches, serves to 
 stamp them all as generically of Lutheran origin. 
 When Luther on the 31st of October, 1 5 1 7, 
 nailed his 95 theses to the doors of the Castle- 
 Church at Wittenberg, the act aroused the 
 civilized world. Says a writer of that time : "The 
 theses were transmitted to all parts of the earth 
 as if the angels were their messengers." Luther's 
 hammer awoke the slumbering nations. From 
 his first stroke, the great Reformatory movement 
 
is 
 
 was begun, and Popes, Councils, and Princes, might 
 as well have sought to turn the earth backward 
 on its axis, as to attempt to retard its course. 
 Everywhere Luther's books were in men's hands, 
 and people were eagerly studying the new and 
 yet old doctrines. In Switzerland, in France, and 
 in England, these influences were most powerfully 
 felt. The great Swiss Reformer, Zwingli, and 
 the great French Reformer, Calvin, both thank- 
 fully acknowledged their indebtedness to Luther. 
 
 In England, especially, the movement made 
 itself felt. "Luther's writings were eagerly 
 read in England.""' Indeed as early as 1521 
 official complaint was made to Cardinal Wolsey 
 "that the University of Oxford is infected with 
 the heresies of Luther, divers students having a 
 great number of books of the said perverse 
 doctrine." The same year Cardinal Wolsey 
 issued a rescript condemning Luther's writings 
 and ordering all copies to be delivered up within 
 1 5 days. Notwithstanding these sharp measures, 
 a noted writer of that time says: " Lutheranism 
 increased daily in the University of Oxford." In 
 1526 appeared Tyndale's translation of the New 
 Testament, evidently inspired by Luther's trans- 
 
 *Church History, Kurtz, Vol. II, p. 313. 
 
i6 
 
 lation of 1522. An Episcopal writer admits of it 
 that Tyndale "had Luther's translation before 
 him and constantly consulted, and often adopted 
 it." The same is true of the first authorized 
 version of the whole English Bible by Coverdale 
 in 1535. "The Origin of the English Bible is 
 therefore," says Dr. Jacobs in his recent learned 
 volume, "to be traced to German soil and 
 Lutheran influences."* 
 
 Protestantism, however, as an organized eccle- 
 siastical movement, dates its origin from the 
 adoption of the Augsburg Confession, June 25th, 
 1530. From this time, it was no longer the indi- 
 vidual work of Luther, but a purified phase of 
 Christendom viz: the Lutheran Church. And 
 this Augsburg Confession, which was wholly and 
 distinctively Lutheran, laid the doctrinal 
 foundation of all the other Protestant Churches. 
 Says D'Aubigne, the Reformed historian, of it: 
 "The Augsburg Confession will ever remain one 
 of the master-pieces of the human mind, enlight- 
 ened by the spirit of God. "f Writes the Presby- 
 terian, Dr. Schaff: "The Augsburg Confession will 
 ever be cherished as one of the noblest monuments of 
 faith from the Pentecostal period of Protestantism. 
 
 *'The Lutheran Movement in England." Jacobs, p. 219. 
 f History of the Reformation, p. 497. 
 
i7 
 
 Its influence extends far beyond the Lutheran 
 Church. It struck the key note to the other evan- 
 gelical confessions! 1 And says Gieseler, the great 
 Reformed Church historian: "If the question be, 
 which among all Protestant Confessions, is 
 best adapted for forming a union among Protes- 
 tant Churches, we declare ourselves unreservedly 
 for the Augsburg Confession." Dr. Krauth 
 writes: "In it the very heart of the gospel beat 
 again. To it, under God, more than to any other 
 cause, the whole Protestant world owes civil and 
 religious freedom."* And the scholarly Bishop 
 Whittingham, of Maryland, speaking for the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church, says : "The Augs- 
 burg Confession is the source of the Thirty-nine 
 Articles of the Church of England and America — 
 their prototype in form, their model in doctrine, and 
 the very foundation of many of their expressions, "f 
 This is most natural, since the Thirty-nine Articles 
 (Episcopal) were not adopted until the year 1563, 
 when the Reformation had already been fought 
 and won under the Augsburg Confession, which 
 appeared 33 years, or a whole generation earlier. 
 The Westminster Confession (Presbyterian) was 
 
 ♦Conservative Reformation, p. 258. 
 
 fLutheran Origin of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican 
 Church — Dr. J. G. Morris. * 
 
i8 
 
 not adopted until 1648, a full century later, and 
 some of the confessions of the other leading 
 Protestant Churches are quite modern. It was 
 inevitable, therefore, that all these should have 
 been substantially drawn from the Augsburg 
 Confession, i. e. were Lutheran in their origin. 
 
 History, moreover, shows that the English 
 Reformation was not only due directly to Luther 
 and Lutheranism, but was on the very point of 
 ecclesiastically joining the new movement. Soon 
 after the adoption of the Augsburg Confession, viz. 
 in 1535, an official English commission was sent to 
 Wittenberg, where after lengthy conferences with 
 Luther and Melanchthon, thirteen doctrinal articles 
 were mutually adopted in which the King of 
 England "agrees to promote the gospel of Christ 
 and the pure doctrine of faith according to the 
 mode in which it was confessed in the Diet of 
 Augsburg." These negotiations after continuing 
 for years, finally failed, and the Church of Eng- 
 land was not amalgamated with the Lutheran 
 Church. But not only did the essential identity 
 of their confession remain, but their forms of wor- 
 ship were chietly taken from Luther's service, 
 and in America the Episcopal ChurdF officially 
 styles herself, Protestant, which as we have 
 shown, etymologically signifies Lutheran. "Luth- 
 
19 
 
 eranism was, in fact, the exact shade which 
 colored the minds of Queen Elizabeth, and of the 
 divines who held to her. Her altar was precisely 
 the Lutheran altar : her opinions were represented 
 in almost a continuous line by one divine after 
 another clown to our time."* The Lutheran 
 belief of Elizabeth is shown by her noted words : 
 
 Christ was the Word that spake it, 
 He took the bread and brake it, 
 And what that Word did make it, 
 That I receive and take it. 
 
 In the face of these indubitable historical facts, 
 how utterly groundless is the claim sometimes 
 put forth that the Episcopal Church of England 
 and America stands alone in this respect, that it 
 is independent of the Lutheran Reformation, and 
 has had a continuous existence from the apostolic 
 time apart alike from the Romish Church, and 
 from the great religious awakening of the XVI 
 century! When Luther appeared, and the Luth- 
 eran Church arose, there was but one great 
 ecclesiastical system dominating Christendom, and 
 holding the civilized world in its grasp viz : the 
 Roman Catholic Church. To Luther and the 
 Lutheran Church, therefore, all the now existing 
 
 o 
 
 non-Romish Churches owe their origin and 
 
 o 
 
 *Christian Institutions. Dean Stanley, p. 89. 
 
20 
 
 their general character. And of all these 
 Churches not one has been so directly dependent 
 upon the Lutheran, and has so nearly reproduced 
 it in doctrine and worship as the Episcopal. 
 
 The Lutheran Church then is without exception 
 the source of the other Reformed churches. To 
 her belongs the proud title : '' Mother of Protest- 
 antism." "The Reformation of the Sixteenth 
 Century is the mother or grandmother of at least 
 half a dozen families of evangelical denominations 
 not counting the subdivisions."* And as 
 daughters should venerate their mother, so 
 affectionately should the various Protestant 
 churches regard and venerate her as "the rock 
 whence they were hewn." "It is the truism of 
 history that the Lutheran is the parent Evangeli- 
 cal Church. She is the mother of Protestantism. 
 Historically all other Evangelical churches have 
 sprung from her."f 
 
 ♦Schaff's Church History, Vol. VII, p. 9. 
 tThe Lutherans in America, Wolf, p. 505. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE LUTHERAN CHURCH AND THE WORD OF GOD. 
 
 THE corner stone of the Lutheran Church is 
 Holy Scripture. From the day that Luther 
 found the Bible in the University at Erfurt, the 
 Reformation was born. In that sacred volume 
 lay the germ of the mighty movement that was 
 about to recreate the world. It was by the study 
 of the Word of God that Luther became en- 
 lightened as to the errors of Romanism, and it 
 was with this sword of the spirit that he led forth 
 the Church from her bondage, to the liberty and 
 progress of the modern era. It was on the rock of 
 the Holy Scriptures as over against the edicts 
 of Popes and the decrees of Councils that Luther 
 planted himself at Worms — that "scene" which 
 Froude calls "the finest in modern history," — 
 when he uttered the memorable words : " Here I 
 
22 
 
 stand, I cannot do otherwise ; God help me, 
 Amen!" 
 
 Accordingly, Luther's first great work was to 
 translate the Bible and place it, in the simplest 
 language, in the hands of the people. Preaching, 
 too, at once resumed the chief place from which 
 it had been supplanted in the Mediaeval services. 
 From Luther's own pulpit in Wittenberg and 
 from Lutheran pulpits everywhere the Word of 
 God resounded, as it did of old when Christ and 
 his Apostles "came preaching the kingdom of 
 God." And when the Augsburg confession was 
 set forth as the chief symbol of the Lutheran 
 faith, it was a mere republication of the teaching 
 of Holy Scripture. Accordingly when the Roman 
 Catholic Duke of Bavaria said to the theologian 
 Eck : "Can you refute by sound reasons, this 
 their confession?" "With the writings of the 
 Apostles and Prophets — no," replied Eck; "but 
 with those of the Fathers and Councils — yes." 
 " I understand," replied the Duke, " the Lutherans 
 according to you, are in the Scripture ; and we 
 are outside." 
 
 And this peculiarity still characterizes the 
 Lutheran Church, not only as over against the 
 Roman, but even measurably the Reformed 
 Churches. The position of Lutheranism in 
 
respect to the Word of God is unique. In no 
 christian communion does it hold so unequivocably 
 the place of absolute authority. Such was the 
 reverence of Luther for the Bible that he does 
 not scruple to say that we must look upon the 
 Scripture as " if God himself had spoken therein," 
 and he calls the Holy Spirit "the most clear and 
 simple writer there is in heaven and on earth."* 
 And this same reverence has passed into the 
 Church holding his name. For, while we gladly 
 concede the prominence which all christian 
 Churches, Greek, Roman, and Reformed, give to 
 the Scripture, yet the Bible does hold a special 
 pre-eminence in the Lutheran Church, such as it 
 has not elsewhere. 
 
 With it the Word of God is the chief Means 
 of Grace. It is the source of the efficacy of the 
 Sacraments. It is the seed of the spiritual life. 
 It is the organ of our personal relation to Christ 
 by which He lives in the believer. It is the 
 instrument of sanctification, the formative power 
 of growth in grace, "Sanctify them through thy 
 truth, thy Word is truth" (John xvii; 17). And 
 it is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. 
 The Word, therefore, in the Lutheran Church is 
 
 *Walch— XVIII, pp. 1456, 1602. 
 
24 
 
 the supreme and all sufficient spiritual agent. 
 Nor is it held as necessary to its effect that it be 
 attended with concomitant agencies and appliances 
 of human wisdom and "human machinery." But 
 rather do these supplant and enfeeble it, even as 
 Oetinger complained that the followers of Zinzen- 
 dorf placed more reliance upon the singing of his 
 emotional hymns than they did upon the Word 
 of God. For when simply and purely preached 
 it exerts its utmost spiritual influence: "That 
 your faith should not stand in the wisdom of 
 men, but in the power of God" (I. Cor. ii ; 5). It 
 therefore, is the staple of Lutheran preaching, and 
 the centre of every Lutheran service. 
 
 No Church so closely moulds its confessions, 
 its theology, its liturgical services, its hymnology, 
 its devotional literature, and its simple christian 
 life after the Scriptures, as does the Lutheran. 
 
 With her the Church stands by and depends 
 upon the authority of Scripture, and not Scripture 
 upon the authority of the Church. 
 
 Emphatically among her ecclesiastical sisters 
 may she wear the title : The Bible Church. Fitly 
 thus does the historian Kurtz, term her: "The 
 Church of the pure doctrine." And Dr. Schaff 
 says of her: "The Lutheran Church meditated 
 over the deepest mysteries of divine grace and 
 
25 
 
 brought to light many treasures of knowledge 
 from the mines of revelation. She can point to 
 an unbroken succession of learned divines who 
 devoted their whole life to the investigation of 
 saving truth."* The Lutheran Church accord- 
 ingly has no sympathy with the low and loose 
 views current in many Protestant quarters, re- 
 specting the sacred oracles. She does not con- 
 sider the Bible as merely the imperfect record of 
 a divine revelation, but she regards it as that 
 revelation. She does not think that the Scriptures 
 merely contain the Word of God, but that they 
 are the Word of God. She does not view the 
 Scriptures as a promiscuous intermixture of 
 human error and divine wisdom, but as absolute 
 and unmixed truth. To her the Bible is "The 
 Word of God which liveth and abideth forever." 
 (I. Pet. i; 23.) For her the Bible is no book of 
 man's origin, but in it she hears the voice of 
 "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners 
 spake in times past unto the fathers by the 
 prophets." (Heb. i; 1.) And therefore she does 
 not receive the Bible with conditions and com- 
 promising qualifications, but she receives it as 
 reverently as did St. Paul, to wit: "For I neither 
 
 *Lutheranism and Reform, p. 174. 
 
26 
 
 received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by 
 the revelation of Jesus Christ." Gal. i; 12. 
 
 The Lutheran Church does not then with one 
 breath receive the Scriptures, while with the 
 other she invalidates them by a low theory of 
 inspiration, but to her they present "not the words 
 which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the 
 Holy Ghost teacheth." (I. Cor. ii ; 13.) Therefore 
 her position is that which Dorner quotes as that 
 of Luther, viz.: "God in revelation is God in the 
 Word. In the Word thou shouldst hear nothing 
 else than thy God speaking to thee."* Or as the 
 great theologian, Gerhard, writes : " Although God 
 did not directly write the Scriptures, yet it is God 
 and indeed God alone, who inspired the prophets 
 and apostles, not only as they spoke, but also as 
 they wrote ; and He made use of their lips, their 
 tongues, their hands, their pen."f 
 
 The Lutheran Church then regards the Scrip- 
 tures as the revelation of God's Word and Will, 
 and hence the one only infallible rule of faith and 
 practice. By this standard, therefore, she frames 
 her creed, moulds her theology, and shapes her 
 system of ethics. And with these high views of 
 Scripture, she does not stumble at what that 
 
 *History of Protestant Theology, Vol. I, p. 107. 
 fSchmid's Lutheran Theology, p. 69. 
 
27 
 
 Word reveals. What God affirms she receives 
 with implicit faith, believing that His power is 
 equal to His word, and that what He says He can 
 do. Hence she does not hesitate where the 
 Scripture doctrine involves a mystery. But 
 despite the arguments of the skeptical reason, 
 and the sneers and taunts of infidels, "as a little 
 child" she "receives with meekness the engrafted 
 Word." (James i; 21.) 
 
 As Luther, in the colossal bronze group at 
 Worms, stands with the open Bible in his hand, 
 and his face upturned to heaven — the noblest 
 artistic impersonation of moral grandeur in the 
 world — so does the Evangelical Lutheran Church 
 stand upon the impregnable rock of Holy Scrip- 
 ture. And it is this Rock upon which, as a 
 Lutheran Conference has recently declared in 
 Berlin, "the wisdom of this world will be rent 
 asunder." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH THE CENTRAL LUTHERAN 
 DOCTRINE. 
 
 TF the Word of God, as 'the sole fountain of 
 1 authority for the christian conscience, as over 
 against the authority of Popes and Councils, was 
 the chief means of the Reformation, the doctrine 
 of that Word most potent in the movement was 
 Justification by Faith. This central truth of the 
 New Testament, involving the very heart of 
 Christ's incarnation and redemptive work, had 
 been lost sight of during the Middle Ages. 
 Instead of teaching that the sinner was justified 
 freely by faith in Christ's blood and righteousness, 
 justification had been made dependent on human 
 works and merits and narrowed to priestly inter- 
 vention. Consequently a system of penances, 
 indulgences, masses, repititions, and monkish 
 
29 
 
 routine, had come in vogue, instead of simple 
 spiritual piety. Not only did these heavily burden 
 and oppress the conscience, but they placed a 
 bar between the soul and its immediate living 
 intercourse with the Savior. All Christendom was 
 groaning under this intolerable perversion. 
 
 But when Luther had reopened the Bible, and 
 studied it carefully for himself, he discovered this 
 lost cardinal principle of Christianity. Especially 
 one day, when on a pious pilgrimage to Rome, 
 while, as a work of penance, climbing Pilate's 
 staircase, the Pauline passage: ''The just shall 
 live by Faith," flashed upon his mind. Then it 
 was, that he also saw the falsity and absurdity of 
 this whole system of meritorious works. He 
 realized that it was a total misconception of the 
 gospel. That it was the servile routine of the 
 slave and not the loving, joyous obedience of the 
 Son. At this discovery a great burden rolled 
 from Luther's soul. He saw that what all his 
 monastic penances and self-mortifications failed 
 to procure, was freely offered to him by simply 
 trusting in the all atoning merits of the crucified 
 Lamb of God. Then Luther for the first time 
 experienced true and perfect spiritual peace. He 
 had now, so to speak, found the key of the lost 
 Paradise. And he now eoes forth from his closet 
 
30 
 
 where God has made him a free man in Christ 
 Jesus, to give this boon of spiritual freedom to 
 the world. 
 
 Henceforth this becomes "the one central 
 point in Luther's heart and life, in his theology 
 and in the testimony of the Church called after 
 him, namely, the clearness, firmness, and joyful- 
 ness, of that justifying laith which was, then, for 
 the first time since the days of the apostles, 
 restored in its fullness to the Christian Church." 
 Wielding in his unique personality this vital 
 Evangelical doctrine he broke the Papal bondage 
 of a thousand years, reformed the corrupted 
 Church of Christ, created a new historic epoch, 
 opened the door of the modern era, and trans- 
 formed the whole condition of man. That we 
 are "justified by faith," that this faith introduces 
 us into a personal union with Christ, and that 
 this new spiritual life issues in good works — this 
 pivotal gospel truth — is the explanation of all our 
 unwonted modern progress. The superior 
 enlightenment of Protestant over Romish nations, 
 the greater spirituality and practical piety of 
 Protestant peoples, and the unfettered advance 
 of education, liberty, and the arts and sciences, 
 since the reformation, are all owing to this vital 
 evangelical principle, 
 
3i 
 
 And if this is the chief factor that differentiates 
 Lutheranism from Romanism, it also to no small 
 degree distinguishes the Lutheran from the 
 Reformed Churches. For, while the Reformed 
 Churches owe their origin to this same principle, 
 and more or less hold and confess it, yet they by 
 no means have the clear grasp of it had by 
 the Lutheran Church. It does not with them 
 hold the primary place that it does in Lutheranism, 
 where it is, as Luther termed it, the articidus stantis 
 aut cadentis ecclesiae, i. e. article of the standing or 
 falling of the Christian Church. For example, in 
 the Calvinistic system, while Justification by Faith 
 has a place, it is yet made secondary to the abso- 
 lute sovereignty and decree of God, which, 
 without any sphere for the freedom of the will, is 
 the sole cause of faith. "The Lutheran Church 
 has always been a unit in the rejection of those 
 gloomy errors which centre in the theory of 
 absolute election to faith. While she never 
 swerved from the fundamental truth that salvation 
 is by grace alone, she just as firmly maintained 
 the other fundamental truth, that salvation is by 
 faith alone, as the only means by which the soul 
 can appropriate the merits of Christ."* "Angli 
 
 ♦Distinctive Doctrines and Usages of the Lutheran Church, p. 
 
 29 
 
32 
 
 canism has sought to confine Christ's grace to 
 narrow channels. Methodism often dims His 
 crown by its conjunction of experiences and 
 works with grace."* Lutheran theology on the 
 other hand is Christo-centric. All revolves about 
 Christ as the shining centre'. And as a matter of 
 fact there is a wide spread degeneracy in much 
 Protestant teaching in regard to this great central 
 article of Justification by Faith. In how many 
 pulpits is the death of Christ on the cross robbed 
 of all its significance as a vicarious sacrifice, and 
 reduced to a mere moral example. That he was 
 the infinitely precious offering over against an 
 infinite guilt of sin ; that He by His suffering 
 paid man's full penalty; and that we have 
 remission of sins through His blood; is not only 
 ignored but openly denied, and even represented 
 as morally unjust and revolting. A far worse and 
 more fatal error this than that Romish perversion 
 against which Luther raised his protest! 
 
 And others, thoroughly evangelical in most 
 respects, still misconceive and misjudge this great 
 principle of Lutheranism. Thus, the late Canon 
 Liddon speaks slightingly of "Luther's imputa- 
 tion doctrine," as one for which he had "no 
 
 ♦Lutherans in America, Wolf, p. 519. 
 
33 
 
 sympathy, as it often led to lax morality, etc.," 
 and then adds condescendingly that "good 
 Lutherans are always better than their' theory."* 
 Yet Christ was not afraid that it would "lead to 
 lax morality" when he made salvation conditional 
 on faith alone saying: "He that believeth on the 
 Son hath everlasting life." (John iii ; 36.) Nor 
 was St. Paul fearful that this doctrine of Christ 
 would lead to fruitlessness in good works, when 
 he declared: "Therefore w r e conclude that a man 
 is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." 
 (Rom. iii; 28.) This idea that the Lutheran 
 doctrine fosters indifference to good works, 
 whether urged by Romanists or Protestants, is 
 an utter perversion both of Scriptural and Luth- 
 eran teaching. The Scripture teaches definitely 
 and cumulatively that the ground of our justifica- 
 tion is solely and absolutely the blood and right- 
 eousness of Christ, and that the condition or 
 means of our justification is faith which lays hold 
 upon the great "propitiation for sinners." But 
 this is not a mere intellectual assent, such as 
 Canon Liddon speaks of, or Paul, when he says : 
 "The devils believe and tremble." But it is a 
 "Faith which worketh by love." (Gal. v ; 6.) A 
 
 *Magazine of Christian Literature March, 1890. 
 
faith quickened by, aglow with, and fruitful 
 through love. And the outcome and test of this 
 living faith are good works. The sinner forgiven 
 much loves much. The greater the free love and 
 pardon of Christ, the greater his impulse toward 
 a life of grateful, good works. The new life born 
 of faith is the Christ-life of love to God and the 
 service of fellowmen. "By their fruits ye shall 
 know them." And this vital Protestant prin- 
 ciple has so illustrated its practical force in the 
 moral regeneration of the world as to render 
 quite superfluous any vindication of it. 
 
 Two fundamental departures from the evangeli- 
 cal tenet of justification are conspicuous in the 
 Protestantism of to-day. One is that which dis- 
 connects Faith from its scriptural relation to the 
 Church. For while Faith is the sole condition of 
 salvation it is mediated through the Word and 
 Sacraments. Saving faith is generated bv the 
 Holy Scriptures and nurtured by the Sacraments. 
 That Faith is thus eiven through the Means of 
 
 o o 
 
 Grace, and not to be violently disjoined from 
 God's historical instrumentality for salvation — the 
 Church — is the true evangelical order. 
 
 The other current error is the position so 
 frequently heralded from Protestant pulpits that 
 doctrines, beliefs, and confessions, have little or 
 
35 
 
 nothing to do with Christianity, that it matters 
 not what a man believes, but only what he does. 
 Life is made the all important thing - , and Faith 
 quite relegated to the background, as altogether 
 indifferent. The Lutheran Christian sees here 
 simply bald Judaism or Paganism. This is the 
 inversion and invalidation of the Gospel teaching. 
 "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt 
 be saved," (Acts xvi ; 31.) was the apostolic 
 message. This preaching, which was "to the 
 Greeks foolishness" and "to the Jews a stone of 
 stumbling," carried with it "the power of God," 
 and changed the face of the world. In the divine 
 plan Faith precedes and orders Life. We are 
 "justified by Faith," and the vital principle thus 
 imparted "works by Love," to the production of 
 the new christian life. Thus, what we believe we 
 do, is the Christian answer to Jew, Pagan, and 
 Infidel. "The great thing in true Religion is the 
 Faith — the Creed — the facts and doctrines on 
 which the soul rests for peace and salvation. 
 There can be no right Religion without a right 
 Faith."* "Credo" — I believe — is the confession 
 which lies at the very starting point of the 
 christian course. 
 
 *The Golden Altar, J. A. Seiss, D.D., LL.D., p. n. 
 
 T^wrr^^nww 
 
36 
 
 The open and tacit assaults thus made upon 
 this great material principle of the Reformation, 
 show what vital departures are taking place from 
 the Evangelical doctrines of Luther and the 
 Reformers, and that the Lutheran must needs 
 stand for the truth to-day as of old. As, then, 
 the central doctrine of her theological system, 
 the great distinctive article of her Church, and 
 the root principle of all her works of practical 
 piety, Lutheranism writes upon the banner which 
 she holds up before a lost race this sentence — 
 the very heart of the Gospel of Christ — "Justi- 
 fication bv Faith." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE SACRAMENTS IN THE LUTHERAN CHURCH. 
 
 SACRAMENT is the Latin form of the New 
 Testament Greek word, " Musterion" 'whence 
 comes our English word Mystery. The Sacra- 
 ments consequently are the sacred mysteries of 
 Christianity — the holiest ordinances of our 
 religion. The two Sacraments — Baptism and the 
 Lord's Supper — were instituted by our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 The nature and intent of the Sacraments are 
 thus defined in Lutheran theology : "They are 
 holy rites, appointed by God, through which, by 
 means of visible signs, grace is imparted to man."* 
 That is, God has instituted the Holy Sacraments 
 to convey strengthening grace to the soul. In 
 each Sacrament, therefore, there are two elements, 
 
 ♦Doctrinal Theology of the Lutheran Church, Schmidt, p. 537. 
 
38 
 
 the divine invisible grace, and the earthly visible 
 sign. And the relation between the two is that 
 the latter is the instrument, or means of the 
 former. That is, the visible element is the vessel 
 through which the invisible grace is conveyed 
 and given, as it is written: "This treasure we 
 have in earthen vessels." (2. Cor. iv ; 7.) Thus, 
 in the Sacrament of Baptism the outward element 
 is water, and the invisible grace offered, or given 
 through the water is spiritual washing or 
 regeneration. So, in the Lord's Supper, the out- 
 ward, or visible elements are Bread and Wine, 
 and the invisible elements given through them 
 are the Body and Blood of Christ. 
 
 These two elements are not to be confused 
 or mixed together, neither are they to be sepa- 
 rated one from the other. But they are to be 
 connected by this sacramental union, viz. that one 
 is the vessel, or means of the other. To get the 
 invisible grace the outward element must be 
 used. "What, therefore, God hath joined 
 together, let not man put asunder." The Sacra- 
 ments thus are not mere figures or signs, but 
 they are means of grace. What they signify they 
 also convey. They are the earthly instruments 
 of God's blessed spiritual gifts. And as they are 
 the institutions of God, so man's faith or unbelief 
 
39 
 
 can neither make nor unmake them. It can but 
 determine their effect. He who observes them 
 with faith receives their grace to his unspeakable 
 good, and he who observes them impenitently 
 profanes their gift to his nameless hurt. " Religion 
 [according to the Lutheran conception] is not the 
 Puritan idea of God's Law, but the Gospel idea 
 of God's Love. Yet God's love is not as loose 
 as are the prevailing views of it. It has an 
 appointed way of making men righteous. And 
 this way is not a vague, individualistic influence 
 of the Holy Spirit over men's impulses and emo- 
 tions, but it is a way of definite and objective 
 means of Grace through which alone the Holy 
 Spirit ordinarily works. These means of Grace 
 are His Word, which both regenerates and 
 strengthens, and two Sacraments, one of which 
 implants the new life, while the other feeds it. 
 To Lutherans then, the Gospel of God's love, 
 revealed in Christ and received through Christ's 
 means of grace, is the sum and substance of all."* 
 
 Such is the Lutheran doctrine of the Holy 
 Sacra.ments. It complies with the Scriptural 
 teaching, which always unites divine grace with 
 the outward sacramental elements. And it does 
 
 *The Lutheran Church, Rev. Theo. C. Schmauk. 
 
40 
 
 no violence to our senses which show us that no 
 change has taken place in the elements, which 
 simply remain as before, viz. natural Water, Bread 
 and Wine. 
 
 But this view of the Sacraments, as held by 
 the Lutherans, we at once notice is totally distinct 
 from that held both by the Roman Catholics, and 
 by the other Protestant Churches. The Roman 
 Catholics inix the outward element and the invis- 
 ible grace, saying that one is changed into the 
 other. This view contradicts the evidence of the 
 senses. And the other Protestant Churches vio- 
 lently disjoin and separate the invisible and the 
 visible elements, for they deny that the latter are 
 instruments of the former. They teach that the 
 earthly elements are only figures or signs, and 
 not means of grace. That the participant receives 
 no grace whatever through the sacramental 
 elements. Whatever blessing he experiences at 
 the time he receives through his mind or spirit, 
 entirely apart from the external use. This latter 
 view contradicts the teaching of Scripture. It 
 also deprives the Sacrament of all direct efficacy. 
 And the question at once arises, if God did not 
 mean them to be the instruments of any blessing, 
 why did He institute them, and ordain their 
 observance? But how much more natural it is 
 
4i 
 
 to think that what divine wisdom and beneficence 
 have set up with such solemn sanctions, are not 
 empty signs, but richly filled vessels — are not 
 utterly devoid of efficacy, but clothed with spirit- 
 ual might and power. From this presentation, 
 the incomparably purer, richer, and more 
 Scriptural view of the Sacraments held by the 
 Lutheran Church, than that held by either the 
 Roman or Reformed Churches, will appear. 
 
