Lectures on Calvinism (Stone Lectures)

same phenomenon is repeating itself in our own century, among nominal Christians of the higher, more prosperous and more cultured classes of society. On the continent of Europe at least, the modern and civilized middle classes deem themselves to have outgrown all religion.

Now the position of Calvinism is diametrically opposed to all this. It does not deny that religion has also its human and subjective side;— it does not dispute the fact that religion is promoted, encouraged and strengthened by our disposition to seek help in time of need and spiritual elevation in the face of sensual passions; but it maintains that it reverses the proper order of things to seek, in these accidental motives, the essence and the very purpose of religion. The Calvinist values all of these as fruits which are produced by religion, and as props which give it support, but he refuses to honour them as the reason of its existence. Of course, religion, as such, produces also a blessing for man, but it does not exist for the sake of man; — it exists for the sake of God. It is not (rod who exists for the sake of His Creation; — the Creation exists for the sake of God. For, as the Scripture says, He has created all things for Himself. For this reason God Even impressed a religious expression on the whole of unconscious nature, — on plants, on animals and also on children. "The whole earth is full of His glory.** "How excellent is Thy Name oh God, in all the earth." "The Heavens declare the gloiy of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork." "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast ordained praise." Frost and hail,.snow and vapour, the abyss and the hurricane, — everything must praise God. But just as the entire creation reaches its culminating point in man, so also religion finds its clear expression only in man who is made in the image of God, and this not because man seeks it, but because God Himself increated in man's nature the real essential religious expression, by means of the seed of religion, as Calvin defines it, sown in our human heart.

God Himself makes man religious by means of the sensus divimtatis i.e. the sense of the Divine, which He causes to strike the chords on the harp of his soul. A sound of need interrupts the pure harmony of this divine melody, but only in consequence of sin. In its original form, in its natural condition, religion is exclusively a sentiment of admiration and adoration, which elevates and unites, not a feeling of dependence which severs and depresses. Just as the anthem of the Seraphim around the throne is one uninterrupted cry of "Holy, — Holy, —Holy"! so also the religion of man upon this earth should consist in one echoing of God's glory, as our Creator and Inspirer. The starting-point of every motive in religion is God and nut Man. Man is the instrument and means, God alone is here the goal, the point of departure and the point of arrival, the fountain, from which the waters flow, and at the same time, the ocean into which they finally return. To be irreligious is to forsake the highest aim of our existence, and on the other hand to covet no other existence than for the sake of God, to long for nothing but for the will of God, and to be wholly absorbed in the glory of the name of the Lord, such is the pith and kernel of all true religion. "Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy Will be done." is the threefold petition which gives utterance to all true religion. Our watchword must be.— "Seek first the kingdom of Cod," and after that think of your own need. First stands the confession of the absolute sovereignty of the Triune God; for of Him, through Him, and unto Him are all things. And therefore in prayer remains the deepest expression of all religious life. This is the fundamental conception of religion as maintained by Calvinism, and hitherto, no one has ever found a higher conception. For no higher conception can be found. The fundamental thought of Calvinism, at the same time the fundamental thought of the Bible, and of Christianity itself, leads, in the domain of religion to the realization of the highest ideal. Nor has the philosophy of religion in our own century, in its most daviug flights, ever attained a higher point of view nor a more ideal conception.

The second principal question in all religion is whether it must be direct, or mediate. Must there stand a church. a priest, or, as of old, a sorcerer, a dispenser of sacred mysteries, between God and the soul, or shall all intervening links be cast away, so that the bond of religion shall bind the soul directly to God. Now we find that in all non-Christian religions, without any exception, human intercessors are deemed necessary, and in the domain of Christianity itself the intercessor intruded again upon the scene, in the saints of the cloisters, in the Blessed Virgin, in the host of angels, and in the priestly hierarchy of the clergy; and although Luther took the field against all priestly mediation, vet the church which is called by his name, renewed by its title of "eclesia docens" the office of mediator and steward of mysteries. On this point also it was Calvin, and he alone, who attained to the full realization of the ideal of pure religion. Religion as he conceived it must "nullis rnediis interpositis" ', i.e. without any creaturely intercession realize the direct communion between God and the human heart. Not because of any hatred against priests, as such, not because of any undervaluing of the saints, nor underestimating the significance of angels, but solely because Calvin felt bound to vindicate the essence of religion and the glory of God in that essence, and absolutely devoid of all yielding or wavering, he waged war, with holy indignation, against everything that interposed itself between the Soul and God. Of course he clearly perceived that in order to be fitted for the true religion, fallen man needs a Mediator, but such a mediator could not be found in any fellow-man. Only the God-man,— only God Himself could be such a mediator. And this mediatorship could be confirmed not by us, but only from the side of God, by the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit in the heart of the regenerated. In all religion God Himself must be the active power. He must wake us religious. He must give us the religious disposition, nothing being left to us but the power to give form and expression to the deep religious sentiment which He, Himself, stirred in the depth of our heart. There we see the mistake of those who regarded Calvin as only an Augustinus redivivus. Notwithstanding his sublime confession of God's holy grace, Augustine remained the Bishop. He kept his position between the Triune God and the layman. And although promenent among the most pious men of his time, he had so little insight into the real claims of thorough-going religion on behalf of laymen that in his dogmatics he lauds the church as the mystical Purveyor, into whose bosom God caused all grace to flow and from whose treasure all men had to accept it. Only he, therefore, who superficially confines his attention to predestination can confuse Augustinianism and Calvinism. Religion for the sake of wan carries with it the position that man has to act as a mediator for his fellow-man. Religion for the sake of God inexorably excludes every human mediatorship. As long as it remains the chief purpose of religion to help man, and as long as man is understood to deserve grace by his devotion, it is perfectly natural that the man of inferior piety should invoke the mediation of the holier man. Another must procure for him what he cannot procure for himself. The fruit on the brandies hangs too high, and, therefore, the higher-reaching man has to pluck it, and hand it down to his helpless comrade. If. on the contrary, the demand of religion is that every human heart must give glory to God, no man can appear before God on behalf of another. Then every single human being must appear personally, for himself, and religion achieves its aim only in the general priesthood of believers. Even the new-born babe must have received the seed of religion from God Himself; and in case it dies without being baptized, it must not be sent off to a limbus tnnocentium, but, if elected, enter, even as the long-lived, into personal communion with God. for all eternity.

The importance of this second point, in the question (if religion, culminating, as it does, in the confession of personal election, is incalculable. On the one hand, all religion must tend to make man free, that by a clear utterance he may express that general religious impression stamped, by God Himself, upon unconscious nature. On the other hand, every appearance of an interposing priest or enchanter in the domain of religion fetters the human spirit, in a chain which presses the more woefully the more the piety increases in fervor. In the Church of Rome, even at the present day, the dons catholiques are most closely confined in the fetters of the clerus. Only the Catholic whose piety has decreased, is able to secure for himself a partial liberty by loosening more than half-way, the tie which connects him with his church. In the Lutheran churches the clerical fetters are less confining, y%t far from being loosened, entirely. And only in churches which take their stand in Calvinism, do we find that spiritual independence which enables the believer to oppose, if need be, and for God's sake, even the most powerful office-bearer in his church. Only he who personally stands before God on his own account, and enjoys an uninterrupted communion with God, can properly display the glorious wings of liberty. And both in Holland and in France, in England as well as in America, the historic result affords most undeniable evidence of the fact that despotism has found no more invincible antagonist, and liberty of conscience no braver, no more resolute champions than the followers of Calvin. In the last analysis, the cause of this phenomenon lies in the fact that the effect of every clerical interposition invariably was, and must be, to make religion external and to smother it with sacerdotal forms. Only where all priestly intervention disappears, where God's sovereign election binds the inward soul directly to God Himself, and the ray of divine light enters straightway into the depth of our heart, only there does religion, in its most absolute sense, gain its ideal realization.

