Six Lectures Delivered at Princeton University, 1898 under the auspices of the L. P. Stone Foundation
Lecture 1: Calvinism as a Life System
Lecture 2: Calvinism and Religion
Lecture 3: Calvinism and Politics
Lecture 4: Calvinism and Science
Lecture 5: Calvinism and Art
Lecture 6: Calvinism and the Future
FIRST LECTURE - CALVINISM AS A LIFE SYSTEM
A TRAVELLER from the old European Continent, disembarking on the shore of this New World, feels as the Psalmist says, that “His thoughts crowd upon him like a multitude.” Compared with the eddying waters of your new stream of life, the old stream in which he was moving seems almost frostbound and dull; and here, on American ground, for the first time, he realizes how so many divine potencies, which were hidden away in the bosom of mankind from our very creation, but which our old world was incapable of developing, are now beginning to disclose their inward splendor, thus promising a still richer store of surprises for the future.
You would not, however, ask me to forget the superiority which, in many respects, the Old World may still claim, in your eyes, as well as in mine. Old Europe remains even now the bearer of a longer historical past, and therefore stands before us as a tree rooted more deeply, hiding between its leaves some more matured fruits of life. You are yet in your Springtide,–we are passing through our Fall;–and has not the harvest of Autumn an enchantment of its own?
But, though, on the other hand, I fully acknowledge the advantage you possess in the fact that (to use another simile) the train of life travels with you so immeasurably faster than with us,–leaving us miles and miles behind,–still we both feel that the life in Old Europe is not something separate from life here; it is one and the same current of human existence that flows through both Continents.
By virtue of our common origin, you may call us bone of your bone,–we feel that you are flesh of our flesh, and although you are outstripping us in the most discouraging way, you will never forget that the historic cradle of your wondrous youth stood in our old Europe, and was most gently rocked in my once mighty Fatherland.
Moreover, besides this common parentage, there is another factor which, in the face of even a wider difference, would continue to unite your interests and ours. Far more precious to us than even the development of human life, is the crown which ennobles it, and this noble crown of life for you and for me rests in the Christian name. That crown is our common heritage, It was not from Greece or Rome that the regeneration of human life came forth,–that mighty metamorphosis dates from Bethlehem and Golgotha; and if the Reformation, in a still more special sense, claims the love of our hearts, it is because it has dispelled the clouds of sacerdotalism, and has unveiled again to fullest view the glories of the Cross. But, in deadly opposition to this Christian element, against the very Christian name, and against its salutiferous influence in every sphere of life, the storm of Modernism has now arisen with violent intensity.
In 1789 the turning point was reached. Voltaire's mad cry, “Down with the scoundrel,” was aimed at Christ himself, but this cry was merely the expression of the most hidden thought from which the French Revolution sprang. The fanatic outcry of another philosopher, “We no more need a God,” and the odious shibboleth, “No God, no Master,” of the Convention;–these were the sacrilegious watchwords which at that time heralded the liberation of man as an emancipation from all Divine Authority. And if, in His impenetrable wisdom, God employed the Revolution as a means by which to overthrow the tyranny of the Bourbons, and to bring a judgment on the princes who abused His nations as their footstool, nevertheless the principle of that Revolution remains thoroughly anti-Christian, and has since spread like a cancer, dissolving and undermining all that stood firm and consistent before our Christian faith.
There is no doubt then that Christianity is imperiled by great and serious dangers. Two life systems1 are wrestling with one another, in mortal combat. Modernism is bound to build a world of its own from the data of the natural man, and to construct man himself from the data of nature; while, on the other hand, all those who reverently bend the knee to Christ and worship Him as the Son of the living God, and God himself, are bent upon saving the “Christian Heritage.” This is the struggle in Europe, this is the struggle in America, and this also. is the struggle for principles in which my own country is engaged, and in which I myself have been spending all my energy for nearly forty years.
In this struggle Apologetics have advanced us not one single step. Apologists have invariably begun by abandoning the assailed breastwork, in order to entrench themselves cowardly in a ravelin behind it.
From the first, therefore, I have always said to myself,–If the battle is to be fought with honor and with a hope of victory, then principle must be arrayed against principle; then it must be felt that in Modernism the vast energy of an all-embracing life-system assails us, then also it must be understood that we have to take our stand in a life-system of equally comprehensive and far-reaching power. And this powerful life-system is not to be invented nor formulated by ourselves, but is to be taken and applied as it presents itself in history. When thus taken, I found and confessed, and I still hold, that this manifestation of the Christian principle is given us in Calvinism. In Calvinism my heart has found rest. From Calvinism have I drawn the inspiration firmly and resolutely to take my stand in the thick of this great conflict of principles. And therefore, when I was invited most honorably by your Faculty to give the Stone-Lectures here this year, I could not hesitate a moment as to my choice of subject. Calvinism, as the only decisive, lawful, and consistent defence for Protestant nations against encroaching. and overwhelming Modernism,–this of itself was bound to be my theme.
Allow me, therefore, in six lectures, to speak to you on Calvinism. 1. On Calvinism as a Life-system; 2. On Calvinism and Religion; 3. On Calvinism and Politics; 4. On Calvinism and Science; 5. On Calvinism and Art; and 6. On Calvinism and the Future.
