CALVINISM AND THE PUTUEE.
that through American democracy there runs even yet a vein, which, having sprung from the Pilgrim Fathers, still exerts its power at the present day. Even your commonschool system, blessed with reading of scripture and opening prayer, points, though with decreasing distinctness, to like Calvinistic origin. Similarly in the rise of your university education, springing for the larger part from individual initiative; in the decentralized and autonomous character of your local governments; in your strict and yet not nomistic Sabbath-observance; in the esteem in which woman is held among you, without falling into the Parisian deification of her sex; in your sense for domesticity; in the closeness of your family ties; in your championship of free speech and in your unlimited regard for freedom of conscience; in all this your Christian democracy is in direct opposition to the democracy of the French revolution: and historically also it is demonstrable that you owe this to Calvinism. But lo and behold, while you are thus enjoying the fruits of Calvinism, and while even outside of your borders the constitutional system of government upholds the national honor, it is whispered abroad that all these are to be accounted blessings of Humanism, and scarcely any one still thinks of honoring in them the after effect of < 'alvinism. the latter being believed to lead a lingering life only in a few dogmatically petrified circles. What I demand then, and demand with an historic right, is that this ungrateful ignoring of Calvinism shall come to an end; that the influence it has exerted shall again receive attention where it still remains stamped upon the actual life of today; and that, where men of a wholly different spirit would unobservedly divert the current of life into Frenchrevolutionary or German-pantheistic channels, you on this side of the water, and we on our side, should oppose with might and main such falsification of the historic principles of our life.
That we may be enabled to do so, I contend in the second place for an historical study of the principles of Calvinism. No love without knowledge, and Calvinism has lost its place in the hearts of the people. It is being advocated only from a theological point of view, and even then very one-sidedly and merely as a side-issue. The cause of this I have pointed out in a previous lecture. Since Calvinism arose, not from an abstract system, but from life itself, it never was in the century of its prime presented as a systematic whole. The tree blossomed and yielded its fruit but without any one having made a botanic study of its nature and growth. Calvinism, in its rise, rather acted than argued. But now this study may no longer be delayed. Both the biography and biology of Calvinism must now be thoroughly investigated and thought out, or, with our lack of self-knowledge, we shall, nolens volens, be side-tracked into a world of ideas that is more at discord than in consonance with the lite of our Christian democracy, and cut loose from the root on which we once blossomed so vigorously.
Only through such study will become possible what I named in the third place: the application of the principles of Calvinism to every department of life by choosing its special principle as the point of departure for all branches of science. I do not exclude theology from this, for theology too exercises its influence upon life in all its ramifications, and it is, therefore, sad to see how even the theology of the Reformed Churches has in so many a country come under the sway of wholly foreign systems. But, at all events, theology is only one of the many sciences that demand Calvinistic treatment. Jurisprudence, the social sciences, philosophy, literature, psychology, aesthetics, and even the medical and natural sciences, each and all of these, when philosophically conceived, go back to principles, and of need in our circles the question must be put with much more penetrating seriousness than hitherto, whether the ontological and anthropological principles that reign supreme in the present method of these sciences are in agreement with the principles of -Calvinism or are at variance with their very essence.
Finally I would add to these three demands, historically justified as it seems to me, still a fourth, that those churches which yet lay claim to professing the Reformed faith, shall cease being ashamed of this confession. You have heard how broad my conception and how wide my views are, even in the matter of ecclesiastical life. In free development only do I see the salvation of this Church-life. I exalt multiformity and hail in it a higher stage of development. Even for the church that has the purest confession, I would not dispense with the aid of other churches in order that its inevitable onesidedness may thus be complemented. But what has always filled me with wrath and indignation was to behold a church or to meet the office-bearer of a church, with the flag furled or hidden under the garb of office, instead of being thrown out boldly to display its glorious colours in the breeze. What one confesses to lie the truth, one must also dare to practise in word, deed and whole manner of life. A church Calvinistic in origin and still recognizable by its Calvinistic confession, which lacks the courage, nay rather which no longer feels the impulse to defend that confession boldly and bravely against all the world, such a church dishonors not Calvinism but itself. Albeit the churches Reformed in bone and marrow may be small and few in numbers, as churches they will always prove indispensable for Calvinism, and here also the smallness of the seed need not disturb us, if only that seed be sound and whole, instinct with generative and irrepressible life.