This leads me, naturally, to the third religious question: Is religion partial, or is it all-subduing, and comprehensive, — universal in the strict sense of the word? Now, if the aim of religion is found in man himself and its realization is made dependent on clerical mediators, religion cannot be but partial. In that case it follows logically that every man confines his religion to those occurrences of his life by which his religious needs are stirred, and to those cases in which he finds human intervention at his disposal. The partial character of this sort of religion shows itself in three particulars: in the religious on/an through which, in the sphere in which, and in the group of persons among which religion thrives and flourishes.

Recent controversy affords a pertinent illustration of the first limitation. The wise men of our generation maintain that religion has to retire from the precinct of the human intellect. It must seek to express itself either by means of the mystical feelings, or else by means of the practical will. Mystical and ethical inclinations are hailed with enthusiasm, in the domain of religion, but in that same domain the intellect, as leading to metaphysical hallucinations must be muzzled. Metaphysics and Dogmatics are increasingly tabooed, and Agnosticism is ever more loudly acclaimed as the solution of the great enigma. On the rivers of sentiment and of feeling, navigation is made duty-free; and ethical activity is becoming the only touch-stone for testing the religious gold; but Metaphysics are avoided as drowning us in a swamp. Whatsoever announces itself with the pretension of an axiomatic dogma, is rejected as irreligious contraband. And although that same Christ Whom these very scholars honour as a religious genius has taught us most emphatically: ''Thou shalt love God, not only with all thy heart and with all thy strength, but also with all thy mind", }ret they, on the contrary, venture to dismiss our mind, or intellect, as unfit for use, in this holy domain, and as not fulfilling the requirements of a religious organ. Thus the religious organ being found, not in the whole of our being, but partially, being confined to our feelings and our will, consequently also the sphere of religious life must assume the same partial character. Tieligion was excluded from science, and its authority from the domain of public life; henceforth the inner chamber, the cell for prayer, and the secrecy of the heart should be its exclusive dwelling place. By his du solid, Kant limited the sphere of religion to the ethical life. The mystics of our own times banish religion to the retreats of sentiment, and the result is that, in many different ways, religion, once the central force of human life, is now placed alongside of it, and far from the thriving of the world, is understood to hide itself in a distant and almost private retreat.

This brings us naturally to the third characteristic note of this partial view of religion; — religion as pertaining not to all, but only to the group of pious people among our generation. Thus the limitation of the organ of religion brings about the limitation of its sphere, and the limitation of its sphere consequently brings about the limitation of its group or circle among men. Just as art is understood to have an organ of its own, a sphere of its own, and therefore, also, its own circle of devotees, so also, according to this view. must it be with religion. Tt so happens that the great bulk of the people are almost devoid of mystical feeling, and energetic strength of will. For this reason they have either no perception of the glow of mysticism, or are incapable of realty pious deeds. But there are also those whose inner life is overflowing with a sense of the Infinite, or who are full of holy energy, and among such it is that piety and religion flourish most brilliantly both in their imaginative power, and in their realizing capability. — From a quite different standpoint, Rome gradually and increasingly came to favour the same partial views. She knew religion only as it existed in her own church, and considered the influence of religion to be confined to that portion of life which she had consecrated. I fully acknowledge that she tried to draw all human life as far as possible into the holy sphere, but everything outside this sphere, everything not touched by baptism, nor aspersed by her holy water, was devoid of all genuine religious efficiency. And just as Rome drew a boundary line between the consecrated and the profane sides of life, she also subdivided her own sacred precincts according to different degrees of religious intensity;— the clergy and the cloisters constituting the Holy of Holies, the pious laity forming the Holy Place, thus leaving the Outer Court to those who, although baptized, continued to prefer to church-devotion the often sinful pleasures of the world; — a system of limitation and division, which for those in the Outer Court, ended in setting nine tenths of practical life outside of all religion. So religion was made partial, by carrying it from ordinary days to days of festival, from days of prosperity to times of danger and sickness, and from the fulness of life to the time of approaching death. A dualistic system which has found its most emphatic expression in the praxis of the Carnival, giving Religion a full -way over the soul during the weeks of Lent, but leaving to the flesh a fair chance, before descending into this vale of gloom, to empty to the dregs the full cup of pleasure, if not of mirth and folly.

Now this whole view of the matter is squarely antagonized by Calvinism, which vindicates for religion its full universal character, and its complete universal application. If everything that is exists for the sake of God, then it follows that the whole creation must give glory to Cod. The sun.

moon, and stars in the firmament, the birds of the air, the whole of Nature around us, but, above all, man himself, who, priestlike, must consecrate to God the whole of creation, and all life thriving in it. And although sin has deadened a large part of creation to the glory of God, the demand, — the ideal-remains unchangeable, that every creature must be immersed in the stream of religion, and end by lying as a religious offering on the altar of the Almighty. A religion confined to feeling or will is therefore unthinkable to the Calvinist. The sacred anointing of the priest of creation must reach down to his beard and to the hem of his garment. His whole being, including all his abilities and powers, must be pervaded by the sensus divinitatis, and how then could he exclude his rational consciousness,— the Xoyoi which is in him, — the light of thought which comes from God Himself to irradiate him? To possess his God for the underground world of his feelings, and in the outworks of the exertion of his will, but not in his inner self, in the very centre of his consciousness, and his thought: — to have fixed starting-points for the study of nature and axiomatic strongholds for practical life, but to have no fixed support in his thoughts about the Creator Himself, all of this was, for the Calvinist. the veiy denying of the Eternal Logos. The same character of universality was claimed by the Calvinist for the sphere of religion and its circle of influence among men. Everything that has been created was, in its creation, furnished by God with an unchangeable law of its existence. And because God has fully ordained such laws and ordinances for all life, therefore He demands that all life be consecrated to His service, in strict obedience. A religion confined to the closet, the cell, or the Church, therefore, Calvin, and with him every Calvinist, abhors. With the Psalmist, he calls upon heaven and earth, he calls upon all peoples and nations to give glory to God. God is present in all life, with the influence of His omnipresent and almighty power, and no sphere of human life is conceivable in which religion does not maintain its demands that God shall be praised, that God's ordinances shall be observed, and that every labora shall be permeated with its ora in fervent and ceaseless prayer. Wherever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever be may apply his hand, in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry. or his mind, in tbe world of art. and science, he is. in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before tbe fare of his God, he is employed in the service of his God, be has strictly to obey bis God, and above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God. Consequently, it is impossible for a ( 'alvinist to confine religion to a single group, or to some circles among men. Religion concerns the whole of our human race. This race is the product of God's creation. It is His wonderful workmanship, His absolute possession. Therefore the whole of mankind must be imbued with the fear of God, — old as well as young, — low as well as high, not only those who have become initiated into His mysteries, but also those who still stand afar off. For not only did God create all men, not only is He all for all men, but His grace also extends itself, not only as a special grace, to the Elect, but also as a common grace (gratia communis), to all mankind. To be sure there is a concentration of religious light and life in the Church, but then in the walls of this church, there are wide open windows, and through these spacious windows the light of the Eternal radiates over the whole world. Here is a city, set upon a hill, which every man can see afar off.— Here is a holy salt that penetrates in every direction, checking all corruption. And even he who does not yet imbibe the higher light, or maybe shuts his eyes to it, is nevertheless admonished, with equal emphasis, and in all things, to give glory to the name of the Lord. All partial religion drives the wedge of dualism into life/but the true ('alvinist never forsakes the standard of religious monism. One supreme calling must impress the stamp of one-ness upon all human life, because one God upholds and preserves it, just as He created it all. Yea, even sin, the utter and absolute reverse of religion, cannot be excluded from the monism of His Providence. The ego of God sets the creation as the non-ego over against Him, and when this non-ego, in the case of man, developes into a contra-ego it will be found that, in the gloomy way of sin and misery. even the painful severance from God shall kindle the most ardent longing for His renewed Communion.