 It is sometimes charged upon the Lutheran 
 Church that she teaches Sacramentarianism, i. e. 
 that the Sacraments will produce their effects with- 
 out faith, or a worthy spiritual state, and that she 
 exalts the Sacraments over the Word of God. 
 Both these charges are fully refuted by our highest 
 authorities. Article XIII of the Augsburg Con- 
 fession teaches of the Use of Sacraments : 
 "Therefore men must use Sacraments so as to 
 join faith with them, which believes the promises 
 that are offered and declared unto us by the 
 Sacraments. Wherefore they condemn those 
 who teach that the Sacraments do justify by the 
 work done, and do not teach that faith is requisite 
 in the use of Sacraments." The same views are 
 constantly upheld by our representative theologi- 
 cal writers. Thus, says that prince of ^Lutheran 
 theologians, Chemnitz: "The efficacy of the 
 
42 
 
 Sacraments is not such as if through them God in- 
 fused, and, as it were, impressed grace and salva- 
 tion, even on unbelievers or believers. "* So also, 
 Hollazius : "The Sacraments confer no grace on 
 adults, unless when offered, they receive it, by true 
 faith, which existed in their hearts previously."* 
 All Lutherans urge the necessity of moral fitness 
 for the Sacrament, and likewise attach all its 
 efficacy to the Word of God. As Augustine says 
 the Sacrament is "the visible word," so our theo- 
 logians teach that "strictly speaking there is but 
 one means of salvation, which is distinguished 
 as the audible and visible word." - } - It is as Luther 
 says in the Catechism: "The eating and drink- 
 ing, indeed, do not produce these great effects, 
 but the Words which stand here." 
 
 The Lutheran Church, then, teaches so just 
 and discriminating a significance of the Word and 
 Sacraments that we may fitly apply to her the 
 striking apothegm of Claus Harms, when in 1817 
 he raised the banner of evangelical Christianity 
 against the devastating inundation of unbelief, viz: 
 I. "The Roman Catholic Church is a glorious 
 Church; she holds and forms herself pre-emi- 
 
 *I)octrinal Theology of the Lutheran Church, y. 550. 
 flbid — Ouenstedt. p. 538. 
 
43 
 
 nently by the Sacrament. II. The Reformed 
 Church is a glorious Church ; she holds and forms 
 herself pre-eminently by the Word of God. 
 III. More glorious than either is the Evangeli- 
 cal Lutheran Church ; she holds and forms her- 
 self pre-eminently by the Sacrament and the 
 Word of God."* 
 
 This one point alone, the true scriptural teaching 
 of the Lutheran Church respecting the Holy 
 Sacraments, gives to her a pre-eminence in 
 Christendom, clothes her with a lever of spiritual 
 power, and makes her the custodian of an 
 incomparable divine treasure, which, while it 
 holds the promise of such great things for her 
 future, should also stimulate inviolable devotion 
 on the part of her members. 
 
 *Kahnis' History of German Protestantism, p. 225. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE LUTHERAN DOCTRINE OF BAPTISM. 
 
 LUTHERANS teach that Baptism, according 
 to the Scriptures, is the initial Sacrament. 
 It is the door of entrance into the visible king- 
 dom of God. It is the seal of the new covenant 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the gate of 
 admission into the Holy Christian Church. It is 
 the beginning of the christian life. Accordingly 
 it differs from the Lord's Supper in that it is 
 administered but once, at the beginning of the 
 spiritual life, whereas the Lord's Supper, as the 
 sacrament of renewal, must be continually 
 repeated. 
 
 Let us look at the Nature, Mode, and Subjects 
 of Baptism, in the Lutheran Church. 
 
 I. Nature. Baptism as a Sacrament, illus- 
 trates the truths laid down in the last chapter. 
 
45 
 
 "By Baptism," says the IXth Article of the 
 Augsburg Confession, "grace is offered." It is 
 then no mere symbolic rite, but it is a means of 
 grace, conveying to the subject the spiritual gift 
 which it typifies. What is this Baptismal grace? 
 The Scriptures answer: "Except a man be born 
 of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into 
 the kingdom of God." (John iii ; 5.) "Be baptized 
 and wash away thy sins." (Acts xxii ; 16.) 
 "According to His mercy He saved us, by the 
 washing of regeneration and renewing of the 
 Holy Ghost." (Titus iii; 5.) 
 
 These and corresponding passages show that 
 Baptism is the bodily application of water with 
 faith, and that the divine grace therein offered is 
 new spiritual birth, or regeneration, by the gift 
 of the Holy Spirit. This is the Lutheran teach- 
 ing, as Luther defines in the catechism: "When 
 connected with the Word of God, it is a Baptism 
 i. e. a gracious water of life and a 'washing of 
 regeneration' in the Holy Ghost." Baptism then 
 is the sacramental rite instituted as the ordinary 
 means of the beginning of the new spiritual life 
 in the soul. Where there is a trinal application 
 of water, with the words of Institution, and a 
 believing heart, there the Holy Ghost is out- 
 poured to cleanse original and actual sin, and to 
 
46 
 
 recreate the personality in the divine image. 
 ■Reason" indeed says Luther, "can never 
 understand how Baptism is a laver of regeneration, 
 but what God says is true whether my senses 
 corroborate it or not. He is omnipotent and can 
 fulfill His Word.""* This Baptismal Grace is not 
 conveyed magically, but only in accordance with 
 the Scriptural conditions. It can. too. be lost, 
 and assuredlv will, unless " That eood riling which 
 was committed unto thee," thou "keep by the 
 Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us." ill. Tim. i : i _ 
 Very precious, rich, and comforting, thus is 
 Baptism according to the Lutheran view, pre- 
 senting a wide contrast to the superficial vi- 
 too largely prevalent respecting this Holy 
 Sacrament. 
 
 II. Subjects. Is this Sacrament to be admin- 
 istered alone to adults, or also to children? The 
 Aucrsburor Confession oives this direct answer: 
 "Children are to be baptized, who by Baptism, 
 beine offered to God. are received into divine 
 favor." 5 also Luther writes: "We must 
 declare it as a simple fact, that a child, which by 
 nature is oppressed with sin and death, begins 
 eternal life at the time of its Baptism. "f That 
 
 •House Postfls. Vol. I, pp. 296 and 298. 
 + House Postfls, Vol. II - 
 
47 
 
 baptism of Children was the primary design and 
 rule — adult baptism being the exception, in such 
 cases where the Sacrament had been neglected — 
 is shown by the general tenor, and individual state- 
 ments of Scripture; by the Apostolic Baptisms; and 
 by the practise of the primitive Christian Church. 
 
 a. The analogy of Baptism to Circumcision in 
 the Scriptures sustains the Lutheran view. Cir- 
 cumcision was the Old Testament rite of admission 
 into God's covenant. Now, as it was administered 
 to children at eight days old, the conclusion is 
 irresistible that Baptism, ordained by Christ to 
 take the place of circumcision, must also be 
 designed for children. Where is the authority 
 for supposing that little children who even "under 
 the law," were admitted into the Jewish Church, 
 should under the "new covenant" of "grace and 
 truth," be excluded from the Christian Church? 
 How directly contrary this would be to those 
 tender words of Jesus ; "Suffer the little children 
 to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of 
 such is the kingdom of God." (Mark x ; 14.) 
 And also to the declaration of St. Peter, on the 
 Pentecostal day, when the Church was founded : 
 "For the promise is unto you, and to your 
 children." (Acts ii ; 39.) 
 
 b. The Household Baptisms of the apostles 
 
4§ 
 
 show the same. Thus, when Paul ''baptized 
 Lydia and her household" (Acts xvi; 15), and when 
 the jailer was "baptized and all his" (Acts xvi; 
 33), or when Paul says : "I baptized the household 
 of Stephanus" (I. Cor. 1 ; 16), is it not manifest 
 that the "household" and "all his," and like 
 phrases, were specially meant to include the little 
 ones of the domestic circle? 
 
 c. Primitive Church Practice. Origen, one of 
 the most learned fathers of the early Christian 
 Church, who was born in the year 185, when 
 those would be living whose fathers could have 
 witnessed the apostolic practice, writes: "The 
 Church has received it from the apostles that 
 infants are to be baptized." And what is alto- 
 gether conclusive, is that in the year 252 an 
 ecclesiastical council of sixty-six bishops convened 
 at Carthage delivered the decision : " It is our 
 unanimous opinion that baptism must be refused 
 to no human being, so soon as he is born." 
 Truly, therefore, does Dr. F. \Y. Conrad say : 
 "The early Fathers of the Christian Church, 
 including Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Justin 
 Martyr, and others, represent in their writings 
 that Infant Baptism was a universal custom derived 
 from the apostles, and the practice was continued 
 in the entire Christian Church, with a few excep- 
 
49 
 
 tions, for fifteen hundred years. Furthermore, 
 inscriptions in the Catacombs of Rome, giving the 
 ages of neophytes or baptized children, also 
 demonstrate the fact that infant baptism was 
 practiced after the death of the apostles, in the 
 first centuries of the Church."* And the historian, 
 Guericke, justly remarks : "Without some apos- 
 tolical tradition, it is wholly inconceivable how the 
 claim of Baptism to an Apostolical origin could 
 ever have gained such unhesitating assent, and 
 been generally adopted even in the 2nd century."f 
 The only objection urged against these cumu- 
 lative testimonies is that a little child cannot have 
 faith. But has not our Lord answered this, when 
 he says: "One of these little ones which believe 
 in me." (Matt, xviii ; 6.) Luther interpreted this 
 as an unconscious faith, discernible to God alone. 
 Augustine argues that in the case of children : 
 "The faith of the Church [represented by christian 
 parents or sponsors,] takes the place of their own 
 faith. "J As, then, faith in the adult is necessary 
 to salvation, but children can be saved without 
 faith, so though faith in an adult be necessary to 
 Baptism, yet children can be baptized, and receive 
 
 *On the Lutheran Doctrine of Baptism, p. 133. 
 
 fChristian Antiquities, p. 238. 
 
 ^Neander's Church History, Vol. II. p. 670. 
 
5o 
 
 baptismal grace, without conscious faith. And 
 though Baptism is thus the ordinary means of the 
 regeneration of infants, yet those dying unbaptized 
 are not lost. Lutheran theologians hold that nol the 
 want, but the contempt of the sacrament condemns. 
 Our duty is bound by the sacrament, but God's 
 grace is not thus bound. He can regenerate and 
 save where and how He will. Infants dying un- 
 baptized are saved. Those responsible for their 
 baptism will be held answerable for the neglect.* 
 
 The New York Independent has lately shown, 
 by carefully tabulated statistics of all religious 
 denominations in the United States, that the pro- 
 portion of Infant Baptisms in the Lutheran Church 
 is more than twofold larger than that of any other 
 Protestant Church. And the Watchman, a leading 
 Baptist journal, remarks that this is owing to the 
 Lutheran doctrine of Baptismal grace. Where 
 there is no belief of direct spiritual efficacy in the 
 sacrament of Baptism, it is quite natural that the 
 rite should fall into neglect. This fact accounts 
 for the alarming decadence of Infant Baptism 
 among non-Lutheran Churches. The most 
 powerful Presbyterian Church in New York City, 
 and perhaps in the U. S., with 2000 members, 
 
 *See Luther's views on this interesting point fully cited by 
 Krauth on Augsburg Confession, p. 63. 
 
5i 
 
 lately reported but 21 Infant Baptisms for the 
 year. A very significant illustration this, that 
 belief in a power of God in the Sacraments is 
 necessary to maintain their observance. 
 
 III. Mode. The Lutheran Church practices 
 Affusion, i. e. pouring or sprinkling. The mode 
 of baptism is not positively indicated in Scripture. 
 The Baptism of Christ in the Jordan seems to 
 indicate pouring. And His baptism is so repre- 
 sented in the frescoes of the Catacombs, one of 
 which is supposed to date from the second century. 
 So also Peter's question: "Can any man forbid 
 water, that these should not be baptized?" (Acts 
 x; 47), certainly indicates the application of 
 water to the subject, rather than the immersion 
 of the subject in the water. A very important 
 testimony as to the practice of the primitive 
 Church is that given in the recently discovered 
 "Teaching of the Apostles," a book dating from 
 a time quite as old as the formation of our New 
 Testament canon. It says: "If thou have not 
 living water, baptize into other water ; and if thou 
 canst not in cold, in warm. But if thou have not 
 either, pour out water thrice upon the head into the 
 name of Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit."* This 
 
 *Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol.- VII, p. 879. 
 
52 
 
 proves beyond a doubt that either immersion or 
 aspersion was considered a legitimate mode. 
 That is, the amount of water was not deemed an 
 essential factor of Baptism. Only those features 
 of the Sacrament which were capable of universal 
 use were made absolute. But the mode, depending 
 upon conditions of climate and of the subject, as 
 for example, whether sick or well, was left open 
 for adaptation. Thus immersion, which could be 
 safely used in a mild country like Palestine, but 
 would be impracticable in a rigorous one like 
 Russia, was not designed to be an essential 
 feature of the rite. But, as pouring or sprinkling 
 can be used in all countries and under all con- 
 ditions, it has, with legitimate authority and 
 judicious propriety, come into well-nigh universal 
 use. And this is the mode practiced in the 
 Lutheran Church. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE LUTHERAN DOCTRINE OF THE LORD S SUPPER. 
 
 THE most solemn institution founded by Jesus 
 Christ, the most important public ordinance 
 of the Christian Church, and that doctrine which 
 has excited deeper interest and graver discussion 
 than any other in theology, is the Lord's Supper. 
 And it is just this holy and weighty doctrine 
 which has become more distinctive of Lutheranism 
 than any other. In fact, as over against the other 
 Protestant denominations, it may be called the 
 corner-stone of the Lutheran Church. For the 
 view of the Lord's Supper which she holds and 
 confesses, in harmony with the saints of old, has 
 been either lost sight of, or definitely repudiated 
 by the great majority of other Protestants. This 
 view has been fitly termed — the real presence. 
 It is thus defined in Article X of the Augsburg 
 

 54 
 
 Confession : " In the Lord's Supper the Body and 
 Blood of Christ are truly present under the form 
 of bread and wine, and are there communicated 
 and received." It will be seen that two objects 
 are here spoken of as being present in the Lord's 
 Supper. One is the Body and Blood of Christ, 
 the other is the Bread and Wine. The Body 
 and Blood are the invisible divine element, the 
 Bread and Wine are the visible earthly element. 
 And the relation of the two elements is that the 
 earthly is the means of the heavenly. That is, 
 by using or appropriating the Bread and Wine 
 the Body and Blood of Christ are received and 
 appropriated by the communicant. The one is 
 not changed into the other, so that the divine and 
 earthly are mixed and confused — -which is the 
 Roman Catholic error of Transubstantiation. Nor 
 are the divine and earthly separated, so that the 
 Body and Blood are not received where the Bread 
 and Wine are taken — which is the error of the 
 other Protestant Churches — but the two are com- 
 bined in an inseparable and yet unmixed union. 
 This is called the sacramental union. And it is 
 precisely in harmony with what we have shown 
 to be the meaning of a Sacrament, viz. an invisible 
 grace conveyed through a visible, earthly vessel. 
 Now let us look at the reasons which prove 
 
55 
 
 this Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence to 
 be the only true one. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 
 all relate that on the evening of our Lord's 
 betrayal he took bread and wine and declared of 
 them these words : "Take eat : This is my Body," 
 — "Drink: For this is my Blood." To St. Paul, 
 also, the Lord after His ascension, appeared and 
 uttered the identical words of this sacramental 
 formula. As Dean Stanley therefore says of this 
 fourfold iteration : "These famous words form the 
 most incontestable and authentic speech of the 
 founder of our religion."* Now, the plain, 
 natural meaning of these words is that Christ in 
 the Holy Supper gives us His Body and Blood to 
 eat and to drink. And the only question between 
 Lutheran Christians and others is whether He 
 meant what He said, or whether He did not mean 
 what He said. 
 
 The chief argument advanced to maintain the 
 opposite view is that our Lord's words were 
 figurative. But it is a rule of Scripture interpre- 
 tation that no revealed word must ever be 
 interpreted figuratively, where the direct natural 
 meaning is admissible. On any other principle 
 all the truths and doctrines of Scripture could be 
 
 *Christian Institutions, p. 95. 
 
56 
 
 frittered away into tropes and figures, and no 
 positive revelation would be left. And it seems 
 quite inconceivable that in this most solemn scene, 
 and with these words so precise and definite, and 
 given us in fourfold repitition, our Lord could 
 have been disguising his meaning in symbolic 
 language. "To suppose that at such a holy time 
 as this He spoke in metaphor, is contrary to the 
 solemnity of the occasion, the meaning of the 
 institution, and the short, precise phrases em- 
 ployed."* St. Paul had no conception of a merely 
 figurative significance, when he challenged unbe- 
 lief on this very point thus : "The cup of blessing 
 which we bless is it not the communion ['partici- 
 pation in,' as the Revised Version margin literally 
 renders it] of the Blood of Christ? The Bread 
 which we break, is it not the communion^ of the 
 Body of Christ?" 
 
 For a Lutheran, the incontestable word of 
 Scripture is sufficient. Yet to make the certainty 
 more indubitable, we have the unbroken witness 
 
 *Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia — Lord's Supper, Vol. II, p. 1345. 
 
 yThe Greek critical scholar, Alford, thus comments on this 
 passage: "koivgovux, the participation of the Body and Blood of 
 Christ. The strong literal sense must here be held fast as con- 
 stituting the very kernel of the Apostle's argument. If we are to 
 translate this ecrriv represents, or symbolizes, the argument is 
 made void." 
 
57 
 
 of the Church down through all the ages. Thus 
 Irenaeus (130 A.D.-202), writes: "When the 
 mingled cup and the broken bread receive the 
 words of God, it becomes the Eucharist of the 
 Body and Blood of Christ." Ambrose : (340-398) 
 "We, receiving of one bread and of one cup, are 
 receivers of the Body of the Lord." Chrysos- 
 tom : (344-407) "The Bread which we break, is 
 it not the communion of the Body of Christ?" So 
 unanimous is this concurrence that the Church 
 historian, Ruckert, says: "That the Body and 
 Blood of Christ were given and received in the 
 Lord's Supper, was, from the beginning, the 
 general faith. No one opposed this in the ancient 
 Church, not even the Arch-Heretics."* And 
 Luther gives this powerful sentence in regard to 
 it: "This article [the Real Presence] has been 
 unanimously held from the beginning of the 
 Christian Church up to this year 1500, as may 
 be shown from the* writings of the fathers, both 
 in the Greek and Latin languages — which testi- 
 mony of the entire, holy Christian Church ought 
 to be sufficient for us, even if we had nothing 
 more."f 
 
 With Lutherans philosophical objections to 
 
 *Lord's Supper, p. 297. 
 
 f Letter to Albert of Prussia. 
 
 t i 1 1 — -^ imm 
 
58 • 
 
 this doctrine are destitute of weight. We believe 
 that God's power is equal to His Word, and that 
 what He says, He can also do. We are only 
 asked to believe the fact, the manner is and 
 remains incomprehensible. We have but to do 
 with the What? We must leave to God the 
 How? The sacramental union of the divine and 
 earthly elements is indeed a holy mystery, but no 
 deeper or more impenetrable than the Incarnation, 
 or the Resurrection, or the Trinal Unity. We 
 have but to do as Thomas a Kempis so fitly 
 counsels: "Human reason is feeble and may be 
 deceived ; but true faith cannot be deceived. 
 Thou ousfhtest, therefore, to beware of curious 
 and unprofitable searching into this most profound 
 sacrament, if thou wilt not be plunged into the 
 depths of doubt. But go forward with simple and 
 unquestioning faith, and with reverence approach 
 this holy sacrament, and whatsoever thou art not 
 able to understand, commit without care to 
 Almighty God."* Where there is this childlike 
 Christian temper, there will be no difficulty in 
 receiving the Scriptural and Lutheran view of 
 the Lord's Supper. 
 
 The difference in the reverence for the Sacra- 
 
 *Book IV ; Chap. XVIII. 
 
59 
 
 ment, and in its practical spiritual efficacy to the 
 communicant, where the altar is approached with 
 these strong, rich views, or where it is considered 
 a mere sign and empty ceremony, is incalculable. 
 To the latter it is but the memorial and shadow 
 of a dead Christ, to the former it is a blessed 
 communion with the living and o-lorified Christ. 
 To the former it is like the mirage of the desert 
 which invites and then disappoints the thirsty 
 traveler; to the latter — partaking with a believing 
 heart — it is a veritable fountain, whence the Real 
 Presence flows out transmuting all the landscape 
 into livino- o-reen, filling the air with the carols of 
 hope and the fragrance of joy, the soul irradiated 
 and entranced by "finding Him whom it liveth." 
 
 The Real Presence is the peerless jewel of the 
 Evangelical Lutheran Church. No other Pro- 
 testant confession now professes to teach it. Of 
 the XXXIX Articles of the Church of England, 
 for which the claim is sometimes made, Dean 
 Stanley truly says that in them "the lion of 
 Lutheranism and the lamb of Zwinelianism lie 
 side by side, and it is well that they thus consist, 
 or they could not mutually subsist."* Rejecting 
 Transubstantiation, Consubtantiation, Impanation, 
 
 ♦Christian Institutions, p. 92. 
 
6o 
 
 and every error, which in any way mixes and con- 
 fuses the divine grace with the earthly means, or 
 which makes Christ's corporeal presence a carnal 
 or physical one, she holds, that after a heavenly and 
 incomprehensible manner, her Lord makes true 
 His word, and gives to His believing disciples in 
 the Holy Supper, His Body as the Bread of their 
 spiritual life, and His Blood for the remission of 
 sins. 
 
 To bear witness, in the very heart of Pro- 
 testantism, to this central truth, she has never 
 wavered during three and a half centuries, and 
 never will, by God's help, to the end of time. 
 And the significance of this stand of the mother, 
 and greatest Church of Protestantism, can not be 
 over-estimated, in its bearing on the Christian 
 world. It deprives Romanism of its most power- 
 ful shibboleth against Protestantism, viz. that it 
 has emptied the blessed Sacrament of its spiritual 
 efficacy. It anchors Lutheranism safely in the 
 conservative faith of the whole Christian Church 
 as over against the deadly inroads of modern 
 Rationalism. 
 
 And it augurs more than anyone can forecast 
 for the future. Negations are barren, positive 
 beliefs grow. After all — amid the mutable 
 fashions and vagaries of transient times — truth 
 
6i 
 
 abides regnant, the one ever advancing and 
 dominant force on earth. And most of all does 
 this hold in things spiritual. With, then, this far- 
 reaching truth of the Real Presence, lost from the 
 coronet of her Protestant sisters, but glittering a 
 peerless jewjel on her brow, the Lutheran Church 
 will go. forward with an incalculable vantage. 
 More and more will theologians be won to her 
 doctrine, and devout Christians rally to her side, 
 and more and more thereby will she become the 
 recognized leader in God's witness-bearing 
 Church to mankind. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LUTHERAN CHURCH POLITY, OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 AS the Scriptures prescribe no definite form of 
 Church organization, the Lutheran, being 
 pre-eminently a Scriptural Church, does the same. 
 Ecclesiastical order she holds to be a matter of 
 freedom, to be determined by the varying 
 exigencies of the occasion. While doctrine per- 
 tains to the conscience, order pertains to expedi- 
 ency. Accordingly, Lutheran Church Polity, or 
 Government, is different in different countries. 
 In Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, 
 and Transylvania, it is Episcopal, the Church 
 being under the government of Bishops and 
 Arch-Bishops. And that the Lutherans in 
 Sweden have what is called the " historic episco- 
 pate" is admitted by Episcopalians, as the Bishop 
 of Connecticut writes of "Swedish Orders": "If 
 
63 
 
 anything outside the domain of pure mathematics 
 may be said to be capable of demonstration, the 
 reality of the Swedish succession is demonstra- 
 ted."* In Germany, again, the Lutheran Church 
 is under the administration of Superintendents, 
 Consistories, etc. In America, the form of Church 
 Constitution is Synodical, and many congrega- 
 tions are entirely independent. 
 
 "The idea of the universal priesthood of all 
 believers has overthrown in the Lutheran Church 
 the doctrine of a distinction of essence between 
 clergy and laity. The ministry is not an order, 
 but it is a divinely appointed office, to which men 
 must be rightly called. No imparity exists by 
 divine right ; an hierarchical organization is un- 
 christian, but a gradation may be observed, 
 (bishops, superintendents, etc.) as a thing of 
 human right only. In Sweden the bishops em- 
 braced the Reformation, and thus secured in that 
 country an "apostolic succession" in the high- 
 church sense ; though, on the principles of the 
 Lutheran Church, alike where she has as where 
 she has not such a succession, it is not regarded 
 as essential. The ultimate source of power is in 
 the congregations, that is, in the pastor and other 
 
 *The Historic Episcopate in the Lutheran Church, Lutheran 
 Quarterly. — Manhart. 
 
64 
 
 officers, and the people of the single cummunions."* 
 Similarly writes Kurtz of the Constitution of the 
 Lutheran Church: "The biblical idea of a uni- 
 versal priesthood of all believers would not tolerate 
 the retaining of an essential distinction between 
 the clergy and the laity. The clergy were properly 
 designated the servants, ministri, of the Church, 
 of the Word, of the Altar. Hierarchial distinc- 
 tions among the clergy were renounced, as 
 opposed to the spirit of Christianity. But the 
 advantages of a superordination and subordination 
 in respect of merely human rights, in the institu- 
 tion of such offices as those of Superintendents. 
 Provosts, etc., were recognized. "f 
 
 In this view of Church Polity, and ecclesiastical 
 orders, the Lutheran Church has the support not 
 only of Scripture, but of the Ancient Church. 
 Thus, says the great father Augustine [354-430 
 A. D.] : "The office of bishop is above the office 
 of priests, not by authority of the Scriptures, but 
 after the custom of the Church. "J And the fore- 
 most' scholars of the Church of England have 
 frankly admitted the same. Thus, writes the 
 learned Bishop Hooker: "It is rather the force 
 
 Conservative Reformation — Krauth, p. 153. 
 f Church History, Vol. II, p. 363. 
 JEcclesia Lutherana, p. 108. 
 
65 
 
 of custom, whereby the Church doth still uphold, 
 maintain and honor the bishops, than that any 
 such law can be shown that the Lord himself hath 
 appointed presbyters to be under the regiment of 
 bishops."* Church Government, then* in the 
 Lutheran system being free, it is only a matter of 
 human judgment and wise discretion what form it 
 is best to adopt. Some form, however, there 
 must be. For history shows that the progress, 
 prosperity, unity, and efficiency of the Church, 
 are quite as much affected by wise or foolish, 
 orderly or anarchical, loose or efficient govern- 
 ment, as civil states and societies are. In the 
 United States quite too little attention, hitherto, 
 has been given this important matter, so that the 
 administration of the Lutheran Church is here 
 perhaps the least orderly in the world. In fact, 
 our point of weakness here lies in the sphere of 
 organization. And from no other single cause, 
 has our efficiency been so much crippled, and our 
 progress been so greatly impeded. "We need 
 order ,"f the distressed cry of the patriarch 
 Muhlenberg as he saw the distracted state of the 
 American Lutheran congregations, is still re- 
 echoed on every hand. Order, oversight, 
 
 *Ecclesiastical Polity, Book. VII, Chap. V. 
 •{•Life and Times of Muhlenberg — Mann, p. 212. 
 
66 
 
 judicious administration, ageneral superintendence 
 of pastors and congregations, is one of the most 
 intensely practical questions of the times. Our 
 mighty Lutheran hosts are too much like a great, 
 undisciplined, disorganized army, so that their 
 overwhelming force cannot be utilized as it should 
 be, cannot be moved by a common impulse, or 
 brought to bear to a common end and purpose. 
 In a recent paper on this point, a theological 
 professor of large experience makes these judi- 
 cious remarks: "Our convictions on this subject 
 have been deepened more from the practical, 
 than from the theoretical side. Life in the 
 seminary makes many revelations concerning 
 the needs of our conoreeations and the modes of 
 supplying them, that are most surprising. We 
 have most excellent material that admits of a high 
 development, if we only treat it properly. But 
 we are constantly losing some of the very best 
 of it, because of our neglect to avail ourselves of 
 the most simple and reasonable business-like 
 methods with respect to its external administra- 
 tion. The question of greatest importance in our 
 Church in this country at present, is that of its 
 thorough organization upon the foundations laid 
 for it by Muhlenberg. The indifference to more 
 thorough organization for the efficient administra- 
 
6; 
 
 tion of the means of grace, is only a symptom of 
 general religious indifference. If the Lord has 
 actually given us a work to do, he means that we 
 should do it with the most thorough adjustment of 
 all our resources for its execution." 
 
 What the form of government of the American 
 Lutheran Church shall be, is yet in the crucible of 
 discussion and experiment. The growing tendency 
 would appear to be toward a superintendency 
 similar to that in Germany. Others think that a 
 government by bishops, after the order of the one 
 in Scandinavia, which has so efficiently preserved 
 the unity and greatness of our Church there, 
 would be the best.* A recent able editorial in 
 the Lutheran Observer, while guarding carefully 
 against any such Episcopate as would compromise 
 the Lutheran doctrine of the universal priesthood 
 and justification by faith alone, remarks : "That 
 some kind of an "episcopate," or its equivalent in 
 some form of adequate supervision, would be an 
 advantage to the Lutheran Church of this country, 
 
 *It is certainly a noteworthy fact, deserving the thoughtful 
 reflection of every lover of his Church, that alone in Scandinavia 
 of all Christian countries do we find the blessed phenomenon of 
 practically but one Church — the Evangelical Lutheran. Thus in 
 Sweden there are but 600 Roman Catholics, 30,000 Baptists and 
 Methodists, and nearly 5,000,000 Lutherans ! What might possibly 
 have not a similar government done to prevent the distractions and 
 divisions of Germany? 
 