Clearness of presentation demands that in this first lecture I begin by fixing the conception of Calvinism historically. To prevent misunderstanding we must first know what we should not, and what we should, understand by it. Starting therefore from the current use of the term, I find that this is by no means the same in different countries and in different spheres of life. The name Calvinist is used in our times first as a sectarian name. This is not the case in Protestant, but in Roman Catholic countries, especially in Hungary and France. In Hungary the Reformed Churches have a membership of some two and a half millions, and in both the Romish and Jewish press of that country her members are constantly stigmatized by the non-offlcial name of “Calvinists,” a derisive name applied even to those who have divested themselves of all traces of sympathy with the faith of their fathers. The same phenomenon presents itself in France, especially in the Southern parts, where “Calviniste” is equally, and even more emphatically, a sectarian stigma, which does not refer to the faith or confession of the stigmatized person, but is simply put upon every member of the Reformed Churches, even though he be an atheist. George Thiebaud, known for his anti-Semitic propaganda, has at the same time revived the anti-Calvinistic spirit in France, and even in the Dreyfus-case, “Jews and Calvinists” were arraigned by him as the two anti-national forces, prejudicial to the “esprit gaulois.” Directly opposed to this is the second use of the word Calvinism, and this I call the confessional one. In this sense, a Calvinist is represented exclusively as the out-spoken subscriber to the dogma of fore-ordination. They who disapprove of this strong attachment to the doctrine of predestination cooperate with the Romish polemists, in that by calling you “Calvinist,” they represent you as a victim of dogmatic narrowness; and what is worse still, as being dangerous to the real seriousness of moral life. This is a stigma so conspicuously offensive that theologians like Hodge, who from fulness of conviction were open defenders of Predestination, and counted it an honor to be Calvinists, were nevertheless so deeply impressed with the disfavor attached to the “Calvinistic name,” that for the sake of commending their conviction, they preferred to speak rather of Augustinianism than of Calvinism. The denominational title of some Baptists and Methodists indicates a third use of the name Calvinist. No less a man than Spurgeon belonged to a class of Baptists who in England call themselves “Calvinistic Baptists,” and the Whitefield2 Methodists in Wales to this day bear the name of “Calvinistic Methodists.” Thus here also it indicates in some way a confessional difference, but is applied as the name for special church denominations. Without doubt this practice would have been most severely criticized by Calvin himself. During his life-time, no Reformed Church ever dreamed of naming the Church of Christ after any man. The Lutherans have done this, the Reformed Churches never. But beyond this sectarian, confessional, and denominational use of the name “Calvinist,” it serves moreover, in the fourth place, as a scientific name, either in a historical, philosophical or political sense. Historically, the name of Calvinism indicates the channel in which the Reformation moved, so far as it was neither Lutheran, nor Anabaptist nor Socinian. In the philosophical sense, we understand by it that system of conceptions which, under the influence of the master-mind of Calvin, raised itself to dominance in the several spheres of life. And as a political name, Calvinism indicates that political movement which has guaranteed the liberty of nations in constitutional statesmanship; first in Holland, then in England, and since the close of the last century in the United States. In this scientific sense, the name of Calvinism is especially current among German scholars. And the fact that this not only is the opinion of those who are themselves of Calvinistic sympathies, but that also scholars who have abandoned every confessional standard of Christianity, nevertheless assign this profound significance to Calvinism. This appears from the testimony borne by three of our best men of science, the first of whom, Dr. Robert Fruin, declares that: “Calvinism came into the Netherlands consisting of a logical system of divinity, of a democratic Church-order of its own, impelled by a severely moral sense, and as enthusiastic for the moral as for the religious reformation of mankind.”3 Another historian, who was even more outspoken in his rationalistic sympathies, writes: “Calvinism is the highest form of development reached by the religious and political principle in the 16th century.”4 And a third authority acknowledges that Calvinism has liberated Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England, and in the Pilgrim Fathers has provided the impulse to the prosperity of the United States.5 Similarly Bancroft, among you, acknowledged that Calvinism “has a theory of ontology, of ethics, of social happiness, and of human liberty, all derived from God.”6 Only in this last-named, strictly scientific sense do I desire to speak to you on Calvinism as an independent general tendency, which from a mother-principle of its own, has developed an independent form both for our life and for our thought among the nations of Western Europe and North America, and at present even in South Africa.
The domain of Calvinism is indeed far broader than the narrow confessional interpretation would lead us to suppose. The aversion to naming the Church after a man gave rise to the fact that though in France the Protestants were called “Huguenots,” in the Netherlands “Beggars,” in Great Britain “Puritans” and “Presbyterians,” and in North America “Pilgrim Fathers,” yet all these products of the Reformation which on your Continent and ours bore the special Reformed type, were of Calvinistic origin. But the extent of the Calvinistic domain should not be limited to these purer revelations. Nobody applies such an exclusive rule to Christianity. Within its boundaries we embrace not only Western Europe, but also Russia, the Balkan States, the Armenians, and even Menelik's empire in Abyssinia. Therefore it is but just that in the same way we should include in the Calvinistic fold those Churches also which have diverged more or less from its purer forms. In her XXXIX Articles, the Church of England is strictly Calvinistic, even though in her Hierarchy and Liturgy she has abandoned the straight paths, and has met with the serious results of this departure in Puseyism and Ritualism. The Confession of the Independents was equally Calvinistic, even though in their conception of the Church the organic structure was broken by individualism. And if under the leadership of Wesley most Methodists became opposed to the theological interpretation of Calvinism, it is nevertheless the Calvinistic spirit itself that created this spiritual reaction against the petrifying church-life of the times. In a given sense, therefore, it may be said that the entire field which in the end was covered by the Reformation, so far as it was not Lutheran and not Socinian, was dominated in principle by Calvinism. Even the Baptists applied for shelter at the tents of the Calvinists. It is the free character of Calvinism that accounts for the rise of these several shades and differences, and of the reactions against their excesses. By its hierarchy, Romanism is and remains uniform. Lutheranism owes its similar unity and uniformity to the ascendancy of the prince, whose relation to the Church is that of “summus episcopus” and to its “ecclesia docens.” Calvinism on the other hand, which sanctions no ecclesiastical hierarchy, and no magisterial interference, could not develop itself except in many and varied forms and deviations, thereby of course incurring the danger of degeneration, provoking in its turn all kinds of one-sided reactions. With the free development of life, such as was intended by Calvinism, the distinction could not fail to appear between a centre, with its fulness and purity of vitality and strength, and the broad circumference with its threatening declensions. But in that very conflict between a purer centre and a less pure circumference the steady working of its spirit was guaranteed to Calvinism.