And thus my last lecture is rapidly drawing to its end. But before I close, I feel nevertheless that one question continues to press for an answer, which accordingly I shall not refuse to face, the question namely, at what I am aiming in the end: at the abandonment or at the maintenance of the doctrine of election. Thereunto allow me to contrast with this word election another word that differs from it in but a single letter. Our generation turns a deaf ear to Election, but grows madly enthusiastic over Selection. How may we formulate the tremendous problem that lies hidden behind these two words, and in what particular do the solutions of this problem, as represented by these two, almost identical formula's, differ? The problem concerns the fundamental question: Whence are the differences? Why is not all alike? Whence is it that one thing exists in one state another in another? There is mi life without differentiation, and no differentiation without inequality. The perception of difference is the very source of human consciousness, the causative principle of all that exists and grows and develops, in short the mainspring of all life and thought. I am therefore justified in asserting that in the end every other problem may be reduced to this one problem: Whence are those differences? Whence is the dissimilarity, the heterogeneity of existence, of genesis, of consciousness? To put it concretely, if a plant yon would rather be rose than mushroom; if insect, butterfly lather than spider; if bird, eagle rather than owl; if a higher vertebrate, lion rather than hyena.; and again, being man, rich rather than poor, talented rather than dullminded, of the Aryan race rather than Hottentot or Kaffer. Between all these there is differentiation, wide differentiation. And I may add that many a one of our race, in his presumptious audacity, has aimed still higher.— has desired to be God,— and behold he was and remained man. Everywhere then differences, differences between the one being and the other, and that too such differences as involve in almost every instance, preference. When the hawk rends and tears the dove, whence is it that these two creatures are thus opposed to, and different from each other? This is the one supreme question in the vegetable and animal kingdom, among men, in all social life, and it is by means of the theory of Selection that our present age attempts to solve this problem of problems. Even in the single cell it posits differences, weaker and stronger elements. The stronger overcomes the weaker and the gain is stored up in a higher potency of being, or, should the weaker still maintain its subsistence, the difference will be manifest in the further course of the struggle itself.
Now the blade of grass is not conscious of this, and the spider goes on entrapping the fly, the tiger killing the stag, and in those cases the weaker being does not account to itself for its misery. But we men are clearly conscious of these differences and by us therefore the question cannot be evaded, whether the theory of Selection be a solution calculated to conciliate the weaker, the less richly endowed creature with its existence. It will be acknowledged that in itself this theory can but incite to a more furious struggle, with a lasciate andare ogni speranzaior the weaker being. Against the ordinance of fate that the weaker shall succumb to the stronger, no struggle can avail. The reconciliation, not springing from the facts, would therefore have to spring from the idea. But what is here the idea I Is it not this, that, where these differences have once become established, and highly differentiated beings appear, this is either the result of chance, or else the necessary consequence of blind natural forces? Now, are we to believe that suffering humanity will ever become reconciled to its suffering by such a solution? Nevertheless I welcome the progress of this theory of Selection and I admire the penetration and power of thought of the men who commend it to us. Not. forsooth, on account of what it urges upon us as a truth, but because if has mustered courage to attack once more the most fundamental of all problems, and thusin point of profundity stands on a level with Calvinism.
For this is precisely the high significance of the doctrine of Election that, in this dogma, as long as three centuries ago, Calvinism dared to face this same all-dominating problem, solving it, however, not in the sense of a blind selection stirring in unconscious cells, but honouring the sovereign choice of Him Who created all things visible and invisible. The determination of the existence of all things to be created, of what is to be camellia or buttercup, nightingale or crow, hart or swine, and, equally among men, the determination of our own persons, whether one is to be born as girl or boy, rich or poor, dull or clever, or even as Abel or Cain, is the most tremendous predestination conceivable in heaven or on earth, and still we see it taking place before our eyes every day, and we ourselves are subject to it in our entire personality, and our entire existence, our very nature, our position in life being entirely dependent on it. This all-embracing predestination, the Calvinist places, not in the hand of man, and still less in the hand of a blind natural force, but in the hand of Almighty God, Sovereign Creator and Possessor of heaven and earth; and it is in the figure of the potter and the clav that Scripture has from the time of the Prophets expounded to us this all-dominating election. Election in creation, election in providence, and so election also to eternal life; election in the realm of grace as well as in the realm of nature. Now, when we compare these two systems of Selection and Election, does not history show that the doctrine of Election has century upon century, restored peace and reconciliation to the hearts of the believing sufferer, and that all Christians hold election as we do, in honor, both in creation and in providence; and that Calvinism deviates from the other Christian confessions in this respect only, that, grasping unity and placing the glory of <4od above all things, it dares to extend the mystery of election to spiritual life, and to the hope for the life to come.