68 
 
 is believed by many who think that the general 
 work of the Church could be carried on more 
 systematically and efficiently under such a form 
 of administration, than under the present methods. 
 * * * * We think if the President of every 
 Lutheran Synod could devote his entire time and 
 labor to a general supervision of the Churches 
 within its bounds, it would be a kind of an 
 " episcopate" that would suit the situation and 
 promote the progress and welfare of the Church." 
 Had it not been, indeed, for the exigencies of the 
 Reformation, Luther would doubtless have 
 preserved ecclesiastical administration by bishops. 
 He wrote: "The Church can never be better 
 governed, and preserved, than with an Episcopal 
 government, after the pattern of the Apostolic 
 and Primitive Church. "f But as Luther found 
 that the Bishops personally were opposed to the 
 Reformation, and that their power was the bul- 
 wark of the Papacy, therefore, as the truth is 
 greater than order, he wisely sacrificed the latter 
 to preserve the former. The great historian, 
 Neander, writes of the early Church that when 
 the " contentions of parties " were proving " injuri- 
 ous to discipline and good order in the Churches, 
 
 •j-The Episcopate for the Lutheran Church in America — Kohler, 
 
 P- i5- 
 
6 9 
 
 the triumph of the Episcopal system undoubtedly 
 promoted their unity, order, and tranquillity."* 
 
 All this shows the vital importance of some 
 judicious, adequate form of Church government. 
 To this end, it seems necessary to have some 
 official Head or Executive, charged with the 
 oversight of synodical congregations. And it 
 would seem necessary that this person should be 
 detached from individual congregational care, or 
 at least have an assistant. He should be free to 
 inspect and overlook the whole field, so that 
 where counsel is needed, counsel can be had ; 
 that when difficulties arise some one may have 
 time and ability to adjust them ; that inexperienced 
 young pastors may be admonished and guided ; 
 and so that instead of helmless drifting and 
 confusion, there may be prudent, wise, and orderly 
 administration. 
 
 While in theory, then, and in practice, the 
 Lutheran Church must maintain pure doctrine as 
 the essential characteristic of the Church, it is 
 also a matter of the gravest practical moment, 
 that there be an efficient Church Polity. That 
 Polity is to be as variable as are the exigencies of 
 the case. And that one — whether by a sytem of 
 Synodical Superintendents or of Bishops — should 
 
 *Church History, Vol. I, p. 193. 
 
7o 
 
 be chosen, which is best adapted to the particular 
 situation. It is admitted on all sides, that as our 
 Church in America is growing so large and em- 
 bracing such vast interests, the question of a 
 government which will contribute to its wiser 
 administration, order, unity, and efficiency, be- 
 comes every day the more pressing a problem oj 
 the hour. And this question should be met 
 intelligently, patiently, and unselfishly, that under 
 the guidance of Providence, our Church in this 
 land may be so organized and ordered, as the 
 most fully to develop its spiritual agency, as an 
 efficient part of the universal Christian Church. 
 
 But in its discussion every true Lutheran will 
 bear in mind the noble words of Bishop Yon 
 Scheele of the Swedish Lutheran Church, which 
 sound the key-note to the Scriptural and Luth- 
 eran theorv of Church eovernment viz.: "It does 
 not matter so much whether we have Bishops or 
 not, but that we have Christ with us and confess 
 Him, as the great Head and Bishop of the 
 Church." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 LUTHERAN WORSHIP. 
 
 ^PHE foundation of the ritual of the Lutheran 
 1 Church was laid in Luther's work: "The 
 Order of Service in the Church" (1523). It was 
 his intention to retain all that was good in the 
 service of the Catholic Church, while discarding all 
 unevangelical doctrines and practices. The 
 various states of Germany have their own Church 
 orders, which differ, however, only in minor par- 
 ticulars. Luther introduced the use of the ver- 
 nacular tongue into the public services, restored 
 preaching to its proper place, and insisted upon the 
 participation of the congregation in the services, 
 declaring " common prayer exceedingly useful and 
 helpful." The popular use of hymns was introduced 
 by Luther, who was himself an enthusiastic singer, 
 and by his own hymns became the father of 
 
72 
 
 German Church hymnology, which is richer than 
 any other. Congregational singing continues to 
 form one of the principle features in the public 
 services."* 
 
 The foregoing is a very fair summary by an 
 impartial witness, the Presbyterian Dr. S chaff, of 
 the chief outlines of Lutheran Worship. It 
 specifies these cardinal features : 
 
 i That Preaching forms the central element of 
 the service. 
 
 2 That " Common Prayer [Luther's own words] 
 as exceedingly useful and helpful," is to have a 
 leading place. That is, the minister is not to 
 have the whole service to himself, but the people 
 are to have their share in the worship. 
 
 3 That congregational singing is to be a 
 "principal feature." 
 
 4 That the services of the Ancient Church — 
 the usages of Christians of all lands and times — 
 were to be "retained," only "excepting unevan- 
 gelical" features. 
 
 5 That there is a definite historical Lutheran 
 service, which, while uniform in any particular 
 country, "differs" in various states, "however 
 only in minor particulars." The remark often 
 
 *Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 1372. 
 
73 
 
 made that Lutherans in Europe have numerous 
 varying orders of service is here seen to be 
 essentially misleading. For, not only are these 
 orders all framed after the same generic pattern, 
 but only one uniform service is used in each 
 different country or territory. Hence, Dr. 
 Schaff's statement, as an unbiassed judge, is 
 quite correct. 
 
 As Luther reformed but did not destroy the 
 old faith, so, also, he reformed and cast anew, but 
 did not destroy the old service. Upon this 
 venerable edifice of Christian worship, as the out- 
 growth, under the Holy Spirit, of Christian 
 experience, and as the visible expression of the 
 communion of saints, Luther would have been 
 the last to lay irreverent or destructive hands. Of 
 its origin and antiquity, Dr. Wenner well and 
 beautifully says : " It is fair to assume that during 
 the first century the principal outlines of the 
 Christian Service were established and generally 
 observed," indicating "an original impress of 
 Apostolical usage and authority. Its foundations 
 were laid in the far off past. Its object is the 
 glory of God and the salvation of men. Its walls 
 have breasted the storms and tumults of passing 
 ages. Its architectural lines have continually 
 pointed upward to the unseen world. The history 
 
74 
 
 of Christian Worship leads us on hallowed paths; 
 to understand and behold its secrets we need 
 anointed eyes. Many questions that agitate the 
 Church at this time are of passing and relative 
 importance. This affects its very life. It springs 
 from the very heart of Christianity, and is inti- 
 mately connected with the life of every believer."* 
 As thus the Primitive and Mediaeval Church 
 had been liturgical, and as Public and Common 
 Worship, are impossible without common forms 
 for the congregation, so also is the Lutheran 
 Church liturgical. And that the Lutheran liturgy 
 which Luther moulded retained the leading 
 characteristics of the worship of all the saints back 
 to Apostolic times, is no reproach to it, but one 
 of its chief glories. Who does not feel his faith 
 strengthened and his religious devotion stirred by 
 the consciousness that the prayer or song he is 
 uplifting has voiced the devotions of the saints 
 up to the throne for a thousand years! What a 
 sublime illustration is this of Christian Unity! 
 What a sweet and comforting realization of the 
 communion of the saints! What a foretaste in 
 the worship of the earthly temple of that in the 
 heavenly temple, when in answer to a voice 
 
 ♦Christian Worship. — Lutheran Quarterly, October, 1892, pp. 
 452, 455- 
 
75 . 
 
 that came out of the throne there was returned 
 the common response, "as it were the voice of a 
 great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, 
 and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, 
 Alleluia; for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth" 
 (Rev. xix ; 6). There is no worship in the world 
 to-day at once so ancient and so modern, so 
 liturgical and yet so spontaneous, so reverent, 
 and yet so stirring the deepest springs of living 
 enthusiasm, as that ol the Lutheran Church. 
 Writes President White of Cornell University of 
 Lutheran Worship in Germany: "These hymns 
 laden with the highest hopes and inspirations of 
 past centuries, take hold upon the German heart 
 to-day. In the Churches the service of praise 
 comes from the hearts and voices of the whole 
 congregation."* And writes another non-Luth- 
 eran of Lutheran Worship in Berlin: "What 
 pure, single worship is here! With all the liturgy 
 and ceremony there is still a wonderful simplicity. 
 There is a solemnity and beauty in its worship, an 
 earnestness and reverence within its sacred 
 temples, a richness, depth, satisfaction in its 
 services — a reverence, in all, that fills the soul with 
 a completeness of devotion. How one grows to 
 love the Protestant Church of Germany." 
 
 *Hand Book of Lutheranism, p. 15. 
 
 95 I M 1 50 1 52 1 W 
 
76 
 
 The liturgical service of the Lutheran Church 
 is eminently Scriptural, largely using the identical 
 Scripture words ; it places the preaching of the 
 Word in the centre about which all revolves ; it 
 is so simple that a child or stranger can easily 
 use it ; and it is very brief, requiring only about 
 one-fourth the time to the sermon occupied by 
 the service of the Episcopal Church. Yet it is 
 liturgically symmetrical and full. As a service for 
 devotion, it is ordered in perfect adaptation to the 
 nature of Christian Worship. It prepares the 
 worshipper for the divine audience by the Con- 
 fession; it begins the service proper in the Introit; 
 it mounts to rapture at the beatific vision in the 
 Gloria in Excelsis; it bows in prayer in the 
 Collect ; it hears the voice of God in the Epistle 
 and Gospel; it returns the answer of the congre- 
 gation in the Creed ; it gives wing to Christian 
 Song in the Hymns; it renders the sacrifice of 
 praise in the General Prayer, and of gifts in the 
 Offertory ; and then it departs with the trinal 
 Benediction. The service is responsive ; is framed 
 about the Christian year; is constantly varied, 
 the Introits and Collects changing for every 
 Sunday ; gives preaching the central place ; 
 allows room for the exercise of liberty, as in the 
 use or disuse of parts and in the choice of written or 
 
77 
 
 extemporaneous prayer; and is so simple and 
 direct that any stranger can at once use it. "All 
 its various parts centre around Christ, presenting 
 Him in all His offices, in both His states, in the 
 fullness of His work, and in all His relations to 
 the sinful and sorrowing, the penitent and be- 
 lieving, the afflicted and tempted, the dying and 
 the glorified. Its lessons, and responses, and collects, 
 and chants are intended simply to carry the devo- 
 tions of the worshippers to the Throne of Grace, as 
 far as possible, in the very words of Holy Scripture* 
 Wherever introduced it is affectionately cherished 
 by the congregations, who could scarcely be per- 
 suaded to become accustomed to the coldness, and 
 
 *That able and moderate journal, the New York Observer (Pres- 
 byterian), thus speaks of this feature: "To many devout persons 
 this Lutheran Service-Book will be chiefly interesting and acceptable 
 because of its Scriptural character, a large part of its phraseology 
 being in the language of sacred writ, the Psalms and Lessons being 
 given in the incomparable English of the Version which has been 
 more widely read than any other words that ever were written. * * * 
 Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this service is that it is 
 not commanded, but commended to the use of the Churches for 
 which it was provided. So careful are the Lutherans of the liberty 
 of the people in matters of worship, that they maintain the princi- 
 ples embodied in the Augsburg Confession, namely, that unity of 
 doctrine and the administration of the sacraments are sufficient for 
 the true unity of the Church, that differences in rites and ceremonies 
 are not injurious to this unity, that ordinances of men ought not 
 to be forced on the congregations. At the same time it is believed 
 that harmony and edification are secured by pure and holy worship 
 that is common and universal." 
 
 ■W — I 58 1— "58 — I — CD — I — 52 — I — 54 — T 
 
78 
 
 formality, and incoherency, affording little food for 
 the heart, that so often characterizes a service 
 without a fixed order/'* 
 
 Ritualism — an extreme ceremonial, a meaning- 
 less repitition of rites, an introduction of such 
 Romish usages as were rejected at the Reforma- 
 tion — is unknown in the Lutheran Church. Even 
 in those countries where an Episcopal Constitution, 
 and the greatest correspondence with Mediaeval 
 usages prevails, as in Scandinavia, Lutheran 
 Worship has always retained a pure and high 
 spirituality. Thus writes a careful observer and 
 traveler of large experience: "Here we find 
 universally prevalent a very " High Church Luth- 
 eranism" which many of us have been educated 
 to regard as "Ritualism" — mere dead "Formal- 
 ism." Be that as it may, I must confess that this 
 very " High Church Lutheranism" with its high 
 Ritual, throughout has produced the highest 
 expression of applied Christianity among the 
 Norwegians, the world has yet seen. There the 
 system has had a most thorough trial for 350 
 years, and the results, if they prove anything, 
 prove that it most likely promotes the highest 
 gospel graces in heart and life, for here we find 
 
 *Distinctive Doctrines and Usages of the General Bodies of the 
 Lutheran Church, p. 116. 
 
79 
 
 the highest type of Christian nation in the world."* 
 Such is the conclusive answer Lutherans can 
 make if ever the groundless charge of "High 
 Church" and " Ritualism," is made. " By their 
 fruits shall ye know them" (Matt, vii; 16). 
 
 Luther saw the value of a Common Liturgical 
 Order of Worship. Accordingly, when he pub- 
 lished his German Order of Service in 1526 he 
 thus advised: "It would be beautiful and admirable, 
 if in every territory, the order of service would be 
 the same, and the surrounding towns and villages 
 would follow the same." The Patriarch Muhlen- 
 berg saw the same need and wrote in 1783 in the 
 closing days of his life: "It would be a most 
 desirable and advantageous thing if all the 
 Evangelical Lutheran congregations in the North 
 American States were united with one another, 
 and if they all used the same order of service and 
 the same hymn-book!' And sagacious observers 
 see and feel that this is one of the greatest needs of 
 American Lutheranism now. Thus Prof. M. 
 Valentine, D.D. says: "A general uniformity is 
 felt to be desirable, but not held to be necessary."f 
 Rev. J. G. Butler, D.D. writes: "Greater uni- 
 
 *M. W. Hamma. D.D. 
 
 ^Distinctive Doctrines and Usages of the General Bodies of 
 the Evangelical Lutheran Church, p. 48. 
 
 to 1 — m — 1 — sr 
 
8o 
 
 formity in our Church services would conduce 
 greatly to the outer and inner unity of the Church, 
 in which there is now too much that is loose, and 
 in many cases, even disorderly. This uniformity 
 secured in our Churches, the Lutheran Church, 
 which is one Church, would preserve and 
 strengthen the bonds which, under God, I trust 
 will ever make us an undivided and united family 
 of the great household of faith." And that veteran 
 of American Lutheranism, Rev. F. W. Conrad, 
 D.D., Editor of the Lutheran Observer, gives this 
 wise counsel: "This state of nonconformity was 
 the legitimate outgrowth of the principle of free- 
 dom in worship maintained by leather, which, 
 notwithstanding his solemn warning against its 
 perversion, and his emphatic testimony to the de- 
 sireableness of a uniform church service in all the 
 congregations of a country, was carried to an 
 unwarranted extreme. The same abuse of liberty 
 in worship, and disregard of the importance of uni- 
 formity in church services in Germany, have pro- 
 duced the same variety and indifference to uniform- 
 ity in worship in the Lutheran Churches of 
 America." And writes the Doctor: " A general 
 desire is felt that a uniform Order of Worship 
 may yet be adopted in all the Lutheran Churches 
 of America."* 
 
 ♦Luther Memorial Tract, p. 6. — F. W. Conrad, D.D. 
 
To remedy these evils the General Synod South 
 at Staunton, Va. 1876,* adopted this resolution: 
 "Resolved, that with a view to promote uniformity 
 in worship and strengthen the bonds of unity 
 throughout all our churches, the Committee on 
 the Revision of the Book of Worship be instructed 
 to confer with the Lutheran General Synod of 
 the United States, and with the Lutheran General 
 Council in America, in regard to the feasibility of 
 adopting but one book containing the same hymns 
 and the same order of service and liturgic forms 
 to be used in all the English-speaking Evangelical 
 Lutheran Churches in the United States." To 
 this proposition the General Synod responded 
 with enthusiasm at its session in Springfield, 
 Ohio, in 1883, where feeling that the movement 
 was Providential, unanimously and with a rising 
 vote, it resolved "that we hail as one of the most 
 auspicious outlooks of our Church in America 
 the prospect of securing a Common Service for all 
 English-speaking Lutherans!' And the General 
 Council having joined these two General Bodies 
 in the movement on "the generic and well-defined 
 basis of the common consent of the pure Lutheran 
 Liturgies of the Sixteenth Century," there resulted 
 what is now known as "The Common Service." 
 
 *On motion of the author, then a pastor at Savannah, Ga. 
 
 » I M I MJ — I — 50 — I — 52 — I — m 
 
82 
 
 Of the intrinsic merit of this Service Dr. Conrad 
 says: "In the number, variety, and devotional 
 style of its parts, and in beauty and force of 
 expression, the order of worship may justly be 
 regarded as the highest product of the intelligence, 
 piety, culture and taste, guided by the devotional 
 spirit, of the Church of Christ; and is worthy of 
 the respect, not only of every Lutheran, but of 
 every Protestant, and deserves a sincere and fair 
 trial by the pastors and congregations of the three 
 bodies for whom it was prepared."* 
 
 Of it, further, a Lutheran can say with pride 
 that it is the order virtually in use by fifty 
 millions of Christians in all quarters of the globe, 
 and therefore of incalculably greater historic and 
 devotional interest than any other book of wor- 
 ship in the world. In harmony with Lutheran 
 principles its use is not made "obligatory upon 
 congregations," or imposed as a law to bind the 
 conscience. It is simply "commended" by the 
 General Bodies, "as serving to edification," and 
 as tending to foster devotion, cement unity, and 
 promote denominational efficiency.f 
 
 ^Lutheran Observer, Oct. 19 and 26, 1888. 
 
 fAs an illustration of the benefits of its use, the Rev. E. T. 
 Horn, D.D., President of the United Synod in the South, says of its 
 introduction there: "It gives order to our worship, secures uni- 
 formity among us, provides a system of devotion in harmony with 
 
83 
 
 During the earlier history of America, the 
 Puritanic ideas of worship generally prevalent, 
 were anything but favorable to the popularity of 
 the Lutheran service. But the progress of the 
 country in culture, and in just conceptions of 
 worship, and the marked tendency in all denomi- 
 nations to liturgical services, are drawing special 
 attention to the Lutheran Worship. And its 
 scripturalness, devotional spirit, symmetry, mode- 
 ration, and reproduction of the pure primitive 
 Church Services, are securing it most favorable 
 recognition. This tendency finds notable ex- 
 pression in the great History of the Christian 
 Church, now being issued by Dr. S chaff, where 
 he thus contrasts the Lutheran with other modes 
 of worship: "The Zwinglian and Calvinistic 
 worship depends for its effect too much upon the 
 
 our faith, maintains among us the fundamental doctrines of God's 
 Word and an administration of the Sacraments according to the 
 Gospel, and stores in the minds of our children the form of sound 
 words ; and while we rejoice in our accord with the fathers of our 
 own Church and with the Church of all ages, in the use of these 
 venerable forms, the Southern Church has hoped to fulfill her own 
 special vocation in uniting in this the Churches of the General 
 Synod and those of the General Council with her own. This hope 
 seems destined to fulfillment ; and already the English Churches of 
 the Synod of Missouri and of the Joint Synod of Ohio are adopting 
 this Common Service of the Lutheran Church." — Distinctive Doc- 
 trines and Usages of the General Bodies of the Evangelical Lutheran 
 Church, p. 190. 
 
 ■y.l.y. l .MIMI- BIU 
 
8 4 
 
 intellectual and spiritual power of the minister, 
 who can make it either very solemn and im- 
 pressive, or very cold and barren."* " Luther [on 
 the other hand,] who was a poet and a musician, 
 left larger scope for the aesthetic and artistic 
 element ; and his Church has developed a rich 
 liturgical literature. "f "The Lutheran Church is 
 conservative and liturgical. She retained from 
 the traditional usage what was not inconsistent 
 with evangelical doctrine, while the Reformed 
 Churches of the Zwinglian type aimed at the 
 greatest simplicity." J 
 
 It is thus evident that the more Reformed 
 scholars and worshipers compare the barren 
 meagreness of their services with the Lutheran, 
 the more will the contrast of the spiritual beauty 
 and fullness of the latter impress them. It is 
 pleasing to know that Lutheran Worship, after 
 having; stood the test of three and a half centu- 
 ries, is thus in full keeping with the trend of 
 modern liturgical ideas. Thus is the good ever 
 at once both old and new. 
 
 It is a remark not infrequently made that the 
 Lutheran Service is very like the Episcopalian. 
 
 *Vol. VII, p. 61. 
 flbid; 
 
 tVol. IV ; 486. 
 
85 
 
 Such a remark results from a want of correct 
 historical information. That there is a general 
 similarity in the worship of these two liturgical 
 Churches is very true. But the similitude is the 
 other way. That is, it is the Episcopal Service 
 which is like the Lutheran. The original Luth- 
 eran Service dates from 1523, whereas the Book 
 of Common Prayer only dates from 1549. And 
 just as the English Bible is traceable to German 
 soil and Lutheran influences, and as the XXXIX 
 Articles of the Church of England were derived 
 from the fountain head of the Lutheran Augsburg 
 Confession, so the ritual and worship of the 
 Episcopal Church are mainly tributary -to, and 
 modelled after the Lutheran liturgies. The prin- 
 cipal one of these was the Cologne Liturgy, which 
 the Archbishop of Cologne, who had become a 
 convert to Lutheranism, had Bucer and Melanch- 
 thon draw up for him in 1543. Dr. Jacobs in 
 his "Lutheran Movement in England" shows 
 with exhaustive scholarship how in the Church of 
 England the order of Morning and Evening 
 Service, the Litany, the Communion Service, the 
 orders for Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, 
 Burial, etc. follow more or less closely the 
 Lutheran Orders, often taking leading forms from 
 Luther's identical words. The correspondence of 
 
 1 — 58 — 1 . « 1 — 60 I b ' l 
 
86 
 
 the worship of these two great historic Churches 
 is matter of congratulation to both. But, when it 
 comes to the point as to which one the credit of 
 originating these services is due, historic justice 
 should always be done. The Church of England 
 is the daughter of the Church of Luther. And 
 the daughter has wisely decked herself very 
 largely in the beautiful robes of her spiritual 
 mother. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 RITES AND FESTIVALS IN THE LUTHERAN CHURCH. 
 
 THE Lutheran made no pretext to be a new 
 Church, as if Christ's Church had been 
 totally destroyed, and no Christian Church was 
 existing on the earth. But she claimed to be the 
 old true historic Church purified, reformed, and 
 renewed. No historic chain was therefore to be 
 broken, no rite abolished, no usage abandoned, 
 which was rightfully observed in the ancient Church. 
 Thus says the Augsburg Confession : Art. XV : 
 "Concerning ecclesiastical rites our Churches 
 teach that those rites are to be observed, which 
 may be observed without sin, and are profitable 
 for tranquillity and good order in the Church" — 
 Art. XXVI : " Among us, in large part, the ancient 
 rites are diligently observed. For it is a calum- 
 nious falsehood, that all the ceremonies, all the 
 
88 
 
 things instituted of old are abolished in our 
 Churches." Apology of Melanchthon, Chap. 
 IV; "It is pleasing to us that, for the sake of 
 unity and good order universal rites be 
 observed." That is, usages and forms of worship 
 observed of old and everywhere by christians, 
 were hallowed by such use, and to be maintained 
 as a bond of unity. The Church historian, 
 Guericke, therefore says: "The Evangelical 
 Lutheran Church retains every undoubtedly 
 ancient festival. In so doing, however, the Luth- 
 eran Church reduces them all to their proper 
 significance. The ultra-reformers, on the other 
 hand, by their abrogation of all such commemora- 
 tions have cut away from beneath their feet the 
 true foundations of history and antiquity."* 
 
 The idea of Luther and the Lutheran Church 
 in retaining usages and rites practiced by the 
 universal Christian Church from the time of Christ 
 and the Apostles was to perpetuate a bond of 
 visible unity between all believers. If divisions 
 and discords sadden and disturb us, how agree- 
 ments and concords that have outlived all differ- 
 ences bridge this chasm of estrangement, and 
 attest that the disciples of Jesus of whatever land, 
 
 *Christian Antiquities, p. 197. 
 
and time, and name, are still one in the bonds of 
 a blessed unity! Another precious feature of the 
 perpetuation of universal usages is the assurance 
 and reverence that come from such ancient and 
 common observance. While the " customs of 
 society and civil government are ever subject to 
 change and vacillation, as being but human, how 
 fitting that that kingdom, which is of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, should be "the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and forever." In this invariability of customs 
 the believer and even the world find a powerful 
 confirmation of the immutability of the truth and 
 faith of which they are the visible expression. 
 With the Lutheran, that the Romish Church uses 
 a universal rite is no more objection to it, than 
 the use of the Apostles' Creed by that Church, is 
 an objection to that venerable symbol. And the 
 non-Lutheran Churches, in disusing universal 
 rites, have in deference alone to groundless 
 prejudice, cast away some of the choicest treas- 
 ures, and the most potent and beneficent 
 influences of the Christian Church. 
 
 In illustration of these principles, the Lutheran 
 Church observed the Christian Year. While 
 many Saints' and Martyrs' days and excesses 
 were stripped from it, the Chief Festivals, those 
 "wreaths about the pillars of the Christian Year" 
 
90 
 
 were retained. This was in keeping with Luther's 
 advice, viz. " Especially should all keep Christmas. 
 Circumcision, Epiphany, the Easter Festival, 
 Ascension, and Pentecost — unchristian legends 
 and songs having been done away."* While thus 
 the Lutheran Church rejected the Romish pseudo- 
 festivals, and abolished the great mass of Saints' 
 days, she by no means, however, set aside the 
 memorial days of the Apostles, Martyrs, All 
 Saints, etc. But she retained these as being "an 
 example of the believers," in Christian heroism, 
 and godly virtues and graces. Accordingly, 
 Luther said that there could be no better spiritual 
 discipline for Christian youth than to place in 
 their hands brief lives of the apostles, martyrs, 
 and saints, discarding any legendary and super- 
 stitious features. Dr. Seiss fitly says of the 
 Lectionary for these Minor Festivals which our 
 Church has appointed, that "it is particularly 
 valuable for a complete rounding out of the system 
 that prevails in the arrangement of the Pericopes 
 for the Christian Church Year. * * * These 
 selections conduct us into quite a different field 
 from that of the other festivals. They bring into 
 greater prominence the element of biography and 
 personal character and experience. They show 
 
 *The Christian Year, Horn, p. 53. 
 
9i 
 
 us more of applied Christianity."* And of the 
 rare spiritual value of their treatment in the pulpit 
 his late noble volume is a worthy illustration. 
 The Christian Year revolves about Jesus 
 Christ as its centre, and its purpose is to show 
 forth the successive stages of His life, and to 
 interpret these for the edification of the believer's 
 spiritual life. "The Year of the Ancient Church 
 had for its foundations the great facts of the life 
 of our Lord. All stress is laid upon the Word; 
 no sanctity belongs to the day. The Lutheran 
 Church, therefore, restored the Church Year to 
 its purity."f And Ahlfeld beautifully says: "As 
 the earth moves around the - visible sun, so the 
 Church moves around the sun of divine grace — 
 so she travels through the sacred history of the 
 Savior. Her spring is the lovely season of 
 Christmas and Epiphany, when Christ is born. 
 Her summer is the season of Lent and the 
 passion time of Jesus Christ. And her harvest 
 and autumn are the Whitsuntide days, when the 
 Holy Spirit is poured out upon the disciples, and 
 when, in the long, lovely Trinity Sundays, one 
 kind after another of the gifts of the Triune God 
 is borne into the granary of the heart." 
 
 *Lectures on the Gospel and Epistles for the Minor Festivals, 
 p. 4. 
 
 fThe Christian Year, Horn, p, 53. 
 
92 
 
 On Advent Sunday, therefore, the Lutheran 
 Church begins the Christian Year, and calls upon 
 all her members to make a holy beginning in 
 piety and Christian activity. On Christmas Day, 
 with joy and thanksgiving, all gather about the 
 holy child Jesus in the sanctuary. On Palm 
 Sunday, the catechumens are presented to the 
 Lord. On Easter, the Churches resound with 
 the mighty rapture of the resurrection. And so 
 to the end. On all the Sundays the Lessons — 
 the Epistle and Gospel for the day — are read ; 
 those selections of Scripture which have the 
 sanction of the usage of more than a thousand 
 years. To the chief ancient festivals the Lutheran 
 Church has added another, that of the Reforma- 
 tion. This is observed on the 31st of October, 
 the anniversary of the beginning of the blessed 
 work of the Reformation by Luther nailing up 
 the famous theses. 
 