Thus understood, Calvinism is rooted in a form of religion which was peculiarly its own, and from this specific religious consciousness there was developed first a peculiar theology, then a special church-order, and then a given form for political and social life, for the interpretation of the moral world-order, for the relation between nature and grace, between Christianity and the world, between church and state, and finally for art and science; and amid all these life-utterances it remained always the self-same Calvinism, in so far as simultaneously and spontaneously all these developments sprang from its deepest life-principle. Hence to this extent it stands in line with those other great complexes of human life, known as Paganism, Islamism and Romanism, by which we distinguish four entirely different worlds in the one collective world of human life. And if, speaking precisely, you should co-ordinate Christianity and not Calvinism with Paganism and Islamism, it is nevertheless better to place Calvinism in line with them, because Calvinism claims to embody the Christian idea more purely and accurately than could Romanism and Lutheranism. In the Greek world of Russia and the Balkan States, the national element is still dominant, and therefore the Christian faith in these countries has not yet been able to produce a form of life of its own from the root of its mystical orthodoxy. In Lutheran countries, the interference of the magistrate has prevented the free working of the spiritual principle. Hence of Romanism only can it be said that it has embodied its life-thought in a world of conceptions and utterances entirely its own. But by the side of Romanism, and in opposition to it, Calvinism made its appearance, not merely to create a different Church-form, but an entirely different form for human life, to furnish human society with a different method of existence, and to populate the world of the human heart with different ideals and conceptions.
That this had not been realized until our time, and is now acknowledged by friend and enemy in consequence of a better study of history, should not surprise us. This would not have been the case, if Calvinism had entered life as a well constructed system, and had presented itself as an outcome of study. But its origin came about in an entirely different way. In the order of existence, life is first. And to Calvinism life itself was ever the first object of its endeavors. There was too much to do and to suffer to devote much time to study. What was dominant was Calvinistic practice at the stake and in the field of battle. Moreover the nations among whom Calvinism gained the day–such as the Swiss, the Dutch, the English and the Scotch–were by nature not very philosophically predisposed. Especially at that time, life among those nations was spontaneous and void of calculation; and only later on has Calvinism in its parts become a subject of that special study by which historians and theologians have traced the relation between Calvinistic phenomena and the all-embracing unity of its principle. It can even be said that the need of a theoretical and systematical study of so incisive and comprehensive a phenomenon of life only arises when its first vitality has been exhausted, and when for the sake of maintaining itself in the future, it is compelled to greater accuracy in the drawing of its boundary lines. And if to this you add the fact that the stress of reflecting our existence as a unity in the mirror of our consciousness is far stronger in our philosophical age than it ever was before, it is readily seen that both the needs of the present, and the care for the future, compel us to a deeper study of Calvinism. In the Roman Catholic Church everybody knows what he lives for, because with clear consciousness he enjoys the fruits of Rome's unity of life-system. Even in Islam you find the same power of a conviction of life dominated by one principle. Protestantism alone wanders about in the wilderness without aim or direction, moving hither and thither, without making any progress. This accounts for the fact that among Protestant nations Pantheism, born from the new German Philosophy and owing its concrete evolution-form to Darwin, claims for itself more and more the supremacy in every sphere of human life, even in that of theology, and under all sorts of names tries to overthrow our Christian traditions, and is bent even upon exchanging the heritage of our fathers for a hopeless modern Buddhism. The leading thoughts that had their rise in the French Revolution at the close of the last, and in German philosophy in the course of the present century, form together a life-system which is diametrically opposed to that of our fathers. Their struggles were for the sake of the glory of God and a purified Christianity; the present movement wages war for the sake of the glory of man, being inspired not by the humble mind of Golgotha but by the pride of Hero-worship. And why did we, Christians, stand so weak, in the face of this Modernism? Why did we constantly lose ground? Simply because we were devoid of an equal unity of life-conception, such as alone could enable us with irresistible energy to repel the enemy at the frontier. This unity of life-conception, however, is never to be found in a vague conception of Protestantism winding itself as it does in all kind of tortuosities, but you do find it in that mighty historic process, which as Calvinism dug a channel of its own for the powerful stream of its life. By this unity of conception alone as given in Calvinism, you in America and we in Europe might he enabled once more to take our stand, by the side of Romanism, in opposition to modern Pantheism. Without this unity of starting point and life-system we must lose the power to maintain our independent position, and our strength for resistance must ebb away.
The supreme interest here at stake, however, forbids our accepting without more positive proof the fact that Calvinism really provides us with such an unity of life-system and we demand proofs of the assertion that Calvinism is not a partial, nor was a merely temporary phenomenon, but is such an all-embracing system of principles, as, rooted in the past, is able to strengthen us in the present and to fill us with confidence for the future. Hence we must first ask what are the required conditions for such general systems of life, as Paganism, Islamism, Romanism and Modernism, and then show that Calvinism really fulfills these conditions.
These conditions demand in the first place, that from a special principle a peculiar insight be obtained into the three fundamental relations of all human life: viz., ( I ) our relation to God, (2) our relation to man, and (3) our relation to the world.
Hence the first claim demands that such a life system shall find its starting-point in a special interpretation of our relation to God. This is not accidental, but imperative. If such an action is to put its stamp upon our entire life, it must start from that point in our consciousness in which our life is still undivided and lies comprehended in its unity,–not in the spreading vines but in the root from which the vines spring. This point, of course, lies in the antithesis between all that is finite in our human life and the infinite that lies beyond it. Here alone we find the common source from which the different streams of our human life spring and separate themselves. Personally it is our repeated experience that in the depths of our hearts, at the point where we disclose ourselves to the Eternal One, all the rays of our life converge as in one focus, and there alone regain that harmony which we so often and so painfully lose in the stress of daily duty. In prayer lies not only our unity with God, but also the unity of our personal life. Movements in history, therefore, which do not spring from this deepest source are always partial and transient, and only those historical acts which arose from these lowest depths of man's personal existence embrace the whole of life and possess the required permanence.