This brings us, without any further transition, to our fourth main question, viz., Must religion be normal, or soteriologicaV\ I am aware that the nomistic conception of religion is usually considered as the opposite of the soteriological, but this latter distinction belongs to another order of conceptions. The distinction which I have in mind here is concerned with the question whether in the matter of religion we must reckon de facto with man in his present condition as normal, or as having fallen into sin, and having therefore become abnormal '. In the latter case religion must necessarily assume a soteriological character. Now the prevailing idea, at present, favours the view that religion has to start from man as being normal. Not of course as though our race as a whole should conform already to the highest religious norm. This nobody affirms. Everyone knows better than to make such an absurd statement. As a matter of fact, we meet with much irreligiousness, and imperfect religious development continues to be the rule. But precisely in this slow aud gradual progress from the lowest forms to the highest ideals, the development demanded h\ this normal view of religion contends that it has found confirmation. According to this view, the first traces of religion are found in animals. They are seen in the dog who adores his master, aud as the homo sapiens developes out of the Chimpanzee, so religion only enters upon a higher stage. Since that time religion has passed through all the notes of the gamut. At present it is engaged in loosening itself from the hands of Church and dogma, to pass on to what is again considered a higher stage, namely, the unconscious feeling for the Unknown Infinite — This whole theory is opposed by that other and entirely different theory, which, without denying the preformation of so much that is human, in the animal, or the fact that (if you will allow me to say so) auimals were created after the image of man, just as man was created after the image of God, nevertheless maintains that the first man was created in perfect relations to his God. i.e. as imbued by a pure and genuine religion, and consequently explains the many low, imperfect and absurd forms of religion found in Paganism, not as the result of his creation but as the result of his Fall. These low and imperfect forms of religion their second theory understands not as a process that leads from a lower to a higher, but as a lamentable degeneration,— a degeneration, which, in the nature of the case, makes the restoration of the true religion possible only in the soteriological way. Now in the choice between these two theories Calvinism allows no hesitation. Standing himself, with this question, too, before the face of God, the Calvinist is so impressed with the holiness of God that the consciousness of guilt immediately lacerates his soul, and the terrible nature of sin presses on his heart as with an intolerable weight. Every attempt to explain sin, as an incomplete stage on the way to perfection, arouses his wrath, as an insult to the majesty of God. He confessed, from the beginning, the same truth which Buckle has demonstrated empirically in his "History of Civilization in England", viz. that the forms in which sin makes its appearance may show us a gradual refinement but the moral condition of the human heart, as such, has remained the same throughout all the centuries. To the de profundis with which, thirty centuries ago, the soul of David cried unto God, the troubled soul of every child of God in the sivteentb century still sounded a response with undiminished power. The conception of the corruption of sin as the source of all human misery was nowhere more profound than in Calvin's environment. Even in the assertions which the Calvinist made, in accordance with Holy Scripture, concerning Hell and damnation, there is no coarseness, no rudeness, hut only that clearness which is the result of the utmost seriousness of life, and the undaunted courage of a deeprooted conviction of the holiness of the most High. Did not He, from Whose lips flowed the most tender, and the most winning words, — did not He, Himself also speak most decidedly and repeatedly of an "outer darkness*', of a "fire that cannot he quenched", of a "worm that dieth not"? And in this. also. Calvin was right, for to refuse to assent to these words is nothing but a lack of thoroughgoing consistency. It shews a want of sincerity in our confession of the holiness of God, and of the destructive power of sin. And on the contary, in this spiritual experience of sin, in this empirical consideration of the misery of life, in this lofty impression of the holiness of God, and in this staunchness of his convictions, which led him to follow his conclusions to the bitter end, the Calvinist found the roots of the necessity first of regeneration, for real existence, and secondly, the necessity of Revelation for clear consciousness. Now my subject does not induce me to speak in detail of regeneration, as that immediate act b}- which God, as it were, sets right again the crooked wheel of life. But it is necessary that I say a few words concerning Revelation, and the authority of the Holy Scriptures. Very improperly, the Scriptures have been represented, by Schweizer and others, as only the formal principle of the Reformed confession. The conception of genuine Calvinism lies much deeper. The meaning of Calvin was expressed in what he called the necessitas S. Script tirae; i. e. the need of Scriptural revelation. This necessitas 8. S. was for Calvin the unavoidable expression for the all-dominating authority of the Holy Scriptures, and even now it is this very dogma which enables us to understand why it is that the Calvinist of to-day considers the critical analysis and the application of the critical solvent to the Scriptures as tantamount to an abandoning of Christianity itself. In Paradise, before the Fall, there was no Bible, and there will be no Bible in the future Paradise of glory. "When the transparent light, kindled by Nature, addresses us directly, and the inner word of God sounds in our heart in its original clearness, and all human words are sincere, and the function of our inner ear is perfectly performed, why should we need a Bible? What Mother loses herself in a treatise upon the "love of our children" the very moment that her own clear ones are playing about her knee, and God allows her to drink in their love with full draughts? But, in our present condition, this immediate communion with God by means of nature, and of our own heart is lost. Sin brought separation instead, and the opposition which is manifest nowadays, against the authority of the Holy Scriptures is based on nothing else than the false supposition that, our condition being still normal, our religion need not be soteriological. For of course, in that case, the Bible is not wanted, it becomes, indeed, a hindrance, and grates upon your feelings, since it intercedes a book between God and your heart. For what husband corresponds with his wife by writ, while she is sitting at the family table, beside him? Oral communication excludes writing. But like the ocean, the cm-rent of religion has its periods of high tide and low tide; and in our days this tide is low, just as, in the days of our fathers it was high. Hence it is that the sense of sin is so feeble in our hearts, and that conditions which, in times of great religious activity, every pious man felt as abnormal and degenerate, are now considered normal and proper. When the sun shines in your house, bright and clear, you turn off the electric light, but when the sun disappears, below the horizon, you feel the necessitas luminis artificiosi, and the artificial light is kindled in every dwelling. Now this is the case in matters of religion. When there are no mists to hide the majesty of > the divine light from our eves, what need is there then for a lamp unto the feet, or a light upon the path? But when history, experience and consciousness all unite in stating the fact that the light of Heaven has disappeared, and that we are groping about in the dark, then, a different, or if you will, an artificial light must be kindled for us;— and such a light God has kindled for us in His Holy Word.

For the Calvinist, therefore, the necessity of the Holy Sriptures does not rest in ratiocination, but on the immediate testimony of the Holy Spirit, — on the testimonium spiritus Saudi. His insight into inspiration is the product of bistorical deduction, and so is also every canonical declaration of the Scriptures. But the magnetic power with which the Scripture influences his soul, and draws it to itself, just as the magnet draws t he steel, is not derived, but immediate. All of this takes place in a manner, which, is not magical, nor unfathomably mystical, but clear, and easy to be understood. God regenerates us, — that is to say he rekindles in our heart the lamp sin had blown out. The necessary consecpience of this regeneration is an irreconciliable conflict between the inner world of our heart and the world outside, and this conflict is ever the more intensified the more the regeneration principle pervades our consciousness. Now, in the Bible, God reveals, to the regenerate, a world of thought, a world of energies, a world of full and beautiful life, which stands in direct opposition to his ordinary world, but which proves to agree in a wonderful way with the new life that has sprung up in his heart. So the regenerate begins to guess the identity of what is stirring in the depth of his own soul, and of what is revealed to him in Scripture, thereby learning both the inanity of the world around him. and the divine reality of the world of the Scriptures, and as soon as this has become a certainty to him, he has personally received the testimony of the Hohj Spirit. Everything that is in him thirsted for the Father of all Lights and Spirits. Outside the Scripture, he discovered only vague shadows. But now as he looks upward, through the prism of the Scriptures, he rediscovers his Father and his God. For this reason he puts no shackles on science. If a man wants to criticize, — let him criticize. Such criticism even holds the promise that it will deepen our own insight into the structure of the scriptural edifice. Only no Calvinist ever allows the critic to dash out of his hand, for a moment, the prism itself which broke up the divine ray of light into its brilliant tints and colours. No appeal to the grace bestowed inwardly, no pointing to the fruits of the Holy Ghost, can enable him to dispense with the necessitas which the soteriological standpoint of religion among sinners carries with it. As mere entities we share our life with plants and animals. Unconscious life we share with the children, and with the sleeping man, and even with the man who has lost his reason. That which distinguishes us, as higher beings, and as wide awake men is our full self-consciousness, and therefore, if religion, as the highest vital function, is to operate also in that highest sphere of self-consciousness, it must follow that soteriological religion next to the necessitas of inward palingenesis demands also the necessitas of an assistant light of revelation to be kindled in our twilight. And this assistant light, coming from God Himself, but handed to us by human agency, beams upon us in His holy Word.