 This observance of the Christian Year by the 
 Lutheran Church, exempted from all Romish and 
 ritualistic obligatory fasts and practices, not only 
 is entirely without objection, but is eminently 
 conducive to the production of a sound, rotund, 
 conservative, spiritual life. With regard to 
 objections urged against its observance, the 
 Lutheran Review makes this forcible reply : 
 
"What a wealth of holy memories and sacred 
 associations cluster around the . festivals of the 
 Church Year to those who are accustomed to 
 observe them. How lost we would feel and how 
 we should miss these festivals if they were sud- 
 denly stricken from the calendar. And yet the 
 non-liturgical churches ignore the Church Year 
 altogether, because they are afraid it savors of 
 popery, and because these festivals are not 
 commanded to be observed by the Word of God. 
 We can only pity their childish fears, while w r e 
 must protest against their inconsistencies. They 
 reject the Church Year, which is observed by the 
 vast majority of Christendom, on the plea that 
 the Bible does not enjoin it, while at the same 
 time they institute a Week of Prayer in January 
 of each year. But where is the warrant for such 
 a Week of Prayer? The zeal of would-be re- 
 formers very often gets the better of their 
 discretion, as is abundantly evident in the Puri- 
 tanic obliteration of all the Church festivals."* 
 The following notable utterance of the extremely 
 Broad Church and liberalistic Phillips Brooks, 
 shows how utterly groundless and unreasonable 
 is the prejudice entertained by some even among 
 us, as if an observance of the Pericope of the 
 
 ♦New York : E. F. Eilert, Editor. 
 
94 
 
 Gospel and Epistles was infected with ritualism. 
 He says: "Look at the way the pulpit teaches. 
 I venture to say that there is nothing so unreason- 
 able in any other branch of teaching. You are a 
 minister, and you are to instruct these people in 
 the truths of God, to bring God's message to 
 them. All the vast range of God's revelation 
 and of man's duty is open to you. And how do 
 you proceed? If you are like most ministers 
 there is no order, no progress, no consecutive 
 purpose, in your teaching. You never begin at 
 the beginning and proceed step by step to the 
 end of any course of orderly instruction. No 
 other instruction ever was given so. No hearer 
 has the least idea, as he goes to your Church, 
 what you will preach to him about that day. It 
 is hopeless to him to try to get ready for your 
 teaching. It is this observance of the Church 
 Year to which we owe so much as a help to the 
 orderliness of our preaching. It still leaves 
 largest liberty. It is no bondage within which 
 any man is hampered. But the great procession 
 of the year, sacred to our best human instincts, 
 with the accumulated reverence of ages, leads 
 those who walk in it, at least once every year, 
 past all the great Christian facts, and however 
 careless and selfish be the preacher, will not leave 
 
95 
 
 it in his power to keep them from his people. 
 The Church Year, too, preserves the personality 
 of our religion. It is concrete and picturesque. 
 The historical Jesus is forever there. It lays 
 each life continually down beside the perfect life, 
 that it may see at once its imperfection and its 
 hope."* 
 
 The beautiful rite of Confirmation is retained 
 in the Lutheran Church. In the primitive Church 
 this was originally administered by the officiating 
 minister as the closing ceremonial of Baptism, in 
 imitation of the apostolic practice, (Acts xix ; 6). 
 In the course of time it came to be administered 
 by the bishop alone as in the Romish and Episco- 
 pal Churches. The Lutheran Church has 
 returned to the primitive usage of its administra- 
 tion by each pastor. " Its idea of confirmation 
 is that of a renewal of the baptismal covenant, a 
 conscious and responsible assumption by the 
 individual himself, of the vow, which at his 
 baptism, had been made for him by his sponsors. 
 Its principal features are the catechetical exercises, 
 the confession, and the vow, and its purpose a 
 new-kindled devotion. "f Beyond doubt the 
 majority of Protestant Churches have made a 
 
 *Lectures on Preaching, pp. 90-91. 
 ■fSchaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 530. 
 
9 6 
 
 great mistake and experience a yet greater loss 
 in their rejection of this ancient, beautiful, and 
 useful ceremony of Confirmation, as a means of 
 introducing especially the baptized youth into the 
 privileges and duties of public Church-member- 
 ship. 
 
 The rite of Confession, as . a fit preparatory 
 discipline for the reception of the Lord's Supper, 
 is universally practiced in Lutheran Churches. 
 It is based on the words of Jesus to His disciples: 
 " Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosoever sins 
 ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and who- 
 soever sins ye retain, they are retained," (John 
 xx ; 22, 23); and upon the custom of the Ancient 
 Church. Luther protested against the Romish 
 perversion of the words of Christ, as shown in 
 the practice of Auricular Confession. He taught 
 that the " Power of the Keys," i. e., the absolution 
 from sins was not absolute, but only declaratory, 
 and was not limited to a priestly order, but a 
 prerogative of the universal priesthood. He 
 objected also to confession as obligatory, and to 
 the necessity of an enumeration of all sins. With 
 these limitations, however, Luther placed a very 
 high estimate on the disciplinary value of Con- 
 fession. He therefore makes use of this definition 
 in the small catechism : "Confession consists of 
 
97 
 
 two parts ; the one is, that we confess our sins ; the 
 other, that we receive absolution or forgiveness 
 through the pastor as of God himself, in no wise 
 doubting, but firmly believing that our sins are thus 
 forgiven before God in heaven." ''The views of 
 Luther on Confession were expressed by Me- 
 lanchthon in the Augsburg Confession, and 
 adopted by the Lutheran Church, which at the 
 same time so changed the character of Private 
 Confession as to divest it of its unscriptural 
 features. It was not imposed upon the consciences 
 of the people as necessary to obtain justification, 
 but rather extended to them as a privilege. An 
 opportunity was thereby afforded to every mem- 
 ber who had any trouble on his mind concerning 
 his sins to reveal the matter to his pastor, in order 
 to receive instruction and comfort. And the 
 subject was thus removed from the sphere of 
 ministerial authority to that of the pastoral care of 
 souls, in verification of which Melanchthon explains 
 Private Absolution as retained in the Churches, 
 as nothing more than "the true voice of the 
 Gospel" addressed to penitent souls by the 
 ministers of Christ."* 
 
 *Rev. F. W. Conrad, D.D., on Luther's Smaller Catechism, p. 
 146. 
 
9 8 
 
 The exercise of the rite of Confession in this 
 pure Scriptural sense was distinctive of the 
 Lutheran, as over against the other Protestant 
 Churches at the time of the Reformation, and has 
 continued so to the present time. " It was left to 
 the great revival of apostolical Christianity in the 
 1 6th century to clear away the rubbish that had 
 accumulated around this institution. Zwingli 
 utterly repudiated the traditional Power of the 
 Keys, and confined it to the social sphere of the 
 Church, the power of admitting and excluding 
 members. Calvin held the same view except 
 that he also included preaching. The Lutheran 
 theologians, on the other hand, while retaining 
 the old forms, £ave to them, as it were, a 
 regeneration. To them, absolution was nothing 
 less than the Word of God which must be be- 
 lieved as truly, as if it were a voice from heaven. 
 Ordinarily it was pronounced by the minister, not 
 as a priestly mediator, but as a minister of the 
 Church, deriving his authority from Christ indi- 
 rectly through the Church."* Luther, with his 
 intense religious and churchly feelings deemed 
 confession invaluable to his spiritual experience. 
 He says : " Not for the treasures of the whole 
 
 *Rev. G. U. Wenner, D.D., on The Tower of the Keys. 
 
99 
 
 world would I give up the privilege of private 
 confession, for I know what strength and comfort 
 I have derived from it. Nobody knows what it 
 can do, until he has fought and contended with 
 the devil. I would long since have been over- 
 come and destroyed, if this confession had not 
 sustained me." In the general practice of the 
 Lutheran Church the Confession of Sins is not 
 private, [which is reserved for exceptional cases] 
 but public. It is regarded as a most salutary 
 preparation for the reception of the Lord's 
 Supper, which no one should fail to observe, unless 
 prevented by necessity. Next to the Hoi)' Sacra- 
 ment itself, the devout Lutheran prizes the 
 opportunity to make public confession before the 
 Church, and to receive that declaration of Abso- 
 lution which the official representative of the 
 Church is authorized to declare to the true 
 penitent. 
 

 CHAPTER XII, 
 
 THE LUTHERAN AN ORTHODOX CHURCH. 
 
 GHRISTIANITY in our time has come upon an 
 extraordinary phenomenon — the glorification 
 of Heresy. The primary characteristic of a chris- 
 tian is Faith. Christians, therefore, have from the 
 first worn the distinctive title : believers. Credo 
 — I believe — begins the Apostles Creed. 
 Christians by no means forego reason, but they 
 do feel with Thomas a Kempis, that " Human 
 reason is feeble and may be deceived : but true 
 faith cannot be deceived. "* It was in this pro- 
 found spiritual sense that Augustine wrote: 
 " Faith makes christians: Reason makes heretics." 
 If there was any deadly sin from which the saints 
 of old shrank it was heresy — the denial, perver- 
 
 *Book IV : Chap. XVIII. 
 
IOI 
 
 sion, or commingling with error of the true 
 christian faith, delivered by the Lord Jesus Christ 
 and his Holy Apostles. Consequently St. Paul 
 warns christians : "A man that is an heretic, after 
 the first and second admonition reject" (Tit. 
 iii ; 9.); meaning that this is an evil that dare not 
 be temporized with, even as a viper dare not be 
 taken to the bosom, or a traitor admitted within 
 the camp. And St. Peter cautions us to be on 
 vigilant watch against those "who privily bring 
 in damnable heresies" (2 Pet. ii ; 1), lest thereby 
 the christian citadel be undermined. 
 
 As an illustration of the feeling of the primitive 
 christians on this point, Eusebius, the early Church 
 historian, records the tradition received from 
 Polycarp. the martyr, that on one occasion the 
 apostle John entered one of the ancient baths, 
 but finding that the heresiarch Cerinthus was in 
 one of the adjoining rooms, he hastily fled from 
 the place, saying: "Let us flee, lest the bath fall 
 in, as long as Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, 
 is within.' '* The source of this strong aversion 
 was that "the truth as it is in Jesus" is the most 
 priceless treasure of Christianity ; and, that even 
 a more deadly enemy of it than the avowed 
 
 ^Ecclesiastical History, chap. XXVIII. 
 
102 
 
 infidel is he who, while falsely professing to be a 
 christian, uses this profession as a vantage ground 
 to "privily bring in damnable heresies." 
 
 But what a contrast to this holy sensitiveness 
 do we see at the present juncture. Heresies are 
 multiplying on every hand. Heresies, too, not 
 as mild and comparatively as non-essential as 
 that of Cerinthus. But heresies of the destructive 
 and deadly kind. It is claimed that a majority 
 of the books of the Bible, instead of being written 
 by their professed and inspired authors, are 
 literary forgeries of quite other ages. The Bible 
 is held no longer to be an infallible book, but full, 
 of discrepancies and errors which were also in 
 the original text. Christ himself is declared to 
 have been fettered by many limitations, which 
 led him into incorrect statements respecting the 
 authorship of these books. Kuenen, Wellhausen, 
 Driver, Briggs, etc., know a great deal more 
 about them than He did, though He lived 1900 
 years nearer their origin and had the not incon- 
 siderable advantage of being Divine. In fact the 
 whole origin of the Bible is treated as natural, 
 like that of any other book. "We are at length 
 beginning to realize the gravity of the present 
 state of the Old Testament controversy. The 
 Traditional views are being examined under the 
 
IQ3 
 
 light of modern discoveries, and efforts are 
 beginning to be made fairly to put in contrast 
 that inspired and trustworthy record of the past, 
 bearing the name of the Old Testament, and 
 sealed with a belief of more than two thousand 
 years in its genuineness and integrity, with that 
 strange conglomerate of myth, legend, fabrica- 
 tion, idealised narrative, falsified history, dram- 
 atized fable, and after-event prophecy, to which 
 modern critical analysis has sought to reduce 
 that which the Church, day by day, calls the most 
 Holy Word of Almighty God."* 
 
 The same heretical treatment is applied to the 
 Christian doctrines. The divinity of Jesus is 
 sought to be abolished from the creed. The vi- 
 carious atonement of our Lord, is reduced to a 
 mere salutary example of suffering. Salvation 
 by faith is denied. It does not matter what one 
 believes. Jew, Infidel, Pagan, and Christian 
 alike, will be asked how they have lived, not 
 what they have believed. Hence the venerable 
 Christian creeds are denounced as yokes of tyranny. 
 The sacraments are held to be of inconsiderable 
 moment. The resurrection is ridiculed as a 
 scientific impossibility and absurdity. And so on 
 
 *Christus Comprobator — Bishop Ellicott, p. 93. 
 
104 
 
 through the list. Now, it is perfectly evident 
 that these heresies invalidate the whole christian 
 structure. They leave no authentic Bible ; no 
 veritable Christ; no fatal sin; no true atone- 
 ment; no real Church ; no historical Christianity; 
 no visible Kingdom of God. Their triumph 
 means the disappearance of Christianity in its 
 visible, historic form from the earth. Now it is 
 nothing new for Christianity to be assailed by 
 heresies. Ever has the banner of truth had to 
 battle its way against bitter foes. But what is 
 new and unparallelled is that these heresies are 
 sought to be legitimized. Their advocates are 
 not to be censured or excommunicated, but to be 
 extolled. The journal of a leading religious de- 
 nomination thus writes: ''Orthodoxy is stagna- 
 tion and spiritual death." "The heretics of 
 to-day are the christian leaders of to-morrow." 
 Those who have denied the divinity of Christ, as 
 Martineau, "are the High Priests and Prophets 
 of mankind," writes a Professor in regular standing 
 in Union Theological Seminary, New York. 
 How closely akin are these utterances to that of 
 the infidel Ingersoll, who cries: "Orthodoxy is 
 retrogression and tyranny — Heresy is the eternal 
 dawn." In fact, in many religious quarters, there 
 is no surer road to popularity than to pose as an 
 
 
I_H^M 
 
 heretic. One has but bitterly to assail some 
 great Christian doctrine, and he is heralded as a 
 scholar, a champion of progress and freedom, a 
 remonstrant against effete dogmas, and his fame 
 travels beyond the seas. To such an extent has 
 this gone that the late Spurgeon felt himself 
 compelled to retire from fellowship with the 
 Baptist union in England, and after the recent 
 failure of the attempt to convict the most daring 
 leader of the destructive critical school in 
 America a noted infidel said: "Old John Knox 
 and Calvin must have turned in their graves, 
 when it was decided by the Presbyterian Church 
 that this man was right.* Why, do you know 
 that in a little while the Protestant Churches will 
 be waiting to take me in!" And while this ex- 
 aggeration was in keeping with the orator's 
 ribald style, yet his and his hearers elation were 
 significant f the radical trend of much of modern 
 Protestantism. 
 
 But amid this wild onset and uproar of heresy, 
 the Lutheran Church stands firm. She abides 
 immovably grounded on the truth. Under her 
 feet is the Rock of Ages, and the waves of hell 
 
 *To the credit of this great Church, this action was reversed 
 by the General Assembly at Washington. 
 
io6 
 
 shall not prevail against her. She is not com- 
 pelled to any creed revision. She does not 
 canonize heretics. She is not embarrassed by 
 heresy trials. She does not abridge a hair's 
 breadth her acceptance of the Bible. She does 
 not stumble at holy mysteries, but holds, as even 
 the great critic Lessing admits : " For what sort 
 of a Revelation would that be which reveals 
 nothing?" She compromises not a single doc- 
 trine. She stands where Christ stood ; where 
 the apostles stood ; where the primitive christian 
 stood ; where the true confessors all through the 
 Mediaeval darkness stood ; where Luther and the 
 Reformers stood, when they emerged into the 
 light ; and where the saints of all ages have stood ; 
 and where by God's grace she will stand to the end 
 of time. She unreservedly accepts and holds to 
 the three Ecumenical (universal) Creeds — the 
 Apostles, the Nicene, and the Athanasian. And 
 she holds to the unaltered Augsburg Confession. 
 These she does not hold as the Bible, but as 
 correct witnesses to the faith of the Bible. Thus 
 she voices her belief with that of the current 
 Christendom of all the centuries. She lifts up her 
 testimony in sweet and unbroken accord with the 
 universal "communion of saints." She is not an 
 heretical, but an orthodox Church. She does not 
 
107 
 
 glory in error, but in truth. She does not lift her 
 sword to assail Christianity, but to defend it. 
 These eloquent words, lately spoken, correctly 
 define the Lutheran position : " Cling to the old 
 faith. There is much falling away on this point. 
 People are too fondly persuading themselves that 
 the Creeds which cheered and sustained so many 
 generations must now be expurgated or damned. 
 The world is thronged with zealots, busy building 
 straw bridges between the orthodoxy of ages and 
 the unbeliefs and shallow self-assertions of this 
 supercillious and self-lauding generation. The 
 greatest need of our times is the re-Christening 
 of Christendom. A flabby goodishness, which 
 makes nothing of doctrine, Church and Sacra- 
 ments, is not Christianity, and only deceives those 
 who trust to it. What men need is positive truth 
 —a teaching that has back-bone in it, and stands 
 out solid and erect above the muddy sentimental- 
 ities of the day — a teaching which anxious and 
 perishing souls can lay hold on and feel that they 
 have something substantial on which to rest. 
 There is such a thing as clear and positive truth. 
 God's word presents it. Christ embodied it. 
 Prophets and Apostles preached it. It has been 
 echoed down through the centuries. Our sainted 
 Confessors revoiced it in our immortal Augustana. 
 
io8 
 
 And on it hangs the destiny of mankind, for 
 time and for eternity."* 
 
 While thus refusing to place natural reason 
 above Faith, the Lutheran Church takes care not 
 to divorce Faith from Good Works. She " discoun- 
 tenances all dead orthodoxy, and next to purity of 
 doctrine lays all stress upon showing the faith in 
 a Christian life. She has from the beginning 
 tried to enforce strict Church discipline in her con- 
 gregations, and requires of those who seek to be 
 admitted to membership evidence of a Christian 
 life. In all relations of Christian and Church 
 life she urges the necessity of showing the true 
 faith in good works. "f As the truth of God is 
 the seed of spiritual life, so she holds that the 
 purer the orthodoxy, the better and richer the 
 harvest of practical godliness. 
 
 This is the unique attitude of the Lutheran 
 Church, that she stands to-day the one solidly 
 unswerving witness of God on earth to the un- 
 impaired "faith which was once delivered unto 
 the saints" (Jude iii). Rationalism, the guise 
 under which this heretical inundation is now 
 
 *Dr. Seiss in address to Graduating Class of Philadelphia Theo- 
 logical Seminary. 
 
 f Distinctive Doctrines and Usages of the Lutheran Church, p. 
 67. 
 
ioq 
 
 threatening Christendom, has ever been alien to 
 the spirit of the Lutheran Church. Bahrdt, the 
 father of the modern school of rationalists, dis- 
 cerningly remarked: "That in the doctrine of 
 the Lord's Supper I was more Reformed than 
 Lutheran, will be supposed as a matter of course."* 
 And though Germany, because of its brilliant 
 mental culture, is the nursery of Rationalism, yet 
 it is not found in the Lutheran Church. Its home 
 is in the universities, and in the schools of 
 Reformed theology. And what is often over- 
 looked is, that similarly the most powerful and 
 numerous defences of evangelical Christianity 
 come from Germany — from its great Evangelical 
 Lutheran scholars. 
 
 Prof. Christlieb some time since wrote the 
 Homiletic Monthly : "This sketch shows that the 
 overwhelming majority of the German ministers 
 of to-day are positively Evangelical ; and at the 
 same time that the overwhelming majority of 
 them are more or less positively Lutheran." The 
 widow of the late evangelical scholar, Dr. Howard 
 Crosby, has just been visiting Germany, and this 
 is her testimony from a non- Lutheran standpoint: 
 "We have been most agreeably surprised by the 
 
 ♦German Protestantism, Kahnis, p. 136. 
 
no 
 
 spiritual preaching we have heard everywhere in 
 Germany ; not a word of poor, finite Rationalism, 
 as we had feared, but simple faith in original 
 form, with a rich armory of Bible texts, making- 
 one feel that the only real strength comes from 
 Scripture knowledge brought to remembrance by 
 the Holy Spirit." :i: So writes also an observing 
 Lutheran layman, "J. A. B.," in a late number 
 of "The Lutheran World:" "I am in Prussia 
 and in the capital of the German Empire, 
 and, after spending six months in the Land of 
 Luther's Church, I say that the members of the 
 Church which bears his name in America, can 
 look across the ocean for an example of Church 
 love and fidelity. Lutherans of the United States 
 do not be deceived by what you hear of the 
 tendency to "Briggsism" among the Germans. 
 The clergymen, as a class, are holy, earnest men 
 of God, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, 
 and working for the salvation of souls. As for 
 the people, the plain people, with the exception 
 of a small number of the various "free thinkers," 
 they know of no disputes as to the Confession 
 nor of any dogma of the Church. Every person, 
 of the age of fourteen and over, is the owner of 
 
 *Ntnu York Observer, September 18, 1892. 
 
Ill 
 
 a hymn-book which contains the Augsburg Con- 
 fession. It and the Bible settle the whole matter." 
 The same is notably true of Lutheran pulpits 
 in the United States. However uncertain one 
 may feel as to whether orthodoxy will confirm 
 his faith, or dangerous heresies offend his ear, on 
 entering other Protestant Churches, we do not 
 believe there is a Lutheran pulpit in all this land 
 from which one will not hear the simple, pure, old 
 gospel. Accordingly, President Patton of Prince- 
 ton, recently remarked to the author that one of 
 the most auspicious signs for Christendom was 
 the unswerving fidelity of Lutheran pastors 
 throughout the entire world to unimpaired 
 Christian truth. 
 
 The Lutheran is an orthodox Church. This 
 is her distinctive, her unique, her unrivalled glory. 
 She is "the Church of the pure doctrine."* With 
 her, orders, polity, methods, forms, are as nothing, 
 the faith is all in all. Like the Church in Phila- 
 delphia spoken of in the Apocalypse, amid all 
 the alluring degeneracies of these modern times, 
 she "has kept My word, and has not denied My 
 name." And therefore does "He who walketh 
 in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks," 
 
 *Church History, Kurtz, Vol. Ill, p. 39. 
 
112 
 
 say to her: "I also will keep thee from the hour 
 of temptation, which shall come upon all the 
 world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. 
 Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take 
 thy crown" (Rev. iii ; 8, 9.). 
 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 LUTHERANS AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 LUTHERANS believe not only in Christianity 
 but in the Church. They hold that the 
 spiritual life exists in and through a visible form, 
 "Christ's body, which is the Church" (Col. i; 24). 
 Piety has an historical as well as a spiritual side. 
 A Lutheran, therefore, does not regard as 
 either Scriptural or safe that Christianity which is 
 indifferent to and independent of churchliness. 
 
 The Lutheran conception of the Church, first, 
 is that it is divine. It is "the household of God 
 — built upon the foundation of the apostles and 
 prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief 
 corner-stone" (Ephes. ii ; 20). It is the congre- 
 gation of the saints — all those who are joined by 
 faith to the Lord Jesus Christ. Its purpose is the 
 preaching of the Word and the celebration of 
 
ii4 
 
 the Sacraments, for the conversion of sinners, 
 and the edification of the faithful. Jesus Christ is 
 the " Head of the Church," and its members are 
 one in Him, and by this means are one with one 
 another. "This communion we then call holy, 
 because in it the Holy Ghost is operating* to 
 sanctify it; catholic, because however widely the 
 members of the Church are scattered, yet at all 
 times and in all places the same faith is confessed; 
 apostolic, because its faith resting upon that pro- 
 claimed by the apostles, has never, in the course 
 of time been changed. "* 
 
 The Church, as thus divine, is entirely ttnique, 
 and is not to be compared with any merely human 
 society or institution. But it is separated from 
 these by an impassable chasm of superiority. 
 Its obligations, its claims, its powers, proceed 
 from God, and are endued with the might of the 
 Holy Ghost. The Church is the " Body of 
 Christ," the organ by which He continuously 
 lives and mightily works on the earth. This 
 clothes it with supernatural spiritual forces, such 
 as pertain to no merely natural or moral associa- 
 tion whatever. 
 
 ♦Lutheran Doctrinal Theology — Schmid, p. 599. 
 
U5 
 
 The Church is visible and invisible. By the 
 visible Church we mean the Church in that 
 broader sense in which it comprises all those 
 who, by observance of the outward conditions, 
 are regular members of the Church. But by the 
 invisible Church we mean the Church in that 
 narrower sense in which it comprises alone the 
 truly regenerate, those whose inner union with 
 Christ complies with their outward profession of 
 Him. But the Lutheran Church repudiates such 
 a perversion of the idea of the invisible Church, 
 as would make it embrace those who reject 
 Christ's visible terms of communion. "Nor is 
 the Church of the elect said to be invisible because 
 the pious and elect have no intercourse whatever 
 with the visible ministry of the Word and Sacra- 
 ments, and with the outward practice of divine 
 worship." :: ' : The invisible Church is not larger 
 and more extensive, than the visible, but just the 
 reverse. Nor is it apart from the visible, but in 
 and a part of it. "The relation between them is 
 this, that the Church in the narrower sense exists 
 in the midst of the Church in the wider sense. "f 
 "The Church invisible becomes visible through 
 
 *Gerhard XI ; 83. 
 
 fLutheran Doctrinal Theology — Schmid, p. 600. 
 
n6 
 
 the Word and Sacraments."* One may be in the 
 visible Church, and yet not be in the invisible. 
 But the divine order is that one cannot be in the 
 invisible Church without being in the visible. 
 Here the rule is, subject to such exceptions as 
 God in His wisdom and mercy may allow, that 
 laid down by St. Augustine: " He who has not 
 the Church for his Mother cannot have God for 
 his Father." 
 
 Lutherans further hold the Church to be one. 
 "There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism" 
 (Ephes. iv; 5). "And there shall be one fold, 
 and one Shepherd" (John x; 16). Diverse 
 Churches with differing faiths and antagonistic 
 confessions — the one a protest against the other, 
 the one unchurching the other — are not the idea 
 of the gospel. Such separated and rival organi- 
 zations do not hold the relation to each other of 
 branches of the Vine, limbs of the Body, or 
 natural members of the Christian Family. Hence 
 the Lutheran Church aspires after a true Christian 
 unity, an oneness in "the truth as it is in Jesus." 
 And assured that she holds that faith, and 
 administers the sacraments in their purity, while 
 not denying that others are more or less true 
 
 *Holman Lecture on the Church, P. Bergstresser, D.D. 
 
ii7 
 
 Churches, or contain regenerated souls, yet she 
 aims to bring back to the pure confession of the 
 truth, all such as have more or less erred there- 
 from, and thus to realize on earth the "One holy 
 Catholic and Apostolic Church," confessed in the 
 Nicene Creed. 
 
 The Church, further, is the divine instrumentality 
 for salvation. To it are committed the Word and 
 Sacraments, the Means of Grace. As these are 
 the divinely ordained agencies for causing justi- 
 fying faith, men must come to these ordinances 
 for salvation: "For the obtaining of faith, the 
 ministry of teaching the Gospel, and administering 
 the Sacraments was instituted. For by the Word 
 and Sacraments, as by instruments, the Holy 
 Spirit is given." Augsburg Confession, Art. V. 
 For the administration of these Means of Grace, 
 there must be a ministry. Hence results the 
 Ministerial Office, and no one has the right to 
 officiate in these holy things, unless he receives 
 a regular call from the Church. The witness and 
 seal of this call is the rite of ordination. 
 
 As to the Church have been committed these 
 divine powers, agencies, and instrumentalities of 
 grace and salvation, to her belongs the regenera- 
 tion of society. Her spiritual forces alone are 
 competent to the overthrow of moral evil. She 
 
n8 
 
 alone can successfully cope with impiety, immo- 
 rality, and vice. Where all human societies are 
 impotent, and where all reforms undertaken on a 
 merely moral basis will fail, she can perform 
 moral wonders in the name of Christ " working 
 with her, and confirming the Word by signs 
 following" (Mark xvi ; 20). All great movements 
 then of a reformatory character, every attempt at 
 the moral regeneration of society, and all uplifting 
 power for the rescue and redemption of mankind, 
 must issue from the Church, and be conducted 
 under her guidance. Here she is at war with 
 many of the skeptical theories promulgated by 
 social reformers of our time. 
 
 To the Church moreover, through the mini- 
 sterial office, pertains the Power of the Keys. This 
 the Augsburg Confession, Article XXVIII, thus 
 defines: "The Power of the Keys, or the power 
 of the bishops, by the rule of the Gospel, is a 
 power, or commandment from God, of preaching 
 the Gospel, of remitting or retaining sins, and of 
 administering the Sacraments. For Christ doth 
 send His Apostles with the charge: "As the 
 Father hath sent me, even so send I you. Re- 
 ceive ye the Holy Ghost ; whosesoever sins ye 
 remit, they are remitted unto them ; and whoseso- 
 ever sins ye retain, they are retained" (John xx; 
 
ii9 
 
 21-23). Again, [the Power of the Keys is] the 
 jurisdiction to judge in regard to doctrine, and to 
 exclude from the communion of the Church. And 
 herein of necessity the Churches ought by Divine 
 right to render obedience unto them [the bishops 
 or ministers]." That is, to the Church belongs 
 the preservation of the pure gospel. To her, for 
 safe keeping and transmission, are "committed 
 the oracles of God" (Rom. iii ; 2). She is "the 
 pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. iii; 15). 
 In this capacity she has framed the canon of 
 Holy Scripture. She has faithfully kept and 
 transmitted the record of divine revelation. And 
 she is the witness-bearing Church, in that by her 
 creeds and confessions she bears unanimous and 
 continuous testimony to the true teaching of this 
 Scripture. The Church thus has a history and 
 is known by historical marks. And the difference 
 between her history and secular histories, is that 
 her history directly bears the formative hand of 
 the Holy Ghost, and therefore most markedly 
 reflects the divine guidance. " Howbeit when 
 He, the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide 
 you into all truth" (John xvi ; 13). As we study 
 the course of the Christian Church through the 
 centuries, we observe the leadings and trace the 
 footprints of the Son of God. 
 