This was the case with Paganism, which in its most general form is known by the fact that it surmises, assumes and worships God in the creature. This applies to the lowest Animism, as well as to the highest Buddhism. Paganism does not rise to the conception of the independent existence of a God beyond and above the creature. But even in this imperfect form it has for its starting-point a definite interpretation of the relation of the infinite to the finite, and to this it owed its power to produce a finished form for human society. Simply because it possessed this significant starting-point was it able to produce a form of its own for the whole of human life. It is the same with Islamism, which is characterized by its purely anti-pagan ideal, cutting off all contact between the creature and God. Mohammed and the Koran are the historic names, but in its nature the Crescent is the only absolute antithesis to Paganism. Islam isolates God from the creature, in order to avoid all commingling with the creature. As antipode, Islam was possessed of an equally far-reaching tendency, and was also able to originate an entirely peculiar world of human life. The same is the case with Romanism. Here also the papal tiara,7 the hierarchy, the mass, etc., are but the outcome of one fundamental thought: viz., that God enters into fellowship with the creature by means of a mystic middle-link, which is the Church;–not taken as a mystic organism. but as a visible, palpable and tangible institution. Here the Church stands between God and the world, and so far as it was able to adopt the world and to inspire it, Romanism also created a form of its own for human society. And now, by the side of and opposite to these three, Calvinism takes its stand with a fundamental thought which is equally profound. It does not seek God in the creature, as Paganism; it does not isolate God from the creature, as Islamism; it posits no mediate communion between God and the creature. as does Romanism; but proclaims the exalted thought that, although standing in high majesty above the creature, God enters into immediate fellowship with the creature, as God the Holy Spirit. This is even the heart and kernel of the Calvinistic confession of predestination. There is communion with God, but only in entire accord with his counsel of peace from all eternity. Thus there is no grace but such as comes to us immediately from God. At every moment of our existence, our entire spiritual life rests in God Himself. The “Deo Soli Gloria” was not the starting-point but the result, and predestination was inexorably maintained, not for the sake of separating man from man, nor in the interest of personal pride, but in order to guarantee from eternity to eternity, to our inner self, a direct and immediate communion with the Living God. The opposition against Rome aimed therefore with the Calvinist first of all at the dismissal of a Church which placed itself between the soul and God. The Church consisted not in an office, nor in an independent institute, the believers themselves were the Church, inasmuch as by faith they stood in touch with the Almighty. Thus, as in Paganism, Islamism and Romanism, so also in Calvinism is found that proper, definite interpretation of the fundamental relation of man to God, which is required as the first condition of a real life-system.
Meanwhile I anticipate two objections. In the first place, it may be asked whether I do not claim honors for Calvinism which belong to Protestantism in general. To this I reply in the negative. When I claim for Calvinism the honor of having re-established the direct fellowship with God, I do not undervalue the general significance of Protestantism. In the Protestant domain, taken in the historic sense, Lutheranism alone stands by the side of Calvinism. Now I wish to be second to none in my praises of Luther's heroic initiative. In his heart, rather than in the heart of Calvin, was the bitter conflict fought which led to the world historic breach. Luther can be interpreted without Calvin, but not Calvin without Luther. To a great extent Calvin entered upon the harvest of what the hero of Wittenberg had sown in and outside Germany. But when the question is put, Who had the clearest insight into the reformatory principle, worked it out most fully, and applied it most broadly, history points to the Thinker of Geneva and not to the Hero of Wittenberg. Luther as well as Calvin contended for a direct fellowship with God, but Luther took it up from its subjective, anthropological side, and not from its objective, cosmological side as Calvin did. Luther's starting-point was the special-soteriological principle of a justifying faith; while Calvin's extending far wider, lay in the general cosmological principle of the sovereignty of God. As a natural result of this, Luther also continued to consider the Church as the representative and authoritative “teacher,” standing between God and the believer, while Calvin was the first to seek the Church in the believers themselves. As far as he was able, Luther still leaned upon the Romish view of the sacraments, and upon the Romish cultus, while Calvin was the first in both to draw the line which extended immediately from God to man and from man to God. Moreover, in all Lutheran countries the Reformation originated from the princes rather than from the people, and thereby passed under the power of the magistrate, who took his stand in the Church officially as her highest Bishop, and therefore was unable to change either the social or the political life in accordance with its principle. Lutheranism restricted itself to au exclusively ecclesiastical and theological character, while Calvinism put its impress in and outside the Church upon every department of human life. Hence Lutheranism is nowhere spoken of as the creator of a peculiar life-form; even the name of “Lutheranism” is hardly ever mentioned; while the students of history with increasing unanimity recognize Calvinism as the creator of a world of human life entirely its own.
The second objection we have to meet is this: If it is true that every general development form of life must find its starting point in a peculiar interpretation of our relation to God,–how then do you explain the fact that Modernism also has led to such a general conception, notwithstanding it sprang from the French Revolution, which on principle broke with all religion. The question answers itself. If you exclude from your couceptions all reckoning with the Living God just as is implied in the cry, “no God no master,” you certainly bring to the front a sharply defined interpretation of your own for our relation to God. A government, as you yourselves experienced of late in the case of Spun, that recalls its ambassador and breaks every regular intercourse with another power, declares thereby that its relation to the government of that country is a strained relation which generally ends in war. This is the case here. The leaders of the French Revolution, not being acquainted with any relation to God except that which existed through the mediation of the Romish Church, annihilated all relation to God, because they wished to annihilate the power of the Church; and as a result of this they declared war against every religious confession. But this of course very really implied a fundamental and special interpretation of our relation to God. It was the declaration that henceforth God was to be considered as a hostile power, yea even as dead, if not yet to the heart, at least to the state, to society and to science. To be sure, in passing from French into German hands, Modernism could not rest content with such a bare negation; but the result shows how from that moment it clothed itself in either pantheism or agnosticism, and under each disguise it maintained the expulsion of God from practical and theoretical life, and the enmity against the Triune God had its full course.