Summing up the results of our investigations thus far, I may express my conclusion as follows. In each one of the four great problems of religion, Calvinism has expressed its conviction in an appropriate dogma, and each time has made that choice which even now, after three centuries, satisfies the most ideal wants, and leaves the way open for an ever richer development. First, it regards religion, not in an utilarian, or eudaimonistic sense, as existing for the sake of man, but for God, and for God alone. This is its dogma of God's sovereignty. Secondly In religion there must be no intermediation of any creature between God and the soul; — all religion is the immediate work of God Himself, in the inner heart. This is the doctrine of Election. Thirdly, religion is not partial but universal: —this is the dogma of common or universal grace. And, finally, in our sinful condition, religion cannot be normal, but has to be soteriological; — this is its position in the twofold dogma of the necessity of regeneration, and of the necessitas S. Scripturae.

Having considered Religion as such, and coming now to tin- Church, as its organized form, or its phenomenal appearance, I shall present, in successive stages, the Calvinistic conception of the essence, the manifestation and the purpose of the Church of Christ upon earth.

In its essence, for the Calvinist, the Church is a spiritual organism, including Heaven and earth, but having at present, its centre, and the starting-point for its action, not upon earth, but in Heaven. This is thus to be understood: God created the Cosmos geocentrically, i. e. He placed the spiritual centre of this Cosmos on our planet, and caused all the divisions of the kingdom of nature, on this earth, to culminate in man, upon whom, as the bearer of His image He called to consecrate the Cosmos to His glory. In God's creation, therefore, man stands as the prophet priest and king, and although sin has disturbed these high designs, yet God pushes them onward. He so loves His world that He has given Himself to it, in the person of His Son, and thus He has again brought our race and through our race. His whole Cosmos, into a renewed contact with eternal life. To be sure, many branches and leaves off the tree of the human race shall fall away, yet the tree itself shall be saved; on its newroot in Christ, it shall once more blossom gloriously. For regeneration does not save a few isolated individuals, finally to be joined together mechanically as an aggregate heap; Regeneration saves the organism, itself, of our race. And therefore all regenerate human life, forms one organic body, of which Christ is the Head, and whose members are bound together by their mystical union with Him. But not before the Parousia, shall this new all-embracing organism manifest itself as the centre of the cosmos; at present it is hidden. Here, on earth it is only as it were its silliouet that can be dimly discerned. In the Future, fhi* new Jerusalem shall descend from God, out of Heaven, but at present it withdraws its beams from our sight in the mysteries of the invisible. And therefore the true sanctuary is now above; — on high are both the Altar of Atonement, and the incense Altar of Prayer; and on high is Christ, as the only priest who, according to MelchizedekV ordinance, ministers at the Altar, in the sanctuary, before God. Now, in the middle ages, the Church had more and more lost sight of this heavenly spiritual character;— she had become worldly in her nature. The Sanctuary was again brought back to earth, the Altar was rebuilt of stone, and a priestly hierarchy had reconstituted itself for the ministrations of the Altar. Next of course it was necessary also to renew the tangible sacrifice on earth, and this at last brought the church to inveut the unbloody offering of the Mass. Now against all this, Calvinism opposed itself, not to contend against priesthood on principle, or against altars as such, or against sacrifice in itself, because the office of priest cannot perish, and everyone knowing the fact of sin realizes in his own heart, the absolute need of a propitiatory sacrifice, but in order to do away with all this worldly paraphernalia, and to call believers to lift up their eyes again, on high, to the real sanctuary, where

Christ, our only priest, ministers at the only real altar. The battle was waged, not against the sacerdotmm, but against the sacerdotalism, and Calvin alone fought this battle through to the end, with thorough.consistency. Lutherans and Episcopalians rebuilt a kind of altar, on earth; Calvinism alone dared to put it away, entirely. Consequently, among the Episcopalians, the earthly priesthood was retained, even in the form of a hierarchy: in Lutheran lands the sovereign became summits episcopus and the divisions of ecclesiastical ranks were maintained; but Calvinism proclaimed the absolute equality of all who engaged in the service of the church, and refused to ascribe to its leaders and officebearers any other character than that of Ministers, (i.e. servants.) That which, under the shadows of the Old Testament dispensation, furnished prophetical and visible instruction, now that the types were fulfilled, had become to Calvin, a detriment to the glory of Christ, and lowered the heavenly nature of the Church. Therefore, Calvinism could not rest until this worldly tinsel had ceased to charm and attract the eye. Only when the last grain of the sacerdotal leaven had been eliminated, could the Church on earth again become the outer court, from which believers could look up and onward to the real sanctuary of the living God.

The Westminster Confession beautifully ets forth this heavenly all-embracing nature of the Church, when it says: — "The Catholic or Universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be, gathered into one, under Christ the Head, thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." Only thus was the dogma of the invisible church religiously consecrated and apprehended in its cosmological, and enduring significance. For, of course, the reality and fulness of the Church of Christ cannot exist on earth. Here is found, at most, one generation of believers at a time, in the portal of the Temple;— all previous generations, from the beginning and foundation of the world, had left this earth, and had gone up on high. Therefore, those who remained here, were, eo ipso, pilgrim*, meaning thereby that they were marching from the portal unto the Sanctuary itself, no possibility of salvation after death being left for those who had not been united to Christ, during this present life. No room could be left for masses for the dead, nor for a call to repenteuce on the other side of the grave, as German Theologians are now advocating. For all such processional, and gradual transitions, were regarded by Calvin as destroying the absolute contrast between the essence of the Church in Heaven, and its imperfect form, here on earth. The church on earth does not send up its light to Heaven, but the Church in Heaven must send its light down to the Church on earth. There is now, as it were, a curtain stretched, before the eye, which hinders it from penetrating while on earth, into the real essence of the Church. Therefore, all that remains possible to us on earth is hist, a mystical communion with that real Church, by means of the Spirit, and in the second place the enjoyment of the shadows which are displaying themselves on the transparent curtain before us. Accordingly, no child of God should imagine that the real Church is here on earth, and that behind the curtain there is only an ideal product of our imagination; but, on the contrary, he has to confess that Christ in human form, in our flesh, has entered into the invisible, behind the curtain; and that, with Him, around Him, and in Him, our Head, is the real church, the real and essential sauctuary of our salvation.

After having thus clearly grasped the nature of the Church, in its bearing upon the re-creation both of our human race and of the Cosmos as a whole, let us now turn our attention to its form of manifestation, here on earth.