120 
 
 The Church, thus, is an orderly kingdom with 
 a constituted government, so that in it "all things 
 may be done decently and in order" (i Cor. xiv; 
 40). The Church is not destitute of authority. 
 It has the power of self-preservation. There is 
 a legitimate ecclesiastical government. Within 
 due limits there must within the Church, and 
 with regard to its spiritual officers be r 1 e and 
 obedience, as saith the Scripture, "Obey them 
 that have the rule over you, and submit your- 
 selves ; for they watch for your souls, as they that 
 must give account" (Heb. xiii; 17). To this Power 
 of the Keys pertains the exercise of discipline, 
 the excommunication of heretics, that the faith 
 may be kept intact, and the correction or excom- 
 munication of the immoral, that the fellowship 
 may be kept pure. And to this authority, legiti- 
 mately exercised, every one must bow, even as 
 it is written: "Tell it unto the Church; but if he 
 neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee 
 as a heathen man and a publican" (Matt, xviii ; 
 
 17). 
 
 The congregation, however, is the ultimate 
 source of power. As Lutherans hold the universal 
 priesthood of all believers, the ministerial office, 
 and hence "the Power of the Keys," is rooted in 
 the congregation. For the sake of order it simply 
 
121 
 
 delegates its rights to some fellow member that 
 he may officiate for all. The Scriptural or New 
 Testament Church was organized by the setting 
 apart of Presbyters or Bishops — synonyms for 
 the one office of Minister — and Deacons ; and 
 this system is that of the Lutheran Church. For 
 the sake of order, these Ministers, with lay rep- 
 resentatives from the congregations, constitute 
 themselves into synods. As these synods repre- 
 sent the embodied wisdom and piety of the 
 Church, it is the moral duty of the congregations 
 to render obedience to them. The individual 
 congregation is under the government of the 
 Church Council, consisting of the Pastor and 
 Deacons, or Elders, as they are often called. At 
 the head of the congregation stands the Minister, 
 to preach the Gospel, administer the Sacraments, 
 conduct the rites of Confession and Confirmation, 
 execute discipline, and in general to exercise the 
 Power of the Keys. "The pastor, by virtue of 
 his office, is at the head, not only of the Sunday 
 School, but of the Church Council and every 
 organization connected with the Church. The 
 superintendent of the Sunday School, and presi- 
 dents and officers of the various organizations, 
 are in no respect equal, much less superior, in 
 authority to the pastor. Because of pastoral 
 
122 
 
 duties, or various other considerations, he may 
 absent himself from any meeting, or even when 
 he is present, he may leave the meeting entirely 
 in the hands of chosen officers ; but the fact 
 remains that the pastor is not only the spiritual 
 leader, but the ordained head of all the affairs of 
 the congregation. We think this position is un- 
 questionably the correct Scriptural and therefore 
 Lutheran, view of the relation between the pastor 
 and all associations in the congregation."* 
 
 In Europe much injury has resulted from the 
 union of Church and State in Lutheran countries. 
 This arises from a perversion of the Lutheran 
 theory. The Church and State, as both ordained 
 of God, and necessary to secular and spiritual 
 order, have a vital connection. With the Family, 
 they constitute those three estates or pillars upon 
 which is supported the whole fabric of society. 
 The Church, therefore, should instil loyalty to 
 the State. And the State should render spiritual 
 deference and allegiance to the Church. But 
 when the Church wields force to execute her 
 authority, she transcends her spiritual realm and 
 incroaches upon the prerogatives of the State. 
 And when the State appoints ministers, maintains 
 
 * Lutheran Observer, Editorial, March 17th, 1893. 
 
123 
 
 professors in theological chairs, and decides 
 questions of doctrine, she incroaches upon the 
 Church's legitimate spiritual supremacy, assumes 
 the Power of the Keys, foments confusion, pro- 
 motes heresy, and causes general disorder. 
 
 Such is the Lutheran conception of the Church. 
 It differs radically from the Romish idea in this 
 that it denies that the Church depends upon a 
 certain external constitution or order, but upon 
 the pure confession of the truth. It denies like- 
 wise the Papal Primacy, that the Pope is the 
 successor of the Apostle Peter and the infallible 
 Head of the Church. It denies, too, an absolute, 
 instead of a declarative, power upon the part of 
 the priests, as a sacerdotal order, to forgive sins. 
 And it denies also the infallibility of a General 
 Council of the Church, for even this has been 
 known to err. There always remains, as of the 
 Very kernel and essence of Protestantism, the 
 exercise of Private Judgment, the right of appeal 
 to the Holy Scripture, as the only supreme, in- 
 errant, infallible, and final tribunal. 
 
 This Lutheran view of the Church, likewise, 
 differs from that of the Protestant Episcopal, in 
 that it denies the existence of three orders in the 
 Church, viz. Deacons, Priests, and Bishops — of 
 which three orders there is no account in the 
 
124 
 
 Scriptures, while there is positive testimony that 
 there was no such distinction in the apostolic age, 
 or first century of the Church. And it likewise 
 repudiates the claim of the apostolic succession 
 of the Episcopate, and the attempt to invalidate 
 the legitimate ministry of those who have not 
 been Episcopally ordained, and to invalidate the 
 Church membership of such as have not been 
 Episcopally confirmed. This is making the Church 
 to depend upon orders instead of faith, which is 
 contrary to the Scriptures. 
 
 The Lutheran view of the Church none the 
 less differs from the Calvinistic and Zwinglian 
 Churches, who, on the other hand, often take too 
 low and latitudinarian views of it. These de- 
 preciate the legitimate authority of the Church, 
 virtually nullifying the Power of the Keys, and 
 by dissociating saving grace from the sacraments, 
 and by a false conception of the invisible Church 
 as apart from the visible, deprive the Church of 
 its chief significance as God's ordained kingdom 
 of salvation. 
 
 The current views in America, respecting the 
 Church, are to a large degree infected with 
 Rationalism. The prevalent tendency often is to 
 regard the Church as little better than u a purely 
 human organization, very much on a level with 
 
125 
 
 other societies."* That Christ can be found with- 
 out the Church, that saving grace may be given 
 through other channels than the Word and Sacra- 
 ments, that "the Faith once delivered to the 
 saints," is liable to change with each decade like 
 the latest assumption of science, or like the plat- 
 form of a political convention, are the sentiments 
 most in vogue with the Low or Broad Churchism 
 of the time. What the Christianity of our day 
 then needs is the element of Churchliness. A 
 due regard for the uniqueness of "the Church of 
 God;" a fitting reverence for its sacraments and 
 historic usages ; a becoming regard to judicious 
 ecclesiastical authority and order; and a lively 
 appreciation of the necessity and beauty of 
 Churchly graces and virtues. 
 
 And herein we see again the great value of the 
 Lutheran view and teaching in regard to the 
 Church. Nothing is more required by the present 
 situation, to correct errors, to restrain false ten- 
 dencies, and to promote the welfare of Christendom, 
 than insistence upon the Lutheran theory of the 
 Church. So wise, so Scriptural, so Catholic, so 
 intensely Protestant, so guarded, and so important 
 to meet present exigences, is her testimony on 
 
 *The Church, Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 474. 
 
126 
 
 this point, that every Lutheran should feel it his 
 mission not alone to intelligently understand it, 
 but also to illustrate it in act and in life. 
 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 LUTHERAN PIETY. 
 
 THE doctrinal character of a Church has a 
 direct bearing upon the religious life. Thus 
 the Lutheran or Calvinistic systems produce 
 markedly diverse types of Christians. The deeper, 
 fuller, more childlike faith of the Lutheran results 
 in a deeper, richer spiritual life. His intenser 
 hold upon the very heart of the gospel, causes a 
 still inner spirit of unusual beauty, depth, and 
 power. Consequently, sensationalism, turbulent 
 revivalism, and all forms of religious demonstra- 
 tiveness, are altogether foreign to him. The 
 meditative, devotional, quietistic temper is the 
 characteristic Lutheran one. Still, but deep ; quiet, 
 but mighty ; not in name but in power. The 
 Lutheran spirit is simple, modest, unobtrusive. 
 Writes Dr. Schaff: "The Lutheran piety has its 
 
28 
 
 peculiar charm, the charm of Mary, who sat at 
 Jesus' feet and heard His word. It has a rich 
 inward life. The Lutheran Church numbers her 
 mystics who bathed in the ocean of infinite love. 
 She has sung the most fervent hymns to the 
 Savior, and holds sweet childlike intercourse with 
 the heavenly Father." This mystical spirit is 
 reflected in her doctrinal literature and prayer 
 books, which are the richest in the world — as 
 Arndt's True Christianity, Gerhard's " Medita- 
 tiones Sacrae," "Gotthold's Emblems," etc. 
 
 Another characteristic of Lutheran Piety is its 
 cheerful and hearty joy 'ousness. It is not austere 
 or Puritanical. It is not narrow or one-sided. It 
 has nothing in it of the severity of asceticism. It 
 is not the enforced perfunctory service of the 
 slave, but the free, willing obedience of the son. 
 It enters with a frank and hearty spirit into all 
 the joyousness spread about in the kingdom of 
 nature. Love being its centre and keystone, its 
 genializing influences soften and irradiate the 
 whole Lutheran system. Believing that the good 
 things of life were meant by the Creator to be 
 enjoyed, it does not hold to a theory of abstinence, 
 but ''temperate in all things" is its motto. "It 
 excels in honesty, kindness, affection, cheerfulness, 
 
129 
 
 and that ' Gemuthlichkeit! for which other nations 
 have not even a name."* 
 
 This happy temper is imbibed from its founder. 
 With all Luther's poignant conviction of sin, his 
 life of theological battle, and his superhuman 
 labors, he yet was intensely human, genial, and 
 sympathetic. " With childlike joy he recognized 
 God's gifts in nature, in garden and field, plants 
 and cattle. He was enraptured with the beauties 
 of Spring, the bloom of the flowers, and the song 
 of the birds. "f He loved home, children, friends. 
 In the evening, after his hard studies, he would 
 gather about the social circle with his friends, and 
 dissolve his soul to the melodies of his lute. Thus 
 he touched whole spheres of human nature to 
 which Calvin was a stranger. 
 
 And this freedom and sunshine of Luther's 
 nature characterize the piety of Lutheran, as 
 contrasted with Reformed peoples. " The religious 
 life in the Reformed Churches is characterized 
 generally by harsh legalism, rigorous renunciation 
 
 *Dr. John Hall of New York, writes from Germany to the 
 Mail and Expi'ess • il There is one feature of German life, as it comes 
 under the notice of a tourist, which deserves commendation — 
 namely, the general sobriety of the people. An intoxicated person 
 is not often seen."' 
 
 •jTvoestlin's Life of Luther, p. 597. 
 
13° 
 
 of the world, coupled with unbending decision 
 and energy of will. It is the spirit of Calvin 
 which impresses on it this character, and deter- 
 mines its doctrine."* The contrasted free joy- 
 ousness, larger Christian liberty, innocent 
 amusements, non-Puritanical conception of the 
 Sabbath, etc. in Lutheran lands, are often 
 misinterpreted and grossly misrepresented by 
 those reared under Calvinistic influences. 
 
 A third feature of Lutheran Piety is \Xs practi- 
 cal character. This is shown in the religiousness 
 and Churchliness of popular life, the propagation 
 of Missions, the erection of Orphans' Homes, 
 Deaconesses' Houses, and general beneficent and 
 pious activity. Nowhere in the world is the 
 practical result of Christianity in individual up- 
 rightness and household piety so marked as among 
 the Scandinavians, who are almost wholly Luth- 
 erans. Says the noted traveler, Du Chaillu : 
 "Passing along their highways, after the lamps 
 are lit, the farmers may be seen with the big 
 Bible on the table, and reading it to the family. 
 Mothers sit by the cradle of their babes and lull 
 them to sleep with hymns and psalms. They say, 
 "We want our children from their birth to hear 
 
 *Kurtz's Church History, Vol. Ill, p. 59. 
 
i3i 
 
 us sing praises to God ; we want them to fear and 
 love God when they grow up, for He is good to 
 us all." "There are tens of thousands of laymen, 
 members of the State Church, earnest Christians, 
 who are seeking to promote the cause of Christ 
 in a manner and with a devotion which we of 
 another temperament and country can scarcely 
 comprehend. Sunday is observed as a Christian 
 holy-day in all places. The word of God is 
 preached in every parish. Wherever you go you 
 will find people going to Church, and some walk 
 a great distance, and do not stay at home on 
 account of disagreeable weather. The stores and 
 public places are closed, and the Sunday laws are 
 kept strictly during the time of divine services."* 
 Speaking of the sterling honesty of the people 
 and of their trust in each other, so that when they 
 leave their houses, they hang up the key on the 
 outside, Congressman S. S. Cox, says: "We 
 left our umbrella in the cars (reaching 
 Copenhagen) ; and as an illustration of the regard 
 to the mcum et tuum which obtains among these 
 people, we afterwards found it at our hotel in 
 Norway, forwarded as if it were actual property, 
 and at a cost too small to record." The Gustavus 
 
 *Hand Book of Lutheranism, p. 125. 
 
132 
 
 Adolphus Society, organized to assist Protestant 
 congregations in Roman Catholic countries, last 
 year gave help to 1,633 such congregations. 
 Since its organization it has aided 3,843 con- 
 gregations. No wonder that these pious 
 Scandinavian Lutherans, out of their comparative 
 poverty, giving so generously to carry the gospel 
 to the heathen, resent as an abuse of Christian 
 courtesy and charity, the action of some Ameri- 
 can sects in treating them as heathen, and appro- 
 priating more money for their conversion than 
 they do for the dark continent of Africa. 
 
 Of Germany, in the Seventeenth Century, when 
 the Lutheran type of piety was very marked and 
 prevalent, Kahnis writes : " In the houses Bible 
 and hymn book were the first and the last, the 
 most faithful advisers in all the events of life. In 
 the higher, as well as in the elementary schools, 
 the confession of the fathers was considered as 
 the chief knowledge ; to be regular in attending 
 the house of the Lord, and in coming to the table 
 of the Lord, formed part of the family honor. 
 All the ordinances of rank, of law, of the State, 
 were connected with religion. " :!: To-day/' Societies 
 for the better observance of the Lord's day ; for 
 
 *IIistory of German Protestantism, p. 251. 
 
133 
 
 the promotion of temperance, the improvement 
 of prison discipline and the care of dismissed con- 
 victs ; the establishment of institutions for the 
 laboring classes, colliers, sailors, orphans and the 
 poor; and of asylums, hospitals, and deaconess 
 homes ; and all the efforts and means for the moral 
 and religious reformatory movements, which are 
 comprehended under the name of Inner Mission, 
 are multiplying in every quarter."* 
 
 American Christians with Puritanic and anti- 
 Lutheran prejudices who visit Europe often bring 
 back unfavorable reports as to the state of religion 
 in Lutheran lands and capitals. A few facts are 
 quite sufficient to refute these prejudiced mis- 
 representations. Thus, it is charged that Berlin 
 is an utterly irreligious city and that Christianity 
 and the Church are there destitute of life and 
 activity. Yet there are at present 26 Churches 
 in process of erection in Berlin, and some of these 
 so large that most of our edifices in comparison 
 are but chapels. Where can such Church Exten- 
 sion activity be surpassed? And in each of these 
 great Churches there are held numerous successive 
 services on the Lord's day, and frequently during 
 the week. The lack of Church accomodations is 
 
 *Hand Book of Lutheranism, p. 14. 
 
134 
 
 often spoken of as a matter of reproach to these 
 Lutheran lands. Yet a late number of the Inde- 
 pendent shows that the German Empire has a 
 Protestant (Lutheran) population of 30,964,274, 
 and 24,996 Protestant houses of worship, i. e., one 
 Church for every 1,240 people, old and young. 
 This is amply sufficient. As a matter of fact, 
 taking the adults alone, the ratio is, in Prussia, 
 one Church to 435, in Denmark, one to 400, and 
 in Wurtemberg, one to 337. No better and more 
 sufficient Church accomodations than these can 
 be found elsewhere. This Churchly piety extends 
 from the hut to the throne. Not only are the 
 Lutheran Emperor and Empress regular wor- 
 shipers, but they show the liveliest interest in 
 Christian and Churchly enterprises, and sustain 
 them by princely gifts of private generosity. "The 
 Lutheran Church in Prussia embraces 6,900 pas- 
 toral charges, 200 of which were organized within 
 the last four years. The annual number of con- 
 firmations is 318,000. There are 2,200 young 
 men studying for the ministry in this Church. 
 The gifts made in 1891 for the charitable objects 
 of the Church amounted to $1,050,000. "Out of- 
 a Protestant population of 18,000,000, statistics 
 show that 5,980,140 had communed within the 
 last year — a better showing than this country can 
 
*35 
 
 make. Of the Protestant population of the United 
 States only one-fifth are communicants, and in 
 Prussia we have one-third of the population not 
 merely entitled to communion, but actually par- 
 ticipating in the Lord's Supper within a year."* 
 For the whole empire the average- of those 
 confirmed who communed was 48^ per cent., 9 
 per cent being the lowest, and 81 per cent, 
 being the highest. The notable feature, however, 
 was that the lowest percentage was at Hamburg, 
 where liberalism has made the greatest inroads 
 and where confessional Lutheranism is weakest. 
 And the very highest averages were maintained 
 in the strictly Lutheran parts of the empire, and 
 among the separatistic Lutheran congregations, 
 as the one at Zwickau. 
 
 The same is true of Lutherans in the United 
 States, that they constitute the most reliably in- 
 dustrious and religious elements of the population, 
 and that their quiet and unobtrusive, but thorough 
 piety, is every day being more felt and acknow- 
 ledged. "The real judgment of the vigor of our 
 spiritual life is based upon a comparison with the 
 spiritual life of present religious bodies. As com- 
 pared with them, the result is on the whole favor- 
 
 *Rev. G. F. Behringer in Lutheran Observer. 
 
136 
 
 able. Our Church is respected and esteemed by 
 the best ministers and best members of other 
 Churches. It has not only now place and recog- 
 nition, but maintains them with increasing power."* 
 
 The Lutheran Church is the parent of modern 
 evangelical missions. A Lutheran King of Den- 
 mark sent the first Protestant Missionaries to 
 India, where the name of the Lutheran Schwarz 
 yet lives among the Christian natives in undying 
 fragrance. And "the Lutheran Church was 
 carrying forward on a vast scale a successful 
 mission in India one hundred years before any of 
 the English Churches had a single missionary 
 station in heathen lands. "f The Herrmansburg 
 Missionary Society in Germany, founded by the 
 Lutheran, Harms, has been so wonderfully blessed, 
 and the means of sending out so many mission- 
 aries to heathen lands, as to win the envious 
 title : "The Wonder of the Mission World." And 
 the first religious book translated for the evangeli- 
 zation of our American Indians was Luther's 
 Catechism, by Campanius, a Swedish Lutheran 
 pastor. "The Lutheran Church has 40 chartered 
 missionary societies at work among the heathen. 
 
 *Rev. C. S. Albert, D.D., in Lutheran Observer, 
 -{-Lutherans in America — Wolf, p. 494. 
 
137 
 
 These societies have 185 stations in Asia, 505 in 
 Africa, and 12 in Australia. On these 700 stations, 
 occupied as centres of mission labor, there are 
 1,000 missionaries, 100 native preachers, and 4,000 
 other native helpers. On the 700 mission stations, 
 there are 210,000 members, 1,000 schools, and 
 60,000 pupils. The annual income of the societies 
 is $1,200,000. Its fields of Labor are: Japan, 
 Southern China, Sumatra, Borneo, Farther India, 
 .Central and Southern India, Persia, Palestine, in 
 Asia; Bogss-land, Galla-land, German East Africa, 
 Madagascar, Natal, Transvaal and Orange Free 
 State, Cape Colony, Namaqualand, the Congo, 
 the Cameroons and Togeland, Slave Coast, Gold 
 Coast, Liberia, Senegambia, in Africa; Queensland, 
 New Zealand and New Guinea, in Australia. 
 Greenland and Lapland are not counted in, 
 because they are almost Christianized — thro' her 
 efforts."* 
 
 The first and greatest Orphan Asylum, was 
 founded in a Lutheran Country, Halle, Germany, 
 and by a Lutheran, Francke. At his death it 
 provided for 2,000 orphans, and it has been the 
 blessed seed of similar institutions now scattered 
 all over the world. 
 
 *Mission Tract, Dr. Wackernagel, Muhlenberg College. 
 
'38 
 
 The institution of Protestant Deaconesses, re- 
 sembling the Catholic sisterhoods of charity, was 
 founded by a Lutheran pastor, Fliedner, at Kaiser- 
 werth, Germany. From this beginning, in 1836. 
 the order has spread through Germany, Switzer- 
 land, France, Scandinavia, Russia, Austria, 
 England, and the United States, until there are 
 now 65 Deaconess Houses, with 8,678 sisters and 
 2,774 labor stations. " Germany," says the Inde- 
 pendent \ "leads all Christian countries in this 
 work." The most splendid of these in the United 
 States is the Mary J. Drexel Home and Mother 
 House of Deaconesses at Philadelphia, founded 
 by the gift of $500,000, and supported by its 
 Lutheran founder, John D. Lankenau, Esq., while 
 he lives. In all, there are sixty-six Orphans' 
 Homes, Deaconess Houses, etc. in the United 
 States. 
 
 The Lutheran piety, then, is the brightest gem 
 in her coronet of Christian graces. It is joyous, 
 as well as stable ; practical, while Churchly and 
 conservative ; and knows how, from the still 
 closet of a holy mysticism, to go forth in the world 
 and serve God with works of power. The purest 
 orthodoxy should not be dead, but the tree that 
 bears the best and most plentiful deeds of practical 
 piety. Lutherans best serve their Church, and 
 
139 
 
 honor its faith, when "having the form of godli- 
 ness they do not deny the power thereof," but 
 when it can be said of them as of Luther that 
 "the confessor of the righteousness of faith had 
 what he confessed and was what he taught." 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CHRISTIAN NURTURE, OR CHILDREN IN THE 
 LUTHERAN CHURCH. 
 
 THE Lutheran Doctrine of Baptism involves 
 the idea of Christian Nurture. It is that 
 Baptism is to be applied to infants, and that 
 Baptism is the beginning of the spiritual life. This 
 holy beginning, or quickening, is thenceforward to 
 be fostered and developed by the use of the means 
 of grace. As intelligence dawns, the baptismal 
 covenant is to be unfolded to the child, viz. that 
 by it he is admitted into the kingdom of God and 
 called to salvation and eternal life. Then by the 
 Word, and later on by the Sacrament, the grace 
 of his Baptism is to be nourished and strengthened 
 on to full and ever-growing Christian stature. 
 That is, the child's spiritual life is to repeat that 
 of the holy and model child Jesus, viz. " And the 
 
141 
 
 Child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with 
 wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him" 
 (Luke ii ; 40). 
 
 The Scriptures consistently thus represent the 
 spiritual life as a growth, a development, an 
 orderly progress, after the semblance of the 
 natural life. "So is the kingdom of God, as if a 
 man should cast seed in the ground — and the seed 
 should spring and grow up — first the blade, then 
 the ear, after that the full corn in the ear" (Mark 
 iv; 26-28). Children, thus, being in the kingdom 
 of God by baptism, and having the new spiritual 
 life therein begun in them, are already in a state 
 of grace. And all that they have to do is to 
 "keep" and nurture that "good thing which was 
 committed unto them by the Holy Ghost, which 
 dwelleth in them" (2. Tim. i; 14). The theory of 
 the Churches which deny baptismal grace and the 
 beginning of the spiritual life therein, is that 
 children are in a condition of spiritual death, out 
 of which they must be aroused by some great and 
 sudden spiritual excitement, conflict, and experi- 
 ence. 
 
 The decisive objection to this view is that it 
 leaves children and youth during all their early 
 years in the attitude of unregenerated souls, who, 
 should they die, would die unconverted and be 
 
142 
 
 lost. And then it contradicts the scriptural order 
 of the life of grace which is that of a gradual 
 process of growth, instead of that of a sudden 
 and violent change. The Lutheran idea, then, of 
 Christian Nurture rests upon the idea that child- 
 ren in baptism are "planted in Jesus Christ our 
 Lord and Savior," and that all through their early 
 years this formative power of grace is developing 
 them into spiritual manhood. They do not look 
 forward to conversion, but God has already 
 accepted them, and they enjoy the divine favor. 
 But here then comes the responsibility of 
 parents and sponsors. If the new life is to be 
 gradually developed during youth, and not to be 
 suddenly acquired at a later period, then all the 
 means of grace must be most carefully applied 
 during this critical season. Hence the duty of 
 Christian Nurture. For this, accordingly, the 
 Lutheran Church makes careful provision. In 
 the formula of baptism this obligation is thus 
 urged : " I now admonish you, who have done so 
 charitable a work to this child in its Baptism, 
 that ye diligently and faithfully teach it, or have 
 it taught, that it may learn to know the will of 
 God, to obtain grace, and find -help to lead a 
 Christian life, till God shall perfect that which He 
 hath now begun in it, and bring it to life ever- 
 
H3 
 
 lasting." In order to fulfill this obligation there 
 results the duty of religious instruction at home, 
 in school, and in Church. 
 
 That this might be efficiently done Luther pre- 
 pared the Catechism, wherein children should be 
 taught in a plain and Scriptural manner the plan 
 of salvation as exemplified in the Ten Command- 
 ments or Law, in the Creed or Gospel, in the 
 Lord's Prayer, and in the Holy Sacraments as 
 the Means of Grace. Of the great importance 
 of this religious agency, Luther wrote: "The 
 Catechism is the first and most important instruct- 
 tion for children. Catechisation ought to be 
 diligently practiced by every parent at home, and 
 by every pastor in the Church. No one can be- 
 come master of the whole catechism, aud hence 
 all the members of the Church should continue 
 to study it. Let no one be ashamed of it, but 
 adhere to it steadfastly, for it must remain and 
 attain the ascendency in the Church, though earth 
 and hell rao-e against it." The catechisation of 
 the young, then, their careful and systematic in- 
 struction in the elementary truths of Christianity 
 and the order of salvation, is diligently practiced 
 everywhere by the Lutheran Church. She believes 
 that childhood and youth are the golden season 
 to " Remember thy Creator," and the opportune 
 
144 
 
 age to find Him who has promised: "Those that 
 seek Me early shall find me " (Prov. viii ; 1 7). And 
 then, when the young intelligently comprehend 
 their baptismal covenant, and are ready to ratify 
 it for themselves, and are spiritually strong 
 enough to run for themselves the Christian race, 
 they come out and make their good confession at 
 the altar by the holy rite of Confirmation. "The 
 General Synod * * * lays the utmost stress upon 
 the duty of bringing up the young in ' the nurture 
 and admonition of the Lord,' especially those to 
 whom God, through holy baptism, has given the 
 'adoption of children,' that they may become, 
 and truly be, in heart and life, all that is meant in 
 their divinely-given Church-membership. As 
 'the force, value, and blessing of the baptismal 
 covenant and grace are to extend through their 
 whole subsequent lives,' the method of their 
 proper care and spiritual development is regarded 
 as distinctively educational, under the regenerat- 
 ing and sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost 
 through the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. * * * 
 Catechisation, therefore, is not looked upon as a 
 mere routine formality, or a process of simply 
 intellectual indoctrination, that shall, of course, 
 terminate in confirmation, irrespective of genuine 
 faith, spiritual interest, or a purpose of true 
 
H5 
 
 Christian obedience on the part of the catechu- 
 mens."* 
 
 The Lutheran Church has thus ever had a 
 warm place in her fold for the tender lambs, and 
 her whole history exemplifies those sweet words 
 of Jesus : " Suffer the little children to come unto 
 Me, and forbid them not ; for of such is the 
 kingdom of God" (Mark x; 14). "The Lutheran 
 Church devotes her best strength to the religious 
 instruction and training of the young. She has 
 in this land nearly 5,000 pastors annually cate- 
 chising them. She has nearly 500,000 scholars 
 in Sunday Schools. "f But her experience has 
 been that valuable as is the Sunday School as a 
 spiritual agency, yet the instruction given there 
 but one hour in the week, and the catechetical 
 teaching of the pastor, with the very little that 
 too often alas! is imparted at home, is not 
 sufficient to counteract the abounding worldly 
 temptations and influences at work to weaken 
 religious impressions. This is shown by the 
 fact that so many of those confirmed after a short 
 time relapse, and fall away from their good con- 
 fession. Hence, in foreien lands, Lutheran child- 
 
 *" Distinctive Doctrines and Usages of Lutheran Bodies." — 
 Prof. M. Valentine, D.D., LL.D., pp. 51 and 52. 
 fThe Lutheran Church — Schmauk, p. 9. 
 
146 
 
 ren receive regular religious instruction as a part 
 of their daily school curriculum for years both 
 before and after confirmation. 
 