Thus I maintain that it is the interpretation of our relation to God which dominates every general life system, and that for us this conception is given in Calvinism, thanks to its fundamental interpretation of an immediate fellowship of God with man and of man with God. To this I add that Calvinism has neither invented nor conceived this fundamental interpretation, but that God Himself implanted it in the hearts of its heroes and its heralds. We face here no product of a clever intellectualism, but the fruit of a work of God in the heart, or, if you like, an inspiration of history. This point should be emphasized! Calvinism has never burned its incense upon the altar of genius, it has erected no monument for its heroes, it scarcely calls them by name. One stone only in a wall at Geneva remains to remind one of Calvin. His very grave has been forgotten. Was this ingratitude? By no means. But if Calvin was appreciated, even in the 16th and 17th centuries the impression was vivid that it was One greater than Calvin. even God Himself, who had wrought here His work. Hence, no general movement in life is so devoid of deliberate compact, none so unconventional in which it spread as this. Simultaneously. Calvinism had its rise in all the countries of Western Europe, and it did not appear, among those nations. because the University was in its van, or because scholars led the people, or because a magistrate placed himself at their head: but it sprang from the hearts of the people themselves, with weavers and farmers, with tradesmen and servants, with women and young maidens; and in every instance it exhibited the same characteristic: viz., strong Assurance of eternal Salvation, not only without the intervention of the Church, but even in opposition to the Church. The human heart had attained unto eternal peace with its God: strengthened by this Divine fellowship, it discovered its high and holy calling to consecrate every department of life and every energy at its disposal to the glory of God: and therefore, when those men or women, who had become partakers of this Divine life, were forced to abandon their faith, it proved impossible, that they could deny their Lord; and thousands and tens of thousands burned at the stake, not complaining but exulting, with thanksgiving in their hearts and psalms upon their lips. Calvin was not the author of this, but God who through His Holy Spirit had wrought in Calvin that which He had wrought in them. Calvin stood not above them, but as a brother by their side, a sharer with them of God's blessing. In this way, Calvinism came to its fundamental interpretation of an immediate fellowship with God, not because Calvin invented it, but because in this immediate fellowship God Himself had granted to our fathers a privilege of which Calvin was only the first to become clearly conscious. This is the great work of the Holy Spirit in history, by which Calvinism has been consecrated, and which interprets to us its wondrous energy.
There are times in history when the pulse of religious life beats faintly; but there are times when its beat is pounding, and the latter was the case in the 16th century among the nations of Western Europe. The question of faith at that time dominated every activity in public life. New history starts out from this faith, even as the history of our times starts from the unbelief of the French Revolution. What law this pulse-like movement of religious life obeys, we cannot tell, but it is evident that there is such a law, and that in times of high religious tension the inworking of the Holy Spirit upon the heart is irresistible; and this mighty inworking of God was the experience of our Calvinists, Puritans and Pilgrim Fathers. It was not in all individuals to the same degree, for this never happens in any great movement; but they who formed the centre of life in those times, who were the promoters of that mighty change, they experienced this higher power to the fullest: and they were the men and women of every class of society and nationality who by God Himself were admitted into communion with the majesty of His eternal Being. Thanks to this work of God in the heart, the persuasion that the whole of a man's life is to be lived as in the Divine Presence has become the fundamental thought of Calvinism. By this decisive idea, or rather by this mighty fact, it has allowed itself to be controlled in every department of its entire domain. It is from this mother-thought that the all embracing life system of Calvinism sprang.
This brings us of itself to the second condition, with which, for the sake of creating a life system every profound movement has to comply: viz., a fundamental interpretation of its own touching the relation of man to man. How we stand toward God is the first, and how we stand toward man is the second principal question which decides the tendency and the construction of our life. There is no uniformity among men, but endless multiformity. In creation itself the difference has been established between woman and man. Physical and spiritual gifts and talents cause one person to differ from the other. Past generations and our own personal life create distinctions. The social position of the rich and poor differs widely. Now, these differences are in a special way weakened or accentuated by every consistent life system, and Paganism and Islamism, Romanism as well as Modernism, and so also Calvinism have all taken their stand in this question in accordance with their primordial principle. If, as Paganism contends, God dwells in the creature, a divine superiority is exhibited in whatever is high among men. In this way it obtained its demigods, hero-worship, and finally its sacrifices upon the altar of Divus Augustus. On the other hand, whatever is lower is considered as godless, and therefore gives rise to the systems of caste in India and in Egypt, and to slavery everywhere else, thereby placing one man under a base subjection to his fellowman. Under Islamism, which dreams of its paradise of houries,8 sensuality usurps public authority, and the woman is the slave of man, even as the kafir9 is the slave of the Moslim. Romanism, taking root in Christian soil, overcomes the absolute character of distinction, and renders it relative, in order to interpret every relation of man to man hierarchically. There is a hierarchy among the angels of God, a hierarchy in God's Church, and so also a hierarchy among men, leading to an entirely aristocratic interpretation of life as the embodiment of the ideal. Finally Modernism, which denies and abolishes every difference, cannot rest until it has made woman man and man woman, and, putting every distinction on a common level, kills life by placing it under the ban of uniformity. One type must answer for all, one uniform, one position and one and the same development of life; and whatever goes beyond and above it, is looked upon as an insult to the common consciousness. In the same way Calvinism has derived from its fundamental relation to God a peculiar interpretation of man's relation to man, and it is this only true relation which since the 16th century has ennobled social life, If Calvinism places our entire human life immediately before God, then it follows that all men or women, rich or poor, weak or strong, dull or talented, as creatures of God, and as lost sinners, have no claim whatsoever to lord over one another, and that we stand as equals before God, and consequently equal as man to man. Hence we cannot recognize any distinction among men, save such as has been imposed by God Himself, in that He gave one authority over the other, or enriched one with more talents than the other, in order that the man of more talents should serve the man with less, and in him serve his God. Hence Calvinism condemns not merely all open slavery and systems of caste, but also all covert slavery of woman and of the poor; it is opposed to all hierarchy among men; it tolerates no aristocracy save such as is able, either in person or in family, by the grace of God, to exhibit superiority of character or talent, and to show that it does not claim this superiority for self-aggrandizement or ambitious pride, but for the sake of spending it in the service of God. So Calvinism was bound to find its utterance in the democratic interpretation of life; to proclaim the liberty of nations; and not to rest until both politically and socially every man, simply because he is man, should be recognized, respected and dealt with as a creature created after the Divine likeness.