As such it displays, unto us, different congregations of believers, groups of confessors, living in some ecclesiastical union, in obedience to the ordinances of Christ Himself. The Church on earth is not an institution for the dispensation of grace, as if it were a dispensary of spiritual medicines. There is no mystical, spiritual order, gifted with mystical powers to operate with a magical influence upon laymen. There are only regenerated and confessing individuals, who, in accordance with the Scriptural command, and under the influence of the sociological element of all religion, have formed a society, and are endeavouring to live together in subordination to Christ as their king. This, alone, is the Church on earth,— not the building, — not the institution,— not a spiritual order. For Calvin, the Church is found in the confessing individual* themselves, — not in each individual separately, but in all of them taken together, and united, not as they themselves see fit, but according to the ordinances of Christ. In the church on earth, the universal priesthood of believers must lie realized. Do not misunderstand me. I do not say: The Church consists of pious persons united in groups for religious purposes. That, in itself, would have nothing in common with the church. The real, heavenly, invisible church must manifest itself in the earthly church. If not, you will have a society, but no church. Now the real, essential church is and remains the body of Christ, of which regenerate persons are members. Therefore the Church on earth consists only of those who have been incorporated into Christ, who bow before Him, live in His Word, and adhere to His ordinances; and for this reason the church on earth has to preach the Word, administer the sacraments, and exercise discipline, and in everything to stand before the face of God.— This at the same time determines the form of government of this church on earth. This government, like the church itself, originates in Heaven, in Christ. He most effectually governs His church by means of the Holy Spirit, by whom He works in His members. Therefore, all being equal under

Him, there can be no distinctions of rank among believers; there are only ministers, who serve, lead and regulate; a thoroughly Presbyterian form of government; the Church power descending directly from Christ Himself, into the congregation, ascending from the congregation to the ministers, and by them being administered unto the brethren. So the sovereignty of Christ remains absolutely monarchical, but the government of the Church on earth becomes democratic to its bones and marrow; a system leading logically to this other sequence, that all believers and all congregations being of an equal standing, no Church may exercise any dominion over another, but that all Churches are of equal rank, and as manifestations of one and the same body, can only be united synod ically, i. e. by way of confederation. Now let me draw your attention to another most important consequence of this same principle, viz. to the multiformity of denominations as the necessary result of the differentiation of the churches, according to the different degrees of their purity. If the church is considered to be an institute of grace, independent of the believers, or an institute in which a hiearchical priest hood distributes the treasury of grace entrusted to him, the result must be that this hierarchy extends itself through all nations and imparts the same stamp to all forms of ecclesiastical life. But if the church consists in the congregation of believers, if the churches are formed by the union of confessors, and are united only in the way of confederation, then the differences of climate and of nation, of historical past, and of disposition of mind come in to exercise a widely variegating influence, and multiformity in ecclesiastical matters must be the result. A result, therefore, of very far-reaching importance, because it annihilates the absolute character of every visible Church, and places them all side by side, as differing in degrees of purity, but always remaining manifestations of one holy and catholicchurch of Christ in Heaven. I do not say that Calvinistic theologians have proclaimed this full consequence from the beginning. The desire for ruling power lurked also at the door of their heart, and even apart from this dangerous disposition it was right and natural for them theoretically to judge each church according to the standard of their own ideals. But this does not in the least detract from the great significance of the fact that by regarding the Church, not as a hierarchy or institution, but as the gathering of individual confessors, they started for the life of the church, as well as for the life of the state, and civil society, from the principle not of compulsion, but of liberty. For, of course by virtue of this starting-point there was no other church-power superior to the local churches, save only what the churches themselves constituted, by means of their confederation. Hence it followed of necessity that the natural and historic differences between men should also, wedgelike, force their way into the phenomenal life of the church upon earth. National differences of morals, differences of disposition and of emotions, different degrees in depth of life and insight, necessarily resulted in emphasizing first one, and then another side of the same truth. Hence the numerous sects and denominations into which the external church-life has fallen by virtue of this principle. So on our side there are denominations which may have departed from the rich deep and Ml Calvinistic Confession, in no small degree, even such as bitterly oppose more than one capital article of our confession; yet they all owe their origin to a deep-rooted opposition to sacerdotalism, and to the acknowledgment of the church as the '-congregation of believers," the truth in which Calvinism expressed its fundamental conception. And although this fact unavoidably led to much unholy rivalry, and even to sinful errors of conduct; yet, after an experience of three centuries it must be confessed that this multiformity, which is inseparably connected with the fundamental thought of Calvinism, has been much more favourable to the growth and prosperity of religious life than the compulsory uniformity in which Rome sought the very basis of its strength. And fruit is to be expected more abundantly still in the future, provided only that the principle of ecclesiastical liberty does not degenerate into indifference, and that no church, which, in its name and confession still upholds the Calvinistic banner, omits to fulfil its holy mission of recommending to others the superiority of its principles.

Still another point must be brought forward in this connection. The conception of the Church as the "congregation of believers" might lead to the conception that it included the believers only, without their children. This, however, is by no means the teaching of Calvinism: itteaching on the subject of infant baptism showing quite the contrary. Believers who meet together do not thereby sever the natural bond that binds them to their offspring. On the contrary, they consecrate this bond, arid by baptism incorporate their children in the communion of their church, and these minors are kept in this Church communion until, when of age, they become themselves confessors, or sever themselves from the church by their unbelief. This is the so-important Calvinistic dogma of the Covenant; a prominant article of our confession, showing that the waters of the Church do not flow outside the natural stream of human life, but cause the life of the church to proceed hand in hand with the natural organic reproduction of succeeding generations. Covenant and Church are inseparable, — the covenant binding the church to the race, and God Himself sealing in it the connection between the life of grace, and the life of nature. Of course Church discipline must come in here, in order to preserve the purity of this Covenant as soon as the mutual permeating of grace by nature tends to lower the purity of the Church. From the Calvinistic viewTpoint, therefore, it is impossible to speak of a nationalChurch, as being destined to embrace all the inhabitants of the whole country. A national Church, i. e. a church comprising only one nation, is a Heathen, or at most, a Jewish conception. The Church of Christ is not national but ecumenical. No1 one single state, but the whole world is its domain. And when the Lutheran Reformers at the instigation of their sovereigns, nationalized their churches, and Calvinistic churches allowed themselves to deviate in the same track, they did not ascend to a higher conception than that of Rome's world-church, but descended to distinctly lower ground. Happily I may conclude by bearing witness that both the Synod of Dort, and the not less venerable Westminster Assembly, have honoured again the ecumenical character ofour Reformed Churches, thereby censuring as unpardonable, every deviation from the only right principle.