 And in America, where such religious instruc- 
 tion is not given in the Public Schools, to meet 
 this want, there has arisen the Parochial School. 
 This is a school in connection with a congregation, 
 supported and managed by it. Of these Lutheran 
 Parochial Schools there are about 3,000 in the 
 United States, with about 300,000 scholars. In 
 addition to secular instruction, the scholars are 
 taught daily the Catechism, Bible History, the 
 Life of Christ, Church History, the Reformation, 
 the Augsburg Confession, etc. " In most of the 
 non-religious subjects of instruction, the English 
 [these are chiefly German schools.] tongue is used 
 in the class-room." Writes one of their advo- 
 cates : " We cannot be satisfied with having our 
 children instructed an hour a week in matters that 
 pertain to the eternal salvation of their immortal 
 souls. We are convinced, and this conviction of 
 ours is based upon experience, that if our children 
 are to receive a thorough knowledge and lasting 
 impression of the Bible, its divine truths and 
 commandments, they are in need of daily religious 
 instruction. The law ot God will have to be 
 called to their minds, explained to them, and 
 
brought home to their hearts day after daw Even 
 the secular sciences taught in our schools are 
 pervaded by a Christian spirit. That is what we, 
 under present circumstances, deem the best, it 
 not the only correct method of bringing up our 
 children in the nurture and admonition of the 
 Lord ; and that is the reason why we Lutherans 
 make it a practice to establish, build, and maintain 
 parochial schools." ' When we see this motive 
 and hear these plausible arguments, and remem- 
 ber the pious sacrifice prompting the support of 
 these parochial schools, while the national public 
 schools must be supported in addition, we cannot 
 but admire the spirit shown. 
 
 The truth is the lack of religion in America as 
 a part of the daily tutelage of the young is rapidly 
 becoming one of the greatest problems of the 
 hour. To it. more than to all other causes must 
 be traced the growing irreli^ion of our vouth, and 
 the indifference of the masses to the Church. These 
 evils are largely owing to the want of a specific 
 system of Christian Nurture, such as prevails in 
 the Lutheran Church. And what our Church in 
 this country needs is to adhere to these judicious 
 principles, and not alone to hold them in theory., 
 
 *Hand Book of Lutheranism. p. 420. 
 
1 48 
 
 but to reduce them to practice. The grave re- 
 sponsibility resting upon Lutheran pastors and 
 parents, is to see to it that the children of the 
 Church are not spiritually neglected, but that they 
 grow up under such constant religious influences 
 as shall hold them for Christ, and develop in them 
 a strong and abiding Christian man and woman- 
 hood. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE young people of the Lutheran Church 
 considered as a distinctive class, have only 
 come into prominence within the past few years, 
 since our Church in common with all other 
 denominations has realized the fact that the 
 enlistment of her young people is necessary for 
 the future welfare of the Church. 
 
 Nothing has expressed this idea more forcibly 
 than a paragraph appearing in one of the pam- 
 phets issued by the Lutheran Young People's 
 Association, of New York, which reads as follows: 
 
 "All careful observers must admit that the 
 efforts put forth by the Churches of all denomina- 
 
 *This chapter is contributed, at the author's request, by E. F. 
 Eilert, President of The Luther League of New York, and Editor 
 of "Luther League Review" 
 
ISO 
 
 tions to enlist the young people of their respective 
 communities in the cause of Christ, are of the 
 most vital importance to the successful evangeli- 
 zation of the world, because the young men and 
 young women of every nation have in their 
 keeping the destiny of that nation, and the result 
 will be either for or against the Kingdom of 
 Christ, just in the proportion in which the Churches 
 have recognized and utilized these mighty forces 
 for the work of that kingdom, or else have been 
 recreant in their trust, and have allowed the 
 spiritual life to become dormant. 'Whatsoever a 
 man sows, that shall he reap,' is no truer of indi- 
 viduals than of Churches. That these facts are 
 accepted as of supreme importance is attested by 
 the establishment of National Associations for 
 young people by many denominations. The 
 Methodists have their Ep worth League, the 
 Episcopalians the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, 
 the Baptists their Baptist Union, and the Roman 
 Catholics a very strong National organization, 
 while the Society of Christian Endeavor, and 
 Young Men's .Christian Associations, although 
 undenominational in character, are wielding an 
 influence that has been felt the world over. The 
 Lutheran Church, however, has exceptional 
 opportunities for reaching and keeping her young 
 
i5i 
 
 people loyal to the Kingdom of the Saviour. Her 
 Sunday School system, supplemented by a six 
 months' course of catechetical instruction, and 
 culminating in confirmation, gives her, when faith- 
 fully carried out, an immense advantage over other 
 denominations. Unfortunately, she has never 
 made the fullest use of her opportunities, owing 
 partly to mistaken zeal and conflicting languages, 
 but mostly to neglect and indifference." 
 
 Appreciating these opportunities, while deplor- 
 ing the losses heretofore sustained, the young 
 Lutherans of New York City about five years 
 ago laid the first stone in the construction of a 
 distinctive Lutheran Young People's Union, which 
 should unite in a common bond of fellowship and 
 mutual esteem, the young people of all the various 
 divisions of our Church. 
 
 The success of the Central Association thus 
 formed was soon manifest, and after a few years 
 trial in their own locality, the work was extended 
 and plans made for the establishment of similar 
 Central Associations throughout the country. 
 
 In the plea issued for this work the following 
 appeared : 
 
 '• One of the greatest evils the Lutheran Church 
 has to contend with is the proselyting of its young 
 people by other denominations. It has been said 
 
152 
 
 that the best material for Church workers is to be 
 found among- the young Lutherans, and conse- 
 quently they are much sought after. As the 
 Lutheran Church has offered little inducement 
 and encouragement _ for the usefulness of the 
 younger element, it is not surprising that so many 
 are taken away from her year after year, and be- 
 come active in Churches of other denominations 
 and among societies connected therewith. The 
 plan of forming Central Associations of the Young 
 People's Societies, existing in certain localities, 
 and urging these Central bodies to see to it that 
 a Young People's Society is to be found in every 
 Lutheran Congregation in that locality, or district 
 is one of the remedies that has been offered to 
 overcome this great evil." 
 
 The plan has met with favor and already a 
 number of Central Associations have been estab- 
 lished in many States, more particularly in New 
 York State, where the work has been given 
 special attention, resulting in the establishment of 
 a New York State Association, called the Luther 
 League of New York. 
 
 While the movement has been centered largely 
 in the East, it is gaining ground all over the 
 country, and the organization of other State Asso- 
 
i53 
 
 ciations and the formation of a National Union is 
 only a question of a short time. 
 
 By these means it is intended to have our 
 Lutheran young people organized as thoroughly 
 as any of the other denominations and unitedly 
 work for the upbuilding of the Church and the 
 advancement of Christ's Kingdom. 
 
 Certainly these efforts should meet with the 
 hearty approval of all our pastors and congrega- 
 tions, and the time be looked forward to with lively 
 anticipation when our young people will be 
 organized into one grand National body. 
 
 In the Lutheran Churches, unlike those of other 
 denominations in this respect, we find various 
 forms of associations, each congregation having 
 such organization as it deems most suitable for 
 the particular field in which it is located. The 
 Christian Endeavor Society may be found in a 
 number of congregations, more particularly among 
 Churches of the General Synod. The Luther 
 Alliance is a form of organization first inaugurated 
 in one of the Synods of Pennsylvania. It uses a 
 liturgical form of worship and adopts a particular 
 constitution. The Alliance form has met with 
 favor in many quarters. 
 
 The form of association which is most common 
 among Lutheran Churches is the Young People's 
 
J 54 
 
 Society. It is conducted as other Church organi- 
 zations, and is usually led by the pastor of the 
 congregation. 
 
 These organizations are adapted to the indi- 
 vidual requirements of the congregation with 
 which they are connected, their sphere, in some 
 instances, being larger than in others, but as a 
 usual thing having the care of the young people 
 as their particular mission. 
 
 Among the German Lutheran Churches, the 
 Young Men's Association predominates, but 
 usually Young Ladies' Societies are also connected 
 with these congregations. Their work is, as a 
 rule, similar to that of Young People's Societies. 
 
 In the western part of New York State more 
 especially than elsewhere, the beneficiary plan is 
 used by a number of Young Men's Associations. 
 These benevolent associations particularly aim to 
 keep within the folds of the Church the young 
 men who would otherwise join beneficiary orders 
 or institutions. 
 
 An examination of these beneficiary organiza- 
 tions reveals the fact that two-thirds are German 
 in language and membership, and consequently 
 draw their members largely from our German 
 Churches. 
 
 Among the Central Associations of Lutheran 
 
 
155 
 
 Young People already organized all the forms of 
 organization alluded to will be found. It is not 
 intended to recommend any of the particular types 
 of associations, as each pastor and congregation 
 is better able to judge the requirements of their 
 particular Church and adopt the best form that is 
 to be had. 
 
 All associations of young Lutherans, no matter 
 by what name the association is known, as 
 long as they are connected with an Evangelical 
 Lutheran Church, are entitled to membership in a 
 Central Association. 
 
 The Young People's movement which is so 
 rapidly developing at present in the Lutheran 
 Church is sni generis. Unlike many other de- 
 nominations our young people make no claim to 
 any "new" or improved method of spreading the 
 Gospel, or of building up the Church, but rely 
 exclusively upon the preached Word and the 
 faithful use of the Sacraments for the propagation 
 of the faith. Occupying a unique position, mid- 
 way between pietistic separatism on the one hand, 
 and the torpid inertia resultant from formalism on 
 the other, this movement will be watched with 
 interest by the whole Church, and the reflex 
 influence of "youthful enthusiasm" cannot fail to 
 stimulate the zeal of the older people. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE LUTHERAN CHURCH AND CULTURE. 
 
 GERMANY represents the highest standpoint 
 of intellectual culture attained in the history 
 of the human race. "The Germans," says Emer- 
 son, "are the modern Greeks, the intellectual 
 masters of the world." "As Israel was elected to 
 prepare the true religion for the world, Greece to 
 develop the principles of science and art, Rome 
 to actualize the idea of law and civil government 
 — so in our times the chief significance of Ger- 
 many lies in science and literature."* As Germany 
 originated the Reformation, and thereby revolu- 
 tionized the modern history of man, so has she 
 been the centre of the greatest thought move- 
 ments of the age. Her thinkers are in the fore- 
 front in every problem of mind, and her scholars 
 
 ♦Germany and its Universities — Schaff, p. 8. 
 
»5* 
 
 take the lead in every department of investigation 
 and knowledge. In theology, in philosophy, and 
 in science, the Germans are the leaders. "The 
 German mind has been so productive in almost 
 all branches of literary effort, that the annual 
 issues of the German Press have numbered many 
 thousands. * * * In philosophy the first name in 
 the order of merit is that of Immanuel Kant. A 
 powerful impulse was given to the study of history 
 by Niebuhr. German researches have been 
 carried into every region of the past. A host of 
 German scholars have engaged in the investiga- 
 tion of the origin and interpretation of the Bible. 
 In Biblical criticism, Ewald, Tischendorf, Meyer, 
 Weiss, are theological scholars familiar to Biblical 
 students in all countries. German travelers have 
 explored many countries of the globe. Schlie- 
 mann has uncovered the ruins of Troy. In math- 
 ematics and the natural sciences, in philology and 
 criticism, in philosophy, in law and the political 
 sciences, and in the different branches of theology, 
 the world acknowledges its debt to the patient, 
 methodical investigations, and the exhaustive dis- 
 cussions of German students during the present 
 century."* 
 
 ♦Universal History, Prof. Fisher, Yale College, p. 629. 
 
i5» 
 
 Says Joseph Cook: "Germany is the most 
 learned nation on the globe. The leading books 
 in every scholar's library are written by Ger- 
 mans." In 1892 America published 4,559 books, 
 France 4,000, England 5,735, while Germany 
 published 2 1,279, more than all the others together, 
 and of a more scholarly order. Germany is the 
 modern Athens — the literary centre toward 
 which the students of all countries flock to com- 
 plete a cultured education. The universities of 
 Germany are the best equipped, attended by the 
 largest number of students, and the most re- 
 nowned in the world. In the year 1892, 30,000 
 students attended the German universities, as 
 against but 5,500 students at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, England. The Independent says: "The 
 German universities are the most cosmopolitan 
 institutions of learning in the world. They draw 
 students literally from every cultured land and 
 climate. Of the 29,518 students matriculated at 
 these high schools during the present term no 
 fewer than 1,948 are foreigners." "The universi- 
 ties are the pride and glory of Germany. They 
 are the centres of the highest intellectual and 
 literary life of the nation, and the laboratories of 
 new systems of thought and theories of action. 
 They reflect a picture of the whole world of nature 
 
159 
 
 and of mind under its ideal form."* Germany has 
 the lowest ratio of illiterates in the world. In the 
 Lutheran kingdom of Wurtemberg in every 10,000 
 persons, there are only 2 who cannot read and 
 write, while in the United States there are 1,700 
 in every 10,000, or a ratio 850 times' as great.f 
 
 And as Germany is the origin and chief centre 
 of the Lutheran Church, it is inevitable that this 
 same literary pre-eminence should characterize 
 this communion. As a rule, the great universities 
 are either exclusively Lutheran, or Lutheran 
 professors have a controlling influence. The 
 greatest theologians and biblical scholars have 
 been those of the Lutheran Church. "German 
 theological science comes forth from the Lutheran 
 Church. The theology of the Lutheran Church 
 supported by German diligence, thoroughness, 
 and profundity, stage by stage, amid manifold 
 struggles and revolutions, arose to an amazing 
 elevation, astounding and incomprehensible to the 
 Swiss, the French, and the English. "J 
 
 "The Lutheran Church," says the Reformed 
 Lange, "is the Church of theologians." "Her 
 
 *Germany and its Universities — Schaff, p. 27. 
 fUnited States Census on Illiteracy for 1880. 
 JGoebel, pp. 263, 267, quoted in Krauth's Conservative Re- 
 formation. 
 
i6o 
 
 universities," writes Dr. Seiss, "have been the 
 glory of Germany for the last three hundred 
 years ; and her critics and religious teachers have 
 been the leading instructors of Christendom from 
 the days of Luther until now. Take from the 
 religious literature of the nations all that has been, 
 directly or indirectly, derived from Lutheran 
 divines, and the ecclesiastical heavens would be 
 bereft of most of its stars. Strike out the long 
 list of Lutheran names and writings, in whatever 
 department, which each of these past three centu- 
 ries has furnished, and a void would be made for 
 which all the ages could produce no adequate 
 compensation."* "The first," says Dr. Wolf, "to 
 liberate the human mind from mediaeval darkness 
 and error, the Lutheran Church has always fos- 
 tered thorough intellectual culture. Her scholars 
 have within the present century restored the 
 glories of the best age of Christian learning. Her 
 wonderful literature, her great universities, her 
 systems of popular education are felt by the 
 world, "f 
 
 Prof. Painter, of Roanake College, in his work 
 " Luther on Education," shows that Luther, by 
 
 ♦Ecclesia Lutherana, p. 127. 
 •f-Lutherans in America, p. 476. 
 
i6i 
 
 his efforts to adapt instruction to children, his 
 reorganization of schools, introducing graded 
 instruction, improved courses of study, etc., laid 
 the foundation of the modern educational system, 
 which begins with the common school and ends 
 with the university. ''The German common 
 schools, dating from Luther, may claim to be the 
 oldest in Europe or America."* Thus the Luth- 
 eran Church, through her many-sided and far- 
 seeing founder, and through her literary outfit in 
 Germany has really given the- world the system 
 of public schools, as well as the great university. 
 "Perhaps in our practical Church work we do not 
 sufficiently appreciate the fact that the Evangelical 
 Lutheran Church, in her origin, history and char- 
 acter, is Germanic, just as the Episcopal and 
 Methodist Churches are English, and the Presby- 
 terian is Scotch. As the doctrinal system of a 
 Church penetrates a nation, so the national and 
 ethnological characteristics of a nation impress 
 themselves upon the Church. So, through centu- 
 ries, Lutheranism, more than anything else, has 
 made the Germans and Scandinavians what they 
 are, and it is natural that the human elements of 
 Lutheranism should be Germanic. It is not an 
 
 *Dr. J. M. Gregory, Address to National Educational Associa- 
 tion of the U. S., endorsed and circulated as an official paper by our 
 Government. 
 
l62 
 
 accident that the Germanic populations should feel 
 most at home in the Lutheran Church, and that 
 the Lutheran Church has her greatest success 
 among these people."* 
 
 The same literary activity characterizes the 
 Lutheran Church in America. In the face of the 
 greatest disadvantages, its scholarly ideal has 
 moved it to the establishment of manifold colleges, 
 theological seminaries, and religious periodicals, 
 and to the formation of a distinctive Lutheran 
 literature ever becoming more worthy of its 
 historic character. 
 
 This high degree of literary culture in the 
 Lutheran Church naturally influences her methods. 
 Large intelligence leads to moderation and en- 
 lightened judgment. The emotional and sensa- 
 tional religious methods, begotten of ignorance 
 and illiteracy, are foreign to her. The culture of her 
 ministry and of her people lifts them quite above 
 these weak and ephemeral means. Accordingly, 
 in her preaching, in her liturgical worship, in her 
 methods of evangelization, everything "is done 
 decently and in order." There may be Churches 
 that have more money, but not that have better 
 judgment and taste than the Lutheran. There 
 may be Churches that draw more largely the 
 
 *Rev. J. N. Lenker, in the Lutheran World. 
 
1 63 
 
 untutored and novelty loving throng who wander 
 like ecclesiastical tramps from one sensational 
 glare to another, but no one, we believe, has so 
 solid, so regular, so quiet, orderly, and sensible a 
 membership. The Lutheran Church, accordingly, 
 flourishes best in the most highly cultivated 
 communities, and naturally attracts the thoughtful 
 and cultured classes. 
 
 Lutherans sometimes seem ignorant of this 
 high character and standing of their own Church, 
 and even seem to think slightingly of it as com- 
 pared with others. But the truly enlightened and 
 cultured of other Churches put a very different 
 estimate on the Lutheran Church. They look up 
 to it with the greatest respect, and to them one 
 can bring no higher claim for regard than to say: 
 " I am a Lutheran." 
 
 To belong to a Church, the theological pre- 
 ceptress of the world, the nursery of the foremost 
 intellectual culture of the age, and that has among 
 its members more crowned heads, more erudite 
 scholars, and more cultivated peoples than any 
 other, certainly has nothing in it to lower a 
 Lutheran's proper self-esteem. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE LUTHERAN CHURCH AND SACRED ART. * 
 
 NO factor, in every age, has had a more potent 
 influence upon the emotions of men than 
 Art — the representation by material objects and 
 emblems of the true and beautiful. In a large 
 sense, Nature herself is supreme Art, for all the 
 lovely and varied forms of Nature are types, 
 symbols, and signs, of the invisible world of 
 thought. Inevitable is it, therefore, that Art 
 should have a place in connection with Religion, 
 and be taken into its employ as its handmaiden 
 and servant. The truest, highest Art is that 
 which leads the imagination toward the invisible 
 by means of the visible — that which makes Nature 
 a stepping stone to the Creator. Hence, the 
 prominent place which Art has occupied in all the 
 natural religions, those "growing wild." "It is 
 
i65 
 
 an immutable truth that Art and Religion are hv 
 separably united. Through music, poetry, paint- 
 ing, sculpture and architecture, the spiritual can 
 appeal directly to the human soul with a force 
 that is irresistible. The Cathedrals and Churches 
 of Europe, solemn and majestic, full of dim light 
 and strange stillness, with their splendid ritual, have 
 done much toward the spread and preservation 
 of Christianity. Art is the ready servant and ally 
 of the Church, and never have her proffered services, 
 in the shape of ritual and adornment, been accepted 
 without vast benefits, as, on the other hand, never 
 have they been rejected without corresponding 
 loss."* 
 
 With the appearance of Revelation we find this 
 agency at once utilized. The Old Testament 
 Religion was set in the framework of Art. 
 Symbols were everywhere employed as the 
 teachers of sacred truth. The glittering Shekinah, 
 or emblem of the divine glory ; the altar, typify- 
 ing the one great sacrifice for sin ; the golden 
 candlestick, a symbol of the holy light of revela- 
 tion; all were of a "typical character, and eminently 
 subservient to the religious instruction and benefit 
 of mankind, by shadowing forth in their leading 
 features the grand truths of the Christian 
 
 * The Architectural Record, Vol. II, No. 3, p. 352. 
 
1 66 
 
 Church."* Our blessed Lord illustrated the same 
 general principles in His instructions. His system 
 of teaching was largely parabolic. His most ex- 
 quisite lessons were uttered in parables. The 
 similitudes between nature and truth He artfully 
 applied to moral uses. The Lily, the Vine, the 
 Flowers of the field, the Wheat and the Tare, 
 afforded Him apt object lessons. The book of 
 Revelation most notably exemplifies this princi- 
 ple. It is chiefly constructed of religious sym- 
 bology. From first to last, it is a grand and 
 majestic gallery of sacred art. The sublimest 
 dispensations of God in the destiny of the Church, 
 and in the fate of the world, are here painted in 
 types and symbols on the canvass of inspiration. 
 
 How natural, then, that artistic representation 
 of the true and divine should be enlisted in the 
 service of Christianity. And history shows this 
 to be the case. The earliest illustrations we 
 have, of course, are in the Catacombs. Says the 
 Church historian, Kurtz : "The great abundance 
 of paintings on the walls of the catacombs, of 
 which many belong to the second century, some 
 indeed, perhaps, to the last decades of the first 
 century, served to show how general and lively 
 
 *Jamieson-Fausset-Crown Commentary, p. 65. 
 
1 67 
 
 was the artistic sense among the earliest 
 Christians."* These catacombs where the perse- 
 cuted Christians fled, were really Churches, con- 
 taining their sanctuaries of worship, and their 
 altars on which were celebrated the Holy Sacra- 
 ment. The artistic designs were numerous 
 symbolical devices of the Christian faith. The 
 principal one, however — in the desire to reproduce 
 which, beyond doubt, all Christian Art. originated 
 — was the figure of Jesus Christ. He is repre- 
 sented in all conceivable Scripture forms, the one 
 most in favor being that of the Good Shepherd. 
 When, after the victory of Christianity through 
 Constantine, Churches were built and ecclesiasti- 
 cal art more developed, ''the centre of the 
 whole house of God was the altar, since the fifth 
 century, commonly of stone, often overlaid with 
 gold and silver."f In the great Cathedrals of the 
 Middle Ages the instinct for Christian Art em- 
 bodied itself in those imposing edifices which will 
 forever remain the noblest monuments of 
 the genius of man, exalted by the sentiment of 
 pious devotion. The loftiest of these is the 
 magnificent Lutheran Cathedral at Ulm, beoom in 
 1377 and completed in 1844, holding 30,000 peo- 
 
 *Church History, Vol. I, p. 215. 
 fChurch History, Kurtz, Vol. I, p. 384. 
 
1 68 
 
 pie, adorned with the richest paintings and 
 sculptures, and with a spire of 528 feet, 16 feet 
 higher than the famous Cologne Cathedral. 
 
 In the Reformation two typical leaders were at 
 the helm. One of these was Luther, the other 
 Zwingli, and later, Calvin. Luther, as the larger 
 personality, the more eminent Christian, and the 
 more intensely human and genial, naturally favored 
 Art. He had a poetic soul, and a mystical devo- 
 tion, which interpreted the divine and infinite, in 
 all the forms of nature and art. Accordingly, he 
 writes : " It is not my opinion that the arts are to 
 be destroyed by means of the Gospel, as some 
 super-spiritualists [Zwingli, Carlstadt, etc.] give 
 out, but I should like to see all the arts enlisted 
 in the service of Him who has given and created 
 them."* On the specific point as to the repre- 
 sentation of Christ in the Church, which was in 
 dispute between the Lutheran and the Reformed 
 Churches, Luther makes this striking argument : 
 "The Scripture has pictures. Hence I may for 
 the sake of memory and a better understanding, 
 paint them on the wall. In like manner, when I 
 contemplate the sufferings of Christ, there projects 
 itself in my heart the picture of a man hanging 
 
 *Luthardt's Moral Truths of Christianity, p. 391. 
 
169 
 
 upon the cross. Now, if it is no sin that I have 
 the picture in my heart, why should it be a sin tf 
 I have it in tJie eye> especially when the heart is of 
 more importance than the eye ? " This fine answer, 
 says Dr. Dorner, "decides the relation of [Luth- 
 eran] Protestantism to Art. The poetic, genial, 
 and ideal feeling of Luther will as little dispense 
 with the divine gift of painting as music, but will 
 rather see them employed in the interest of 
 religion."* Never had a man a greater tempta- 
 tion to go to an extreme. Zwingli, Carlstadt, and 
 the Reformed, cried out that these artistic devices 
 were Romish, and the paintings were torn from 
 the walls, and the crosses broken on the altars. 
 But Luther, with true wisdom, refused to argue 
 from the abuse of a good principle against its 
 proper use. In indignant protest he denounced 
 these fanatical extremists, in a series of sermons 
 of burning eloquence and power. And he 
 judiciously selected the golden mean. 
 
 While Zwingli thus wished to do away with 
 organ playing, instrumental music, etc., and Calvin 
 would not tolerate altars, crosses, and candles, in 
 the Churches, a wise moderation prevailed in the 
 Lutheran Church. The principles of the great 
 
 *IIistory of Protestant Theology, Vol. I, p. 146. 
 
I/O 
 
 founder of Protestantism passed over to the 
 Church called after his name. V In Romish wor- 
 ship all appealed to the senses, and in that of the 
 Calvinistic Churches all appealed to the under- 
 standing ; but in the Lutheran worship both sides 
 of human nature were fully recognized, and a 
 proportionate place assigned to each. Altars 
 ornamented with candles and crosses were allowed 
 to remain, not as objects of worship, but rather 
 to aid in exciting and deepening devotion."* 
 
 This employment of sacred art in the building 
 of Churches, and in their interior and altar 
 appointments and decorations, has accordingly 
 become characteristic of Lutheran, as contrasted 
 with Calvinistic and Reformed Churches all over 
 the world.f The only exception is that of the 
 
 ♦Church History, Kurtz, Vol. II. p. 364. 
 
 "I* "The Lutheran Church designates different colors for the 
 different seasons of the year, so that the Church's joy or sorrow 
 may be taught by the eye as well as by the ear. These various 
 colors, used in the several services of the Church, are all symbolical 
 and add solemnity to the devout worship of Almighty God in His 
 house. White is a symbol of purity, joy, life, and light, and is used 
 on the Festivals of Christmas, Easter, and the Ascension of our 
 Lord, and on Whit-Sunday, on Trinity Sunday, and on the dedica- 
 tion of a Church. Violet or Purple-, the symbol of penitence and 
 sorrow, is used during Advent and Lent Seasons, and at funerals. 
 Green, the symbol of hope and peace, and Red, the symbol of divine 
 love and royal dignity, are used from Trinity Sunday until Advent. 
 Black, the symbol of death, is used on Good Friday." — The Church 
 Year, Rev. W. H. Gotwald, D.D. 
 
I/I 
 
 Episcopal Church, where these artistic uses were 
 borrowed from the Lutheran, and not borrowed 
 by us from the Episcopal, as is sometimes supposed 
 by the misinformed. Their Lutheran origin is 
 fully admitted by the distinguished Episcopal 
 scholar, Dean Stanley. Speaking of the changes 
 which occurred in Queen Elizabeth's time, he 
 writes: "The Lutheran element remained too 
 strongly fixed to be altogether dislodged. Luth- 
 eranism was, in fact, the exact shade which colored 
 the mind of Elizabeth, and of the divines who 
 held to her. Her altar was the Lutheran altar!'* 
 "In her doctrine Elizabeth was a moderate 
 Lutheran. "f 
 
 Dr. Schaff not only admits this distinction of 
 sacred art as belonging to the Lutheran, as over 
 against the other Protestant Churches, but really 
 accords it the superiority, thus : " Lutheranism 
 draws the fine arts into the service of religion. 
 The Reformed communion is much poorer in this 
 respect. It aimed at the greatest simplicity in 
 religion, which in Presbyterianism and Puritanism 
 is certainly carried to excess. Mrs. Beecher 
 Stowe, though herself a Puritan, in describing the 
 wondrous beauties of nature in Switzerland, 
 
 *Christian Institutions, p. 89. 
 
 fOutlinesof Universal History, Prof. Fisher, Yale College, p. 43. 
 
172 
 
 makes the significant remark : ' One thing is cer- 
 tain : He who made the world is no utilitarian, no 
 despiser of the fine arts, and no condemner of 
 ornament, and those religionists, who seek to 
 restrain everything within the limits of cold, bare 
 utility, do not imitate our Father in heaven. The 
 instinct to adorn and beautify is from Him ; it 
 likens us to Him, and if rightly understood, 
 instead of being a siren to beguile our hearts 
 away, it will be the closest of affiliating bands.' "* 
 In America, the financial weakness of many of 
 our struggling Churches, the absence of wealth, 
 with its attendant opportunity for culture, and 
 still more, the prevalence for so long a period of 
 extreme Calvinistic and Puritanic conceptions of 
 
 *Lutheranism and Reform, Schaff, p. 175. 
 