This was no outcome of envy. It was not the man of lower estate who reduced his superior to his level in order to usurp the higher place, but it was all men kneeling in concert at the feet of the Holy One of Israel. This accounts for the fact that Calvinism made no sudden break with the past. Even as in its early stage Christianity did not abolish slavery, but undermined it by a moral judgment, so Calvinism allowed the provisional continuance of the conditions of hierarchy and aristocracy as traditions belonging to the Middle Ages. It was not charged against William of Orange that he was a prince of royal lineage; he was the more honored for it. But inwardly Calvinism has modified the structure of society, not by the envying of classes, nor by an undue esteem for the possessions of the rich, but by a more serious interpretation of life. By better labor and a higher development of character the middle and working classes have provoked the nobility and the wealthier citizens to jealousy. First looking to God, and then to one's neighbor was the impulse, the mind and the spiritual custom to which Calvinism gave entrance. And from this holy fear of God and this united stand before the face of God a holier democratic idea has developed itself, and has continually gained ground. This result has been brought about by nothing Egmont so much as by fellowship in suffering. When, though loyal to the Romish faith, the dukes of Egmont and Hoorn ascended the same scaffold on which, for the sake of a nobler faith, the working-man and the weaver had been executed, the reconciliation between the classes received its sanction in that bitter death. By his bloody persecutions, Alva the Aristocrat advanced the prosperous development of the spirit of Democracy. To have placed man on a footing of equality with man, so far as the purely human interests are concerned, is the immortal glory which incontestably belongs to Calvinism. The difference between it and the wild dream of equality of the French Revolution is that while in Paris it was one action in concert against God, here all, rich and poor, were on their knees before God, consumed with a common zeal for the glory of His Name.
The third fundamental relation which decides the interpretation of life is the relation which you bear to the world. As previously stated, there are three principal elements with which you come into touch: viz., God, man and the world. The relation to God and to man into which Calvinism places you being thus reviewed, the third and last fundamental relation is in order: viz., your attitude toward the world. Of Paganism it can be said in general, that it places too high an estimate upon the world, and therefore to some extent it both stands in fear of, and loses itself in it. On the other hand Islamism places too low an estimate upon the world, makes sport of it and triumphs over it in reaching after the visionary world of a sensual paradise. For the purpose in view however we need say no more of either, since both for Christian Europe and America the antithesis between man and the world has assumed the narrower form of the antithesis between the world and the Christian circles. The traditions of the Middle Ages gave rise to this. Under the hierarchy of Rome the Church and the World were placed over against each other, the one as being sanctified and the other as being still under the curse. Everything outside the Church was under the influence of demons, and exorcism banished this demoniacal power from everything that came under the protection, influence and inspiration of the Church. Hence in a Christian country the entire social life was to be covered by the wings of the Church. The magistrate had to be anointed and confessionally bound; art and science had to be placed under ecclesiastical encouragement and censure; trade and commerce had to be bound to the Church by the tie of guilds; and from the cradle to the grave, family life was to be placed under ecclesiastical guardianship. This was a gigantic effort to claim the entire world for Christ, but one which of necessity brought with it the severest judgment upon every life-tendency which either as heretical or as demoniacal withdrew itself from the blessing of the Church. Hence the stake was fit alike for witch and heretic, for in principle both lay under the same ban. And this deadening theory was carried out with iron logic, not from cruelty, nor from any low ambition, but from the lofty purpose of saving the christianized world, i.e., the world as overshadowed by the Church. Escape from the world was the counterpoise in monastic and partly even in clerical orders, which emphasized holiness in the centre of the Church in order to wink the more lightly at worldly excesses without. As a natural result the world corrupted the Church, and by its dominion over the world the Church proved an obstacle to every free development of its life.
Thus making its appearance in a dualistic social state, Calvinism has wrought an entire change in the world of thoughts and conceptions. In this also, placing itself before the face of God, it has not only honored man for the sake of his likeness to the Divine image, but also the world as a Divine creation, and has at once placed to the front the great principle that there is a particular grace which works Salvation, and also a common grace by which God, maintaining the life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it, arrests its process of corruption, and thus allows the untrammelled development of our life in which to glorify Himself as Creator.10 Thus the Church receded in order to be neither more nor less than the congregation of believers, and in every department the life of the world was not emancipated from God, but from the dominion of the Church. Thus domestic life regained its independence, trade and commerce realized their strength in liberty, art and science were set free from every ecclesiastical bond and restored to their own inspirations, and man began to understand the subjection of all nature with its hidden forces and treasures to himself as a holy duty, imposed upon him by the original ordinances of Paradise: “Have dominion over them.” Henceforth the curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life. To praise God in the Church and serve Him in the world became the inspiring impulse, and, in the Church, strength was to be gathered by which to resist temptation and sin in the world. Thus puritanic sobriety went hand in hand with the reconquest of the entire life of the world, and Calvinism gave the impulse to that new development which dared to face the world with the Roman thought: nil humanum a me alienum puto, although never allowing itself to be intoxicated by its poisonous cup.
Especially in its antithesis to Anabaptism Calvinism exhibits itself in bold relief. For Anabaptism adopted the opposite method, and in its effort to evade the world it confirmed the monastic starting-point, generalizing and making it a rule for all believers, It was not from Calvinism, but from this anabaptistic principle, that Akosmism had its rise among so many Protestants in Western Europe. In fact, Anabaptism adopted the Romish theory, with this difference: that it placed the kingdom of God in the room of the Church, and abandoned the distinction between the two moral standards, one for the clergy and the other for the laity. For the rest the Anabaptist's standpoint was: ( I ) that the unbaptized world was under the curse, for which reason he withdrew from all civil institutions; and (2) that the circle of baptized believers–with Rome the Church, but with him the kingdom of God–was in duty bound to take all civil life under its guardianship and to remodel it; and so John of Leyden violently established his shameless power at Munster as King of the New Zion, and his devotees ran naked through the streets of Amsterdam.11 Hence, on the same grounds on which Calvinism rejected Rome's theory concerning the world, it rejected the theory of the Anabaptist, and proclaimed that the Church must withdraw again within its spiritual domain, and that in the world we should realize the potencies of God's common grace.