Having thus far given an outline of the nature of the ( 'liurch, and the form of its manifestation, let me now draw your attention in the last place to the purpose of its appearance on earth. I shall not say anything for the present on the separation of Church and state. This will naturally find place in the next Lecture. At present. I confine myself to the purpose that has been assigned to the Church in its pilgrimage through the world. That purpose cannot be human— egoistic, to prepare the believer for Heaven. A regenerate child, dying in the cradle, goes straight to Heaven, without any further preparation and wheresoever the Holy Ghost has kindled the spark of Eternal life in the soul, the perseverance of the saints assures the certainty of eternal salvation. Nay, upon earth also, the Church xists merely for the sake of God. Regeneration is sufficient for the elect man, to make him sure of his eternal destiny, but it is not enough to satisfy, the glory of God in His work among men. For the glory of our God it is necessary to have regeneration, followed by conversion, and to this conversion the Church must contribute, by means of the preaching of the Word. In the regenerate man glows the spark, but only in the converted man does the spark burst into a blaze, and that blaze radiates the light from the church into the world, that, according to our Lord's commandment, our Father, which is in Heaven, may be glorified. And both our conversion and our sanctification in good works are only then marked by the lofty character which Jesus demands, when we make them serve, in the first place, not the guarantee of our own salvation, but rather the glorifying of God. In the second place, the Church must fan this blaze, and make it brighter, by the communion of the saints and by the Sacraments. Only when hundreds of candles are burning from one candelabrum, can the full brightness of the soft candle-light strike us, and in the same way it is the communion of saints which has to unite the many small lights of the single believers so that they may mutually increase their brightness, and Christ, walking in the midst of the seven candlesticks, may sacramentally purify the glow of their brightness to a still more brilliant fervour. Thus the purpose of the Church does not lie in us, but in God, and in the glory of His name. — From this solemn purpose originates, in the same way, the severely spiritual cultus which Calvinism tried te restore in the services of the Church. Even Von Hartman, the far-from- Christian philosopher, perceived that cultus becomes more religious just in proportion as it has the courage to despise all external show, and the energy to evolve itself from symbolism, in order to clothe itself in beauty of a much higher order, — the inward, spiritual beauty of the worshipping soul. Sensual church services tend to soothe and flatter man religiously, and only the purely spiritual service of Calvinism aims at the pure worship of God, and at adoration of Him in spirit and in truth. — The same tendency leads our church discipline, that indispensible element of every genuine Calvinistic church activity. Church discipline was also instituted in the first place, not to prevent scandals, nor even primilarily to prune the wild branches, but rather to preserve the sanctity of the Covenant of God, and ever to impress upon the outside world the solemn fact that God is too pure to look upon evil. — Finally we have the service of Church philanthropy, in the Diaconate which Calvin alone understood, and restored to its primordial honor. Neither Rome nor the Greek Church, neither the Lutheran nor the Episcopal Church, caught the real meaning of the Diaconate. Calvinism alone has restored the Diaconate to its place of honor, as an indispensable and constitutive element of ecclesiastical life. But. in this Diaconate, also, the lofty principle must prevail that it may not glorify those who give alms, but only the name of Him who moves the hearts of the people to liberality. The Deacons are not our servants, but servants of Christ. That which we commit to them we simply give back to Christ, as stewards of what is His property; and in His name it must be distributed to His poor, — our brothers and sister The poor church -member, who thanks the Deacon and the giver, but not Christ, actually denies Dim who is the real and divine Giver, and who through his deacons, purposes to make it manifest that He is a Savior, not for the soul alone, but also for the body, — or to express it more pointedly, that for the whole man, and for the whole of life He is the Christus Consolator, the heavenly Redeemer, anointed and appointed by God Himself, for our fallen race, from all eternity. And so, as you see, the result proves incontestably that in Calvinism, the fundamental conception of the Church fits perfectly to the fundamental idea of Religion. All egoism and eudaimonism are excluded from both, even unto the end. Always and ever we have a Religion, and a Church, for the sake of God, and not for the sake of man. The origin of the Church is in God, its form of manifestation is from God, and from beginning to end, its purpose is and remains to magnify God's glory.

Now finally, I come to the fruit of religion in our practical life, or the position taken by Calvinism in the question of morals; — the third and last division, with which this lecture on Calvinism and Religion will naturally conclude.

Here, the first thing that attracts our attention is the apparent contradiction between a confession, which, it is alleged, blunts the edge of moral incentives, and a practice, which, in moral earnestness exceeds the practice of all other religions. The Antinomian and the Puritan seemed to be mingled in this field like tares and wheat, so that at first sight it seemed as though the Antinomian were the logical result of the Calvinistic confession, and as though it were only by a fortunate inconsistency that the Puritan could infuse the warmth of his moral earnestness, into the all congealing chill emanating from the dogma of predestination. Romanists, Lutherans, Remonstrants and Libertines have ever charged against Calvinism that its absolute doctrine of predestination, culminating in the perseverance of saints, must necessarily result in a too easy conscience and a dangerous laxity of morals. But Calvinism answers this charge, not by opposing reasoning against reasoning, but by putting a fact of world-wide reputation over against this false deduction of fictitious consequences. It simply asks: — "What rival moral fruits have other religions to oppose if we point to the high moral earnestness of the Puritans?" "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound*' is the old diabolical whisper which the evil spirit hurled against the Holy Apostle himself in the childhood of the Christian Church. And when, in the sixteenth century the Heidelburg Catechism had to defend Calvinism against the shameful charge; — "Does not this doctrine lead to caieless and ungodly lives?" Ursinus and Olevianus had to deal with nothing else than the echoing and monotonous repetition of the same old slander. Certainly the ungodly lust to persist in, and even to foster, indwelling sin, yea even Antinomionism itself, again and again abused the

Calvinistic confession, seizing it like a shield, to hide the carnal appetites of the unconverted heart. But as little as the mechanical repetition of a written confession had ever anything in common with genuine religion, just so little may the Calvinistic Confession he made responsible for those reverberating stone pillars, echoing Calvin's fomulas, but without a grain of Calvinistic earnestness in their heart. He only is the real Calvinist, and may raise the Calvinistic banner, who in his own soul, personally, has been struck by the Majesty of the Almighty, and yielding to the over powering might of his eternal Love, has dared to proclaim this majestic love, over against Satan, and the world, and the worlclliness of his own heart, in the personal conviction of being chosen by Cod Himself, and therefore of having to thank Him and Him alone, for every grace everlasting. Such an one could not but tremble before the might and the majesty of Cod. as a matter of course accepting His Word as the ruling principle of His conduct in life; — a principle which has led so far that for its strong attachment, to the Scriptures. Calvinism has been censured, as being nnuiiiistic religion, but without any warrant. Nomistic is the appropriate name for a religion which proclaims salvation to be attained by the fulfilment of the law, while Calvinism, on the fother hand, in a thoroughly soteriological sense, never derived salvation but from Christ and the atoning fruit of His merits.

But it remained the special trait of Calvinism that it placed the believer before the face of God, not only in His church, but also in his personal, family, social, and political life. The majesty of God, and the authority of God press upon the Calvinist in the whole of his human existence. He si a pilgrim, not in the sense that he is marching through a world with which he has no concern, but in the sense that at every step of the long way he must remember his responsibility to that God so full of majesty, who awaits him at his journey's end. In front of the Portal which opens for him, on the entrance into Eternity, stands the Last Judgment, and that judgment shall be one broad and comprehensive test, to ascertain whether the long' pilgrimage has been accomplished with a heart that aimed at God's glory, and in accordance with the ordinances of the Most High. What now does the Calvinist mean by his faith in the ordinances of God? Nothing less than the firmly rooted conviction that all life has first been in the thoughts of God, before it came to be realized in Creation. Hence all created life necessarily bears in itself a law for its existence, instituted by God Himself. There is no life outside us in Nature, without such divine ordinances,— ordinances which which are called the laws of Nature; — a term which we are willing to accept, provided we understand thereby, not laws originating from Nature, but laws imposed upon Nature. So, there are ordinances of Heaven for the firmament above, and ordinances for the earth below, by means (if which this world is maintained, and, as the Psalmist says, these ordinances are the servants of God. Consequently there are ordinances of God for our bodies, for the blood that courses through our arteries, and veins, and for our lungs as the organs of respiration. And even so are there ordinances of God, in Logic, to regulate our thoughts; ordinances of God for our imagination, in the domain of aesthetics; and so, also, strict ordinances of God for the whole of human life in the domain of moral*. Not moral ordinances in the sense of summary general laws, which leave the decision in concrete and detailed instances to ourselves, but just as the ordinance of God determines the course of the smallest asteroid, as well as the orbit of the mightiest star, so also these moral ordinances of God descend to the smallest and most particular details, stating to us what in every case is to be considered as the will of God.

And those ordinance- of God, ruling both the mightiest problems and the smallest trifles, are urged upon us, not like the statutes of a law book, not like rules ■which may be read from paper, not like a codification of life, which could even for a single moment, exercise any authority of itself, — but they are urged upon us as the constant will of the omnipresent and almighty God, who at every instant is determining the course of life, ordaining its laws, and continually binding us by His moral authority. The Calvinist does not, like Kant, ascend in his reasoning from the "Da So/is/" (Thou shalt) to the idea of a lawgiver, but, because he stands before the face of God, because he sees God, and walks with God, and feels God in the whole of his being and existence, therefore he cannot withdraw his ear from that never silenced "Thou sfialt", which proceeds continually from his God, in Nature, in his body, in his reason, and in his action.

