principle of the Protestant church as to her creeds seems perfectly groundless; and it would be strange if it were not so; for, had such unlimited power over the three creeds really been placed in the hands of the clergy, how long a time would have elapsed before it had become too evident even to the warmest theological zeal, that this three-headed Cerberus of the church was in danger of losing entirely the two abnormal features which had so long remained her protection and her pride? However this may be, Dr. Rupp was dismissed for his temerity, and consequently seceded with a part of his congregation, and founded the first dissenting German protestant church. Its fate, however, has been unfortunate; a party of the dissentients going the lengths of Wislicenus, while Dr. Rupp himself adheres firmly to the inspired writings. A second schism has taken place, and it is at present intended by each party to raise an independent church for its own worship. Such is a brief account of the movement of the German Protestant Litchfreunde, a movement which (though from quite different reasons than our author's) it is impossible for us to contemplate with much heartfelt satisfaction. It is too clear to one who reads the writings of the chief movers, that theological rancour and an offended intellectual pride, supply far too much the place of the moral enthusiasm which can alone give these spiritual insurrections dignity, and render their results enduring. In the spirit of Uhlich alone do we see much of the moral earnestness which we desire, and that is of a far different kind from the passionate hatred of sin which in Luther was a spiritual necessity rather than the result of conscientious conviction; it is far more the active efforts of a naturally practical mind, convinced that there was good to be done, and deeply anxious to do it, but not led on by the kind of irresistible impulse or passion which alone enabled the great Reformer to throw off the authority under which Europe for centuries had groaned. Uhlich was rather fitted (as it seems to us) for an active co-operator in a great reform than for its leader. And to the whole movement we have this insuperable aversion, that it took place within the church in whose faith they no longer believed, whose doctrines and creeds were a laughing-stock to CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 36. X all. The rationalistic spirit in Germany had been growing up for more than a century within the orthodox church, and these reformers defended themselves from the imputation of dishonesty in joining and remaining in a church to which they no longer really belonged, by alleging the notorious fact that the rationalistic views were knowingly admitted into the church by those appointed to examine and ordain its clergy. This was certainly the fact; but it required the assistance of the most unpardonable falsehood to render this laxity of official strictness of any avail. The passage of the ordination service in the Prussian dominions which has reference to the faith of the new candidate runs thus: "You are accordingly enjoined, first to preach and spread no other doctrine than that which is grounded in the sincere and clear word of God, the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testament, our only rule of faith, and recorded in the three chief creeds, the Apostolic, Nicene, and Athanasian, and also such as is accordant with the spirit of our church, and to follow which you are bound." And the candidate is to be asked "if he is ready to pledge himself to all this?" on which he must answer with "yes." Now what can be thought of the moral earnestness of those who should excuse themselves from the obvious obligation that this lays upon them to resign their posts when they no longer believe this, by alleging the inconsistency of the injunctions which it comprehends, or the notorious laxity of construction with which it was taken? To the former it is enough to reply that the very assertion of inconsistency is a denial of one of the principles to which they had pledged themselves, as in the opinion of the church the doctrine of the creeds and the Scripture is identical. To the latter we might reply, that every repetition of the crime of dishonesty rendered it more and more incumbent on the sincere, to enter their protest against this unholy union of religion and sin; and that, unblest assuredly would be an agitation which had crept into the church under the disguise of a pretended faith, and then used the very enormity of the crime, the very extent of this religious imposture, as a means of obliging the more honest believers to surrender the faith of their ancestors, and allow them to keep under the sanction of law, the position they had gained by the meanest cowardice, the most wicked trifling with the first divine intuitions of conscience. It is the most startling proof of the want of real moral enthusiasm which could have alone made this movement successful or even great, that (except in the church at Köningsberg, where the minister was dismissed) no schism took place, and that while their intellect was clamouring for freedom, no conscience stirred. It is the very stamp of true reform to begin with protest against all that is morally false, to recoil from untruths which have acquired the sanction of fashion and the prescription of age; to begin by rejecting what is insincere before it advances to destroy what is untrue. He whose conscience does not shrink from the immoralities of life will have no power to overthrow its errors. The flame that has not power to dissolve the binding crust of moral insincerity will never acquire the volcanic force to explode the hard stratum of lifeless creed that time deposits round religion. Wanting the heat of moral enthusiasm, it is the mere electric light caused by the collision of authority with the restless waves of intellectual pride. And now we must draw this article to a conclusion. The sketch which is laid before us in the work which we have attempted to review, of the history and state of the German Protestant Church, has added another example to those already before us of the melancholy truth that in the noblest attempt which states have ever made, in their employment of the most powerful instrument for man's improvement, their culture of his religion, they have hitherto experienced a most remarkable and complete failure. Many who have observed this have been led hastily to conclude that under no circumstances could religious influences be encouraged by the aid of state machinery without essential detriment to the cause of truth. We cannot draw this inference. It seems to us that there is reason enough to account for the failure, in the essentially false form in which the idea of religion has been conceived in all states where the experiment has yet been tried. If it be indeed true (as we are persuaded that it is) that religion is generated not by our reason but by our affections, then what can be more mistaken than to hold up as the object which is to unite men in sympathy and incite them to beneficence, as the object in fact of their common love, the hard and repulsive image of a creed? The infinite aspirations which are longing for worship recoil back on the soul of man from the dried up thing, and the hearts of the people grow callous as they feel the inward conviction that if that assemblage of stiff verbal propositions be religion, it is better to immerse themselves in the ever-glowing interests of social life. Strange it is that amidst all the disputes as to the right creed to embody the spirit of Christianity, none should ever have thought of CHRIST. Human life once became divine that man might receive an everlasting lesson, but instead of studying that lesson aright he deprived it of its human interest by divesting it of its human form; it was abstracted and developed into systems by theologians, embodied in articles of belief by councils, and tortured into catechisms by teachers of the young! No wonder that it lost its fresh breath of inspiration. For the attempt was one to embody in a scientific system what was meant to remain the object of our love. Now affection is in its very nature unscientific; and hence the great error of confusing the regions of philosophy and religion. Affection fixes at once upon the concrete, while philosophy abstracts and classifies. And hence the great eras in religious life, which have ever been marked by the flow of new affections, have not been preceded as a cause, but followed as a consequence, by the systems of philosophy formed in a newer school. Philosophy has analysed and reviewed the changes which religious forces have effected, but never been the power which produced them. And we might have learned the same lesson from a study of the providence of God. He implanted affection in us at once, and gave us its object ready in the concrete field of the universe; philosophy was as yet only a possibility in the mind, a power to analyse, separate and again unite the causes that acted around us. What nature is to science, that is religion to theology. We look round on the wondrous beauty of the physical world, and while rejoicing in the fresh influences and radiant glory that embrace us, we feel that gladness of satisfied affection for beauty and magnificence, which the revelation of the hidden causes that philosophy brings to light can neither increase nor diminish; and so also the acute reasoning and compact consist |