Thus it is shown that Calvinism has a sharply-defined starting-point of its own for the three fundamental relations of all human existence: viz., our relation to God, to man and to the world. For our relation to God: an immediate fellowship of man with the Eternal, independently of priest or church. For the relation of man to man: the recognition in each person of human worth, which is his by virtue of his creation after the Divine likeness, and therefore of the equality of all men before God and his magistrate. And for our relation to the world: the recognition that in the whole world the curse is restrained by grace, that the life of the world is to be honored in its independence, and that we must, in every domain, discover the treasures and develop the potencies hidden by God in nature and in human life. This justifies us fully in our statement that Calvinism duly answers the three above-named conditions, and thus is incontestably entitled to take its stand by the side of Paganism, Islamism, Romanism and Modernism, and to claim for itself the glory of possessing a well-defined principle and an all-embracing life-system.
But even this is not all. The fact that in a given circle Calvinism has formed an interpretation of life quite its own, from which both in the spiritual and secular domain a special system arose for domestic and social life, justifies its claim to assert itself as an independent formation. But it does not yet credit it with the honor of having led humanity, as such, up to a higher stage in its development, and therefore this life-system has not, so far as we have yet considered it, attained that position which alone could give it the right to claim for itself the energy and devotion of our hearts. In China it can be asserted with equal right that Confucianism has produced a form of its own for life in a given circle, and with the Mongolian race that form of life rests upon a theory of its own. But what has China done for humanity in general, and for the steady development of our race? Even so far as the waters of its life were clear, they formed nothing but an isolated lake. Almost the same remark applies to the high development which was once the boast of India and to the state of things in Mexico and Peru in the days of Montezuma and the Incas. In all these regions the people attained a high degree of development, but stopped there, and, remaining isolated, in no way proved a benefit to humanity at large. This applies more strongly still to the life of the colored races on the coast and in the interior of Africa a far lower form of existence, reminding us not even of a lake but rather of pools and marshes. There is but one world-stream, broad and fresh, which from the beginning bore the promise of the future. This stream had its rise in Middle Asia and the Levant, and has steadily continued its course from East to West. From Western Europe it has passed on to your Eastern States, and from thence to California. The sources of this stream of development are found in Babylon and in the valley of the Nile. From thence it flowed on to Greece. From Greece it passed on to the Roman Empire. From the Romanic nations it continued its way to the Northwestern parts of Europe, and from Holland and England it reached at length your continent. At present that stream is at a standstill. Its Western course through China and Japan is impeded; meanwhile no one can tell what forces for the future may yet lie slumbering in the Slavic races which have thus far failed of progress. But while this secret of the future is still veiled in mystery, the course of this world-stream from East to West can be denied by none. And therefore I am justified in saying that Paganism, Islamism and Romanism are the three successive formations which this development had reached, when its further direction passed over into the hands of Calvinism; and that Calvinism in turn is now denied this leading influence by Modernism, the daughter of the French Revolution.
The succession of these four phases of development did not take place mechanically, with sharply outlined divisions and parts. This development of life is organic, and therefore each new period roots in the past. In its deepest logic Calvinism had already been apprehended by Augustine; had, long before Augustine, been proclaimed to the City of the seven hills by the Apostle in his Epistle to the Romans; and from Paul goes back to Israel and its prophets, yea to the tents of the patriarchs. Romanism likewise does not make its appearance suddenly, but is the world organization product of the three potencies of Israel's priesthood, the cross of Calvary, and the world organization of the Roman Empire. Islam in the same way joins itself to Israel's Monism, to the Prophet of Nazareth, and to the tradition of the Koraishites. And even the Paganism of Babylon and Egypt on the one hand, and of Greece and Rome upon the other, stand organically related to what lay behind these nations, preceding the prosperity of their lives. But even so, it is as clear as day that the supreme force in the central development of the human race moved along successively from Babylon and Egypt to Greece and Rome, then to the chief regions of the Papal dominion, and finally to the Calvinistic nations of Western Europe. If Israel flourished in the days of Babylon and Egypt, however high its standard, the direction and the development of our human race was not in the hands of the sons of Abraham but in those of the Belshassars and the Pharaohs. Again, this leadership does not pass from Babylon and Egypt on to Israel but to Greece and Rome. However high the stream of Christianity had risen when Islam made its appearance, in the 8th and 9th centuries the followers of Mahomet were our teachers and with them rested the issue of the world. And though the hegemony of Romanism still maintained itself for a short time after the peace of Munster, no one questions the fact that the higher development, which we are now enjoying, we owe neither to Spain nor to Austria, nor even to the Germany of that time, but to the Calvinistic countries of the Netherlands and to England of the 16th century. Under Louis XIV, Romanism arrested this higher development in France, but only that in the French Revolution it might exhibit a ghastly caricature of Calvinism, which in its sad consequences broke the inner strength of France as a nation, and weakened its international significance. The fundamental idea of Calvin has been transplanted from Holland and England to America, thus driving our higher development ever more Westward, until on the shores of the Pacific it now reverently awaits whatsoever God has ordained. But no matter what mysteries the future may yet have to disclose, the fact remains that the broad stream of the development of our race runs from Babylon to San Francisco, through the five stadia of Babylonian-Egyptian, Greek-Roman, Islamitic, Romanistic and Calvinistic civilization, and the present conflict in Europe as well as in America finds its man cause in the fundamental antithesis between the energy of Calvinism which proceeded from the throne of God, found the source of its power in the Word of God, and in every sphere of human life exalted the glory of God, and its caricature in the French Revolution, which proclaimed its unbelief in the cry of, “No God no master”; and which presently in the form of German Pantheism is reducing itself more and more to a modern Paganism.