 While the whole history of the Lutheran Church thus shows her 
 distinctive attitude and practice, as appreciative of the positive 
 uses and benefits of sacred art, and while the advocacy of these 
 principles is especially needed at this time to counteract prevalent 
 prejudices, yet the Lutheran Church would none the less protest 
 against making them essential and binding upon the conscience. 
 Sacred Art, however important, still rests upon the grounds of ex- 
 pediency, and as such, belongs to the sphere of liberty. Hence the 
 Lutheran Observer is quite correct in this recent editorial : " However, 
 the whole matter of Church decoration with Christian symbols and 
 other works of art, within appropriate limits, belongs to the adia- 
 p/iora, or things indifferent and non-essential, and these are free to 
 be used or not, according to the taste or preference of congrega- 
 tions, so far as not forbidden in the Scriptures." 
 
i73 
 
 worship, moulding and tincturing religious thought 
 in all communions, have to the present time, pre- 
 vented the Lutheran Church from assuming her 
 true place with respect to the use of sacred art. It 
 is, as Dr. Wolf truly remarks in his review of Dr. 
 Schaff's Church History in the Lutheran Quar- 
 terly, January 1893 : "One of the most instructive 
 features of this volume is its disclosure of the 
 truth that almost all those things against which 
 Lutherans have to battle incessantly within their 
 own Church, are importations from the Churches 
 of Zwingli and Calvin. The Puritans brought 
 with them to this country the favorite ideas and 
 practices of these Reformers so far as they 
 antagonized the Lutheran Reformers, and when 
 our feeble English Churches were struggling for 
 existence, they somehow fell into the ways of 
 Calvinism — probably because their pastors had 
 received their training from Calvinist schools and 
 Puritan authors. The denial of quickening grace 
 in Baptism, of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, 
 the opposition to pictures in the Churches, to 
 altars, crosses, candles, clerical robes, etc., have 
 come to us from either Zwingli, or Calvin, or 
 both." 
 
 The ground of these objections is laid upon 
 Romish and Ritualistic abuses. But these objec- 
 
174 
 
 tions would on the same ground sweep away the 
 essentials of Christianity. The Scriptures, the Sac- 
 raments, the Apostle's Creed, the Festivals, the rite 
 of Confession, the authority of the Church, are all 
 similarly abused in the Romish Church. Dare we, 
 therefore, reject them? Whatever then is right, and 
 true, and useful in itself, we are notto discard,because 
 of perversions and excesses, but we are to use so 
 judiciously as to avoid and reprove those abuses. 
 So with Art, as related to Religion. It is 
 natural, sustained by Scripture analogy, employed 
 by Christ, and an invaluable aid to devotion. It 
 is Christian, having characterized the entire his- 
 tory of the Christian Church. Moreover, it is 
 specifically Lutheran, distinguishing the Lutheran 
 from all the Reformed Churches in this regard. 
 Now, the question for us, as Lutherans, here in 
 America, is this, Will we, as we sometimes here- 
 tofore have done join our ecclesiastical opponents 
 in decrying our own historic usages? If so, let 
 us remember, that " A house divided against itself 
 shall not stand" (Matt, xii ; 25). Our Churches 
 here cannot be built up from anti- Lutheran ele- 
 ments. We may discard ever so much to please 
 them ; they will still stay in their own native and 
 powerful Churches. But our Lutheran sons and 
 daug-hters have been used to a well-defined 
 
 
*75 
 
 ecclesiastical art from whatever part of our world- 
 wide Church they have come. They bring these 
 fond and sacred associations with them, and if we 
 will reject Lutheran Churches and altars, and 
 other Churches will adopt them, we can only 
 expect that they will go where they feel at home. 
 And then that irony of American history will 
 repeat itself, that, when other Churches have 
 drawn the intelligent and cultured by the use of 
 our Lutheran custorns, and have grown powerful 
 thereby, we will timidly begin to dare to use 
 them ourselves. And then the objection will be 
 raised that we are borrowing the customs of others. 
 Why not be the first ourselves to use our own 
 precious historic treasures, and then when others 
 want them, compel them to be the borrowers? 
 How far better thus to evince a manly self-respect 
 and courage! And instead of apologizing for, or 
 rejecting our Lutheran heritage, let us boldly es- 
 pouse it, and proudly hold it up to the world as 
 without a peer. Christendom will only respect the 
 Church which first respects itself. The Lutheran 
 Church with regard to Sacred Art, like so many 
 other things, has nothing to be ashamed of. On 
 the contrary, her history here shows her to be in 
 harmony with primitive usage, with Scripture, and 
 with the most cultured minds and gifted souls of the 
 
176 
 
 human race. Of no Lutheran feature can we have a 
 juster pride, none is in closer touch with the trend 
 of modern thought, nor is there one that will 
 more recommend her as the Church worthy to be 
 a leader of the Church Universal. Her motto is : 
 "In Christianity, pictorial and sculptured repre- 
 sentations, are language made visible, symbolized 
 thought,"* divine lessons presented through the 
 eye, which God has made an organ for the recep- 
 tion of truth as well as the ear. 
 
 Lutheran Churches are sanctuaries where on 
 every side religion breathes, sacred visions hold 
 the eye, whispers of the divine reach the soul, and 
 the footseps of God grow audible. The Lutheran 
 altarf is a veritable Holy of Holies, a staircase to 
 the invisible, an arcanum, where the soul com- 
 munes with the glorified Savior, and bathes in 
 the licrht of infinite love. In the Lutheran 
 Sanctuary, Art uses her every gift to make 
 audible and visible the truths of Christianity, and 
 to invest, with a rich and sacred halo, the senti- 
 ment of Religion. 
 
 *Fundamental Truths of Christianity, Luthardt, p. 148. 
 
 fThe Lutheran Church is the only Protestant Church which 
 strictly has an Altar, and uses that term in her formularies of wor- 
 ship. In the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, the word "Altar" 
 was stricken out by the Calvinistic revisers, and "Communion 
 Table" substituted. 
 
177 
 
 As an instructive illustration of the manner in 
 which the Lutheran Church, in its attitude respect- 
 ing Sacred Art, is in sympathy with the best 
 progressive tendencies of the age, we append to 
 this chapter the following extract from a valuable 
 paper on this theme, which recently appeared in 
 that widely circulated religious publication, " The 
 Homiktic Review:" "The conclusion of these 
 phases of the whole subject is, that paintings, 
 pictures, reproductions of the pathos and power 
 of many of them, have been positive means of 
 Christian education, thorough conversions, and 
 the perseverance in saintliness of the persons thus 
 converted. Savanarola, in the cloisters and cells 
 of his convent, was deeply moved by the paint- 
 ings of Angelico, whose art was worship and for 
 the advancement of the Church. Zinzendorf, the 
 founder of the first Protestant missionary Church, 
 was converted by contemplating a picture of the 
 crucifixion, which bore the inscription : 
 
 ' I did this for thee ; 
 
 What hast thou done for me? ' 
 
 If there has been one offering on the altar of the 
 Lord, which has has been devotional in aim and 
 spirit equal to sacred music and poetry, it is sacred 
 pictorial art. The Bible and the Christ have been 
 reproduced in this form according to the gifts 
 
178 
 
 bestowed by nature and by grace. Such portrai- 
 ture has been given, and the objections to it are 
 similar to the objections to written lives of Christ 
 by Farrar and Edersheim, Geikie and Beecher, 
 and to the sermons of the best preachers, and 
 even to the records of the evangelists themselves. 
 Protestantism in this particular has been wrong 
 and Puritanism too. The reaction has been from 
 one extreme to the other. There has been little 
 attempt to gain and keep the golden mean."* 
 
 ♦New York, May, 1893. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 LUTHERAN UNITY. 
 
 WHEN our Lord prayed that all His disciples 
 might be one, he evidently had two ideas 
 chiefly in view, viz. spirituality and efficiency. 
 For brotherly unity is necessary to piety. Where 
 division, distraction, and strife prevail, there can- 
 not be the sweet and peaceful spirit of Christ. 
 And so efficiency in Christian work depends upon 
 unity. As an army torn and sundered by internal 
 dissensions can accomplish nothing against the 
 foe, so a Church rent by differences and contro- 
 versy within its own borders, can do very little 
 effective work for Christ. On this account, the 
 various denominations have their separate con- 
 fessions and usages, in order that those who are of 
 one mind can work together in undisturbed 
 harmony. 
 
i8o 
 
 Now the Lutheran Church encounters excep- 
 tional difficulties in seeking to attain this* unity. 
 Its very strength is here a source of weakness. 
 As it is so widely distributed throughout the 
 various nationalities and languages of the globe, 
 the problem becomes the more difficult to fuse all 
 these types into one American Lutheran Church. 
 Yet, on the other hand, there are several power- 
 ful conditions tending to facilitate this unity. One 
 is the personality of Luther, which is so predomi- 
 nant and overshadowing among all Lutherans, as 
 to be a perpetual force moulding them alike, and 
 so drawing them together. Another, is the doc- 
 trine of the Lutheran Church that unity does not 
 depend upon secondary points, such as identity 
 of Church government, or of rites and ceremonies. 
 Differences on these adiapJwra are no reason, 
 therefore, to hinder true and hearty Lutheran 
 unity. These must be regarded with mutual 
 tolerance and charity. But even here Lutheran 
 worship everywhere has been controlled by the 
 type of Luther's Reformation Service, so that an 
 essential historical unity of public worship char- 
 acterizes Lutherans of all lands, drawing them 
 together as one spiritual family. 
 
 Another impulse toward Lutheran unity comes 
 from the singular pre-eminence of the Augsburg 
 
I8l 
 
 Confession. No other Church has any one sum- 
 mary of faith enjoying such a unique and universal 
 authority over all its various branches, as does 
 this venerable symbol. Not a solitary body of 
 Lutherans rejects it. Nor does any one propose 
 its revision. Wherever there has been individual 
 opposition to it, such opposition has been com- 
 pelled to succumb to the overwhelming sentiment 
 in its favor. "As various kingdoms, states, and 
 cities, embraced the faith of God's word, as our 
 Church had enfolded it, they accepted this Con- 
 fession as their own, and were known as Evan- 
 gelical Lutherans because they so accepted it. 
 The Church was known as the Church of the 
 Augsburg Confession. * * * It is our shield and 
 our sword, our ensign and our arming, the con- 
 stitution of our state. It is the bo?id of our union 
 throughout the world, and by it, and with it, our 
 Church as a distinct organization, must stand or 
 fall."* 
 
 The idea is sometimes entertained, that a 
 serious difference exists among Lutherans on the 
 ground that some subscribe the Augsburg Con- 
 fession, and others th~. Form of Concord. But 
 this is a mistake. Those who in addition subscribe 
 
 Conservative Reformation, Krauth, pp. 262 and 214. 
 
1 82 
 
 to the later symbols do not do so in any spirit 
 of antagonism to the Augsburg Confession, but 
 only because they deem the latter a consistent 
 explanation and development of the Augsburg 
 Confession, so that their subscription to them only 
 more firmly seals their subscription to the 
 Augustana. Thus says one whose general body 
 demands, not of laymen, but of pastors and 
 teachers, subscription to the Form of Concord : 
 " Those who sincerely adopt the Confession 
 of Augsburg and the Catechism, are in accord 
 with us. Our controversy with those who 
 reject a portion of the Confession, has its ground 
 in the conviction that such rejection betrays a 
 dissent from the Evangelical doctrine set forth in 
 the Augsburg Confession, whose true import and 
 meaning the later symbols develop and defend."* 
 He, then, who heartily receives the Augsburg 
 Confession, in the sense in which our Church has 
 always received it, is a Lutlicran^ and no one 
 dare gainsay his Lutheranism. Justasun-Lutheran, 
 are extra and supra-confessional tests and con- 
 ditions as is an infra-confessional laxity. 
 
 As therefore, the Augsburg Confession is thus 
 generally and heartily accepted by Lutherans, 
 
 "Trot. M. Loy, D.D., of Joint Synod of Ohio. 
 
'8 3 
 
 there is more true unity and agreement hi faith and 
 spirit among Lutherans than in any other Christian 
 body in the world, Writes one of our divines of this 
 theological unity: "As we have reason to know, 
 the doctrine of the Real Presence is now taught 
 in all Lutheran theological seminaries in this 
 country, and is held by the vast majority of the 
 Lutheran pastors. * * * And as Luther's Small 
 Catechism, in its pure text, is used almost uni- 
 versally in Lutheran congregations as a manual 
 of instruction, the doctrine is taught to the young 
 people who are in preparation for the duties and 
 benefits of Church membership. "* Consequently, 
 it is a matter of certainty, that a number of 
 Lutherans assembled together from the wide- 
 spread branches of Lutheranism throughout the 
 world, could draw up a set of articles of common 
 doctrinal agreement, and would find themselves in 
 a harmony of spirit, such as could no other Church. 
 A remarkable ilhistration of this truth is given in 
 the volume that has lately appeared : " Distinctive 
 Doctrines and Usages of the General Bodies of 
 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United 
 States. "f Six of the foremost theologians there 
 speak for the bodies they represent, comprising 
 
 *Rev. J. W. Richard, D.D. 
 
 -{•Lutheran Board of Publication, 42 N. Ninth St., Philadelphia. 
 
1 84 
 
 1,019,323 of our Lutheran communicants in the 
 United States. And when we consider the 
 amount of doctrinal divergence and looseness 
 prevalent in the other denominations in our land, 
 the positive hold upon the great Scriptural truths, 
 and the close general doctrinal concurrence exhib- 
 ited in this volume, constitute the religious phenom- 
 enon of the times. All these representative Lutheran 
 theologians agree : a. In making the Word of God 
 the supreme and only infallible rule of faith and 
 practice, " while the symbols [confessions] are 
 not considered like the Scriptures, as judges, but 
 as a witness and declaration of the faith."* b. All 
 accept the Augsburg Confession, without reser- 
 vation, as, from beginning to end, "a correct 
 exhibition of the fundamental doctrines of the 
 divine word and of the faith of our Church, "f 
 and "recognize the fact that the Evangelical 
 Lutheran Church had her settled faith, and her 
 distinctive character, when she witnessed her 
 good confession at Augsburg, in 15 30." J "The 
 question as to whether one be a Lutheran or 
 not, the General Council affirms, must be 
 decided from his relation to the doctrines 
 of the unaltered Augsburg Confession, and from 
 
 ♦Prof. S. Fritschel, D.D., p. 65. 
 
 fProf. M. Valentine, D.D., LL.D., p. 41. 
 
 JProf. M. Loy, D.D., p. 9. 
 
i8 5 
 
 no other standard whatever."* c. All are one in 
 the point that Christian unity is a matter primarily 
 of agreement in the faith, and that rites and 
 ceremonies, forms of worship, systems of Church 
 government, etc., are secondary, and belong to 
 the adiaphora (things indifferent). " Christians 
 may differ, and in many.cases, owing to different 
 circumstances, must differ as to ceremonies, 
 external organization, etc. But there is one thing 
 concerning which all Christians of all times and 
 of all countries should perfectly agree — they 
 should be one in faith and doctrine."^ d. And 
 every one of these writers, while "never failing 
 to distinguish between that which is necessary 
 and that which is free," yet "love the old ways of 
 our fathers, and the beautiful forms in which they 
 worshiped the Lord." All " recognize the benefits 
 of uniformity in the ceremonies and usages of the 
 Churches, and heartily seek to promote it." All 
 "desire, even in externals, to walk in the old 
 paths and manifest their historical connection with 
 the old Church. "J 
 
 Such a unanimity of sentiment — every writer, 
 from what is generally considered the most 
 
 *Prof. H. E. Jacobs, D.D., LL.D., p. 57. 
 fProf. F. Pieper, p. 137. 
 |Prof. M. Loy, D.D., p. 10. 
 
1 86 
 
 moderate, the General Synod, to that which is 
 commonly looked on as most extreme, the 
 Synodical Conference, endorsing absolutely the 
 one great Augsburg Confession in all its teach- 
 ings, covering the whole main system of Scriptural 
 doctrine — is a fact without parellel in any other 
 denomination. No approach to such concurrence 
 could be shown elsewhere. The bare thought of 
 it would be considered utterly chimerical. '* As to 
 the substance of what is known as Lutheran all 
 the writers agree. All accept the Augsburg Con- 
 fession as the original and true confession of 
 Lutheran doctrine, and consent that whoever 
 heartily accepts the doctrinal statements of this 
 Confession is a Lutheran, not in name, but in 
 fact."* The evidences, then, in this remarkable 
 series of papers, of essential unity on the part of 
 the various Lutheran bodies of the United States, 
 is one that should fill every Lutheran heart with 
 encouragement, while it should attract the 
 thoughtful attention and study of other bodies of 
 Christians. 
 
 As a consequence of this fundamental unity, 
 the Lutheran Church is the only branch of 
 Protestantism that has never generated sects, 
 not a single one having sprung from her, while 
 
 * The Lutheran World. 
 
i87 
 
 the other wing of Protestantism has unfortunately 
 had a multitudinous progeny of this character. 
 In a recent editorial, "A Marvel in History," 
 the Eastern Lutheran utters these indisputable 
 words: "There has been no schism in the 
 Lutheran Church from the beginning. There 
 have been differences in language, and customs, 
 and modes of worship, but there is only one 
 Evangelical Lutheran Church in the world to-day. 
 While the Lutheran half of Protestantism has come 
 down unbroken through the centuries, the other half 
 — the Reformed half — has been broken into frag- 
 ments, and comprises all the other denominations 
 of Christendom. It is reported that the census- 
 takers found 150 denominations, or sub-divisions 
 of denominations, in this country, in 1890. The 
 Lutheran Church is not responsible for the 
 divisions of Protestantism. If the Augsburg Con- 
 fession had been accepted by all in 1530, there 
 might have been a unity of the Protestant Church 
 to-day, as there is a unity of Catholicism. The 
 fact that the Reformed part has broken into so 
 many fragments, shows the weakness of its 
 ecclesiastical platform. That the Lutherans have 
 remained united for over three and a half centu- 
 ries is a marvel, and it shows the strength of 
 their ecclesiastical foundation." 
 
1 88 
 
 These being the facts, their exists no sound 
 excuse for our divisions in America. And as Dr. 
 Jacobs truly says : " The problem of the hour for the 
 Lutheran Church in America, is, how to unite 
 these various elements in the historical faith of 
 the Lutheran Church, as embodied in her histori- 
 cal confessions, and with the worship prescribed 
 in her historical Liturgies and Church Orders."* 
 The two greatest foes to this auspicious result 
 are the extremists. The one, the party who 
 would insist on extra-confessional and unhistorical 
 tests. And the other, who are more eager to 
 unite and fellowship with non- Lutherans than 
 with those of their own household. Putting aside 
 both these supra- and infra- Lutherans, why should 
 not the Lutheran Church in this country be one? 
 
 In the Providence of God, despite all her mis- 
 takes and losses, she has now attained a com- 
 manding position here both theologically and 
 numerically. She is known and recognized as one 
 of the foremost ecclesiastical bodies of the land. 
 But this lack of unity, and these contending 
 General Bodies, with the synods and congrega- 
 tions maintaining an independent attitude, arc 
 our greatest element of weakness, and the chief 
 
 ♦Preface to "The Lutheran Movement in England," p. 8. 
 
obstacle in the path of our growth, success, and 
 influence. Our sorest need is, as the patriarch 
 Muhlenberg said : " Unity — a twisted cord of 
 many threads will not break." God has laid 
 upon us a weighty responsibility, as he has also 
 given us an unrivalled opportunity in this Western 
 World. And, bound together by such strong and 
 close ties of faith, usage and history, what we 
 need above all things is to be one. 
 
 And to effect this we should not misrepresent 
 our Lutheran brethern, of any branch or synodi- 
 cal connection of our Church, not seek to fan 
 prejudices against them, and especially not take 
 up the inuendoes and perversions of other de- 
 nominations, and hurl them at those of our own 
 faith and name. And by mutual charity, tolerance, 
 sympathy, and good-will, we can come together, 
 and work together, and march under the same 
 banner, as one great, undivided Lutheran host, 
 in this Western World. As indicative of the 
 tendency at present prevailing, the Independent 
 has lately had a colloquium of representative 
 writers, on Lutheran Unity, in which Dr. Valentine 
 for the General Synod, says : " Is the suggestion 
 practicable? It ought to be. For these different 
 bodies are all Lutheran bodies, the differences in 
 their confessional basis being no greater than 
 
190 
 
 have always existed within the Lutheran Church. 
 The points in disagreement, causing the divisions, 
 do not belong to essentials. It were absurd for 
 any one of these bodies to claim that its title to 
 Lutheranism consists in the things in which it 
 differs from all the other bodies. Its Lutheranism 
 is made, not by the peculiarities in which it sepa- 
 rates from all the rest, but by the truth and 
 Church life which it maintains in common with 
 them, the essential Lutheran system of doctrine." 
 Dr. Jacobs, for the General Council, writes : "The 
 Lutheran Church humbly claims to stand for the 
 very widest basis possible for Christian union. 
 Three centuries have passed, and the representa- 
 tives of the various European Lutheran Churches 
 are meeting in America. They have not come at 
 once, but in successive waves of emigration, so 
 that before one is organized and Americanized, 
 it is overwhelmed by new accessions, among 
 whom the same process is to be repeated. Who 
 can be surprised that all are not united into one 
 compact, homogeneous and well-organized general 
 body? Has not much been gained, according to 
 the showing of Dr. Carroll's statistics, that of 
 1,199,514 communicants 838,938 have been 
 gathered into three general organizations ? " Prof. 
 Pieper, speaking for the Missouri Conference, 
 
I9i 
 
 after remarking various advances toward unifica- 
 tion, says : " Still, there is a bad residue of 
 divisions in the Lutheran Church, causing a great 
 waste both of men and money. The gain to the 
 Lutheran Church would be enormous if a perfect 
 consolidation in the Lutheran families could be 
 effected. But how could this be done? The 
 Lutheran Church has no peculiar ecclesiastical 
 system nor any special rites to insist upon. All 
 these things she classes with the 'adiaphora.' 
 But the great stress is laid upon harmony in the 
 Biblical doctrine. It was on this line of proceed- 
 ing that practical results toward consolidation 
 were obtained in the Lutheran Church. On this 
 principle the Michigan Synod last year united 
 with the Synodical Conference. Lately so-called 
 "Free Conferences" were held between members 
 of the Synodical Conference and other Lutheran 
 bodies with the same object in view. Thus a 
 campaign for consolidation is carried on." 
 
 Certainly, these are notable signs of the times. 
 How much greater is the Lutheran unity pre- 
 vailing now than a quarter of a century ago, and 
 it is growing more and more every year. Instead 
 of a dozen parties, each nursing its own narrow, 
 little, one-sided, Lutheran phase, one supreme 
 historical Lutheran ideal — the world-wide type 
 
192 
 
 — is gradually shaping all parties in accordance 
 with it. And this is surely bringing all together. 
 Lutheran unity is in the air! Nor can any petty, 
 partisan narrowness withstand its advance. Let 
 all join in the fervent hope expressed by Bishop 
 von Scheele, during" his visit amono- us, "that our 
 great Church, in this country, might be united on 
 the basis of the Augsburg Confession."' Speed 
 the grand consummation! Let every minister 
 and every layman, instead of fomenting strife, 
 and fanning the fire of prejudice, pray and strive 
 for this auspicious end. 
 
 And with a united Lutheran Church in America, 
 how nobly will our grand ecclesiastical mother 
 take the leading position that belongs to her, how 
 clearly will her testimony shine forth for the 
 Word and Sacraments, and what effective service 
 can she render for the advancement of the kingdom 
 of God! 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 ENGLISH AXD FOREIGX-SPEAKIXG LUTHERANS. 
 
 THE other Protestant Churches in the United 
 States practically come from but one 
 country, viz. Great Britain, and hence generally 
 speak the English language. But Lutherans, 
 coming from all the countries of Europe, pre- 
 dominantly speak foreign tongues. Prof. Boyesen 
 estimates that nearly one-third of the population 
 of New York City is German-speaking. In 
 Chicago the proportion is about the same. The 
 last decade brought a million and a half Germans 
 to our shores. The oreat Xorth West is filling 
 up with Lutherans. Wisconsin alone has 1 50,000 
 German voters. There are more than one-third 
 as many Norwegians here as in Norway. One- 
 half the population of Minnesota is Scandinavian. 
 So marvelous has been our foreign growth in the 
 
194 
 
 great West that it is the surprising fact that there 
 are 300 more Lutheran Churches west of Chicago 
 than east of that city, and 80,000 more communi- 
 cants. As a result, the Lutheran is the Church 
 of many tongues in America. 
 
 The Government Census for 1890 thus tabulates 
 Lutheran communicant members, according to 
 lanooiao-e : 
 
 German, 
 
 German-English, 
 
 English, 
 
 Norwegian, 
 
 Swedish, 
 
 Danish, 
 
 Icelandic, - 
 
 Finnish, 
 
 454.005 
 232,512 
 198,997 
 190,154 
 88,700 
 
 13-674 
 1,991 
 
 1.385 
 
 1,181,418 
 This table shows that the foreign-speaking 
 Lutherans of America outnumber the purely 
 English-speaking, in the proportion of 5 to 1. 
 Or, in round numbers, there are only 200,000 
 English Lutherans, as against 1,000,000 speaking- 
 foreign tongues. With these foreign -speaking 
 members, the Lutheran is one of the most power- 
 ful denominations in America; without them, one 
 of the weakest and most insignificant. Now, the 
 
195 
 
 problem before the Lutheran Church is, how to 
 effect the transition of these foreign-speaking 
 members into the English-speaking Churches. 
 Upon this, it is self-evident, depends almost our 
 very existence in the future. As our country fills 
 up and emigration ceases, the foreign languages 
 will inevitably die, and with them will also dis- 
 appear the Churches using them. Lutheranism 
 can only then survive in the English tongue. And 
 every German, Swede, Norwegian, Dane, etc., 
 who is a true Lutheran in heart, must desire 
 before all else, the progress and welfare of the 
 English Lutheran Church. The monument to 
 perpetuate German and Scandinavian religious 
 life and character in this country can never be 
 language, it can alone be the faith and spirit of 
 the Lutheran Church. As the Swedish Bishop 
 von Scheele truly said in his address to the 
 Swedish students of Bethany College, Lindsburg, 
 Kansas, speaking of the question of language : 
 " It lies in the very nature of the case that the 
 rising generation should be taught in the English 
 language, as any other course would, in America, 
 be abnormal, since English is the language of 
 America." 
 
 And the supreme difficulty that our English 
 Lutheran Church encounters here, is the indiff- 
 
196 
 
 erence, and often apparent antagonism, of our 
 foreign-speaking members to our English 
 Churches. For example, the Dutch Reformed, in 
 point of numbers, are altogether insignificant in 
 New York City, as compared with the German. 
 Yet in that city, the Dutch Reformed have many 
 more and more powerful English Churches than 
 the Lutherans have, ^nd simply because the 
 Dutch were willing to surrender their laneuaee 
 in order to save their Church. Their mother faith 
 was dearer to them than their mother tongtte. And 
 until Germans, Swedes, etc., will rise to the same 
 high standard, and illustrate their conviction that 
 a Church is not to be restricted to one language, 
 and not to be conditioned at all by language, but by 
 faith, the progress of our Church in this country 
 will continue to be arrested by this rock of 
 stumbling. "For our true position and influence 
 cannot be rightly achieved as a Church of an alien 
 tongue or of alien tongues. However interesting 
 and adapted to present necessities our Church's 
 polyglot character may now be, the attainment of 
 its right rank and influence in this country 
 requires it to become as rapidly as possible an 
 English-speaking Church."* 
 
 *Frof. M. Valentine, D.D., LL.D., in "Distinctive Lutheran 
 Doctrines and Usages," p. 57. 
 
197 
 
 And yet the English Churches are here perhaps 
 quite as much to blame as the foreign Lutheran 
 element. They first set this mistaken example, 
 that a change of language meant a change of 
 Church. When they would establish a. Church in 
 the English language, too often they did not seek 
 to make it a Lutheran Church, but in the process 
 transformed it into a non- Lutheran one. Instead 
 of merely changing the language, they changed 
 the faith and historic usages. Thus in our early 
 American history most of the characteristics of 
 the world-wide Lutheran Church were dropped, 
 and the peculiarities of the Puritan and*Calvinistic 
 Churches — repugnant to the broader, deeper, 
 richer spirit of Lutheranism — were adopted. 
 The beautiful and devotional liturgical service and 
 worship of Lutheranism were discarded, and the 
 worship framed after the non- Lutheran Churches. 
 And shall Ave wonder, then, that when the foreign 
 Lutheran cannot recognize his dear religious 
 home, but discerns scarcely any difference between 
 it and the non- Lutheran Churches, only that the 
 latter are more numerous and powerful, more 
 convenient of attendance, and offering; Greater 
 social advantages, he should too often allow 
 his children to go to them without a protest? 
 When nothing of conscience, or of home-like 
 
198 
 
 feeling is to be gained, why make any sacrifice? 
 
 Until, then, the English Churches first lead the 
 way by showing that a change of language does 
 not involve an abandonment of Lutheranism, 
 they cannot ask or expect foreign-speaking 
 Lutherans to rally to their support. But if an 
 English Church is Lutheran, if it is faithful to the 
 Lutheran doctrine, and if it perpetuates that 
 worship and those usages to which the Lutheran 
 has been accustomed in his native land, 
 then when the foreign Lutheran enters it, he will 
 feel at home. And then, the bond of sacred 
 traditions, childhood-memories, the love of father- 
 land, and early parental instructions, will draw him 
 like an irresistible magnet to his own ecclesiasti- 
 cal altar. 
 