Thence it follows that he adjusts himself to these ordinances not by force, as though they were a yoke of which he would like to rid himself, but with the same readiness with which we follow a guide through the desert, recognizing that ice are ignorant of the path, which the guide knows, and therefore acknowledging that there is no safety but in closely following in his footsteps. When our respiration is disturbed, we try irresistibly and immediately to remove the disturbance, and to make it normal again, i. e. to restore it, b}r bringing it again into accordance with the ordinances which God has given for man's respiration. To succeed in this gives us a feeling of unspeakable relief. Just so, in every disturbance of the moral life the believer has to strive as speedily as possible to restore his spiritual respiration, according to the moral commands of his God, because only after this restoration can the inward life again thrive freely in his soul, and renewed energetic action become possible. Therefore every distinction between general moral ordinances, and more special christian commandments is unknown to him. Can we imagine that at one time God willed to rule things in a certain moral order, but that now, in Christ, He wills to rule it otherwise? As though He were not the Eternal, the Unchangeable, who, from the hour of creation even unto all eternity had willed, wills, and shall will and maintain one and the same firm moral world-order! Verily Christ has swept away the dust with which our sinful limitations had covered up this world-order, and has made it glitter again in its original brilliancy.

Verily Christ and He alone has disclosed to us the eternal love of God, which was, from the beginning; the movingprinciple of this world order. Above all, Christ has strengthened in us the ability to walk in this world order with a firm, unfaltering step. But the world-order itself remains just what it was from the beginning. It lays full claim, not only to the believer (as though less were required from the unbeliever), but to every human being and to all human relationships. Hence Calvinism does not lead us to philosophize on a so-called moral life, as though ice had to create, to discover, or to regulate this life. Calvinism simply places us under the impress of the majesty of God, and subjects us to His eternal ordinances and unchangeable commandments. Hence it is that, for the Calvin ist, all ethical study is based on the Law of Sinai, not as though at that time the moral world-order began to be fixed, but to honour the Law of Sinai, as the divinely authentic summary of that original moral law which God wrote in the heart of man, at his creation, and which God is re-writing on the tables of every heart at its conversion. The Calvinist is led to submit himself to the conscience, not as to an individual lawgiver, which every person carries about in himself, but as to a direct sensus divinitatis, through which God Himself stirs up the inner man, and subjects him to His judgment. He does not hold to religion, with its dogmatics, as a separate entity, and then place his moral life with its ethics as a second entity alongside of religion, but he holds to religion, as placing him in the presence of

God, Himself, Who thereby embues him with His divine will. Love, and adoration are, to Calvin, themselves the motives of every spiritual activity, and thus the fear of God is imparted to the whole of life as a reality, — into the family, and into society, into science and art, into personal lie, and into the political career. A redeemed man who in all things and in all the choices of life is controlled solely by the most searching, and heart-stirring reverence for a God who is ever present to his consciousness, and who ever holds him in his eye: — thus does the Calvinistic type present itself in history. Always and in all things the deepest, the most sacred reverence for the ever present God as the rule of life, — this is the only true picture of the original Puritan. The avoidance of the world has never been the Calvinistic mark, but the shibboleth of the Anabaptist. The specific, anabaptistical Dogma on "avoidance" proves this. According to this dogma, tin: Anal taptists, announcing themselves as "saints", were severed from the world. They stood in opposition to the world. They refused to take the oath; they abhorred all military service; they condemned the holding of public offices. Here already, they shaped a new world, in the midst of a worldof sin, but which had nothing to do with this present world. They rejected all obligation and responsibility towards the old world, and they avoided it systematically, for fear of contamination, and contagion. But this is just what the Calvinist always disputed and denied. It is not true that there are two worlds, a bad one and a good, which are fitted into each other. It is one and the same person whom God created perfect and who afterwards fell, and became a sinner; — and it is this same "ego" of the old sinner who is born again, and who enters into eternal life. So, also, it is one and the same world which once exhibited all the glory of Paradise, which was afterwards smitten with the curse, and which, since the Fall, is upheld by common grace;— which has now been redeemed and saved by Christ, in its centre, and which shall pass through the horror of the judgment into the state of glory. For this very reason, however, the Calvinist cannot shut himself up in his church and ahandon the world to its fate. He feels, rather, his high calling to push the development of this world to an even higher stage, and to do this in constant accordance with God's ordinance, for the sake of God, upholding, in the midst of so much painful corruption, everything that is honourable, lovely, and of good report among men. Therefore it is that we see in History (if I may be permitted to speak of my own ancestors), that scarcely had Calvinism been firmly established in the Netherlands for a quarter of a century, when there was a rustling of life in all directions, and an indomitable energy was fermenting in every department of human activity, and their commerce and trade, their handicrafts and industry, their agriculture and horticulture, their art and science, flourished with a brilliancy previously unknown, and imparting a new impulse for an entirely new development of life, to the whole of Western Europe.

This admits of only one exception, and this exception I wish both to maintain and to place in its proper light. What I mean is this. — Not every intimate intercourse with the unconverted world is deemed lawful, by Calvinism, for it placed a barrier against the too unhallowed influence of this world by putting a distinct ''veto"' upon three things, card-playing, I heal res, and dancing; — three forms of amusement which I shall first treat separately, and then set forth in their combined influence. — Card-playing has been placed under a ban by Calvinism, not as though games of all kinds were forbidden, nor as though something demoniacal lurked in the cards themselves, but because it fosters in our heart the dangerous tendency to look away from God, and to put our trust in Fori inn- or L/,f/r. A game which is decided by keenness of vision, quickness of action, and range of experience, is ennobling in its character, but a game like cards, which is chiefly decided by the way in which the cards are arranged in the pack, and blindly distributed, induces us to attach a certain significance to that fatal imaginative power, outside of God, called Chance or Fortune. To this kind of unbelief, every one of us is inclined. The fever of stock-gambling shews daily how much more strongly people are attracted and influenced by the nod of Fortune, than by solid application to their work. Therefore the Calvinist judged that the rising generation should be guarded against this dangerous tendency, whereas, by. means of card-playing it would be fostered. And since the sensation of God's ever-enduring presence was felt by Calvin and his adherents as the never-failing source from which they drew their stern seriousness of life, they could not help loathing a game which poisoned this source by placing Fortune above the disposition of God, and the hankering after chance above the firm confidence in His will. To fear God, and to bid for the favors of Fortune seemed to him as irreconcilable as fire and water.

Entirely different objections were entertained against Theatre-going. In itself there is nothing sinful in fiction;— the power of the imagination is a precious gift of God Himself. Neither is there any special evil in dramatic imagination. How highly did Milton appreciate Shakespeare's Drama, and did not he himself write in dramatic form? Nor did the evil lie in public theatrical representations, as such. Public performances were given for all the people at Geneva, in the Market Place, in Calvin's time, and with his approval. No, that which offended our ancestors was not the comedy or tragedy, nor should have been the opera, or the operetta, in itself, but the moral sacrifice which as a rule was demanded of actors and actresses, for the amusement of the public. A theatrical troop, in those days especially, stood, morally, very low\ This low moral standard resulted partly from the fact that the constant and ever-changing presentation of the character of other people, finally hampers the moulding of your personal character; and partly because, unlike the Greeks, modern Theatres have introduced the presence of women on the stage, the prosperity of the Theatre being too often gauged by the measure in which a woman jeopardizes the most sacred treasures God entrusts to her, — her stainless name, and irreproachable conduct. Certainly, a strictly moral Theatre is very well conceivable, but with the exception of a few large cities, such Theatres would neither be sufficiently patronized nor could exist financially, and the actual fact remains that, taking all the world over, the prosperity of a Theatre often increases in proportion to the moral degradation of the actors. For often therefore the prosperity of Theatres is purchased at the cost ot manly character, and of female purity; and to purchase delight for the ear and the eye at the price of such a moral hetacomb, the Calvinist, who honoured whatever was human in man, for the sake of God, could not but condemn. Finally, so far as the dance is concerned, even worldly papers, like the parisian "Figaro", at present justify the position of the Calvinist. Only recently an article in this paper called attention to the moral pain with which a father takes his daughter into the Ball-room for the first time. This moral pain, it declared, is evident, in Paris at least, to all who are familiar with the whisperings, indecent looks and actions prevalent in those pleasure-loving circles. Here, also, the Calvinist does not protest against the Dance itself, but exclusively, against the impurity to which it is often in danger of leading. With this I return to the barrier of which I spoke. Our fathers perceived excellently well that it was just these three,— Dancing, Card-playing, and Theatres, — with which the world was madly in love. In worldly circles these pleasures were not regarded as secondary trifles, but honoured, as all-important matters; and whoever dared to attack them, exposed himself to the bitterest scorn and enmity. For this very reason, they recognized, in these three, the Rubicon which no true Calvinist could cross without sacrificing his earnestness to dangerous mirth, and the fear of the Lord to often far from spotless pleasures. And now may I ask, — has not the result justified their strong and brave protest? Even yet after a lapse of three centuries, you will find, in my Calvinistic country, entire social circles into which this world - liness is never allowed to enter, but in which the richness of human life has turned, from without, inward, and in which, as the result of a sound spiritual concentration, there has been developed such a deep sense of everything high, and such an energy for everything holy as to excite the envy even of our Antagonists. Not only has the wing of the Butterfly in those circles been preserved intact, but even the gold-dust upon this wing shines as brilliantly as ever.