This then is what Calvinistic dogmatic narrowness amounts to. Or rather, for the times are too serious for irony or jest, let every Christian, who cannot yet abandon his objections, at least put this all-important question to himself: Do and know of another solution of this fundamental world-problem enabling me better to defend my Christian faith, in this hour of sharpest conflict, against renewed Paganism collecting its forces and gaining day by day. Do not forget that the fundamental contrast has always been, is still, and will be until the end: Christianity and paganism, the idols or the living God. So far there is a deeply felt truth in the drastic picture drawn by the German emperor, representing Buddhism as the coming enemy. A closely drawn curtain hides the future, but Christ has prophesied to us on Patmos the approach of a last and bloody conflict, and even now Japan's gigantic development in less than forty years has tilled Europe with fear for what calamity might be in store for us from the cunning "yellow race" forming so large a proportion of the human family. And did not Gordon testify that his Chinese soldiers, with whom be defeated the Taipings, if only well drilled and officered, made the most splendid soldiers he ever commanded? The Asiatic question is in fact of mostserious import. The problem of the world took its rise in Asia and in Asia it will find its final solution; and, both in technical and material development, the issue has shown that heathen nations, as.soon as they awake, and arise from their lethargy, rival us almost instantly.
Of course this danger would be far less menacing in case Christendom, in both the old and the new world, stood united around the Cross, shouting songs of praise to their King and Savior, and ready as in the days of the crusades to advance to the final conflict. But how when pagan thought, pagan aspirations, pagan ideals are gaining ground even among us and penetrating the very vitals of the rising generation? Have not the Armenians, just because the conception of Christian solidarity has become so sadly weakened, been basely and cowardly abandoned to the fate of assassination? Has not the Greek been crushed by the Turk, while Gladstone, the Christian statesman, politically a Calvinist to the very core, who had the courage to brand the Sultan "Great Assassin", has departed from among us1? Accordingly radical determination must be insisted upon. Half-measures cannotguarantee the desired result. Superficiality will not brace us for the conflict. Principle must again bear witness against principle, world-view against world-view spirit against spirit. And here, let him who knows better speak, but I for one know of no stronger and no firmer bulwark than Calvinism, provided it be taken in if s sound and vigorous formation. And if you retort, half mockingly, am I really naive enough to expect from certain Calvinistic studies a reversal in the Christian world-view, then be the following my answer: the quickening of life comes not from men, it is the prerogative of God, and if is due to His sovereign will alone, if the tide of religious life rise high in one century, and run to a low ebb in the next. In the moral world, too. we have at one time, spring, when all is budding and rustling with life, and again, the cold of winter, when every vital stream congeals, and all religious energy is petrified. Now the period in which we are living at present, is surely at a low ebb religiously, and lacks the heroic spark. Unless Cod send forth his spirit, there will be no turn, and fearfully rapid will be the descent of the waters. But you remember the Aeolian Harp, which men were wont to place outside their casement, that the breeze might wake its music into life. Until the wind blew, the harp remained silent, while, on the other hand, even though the wind arose, if the harp did not lie in readiness, a rustling of the breeze might be heard, but not a single note of etherial music delighted the ear. Now, let Calvinism be nothing but such an Aeolian Harp,— absolutely powerless, as it is, without the quickening spirit of God, still we feel it our God-given duty to keep our harp, its strings tuned aright, ready in the window of God's Holy Sion, awaiting the breath of the Spirit.