 In ignoring language then, alike by American 
 and Foreigner, and making the Lutheran element 
 supreme, alone lies the solution of this linguistic 
 problem, which is the gravest practical one before 
 us, dwarfing all others. But on the other hand, the 
 question naturally arises : Shall we not have a 
 distinctively American Lutheran Church here? 
 We answer: Certainly, by all means. In every 
 country our Church, even when built upon the 
 great historic outlines of Lutheranism, will more 
 or less in minor matters, be moulded by, and 
 
199 
 
 reflect the genius and institutions of the land and 
 race. It must have the quality of adaptation, 
 which Lutheranism has shown itself to possess to 
 a remarkable degree, or it could never have taken 
 root in so many diverse lands. But to have such 
 minor variations is one thing — to essentially trans- 
 form the Lutheran character is another. The 
 former only shows the flexibility and adaptedness 
 of Lutheranism to world-wide conditions, and 
 illustrates its rightful claim to universal preva- 
 lence. The latter makes the Lutheran Church in 
 one country a protest against the Lutheran Church 
 of every other country, and so works for its 
 injury and destruction. Some Lutherans in their 
 intense Americanism forget that nationality has, as 
 such, nothing to do with constituting a Church. 
 Many Churches, thus, are Lutheran, but not Ameri- 
 can, such as the Lutheran Church of Sweden. And 
 many Churches again are American, but not 
 Lutheran, such as the Presbyterian Church. 
 Faith and history, not nationality or language, 
 constitute the distinctive features of a Church. 
 Consequently, in order to be a Lutheran, it is not 
 necessary to be a German, Swede, Dane, or 
 Norwegian. Nor, in order to be an American is 
 it necessary to drop Lutheran historical charac- 
 teristics. True Lutheranism and true American- 
 
200 
 
 ism make the ideal combination for our Church 
 in America. 
 
 To blend all our foreign-speaking elements in 
 one great English-speaking American Lutheran 
 Church, requires then the disarmament of preju- 
 dice on both sides. English-speaking Lutherans 
 must abandon anti- Lutheran prejudices as to 
 religious customs and usages, which they have 
 acquired from Calvinistic associations, and must 
 learn to judge more charitably, and with warmer 
 appreciation of their foreign Lutheran brethren. 
 And foreign-speaking Lutherans must abandon 
 their unreasonable and narrow prejudice that the 
 great historic Lutheran Church was meant to be 
 restricted alone to their particular language, 
 which would involve its inevitable belittlement 
 and destruction. And, instead of disparaging 
 criticism, and going into anti- Lutheran Churches 
 in preference to those of their own faith, they 
 should appreciate the sacrifices, and the heroism 
 displayed by pastors and laymen, in seeking to 
 upbuild the Lutheran Church in the English 
 language. 
 
 And thus all yoke-fellows of the Lutheran 
 household working harmoniously together, with- 
 out regard to linguistic antecedents and preju- 
 dices, this vexatious reck of offence will at last 
 
201 
 
 be removed. And there will result a distinctively 
 American Lutheran -Church. A Church which, 
 while preserving the characteristic faith and 
 customs of the universal Lutheran Church, yet is 
 in harmony with American spirit and life. For, 
 just as the Lutheran Church in Germany has a 
 Germanic type that is not of its essence, and in 
 Scandinavia has a type resulting from the Scandi- 
 navian character, so will and must it be eventually 
 here. The Lutheran Church, not in its foreign, 
 but in an American phase, moulded in non- 
 essentials by, and harmonized with American 
 institutions and character, is what must be the 
 final resultant on our shores. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE LUTHERAN A WORLD-WIDE, OR TRULY 
 CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 THE Lutheran Church is not only the oldest, 
 but also the greatest of Protestant Churches. 
 Numerically, she far outstrips all others. In her 
 general distribution, too, she maintains the same 
 pre-eminence. The most distinctive and favorite 
 term of the Christian Church in ancient times 
 was Catholic, i. e., universal. The Jewish and 
 Pagan religions were national. That is, they 
 were particularistic, narrowed down to a particular 
 race or class. There was one religion for the Jew 
 and another for the Greek ; one for the freeman 
 and another for the slave ; one for the aristocratic 
 and another for the menial classes. But it was 
 the distinguishing glory of Christianity that it 
 abolished all these social and race distinctions. 
 
It broke down the barriers that separated men 
 into antagonistic parties. The Apostle could 
 boast: " There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is 
 neither bond nor free ; for ye are all one in 
 Christ Jesus" (Gal. iii ; 28). That is, the Christian 
 is the one universal, or Catholic religion. 
 
 Now this primal condition of Christianity is 
 reproduced alone in the Evangelical Lutheran 
 Church. It is the Catholic, among the Protestant 
 Churches. Its distribution is literally world-wide. 
 While the greatest of the other Protestant 
 denominations is the Established Church in but 
 a single country, the Lutheran is the Established 
 or National Church in about thirty-five of the 
 governments of the world. Notable among these 
 are Prussia,* Saxony, Bavaria, Hanover, Meck- 
 lenberg, Wurtemberg, Hamburg, Alsace-Lorraine, 
 Denmark, Danish West Indies, Sweden, Norway, 
 Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, etc., etc. In 
 other countries, as in Hungary, the Baltic 
 Provinces of Russia, Poland, Lapland, Holland, 
 France, Great Britain, and the United States, she 
 has a very large part of the Christian membership. 
 So, over Asia, Africa and Oceanica — as Australia, 
 New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, etc. — her vast 
 ecclesiastical household extends. 
 
 ♦Predominantly Lutheran, though united with the Reformed. 
 
204 
 
 It may literally be said, therefore, that there is 
 not a continent, country, or island of the sea, 
 where this Mother Church of Protestantism does 
 not hold up the cross of Jesus, and offer the bread 
 and water of life to the souls of men. " From 
 the rising- of the sun unto the going down 
 thereof" (Psalm 1, i) reaches her vast dominion. 
 The Lutheran Church, too, repeats the miracle 
 of Pentecost, by preaching the gospel in myriad 
 languages. She is the polyglot Church, the 
 Church of many tongues. In this world-wide 
 communion she embraces no less than seventeen 
 reigning sovereigns, and a membership of more 
 than fifty millions. 
 
 Zockler's "Religious Statistics of the World" 
 gives the number of Lutherans as 47,000,000, 
 that of the Episcopalians as about 30,000,000, 
 Presbyterians and Congregationalists together 
 25,000,000, besides a number of smaller denomi- 
 nations as the Methodists, Baptists, etc. But the 
 latest statistical tables of Lutherans are as follows: 
 
 Germany, 28,272,000 
 
 Sweden, - - - 5, 000,000 
 
 Denmark, Iceland, etc., 2 369,696 
 
 Norway, - 2,125,000 
 
 Forwarded to page 205, 37,766,696 
 
205 
 
 Forwarded from page 204, 
 
 37,766,696 
 
 Russia, Finland, Poland, etc. 
 
 , 5,048,000 
 
 Other European Countries, 
 
 216,000 
 
 Asia, 
 
 1 13,000 
 
 Africa, - 
 
 122,976 
 
 Oceanica, 
 
 103,700 
 
 America, 
 
 7,107,800 
 
 50,478,172 
 
 Zockler puts the number of Protestants in the 
 world at 150,000,000, while Rand & McNally's 
 "Atlas of the World" makes it 108,000,000. Accord- 
 ing to the former, the Lutherans are immensely 
 the leading denomination numerically, while if 
 the latter estimate be correct, their number would 
 almost equal that of all the other Protestants 
 combined. Think of this vast army of 50,000,000 
 of Christians upholding the Lutheran banner 
 from Arctic Greenland to Tropical Australia, 
 from land to land, and from sea to sea! Verily 
 the Churches of the Augsburg Confession en- 
 girdle the globe. "Their line is gone out through 
 all the earth, and their words to the end of the 
 world" (Psalm xix ; 4). 
 
 Is not, this, then a world-wide — a truly Catholic 
 Church? And what has given the Lutheran 
 Church this universal distribution, this general 
 
206 
 
 establishment, this door of entrance to all peoples 
 and tongues, is her genuine Catholicity of spirit. 
 There is nothing narrow, one-sided, bigoted in 
 her genius. Bound alone by God's Word, she 
 is free, open, and many-sided in her polity and 
 life. She does not make essentials of things 
 secondary and indifferent. She makes a test of 
 nothing that is not Scriptural. Forms of Church 
 government, rites and ceremonies of worship, 
 questions of casuistry, etc., which in other 
 denominations are often made tests of conscience 
 and communion, the Lutheran Church justly 
 relegates to the sphere of Christian liberty. 
 
 Thus, insisting alone upon those conditions 
 which the Scriptures have made fundamental, 
 the Lutheran Church by her large Catholicity 
 commends herself to widely varying classes and 
 races of men. She adapts herself equally to the 
 German and the English, the Scandinavian and 
 the Slavonic, the Finn and the Lapp, the High 
 and the Low Ecclesiastic, the Monarchist and the 
 Republican, the learned and the simple. It is this 
 broad, generic character, which accounts for her 
 world-wide prevalence and popularity, and it is 
 this which gives her that feature which should 
 ever be the distinguishing mark of the Church of 
 Christ, viz. that she is truly Catholic, or universal. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 UNPARALLELED GROWTH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 DEEP as is the interest and just as is the 
 pride we feel in the world-wide gre'atness 
 of our beloved Church, her condition and pros- 
 perity in this our native land, are still of intenser 
 interest to us. Her beginnings in America were 
 very feeble. The first Lutherans came to 
 America in 1621 from Holland, and were perse- 
 cuted and repressed by the Dutch, so that it was 
 fifty years before they were allowed to build an 
 house of worship. This, one of the first Luth- 
 eran edifices in America, was erected about 
 1663, but soon torn down and succeeded by a 
 plain log building, at the corner of Broadway and 
 Rector Street, New York City, in 1684. In the 
 year 1638 some Swedish Lutheran emigrants 
 arrived and founded the Churches on the Dela- 
 
208 
 
 ware, which later were absorbed by the Episco- 
 palians. These Swedes immediately upon 
 landing built near Lewes, Delaware, "the first 
 Evangelical Lutheran Church on this continent." 
 
 Shortly after, the emigration of German 
 Lutherans began. And by the year 1710 they 
 were coming in large numbers. In 1734 
 the sharp persecution of the Lutherans of Salz- 
 burg, drove them out of the fatherland, and a 
 large colony settled in Georgia, on the Savannah 
 River, near the city of Savannah. Pennsylvania, 
 however, became the centre of German Lutheran 
 emigration. By the year 1750, the Lutheran 
 population of the colony of Pennsylvania num- 
 bered 60,000 souls. 
 
 The Lutherans, however, were under the 
 greatest disadvantages. Speaking a strange 
 tongue, poor and uninfluential, and destitute of 
 pastors, Churches, and schools, their spiritual 
 condition was deplorable. Scattered as sheep 
 without a shepherd, and unable to compete with 
 the stronger and native denominations, it was 
 inevitable that they and their children should 
 largely become the prey of the sects around them. 
 No wonder, then, that when* the patriarch 
 Muhlenberg arrived in 1842, his heart was so 
 depressed as almost to despair of the outlook. 
 
209 
 
 But what a mighty ecclesiastical organization has 
 been developed from this seemingly hopeless 
 beginning! 
 
 The following table shows the marvelous 
 changes in the century from Muhlenberg's death 
 to the present. 
 
 
 Ministers. 
 
 
 Churches. 
 
 
 Communicants. 
 
 1800, - 
 
 
 JO 
 
 
 35° 
 
 
 15,000 
 
 1820, 
 
 
 170 
 
 
 850 
 
 
 35,000 
 
 1830, 
 
 
 300 
 
 
 1,000 
 
 
 55,000 
 
 1840, 
 
 
 400 
 
 
 1,200 
 
 
 120,000 
 
 1850, 
 
 
 757 
 
 
 1,624 
 
 
 143,543 
 
 i860, 
 
 
 i,i34 
 
 
 2,017 
 
 
 235,000 
 
 1870, 
 
 
 1,933 
 
 
 3,4i7 
 
 
 387,746 
 
 1880, 
 
 
 3,o9 2 
 
 
 5,388 
 
 
 694,426 
 
 1890, 
 
 
 4,692 
 
 
 7,948 
 
 
 1,099,868 
 
 1893, 
 
 
 5, 102 
 
 
 9,119 
 
 
 1,234,762 
 
 In 
 
 1748 
 
 Muhlenbe 
 
 rQf organized 
 
 
 the first 
 
 Lutheran Synod, composed of but seven clerical 
 members. Now there are 4 General synods, 
 about 100 district and sub-synods, 5,000 ministers, 
 nearly 10,000 Churches, and, if the statistics 
 were all accurately gathered, about 1,500,000 
 communicants. This growth is altogether un- 
 paralleled by that of any other ecclesiastical body 
 in the United States. The Government Census 
 for 1890, in giving the comparative growth of the 
 religious denominations in the United States for 
 
2IO 
 
 the last decade, shows that the Lutherans have 
 increased in membership 487,000 and that the 
 percentage of increase is as follows : Lutherans, 
 68 per cent., Episcopalians, 48 per cent., 
 Presbyterians, 39 per cent., Baptists, 37 per cent., 
 Congregationalists, 33 per cent., Methodists, 
 30 per cent. The Government Census further 
 shows that in growth of Church property the 
 Lutheran Church has outstripped in the same 
 ratio the other five leading denominations. In 
 1840, Lutheran Church property amounted in 
 value to but the insignificant sum of $2,854,286, 
 while in 1890 it had risen to $34,218,234. The 
 average value of Church buildings in the General 
 Synod and General Council is $7,007.50, the 
 highest average of any denomination in the 
 United States. During the last decade there 
 were erected 3,064 Lutheran Churches. It will 
 not do to talk of Christianity declining, when 
 there is one denomination in our country, which 
 builds upon an average a new Church every 
 working day in the week. Commenting on these 
 figures, Rev. Dr. Carrol, the Government official 
 for taking the religious census, says in the Inde- 
 pendent : "The growth of the Lutheran Church 
 during the decade last past has been phenomenal. 
 While the rate of increase in the entire popula- 
 
21 I 
 
 tion since 1880, has been a fraction over 28 per 
 cent., the Lutheran Church has increased by 68 
 per cent., or more than twice the rate of increase 
 of the population of the country." 
 
 This amazing numerical and material growth 
 has been largely owing to emigration. But no 
 less extraordinary also has been the intensive 
 growth. The first periodical was The Lutheran 
 Observer, published in 183 1, in the English lan- 
 guage. Now there are 150 Lutheran periodicals, 
 divided among the languages as follows: 55 
 English, 51 German, 17 Norwegian, 16 Swedish, 
 4 Danish, 1 Icelandic, 4 Finnish, 1 French, and 1 
 Hungarian. In 1832 the first college — Pennsyl- 
 vania College — was founded; now there are 32 
 ^Lutheran colleges, with upwards of 5,000 students. 
 In 181 5, Hartwick Seminary was our solitary 
 theological school, now there are 26 Lutheran 
 theological seminaries with nearly 1 ,000 students 
 for the ministry. Besides these, there are 10 
 Youngs Ladies' Seminaries, and 12 Academies, 
 and 66 Orphans' Homes and Institutions of 
 mercy. The growth in the publication interests 
 has kept pace with other advances. It has not 
 been long since Lutheran readers, Sunday 
 Schools, etc., were largely dependent upon non- 
 Lutheran religious publications. But 20 publica- 
 
212 
 
 tion houses, many of them large and prosperous, 
 now send forth an abundant supply of distinctively 
 Lutheran literature. 
 
 And most notable of all has been the growth in 
 benevolence. As the Church is advancing from 
 poverty to comparative wealth, every branch 
 of the Church shows rapid strides in this respect. 
 This increased progress is also doubtless largely 
 owing to the application of systematic methods 
 in the raising of funds. The " Hand Book of 
 Lutheranism" places the Synodical contributions 
 for benevolence for 1890, at $848,324. With this 
 amount no less than 2,162 mission congregations 
 and stations have been maintained in bur rapidly 
 expanding Home Mission field. The great 
 States and Territories of the West are filling up* 
 more largely with Lutherans than any others. 
 Foreign Missions are maintained in India, Africa, 
 and Japan, for which larger amounts are appro- 
 priated every year.* Individual beneficence is 
 growing, as is shown by the more frequent and 
 liberal gifts and bequests to the benevolent 
 aeencies of the Church. 
 
 *The contributions to the single cause of Foreign Missions, for 
 the biennium closing with 1892, made by the General Synod alone, 
 with but one-seventh of the Lutheran membership of the country, 
 amounted to $105,127.00! 
 
213 
 
 The unparalleled growth of the Lutheran 
 Church in the United States, in all these respects, 
 is a matter of surprise and solicitude to our 
 brethren of other households. Surveying the 
 ecclesiastical horoscope, they marvel at this 
 "rising denomination," this '"new ecclesiastical 
 star" of the first magnitude, ascending the 
 religious firmament. But there is nothing either 
 startling or strange in the phenomenon. It is 
 simply that the Mother of Protestantism is pre- 
 paring to enfold all her children in her arms. It 
 is that the leading Church of the old world is 
 coming on, step by step, to take possession of 
 the new. 
 
 And while this marvelous growth must thrill 
 every Lutheran heart, what responsibilities it 
 devolves upon each conscientious member! 
 Seasons of growth are critical seasons — times of 
 opportunity and labor. Never was there such 
 an obligation laid upon the Lutherans of any 
 country or age, as upon those of the rapidly 
 developing Church in the United States. May 
 they have the energy, the judiciousness, and the 
 consecration, to be equal to the hour! 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 LOYALTY TO THE LUTHERAN CHURCH. 
 
 PATRIOTIC loyalty — love of one's native 
 land — , and domestic loyalty — devotion to 
 one's own home — , are justly esteemed among 
 the first virtues. How much stronger reason, 
 then, is there for Church loyalty — unswerving 
 fidelity to our ecclesiastical mother, the Church 
 which gave us spiritual birth, and tenderly nursed 
 and fostered us to spiritual maturity. If the 
 traitor and the filial ingrate be shunned among 
 men, what shall we say of the one who despises 
 his parental Church, and deliberately spurns his 
 own ecclesiastical household and family! Accord- 
 ingly, devotion to our mother Church is one of 
 the most sacred Christian obligations. Phillips 
 Brooks well said that "the man who loves the 
 universal Church the most, will be the truest to 
 
215 
 
 his own particular Church. "* It is the one whose 
 religious convictions are vague and superficial, 
 who is ever ready to cry that one Church is as 
 good as another. Loyalty to our own Church 
 does not keep us from loving and appreciating 
 Christians of other households, but it does demand 
 that we love ours the more, and give to it our 
 respect, our service, and our defence. There are 
 Churches we could name whose members are 
 remarkable for this unfaltering fidelity, and what 
 vantage of strength and influence it gives them! 
 
 The degree of our loyalty naturally depends 
 upon the character of that object which calls it 
 forth. Thus, American patriotism should be 
 exceptionally strong on account of the singular 
 glory of his country which thrills the breast of 
 every true American with pride. And so the 
 Church love of the Lutheran has more stirring 
 reasons to incite it, than that of any other. 
 Writes one of our most intelligent laymen : "We 
 have in our Lutheran Church, doctrine that is 
 pure, a refinement and good taste exhibited in 
 her forms and services, that must satisfy the 
 most fastidious, and a history to which all 
 Christendom does homage. Let us love it ; and 
 
 ♦Yale Lectures on Preaching, p. 227. 
 
2l6 
 
 let us show our faith by our works."* How true 
 this is? Where is the Church whose faith can 
 stand the test of Scripture as ours, or that 
 has behind it so illustrious a history? And 
 ought not these considerations to inspire within 
 the hearts of her children emotions of unequalled 
 love and pride? 
 
 And yet, what are the facts? It must be con- 
 fessed, we fear, that perhaps no Church in 
 America seems to have so light a hold upon her 
 sons and daughters as the Lutheran. How many 
 are always ready to look up to other Churches, 
 while disposed to regard disdainfully their own. 
 And how common it is for Lutherans to be ready 
 to seize the slightest occasion to sever the bonds 
 that hold them to their own Church! How many 
 Lutherans there are who do not honor and revere 
 their own historic characteristics, and instead of 
 holding them up for others to imitate, are ever 
 eager to be copying from others. How often, 
 too, when a prejudice is found to exist against an 
 honored Lutheran usage, the disposition is to defer 
 too greatly to it. Whereas, the only successful way 
 to disarm prejudice against a rightful custom is 
 by its courageous use. Such a manly course 
 
 'St. James' Lenten Messenger^ New York, 1888. 
 
2T7 
 
 will at once demonstrate the groundlessness of 
 the objection, and bring honor upon the Church 
 and its practices. 
 
 Why is it that we have sustained such incalcu- 
 lable losses from time to time, and that in the 
 o-reat cities we are not in the lead as we should 
 
 o 
 
 be? It is largely on account of the flaccid fibre 
 of so much of Lutheran loyalty. It is because of 
 that lack of Church love which springs from lack 
 of character and intelligence. "A man with a 
 heart," said Frederick William III. to Napoleon, 
 "will remember the cradle in which he was 
 rocked when a child." So, a want of Church 
 loyalty springs primarily from the defect of 
 religious principle, and the lack of a true self- 
 respect. But, secondarily, it proceeds from the want 
 of knowledge. It is more frequently ignorance than 
 anything else that causes many nominal Lutherans 
 to regard slightingly the Lutheran Church, and 
 to be holding others in esteem above it. " There 
 was a time when the dominant tendency was to 
 glory that we are like everybody, and conse- 
 quently nothing in ourselves, living by mere 
 sufferance, despised by others as those having 
 little respect for themselves. Suddenly, as the 
 cloud lifted, the great proportions of our Church, 
 her vast heritage, her wonderful structure of 
 
2l8 
 
 theology, her rich treasures in every department 
 of religious literature, and her active work in so 
 many spheres of beneficence, come to view. 
 How easy now to glory that we are Lutherans! "* 
 Intelligent people in other Churches need not be 
 told of the Lutheran Church, and are accustomed 
 to look up to it with the greatest respect. It is a 
 sad commentary therefore on the ignorance of 
 our own members, when they are deficient in 
 esteem and love for the house of their faith and 
 of their fathers. 
 
 A higher type of Lutheran Church loyalty is 
 then one of our most imperative needs. It is not 
 numbers but quality — unfaltering devotion — that 
 makes a Church efficient and progressive. In a 
 crisis of unwonted peril, Caesar would lean upon 
 none but his famous tenth legion, because he 
 knew he could trust their loyalty to the last. 
 They would die before they would betray or dis- 
 honor the Roman standard. So Lutherans, 
 while not disparaging, or thinking uncharitably 
 of any other Church, should cling to their own 
 Church, bear high its standard, defend it from 
 misrepresentation, and do and sacrifice for it, 
 with a devotion that knows no tire. 
 
 ♦Introduction to "Lutherans in America," p. 10. 
 
219 
 
 The scroll of Lutheran Church history is em- 
 blazoned with some of the brightest examples of 
 Church love that shed honor upon Christendom. 
 And so, let us trust that the era of Lutheran 
 indifference, denominational laxity, and want of 
 self-respect in our American Lutheran Church, is 
 reaching the stage of "innocuous desuetude." 
 All signs indicate rather that a new epoch is upon 
 us when the old adage will be proven, "once a 
 Lutheran, always a Lutheran." And when no 
 other denomination of Christians can boast a 
 stronger and more uncompromising Church love 
 than that which characterizes an Evangelical 
 Lutheran. When Lutheran parents feel a deep 
 solicitude that their children should perpetuate 
 their family name in honorable place in the Luth- 
 eran Church, and when Lutheran sons and 
 daughters feel that it is a tribute of willing 
 reverence to their parents to abide in the spiritual 
 house of their fathers, then will our numerous 
 losses cease, and will our beloved Church have 
 pride and not humiliation in her children. 
 
 Assault who may, kiss and betray, 
 
 Dishonor and disown, 
 My Church shall still be dear to me — 
 
 My fathers' and my own ! 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 FUTURE OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA. 
 
 WHEN we bear in mind how conspicuously 
 the Lutheran is the leading Protestant 
 Church of Europe, and how phenomenal her 
 recent growth has been in America, we are 
 naturally disposed to raise the question, "What 
 shall be her future in this Western World?" 
 We have seen that during the last decade the 
 Lutheran Church has increased at a ratio more 
 than twice that of the increase of the population 
 of the country. If this ratio of progress con- 
 tinues, it is evident that a very great future 
 destiny is before us. But this future largely 
 depends upon our denominational wisdom or 
 folly. In the past our blunders have been almost 
 as phenomenal as our advance, so that we have 
 grown, as it were, in spite of ourselves. Every 
 
221 
 
 one knows that our losses have been almost 
 incalculable, and that other denominations have 
 largely flourished upon our best material. Patrick 
 Henry said he knew of no other lamp by which 
 to guide his feet onward than the lamp of experi- 
 ence. And so, a study of the causes that have 
 hindered our progress in the past, and cost us 
 such great losses, will best serve to guard us 
 against these mistakes in the future. To make, 
 then, the most of the rare denominational opportu- 
 nity which Providence has placed in our hands, 
 let us note these lessons. 
 
 First, let us repress fraternal strife, and inter- 
 synodical prejudices, jealousies, and contentions. 
 And, bound together by the tie of Lutheran unity, 
 let all work together with the common purpose to 
 advance our beloved Zion. 
 
 Let us, too, frown down, what a prominent 
 German Lutheran minister has aptly termed "the 
 linguistic devil." Let it rather be a glory to our 
 Church that she is the Church of many tongues, 
 than to make it a theme of reproach and an apple 
 of discord. Let not the German or Scandinavian 
 entertain the bigoted thought that Lutheranism 
 is limited to his narrow native tongue, and that 
 one cannot be a Lutheran if he uses the English 
 laneuaee. And he who founds an English Lu- 
 
222 
 
 theran Church, must not commit the equally grave 
 error, of seeking to establish a totally new Church, 
 rejecting that historic faith and those historic 
 usages, without which the Church he frames has 
 no claim whatever to the title Lutheran. In 
 short, the Church in America must be Lutheran, 
 and not something else. And it must more and 
 more largely every year, and eventually altogether, 
 use the English language. A Church in a foreign 
 tongue can never come into thorough contact 
 with the life of a people. And such an un- 
 American Church will be but a diminishing 
 influence, and ever have a more and more lan- 
 guishing life. Our Church's future in this land 
 depends most largely upon the good common- 
 sense with which our foreign-speaking Lutherans 
 will adapt themselves to the situation, and upon 
 their loyally bringing up their sons and daughters 
 in English Lutheran Churches. An unnatural 
 effort to retain them in a Church with a foreign 
 tongue, or indifferently allowing them to go to a 
 non- Lutheran Church, will but repeat the regret- 
 ful story of the past. " There is no reason why, 
 if properly administered, the Lutheran Church 
 should not be as influential in this country, as any 
 religious communion that has found a home here. 
 But to attain this end, some very important factors 
 
must be regarded. The Church feeling as dis- 
 tinguished from the merely congregational must 
 be diligently cultivated, and our people must learn 
 that the interests of the Church are far more 
 important than those of any congregation. Then 
 the Lutheran Church feeling must also be asserted. 
 We must build upon our own distinctive doctrines, 
 worship according to our own Orders of Service, 
 be governed by our own polity, and cultivate our 
 own form of Christian life. The secret of the 
 failures of some men in the Lutheran ministry, is 
 that they have never understood the peculiar 
 spirit of the Lutheran Church, and could not, 
 therefore, build up Lutheran congregations. The 
 secret of the lack of success of many congrega- 
 tions is that they have attempted to provide for 
 Lutheran people according to measures that they 
 have seen practiced with seeming success in other 
 denominations. The proper rule for Churches as 
 well as for individuals, is: 'Be yourself, if you 
 would gain respect.' This is especially true, when 
 consistency involves no disgrace, but is the high- 
 est honor."* 
 
 Another error of great significance to be 
 avoided in the future, is our neglect to hold the 
 
 * The Lutheran, April 8, 1893. 
 
224 
 
 great municipal centres. Our principal strength 
 is in the smaller towns and country, and our chief 
 weakness is in the great cities. And as those 
 cities are the very heart of the nation, whence 
 the currents of life and influence radiate in all 
 directions, those who control them hold the keys 
 of the future. We have the country; we have 
 large numbers ; what should now be our aim is 
 to have strong Churches in the leading municipal 
 centres. This will give our Church that promi- 
 nence, wealth, culture, and influence, which are 
 invaluable aids to denominational prosperity, 
 piety, usefulness, and power. 
 
 Profiting, thus, by her sore experiences in the 
 past, and improving, by liberality and zeal, the 
 exceptional opportunity and responsibility given 
 her, the future for the Lutheran Church in this 
 land is a most auspicious one. It must be borne 
 in mind also that the conditions are far more 
 favorable to her now than they formerly were. 
 Her German origin, once a hindrance and re- 
 proach, now that the German mind is the acknowl- 
 edged intellectual master and preceptor of 
 civilization, is a credit and stimulus to her. For 
 a long period of our country's history, too, the 
 predominance of the Puritanic type in American 
 Christianity was most unfavorable to an historic 
 
225 
 
 and liturgic Church. But the wonderful change in 
 this respect, so that the whole tide is setting power- 
 fully in favor of theChurchly denominations, makes 
 that which once was a detriment now a signal ad- 
 vantage. The historic Church, the Church whose 
 faith and practice are rooted in the past, it now 
 appears beyond all doubt, is to be the Church of 
 the future. For as there is a spiritual unity binding 
 together the Christian ages, so in the true Church 
 of Christ universal, past, present, and future, must 
 meet in one. And as the Lutheran has the best, 
 and richest, and most glorious history, this is a 
 vital point in her favor. 
 
 Moreover, as the Lutheran Church gave to the 
 world that boon of civil and religious liberty, 
 which is the peculiar glory of our institutions, 
 the genius of Lutheranism is especially adapted 
 to the spirit of, America. And, as then, the 
 Lutheran Church was the founder of the pure 
 phase of modern Christianity, so let us trust that 
 in the very forefront of those Christian columns 
 which are here, under the euidance of God, 
 working out the last and highest problems of 
 human destiny, will gleam the standard of our 
 beloved Evangelical Lutheran Church. 
 
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