This now is the proof to which I invite your respectful attention. Our age is far ahead of the Calvinistic age in its overflowing mass of ethical essays and treatises and learned expositions. Philosophers and Theologians really vie with one another in discovering for us, or in hiding from us, just as you may be pleased to put it, the straight road in the domain of morals. But there is something that all this.host of learned scholars have not been able to do. They have not been able to restore moral firmness to the enfeebled public conscience.

Rather must we complain that ever more and more the foundations of our moral building are gradually being loosened and unsettled, until finally there remains not one stronghold left of which the people in their wider ranks can feel that it guarantees moral certainty for the Future. Statesmen and Jurists are openly proclaiming the right of the strongest; the ownership of property is called stealing; free love has been advocated, and honesty is ridiculed. A pantheist has dared to put Jesus and Nero on the same footing; and Van Nietzsche, going further still, deemed Christ's blessing of the meek to be the curse of humanity.

Now compare with all this the marvellous results of three centuries of Calvinism. Calvinism understood that the world was not to be saved by ethical philosophizing, but only by the restoration of tenderness of conscience. Therefore it did not indulge in reasoning, but appealed directly to the soul, and placed it face to face with the Living God, so that the heart trembled, at His holy majesty, and in that majesty, discovered the glory of His love. And when, going back in this historical review, you observe how thoroughly corrupt and rotten Calvinism found the world, to what depth moral life at that time had sunken, in the courts, and among the people, in the clerg}T, and among the leaders of science, among men and wonen, among the higher and the lower classes of society: — then what censor among you will dare to deny the palm of moral victory to Calvinism, which in one generation, though hunted from the battlefield to the scaffold, created, throughout five nations at once, wide serious groups of noble men and still nobler women, hitherto unsurpassed in the loftiness of their ideal conceptions and unequalled in the power of their moral self-control.

My third lecture leaves the sanctuary of religion and enters upon the domain of the State; the first transition from the Sacred Circle to the secular field of human life. Only now therefore we proceed, summarily and in principle, to eradicate the wrong idea, that Calvinism represents an exclusive^ ecclesiastical and dogmatic movement.

The religious momentum of Calvinism has placed, beneath political Society, a fundamental conception, all its own, just because it did not only prune the branches and clean the stem, but reached down to the very root of life.

That this had to be so becomes evident at once to everyone, who is able to appreciate that a political scheme has never become dominant, which was not founded in a specific religious conception.

And that this has been the fact, as regards Calvinism, may appear from the political changes, which it has effected in those three historic lands of political freedom, the Netherlands, England and America.

Every competent historian will without exception confirm the words of Bancroft:— "The fanatic for Calvinism was a fanatic for liberty, for in the moral warfare for freedom, his creed was a part of his army, and his most faithful ally in the battle." l And Groen van Prinsterer has thus expressed it: "in Calvinism lies the origin and guarantee of our constitutional liberties." That Calvinism has led public law into new paths, first in Western Europe, then in two Continents, and to-day more and more among all civilized nations, is admitted by scientific students, if not yet fully by public opiniou.

But for the purpose I have in view, the mere statement of this important fact is insufficient.

In order that conviction may be aroused and the influence of Calvinism on our political development guaranteed for the future, it must be shown, — for what fundamental political conceptions Calvinism has opened the door, and how these political conceptions sprang from its root in religion.

Allow me to argue this matter in detail by pointing out to you a threefold Sovereignty:—

1. the Sovereignty in the sphere of the State; 2. the Sovereignty in the sphere of Social life; and 3. the Sovereignty in the sphere of the Church.

First then Sovereignty in that political sphere, which is defined as the State. And then we admit that the impulse to form states arises from man's social nature, which was expressed already by Aristotle, when he called man a l%aov ^olirixov." God might have created men as disconnected individuals, standing side by side and without genealogical coherence. Just as Adam was separately created, the second and third and every further man might have been individually called into existence; but this was not the case.

1 History of the Unile<l States, from the discovery of the V. States. Fifteenth Ed. Boston 1853, I. 464.

Man is created from man, and by virtue of his birth he is organically united with the whole race. Together we form one humanity, not only with those who are living now, but also with all the generations behind us and with all those who shall come after us, — pulverized into millions though we may be.

All the human race is from one blood. But the conception of States, which subdivide the earth into continents, and each continent into morsels, does not harmonize with this idea.

Then only would the organic unity of our race be realized politically, if one State could embrace all the world, and if the whole of humanity were associated in one world-empire.

Had sin not intervened, no doubt, this would actually have been so. If sin, as a disintegrating force, had not divided humanity into different sections, nothingwould have marred or broken the organic unity of our race.

And the mistake of the Alexanders and of the Augusti and of the Napoleons was not, that they were charmed with the thought of the One World-empire, but it was this — that they endeavored to realize this idea notwithstanding that the force of sin had dissolved our unity.

In like manner the international cosmopolitan endeavors of the Social-democracy present, in their conception of union, an ideal, which on this very account charms us, even when we are aware that they try to reach the unattainable, in endeavouring to realize this high and holy ideal, now and in a sinful world.

Nay even Anarchy, conceived as the attempt to undo all mechanical connections among men, together with the undoing of all human authority, and to encourage, in their stead, the growth of a new organic tie, arising from nature itself, — I say, all this is nothing but a looking backward after a lost paradise.

For indeed without sin there would have been neither magistrate nor state-order; but political life, in its entirety, would have evolved itself, after a patriarchal fashion, from the life of the family.

Neither bar of justice, nor police nor army, nor navy is conceivable in a world without sin; and thus every rule and ordinance and law would drop away, even as all control and assertion of the power of the magistrate would disappear, were life to develop itself, normally and without hindrance, from its own impulse.

Who binds up, where nothing is broken? Who uses crutches, where the limbs are sound?

Every State-formation, every assertion of the power of the magistrate, every mechanical means of compelling order and of guaranteeing a safe course of life is therefore always something unnatural; something, against which the deeper aspirations of our nature rebel; and which, on this very account, may become the source both of a dreadful abuse of power, by those who exercise it, and of a contumacious revolt by the multitude.

Thus originated the battle of the ages between Authority and Liberty, and in this battle it was the very innate thirst for liberty, which proved itself the God-ordained means to bridle the authority, wheresoever it degenerated into despotism.

Thus all true conception of the nature of the State and of the assumption of authority by the magistrate, but on the other hand also of the right and duty of the people to defend liberty, depend on what Calvinism has here placed in the foreground, as the primordial truth, — that God has instituted the magistrates, by reason of sin.

In this one thought are hidden both the light-side and the shady -side of the life of the State.

The shady-side, for this multitude of states ought not to exist; there should be only one world-empire. These magistrates rule mechanically and do not harmonize with our nature. And this authority of government is exercised