Thus notice I was not too bold when I claimed for Calvinism the honor of being neither an ecclesiastical, nor a theological, nor a sectarian conception, but one of the principal phases in the general development of our human race; and among these the youngest, whose high calling still is to influence the further course of human life. Just now, however, allow me to indicate another circumstance, which strengthens my principal statement, viz., the commingling of blood as, thus far, the physical basis of all higher human development. From the high-lands of Asia our human race came down in groups, and these in turn have been divided into races and nations; and in entire conformity to the prophetic blessing of Noah the children of Shem and of Japheth have been the sole bearers of the development of the race. No impulse for any higher life has ever gone forth from the third group. With the two other groups a twofold phenomenon presents itself. There are tubal nations which have isolated themselves and others which have intermingled. Thus on the one hand there are groups which have dominated exclusively their own inherent forces, and on the other hand groups which by commingling have crossed their traits with those of other tribes, and thus have attained a higher perfection It is noteworthy that the process of human development steadily proceeds with those groups whose historic characteristic is not isolation but the commingling of blood. On the whole the Mongolian race has held itself apart, and in its isolation has bestowed no benefits upon our race at large. Behind the Himalayas a similar life secluded itself, and hence failed to impart any permanent impulse to the outside world. Even in Europe we find that with the Scandinavians and Slavs there was hardly any intermingling of blood, and, consequently having failed to develop a richer type, they have taken little part in the general development of human life. On the other hand, the tablets from Babylon in our great Museums by the two languages of their inscriptions still show that in Mesopotamia the Aryan12 element of the Accadians13 mingled itself at an early period with the Semitic-Babylonian; and Egyptology leads us to conclude that in the land of the Pharaohs we deal from the beginning with a population produced by the mingling of two very different tribes. No one believes any longer the pretended race-unity of the Greeks. In Greece as well as in Italy we deal with races of a later date who have intermingled with the earlier Pelasgians, Etruscians and others. Islam seems to be exclusively Arabic, but a study of the spread of Islamism among the Moors, Persians, Turks and other series of subjected tribes, with whom intermarriage was common, at once reveals the fact that especially with Mahometans the commingling of blood was even greater than with their predecessors. When the leadership of the world passed into the hands of the Romanic nations, the same phenomenon presented itself in Italy, Spain, Portugal and France In these cases the Aborigines were generally Basques or Celts,14 the Celts in turn being overcome by the Germanic tribes, and even as in Italy the East Goths and Lombards, so in Spain the West Goths, in Portugal the Swabians, and in France the Franks instilled new blood into debilitated veins, and to this wonderful rejuvenescence the Roman nations owed their vigor until far into the 16th century. Thus in the life of nations the same phenomenon repeats itself which so often strikes the historian as a result of international marriages among princely families, as we see how the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons, the Oranges and the Hohenzollern, for instance, have been, century after century, productive of a host of most remarkable statesmen and heroes. The raiser of stock has aimed at the same effect in the crossing of different breeds, and botanists harvest large profits by obeying the same law of life with plants; and by itself it is not difficult to perceive that the union of natural powers, divided among different tribes, must be productive of a higher development. To this it should be added that the history of our race does not aim at the improvement of any single tribe, but at the development of mankind taken as a whole, and therefore needs this commingling of blood in order to attain its end. Now in fact history shows that the nations among whom Calvinism flourished most widely exhibit in every way this same mingling of races. In Switzerland, the Germans, united with Italians and French; in France, the Gauls, with Franks and Burgundians; in the Lowlands, Celts and Welsh15 with Germans; also in England the old Celts and Anglo Saxons were afterwards raised to a still higher standard of national life by the invasion of the Normans. Indeed it may be said that the three principal tribes of Western Europe, the Celtic, Romanic and Germanic elements under the leadership of the Germanic, give us the genealogy of the Calvinistic nations. In America, where Calvinism has come to unfold itself in a still higher liberty, this commingling of blood is assuming a larger proportion than has ever yet been known. Here the blood flows together from all the tribes of the ancient world, and again we have the Celts from Ireland, the Germans from Germany and Scandinavia, united to the Slavs from Russia and Poland, who promote still further this already vigorous intermingling of the races. This latter process takes place under the higher exponent that it is not merely the union of tribe with tribe, but that the old historic nations are dissolving themselves in order to allow the re-union of their members in one higher unity, hitherto constantly assimilated by the American type. In this respect also Calvinism fully meets the conditions imposed on every new phase of development in the life of humanity. It spread itself in a domain where it found the commingling of blood stronger than under Romanism, and in America raised this to its highest conceivable realization.
Thus it is shown that Calvinism meets not only the necessary condition of the mingling of blood, but that in the process of human development it also represents, with respect to this, a further stadium. In Babylon this commingling of blood was of small significance; it gains in importance with the Greeks and Romans; it goes further under Islamism; is dominant under Romanism; but only among Calvinistic nations does it reach its highest perfection. Here in America it is achieving the intermingling of all the nations of the old world. A similar climax of this process of human development is also exhibited by Calvinism in the fact that only under the influence of Calvinism does the impulse of public activity proceed from the people themselves. In the life of the nations also there is development from the underage period to that of maturity. As in the family-life, during the years of childhood, the direction of affairs is in the hands of the parents, so also in the life of the nations it is but natural that during their under-age period first the Asiatic despot, then some eminent ruler, afterwards the priesthood, and finally both priest and magistrate together should stand at the head of every movement. The history of the nations in Babylon and under the Pharaohs, in Greece and Rome, under Islamism and under the papal system, fully confirms this course of development. But it is self-evident that this could not be a permanent state of things. Just because in their progressive development the nations finally came of age, they must at length reach that stadium in which the people itself awoke, stood up for their rights, and originated the movement that was to direct the course of future events; and in the rise of Calvinism this stadium appears to have been reached. Thus far every forward movement had gone forth from the authorities in State, Church or Science, and from thence had descended to the people. In Calvinism, on the other hand, the peoples themselves stand out in their broad ranks and form a spontaneity of their own, press forward to a higher form of social life and conditions. Calvinism had its rise with the people. In Lutheran countries the magistrate was still the leader in public advances, but in Switzerland, among the Huguenots, in Belgium, in the Netherlands, in Scotland and also in America the peoples themselves created the impetus. They seemed to have matured; to have reached the period in which they were of age. Even when in some cases, as in the Netherlands, the nobility for a moment took a heroic stand for the oppressed, their activity ended in nothing, and the people alone, by undaunted energy, broke the barrier, and among these it was the “common folk”, to whose heroic initiative William the Silent, as he himself acknowledges, owed the success of his undertaking.
Hence, as a central phenomenon in the development of humanity, Calvinism is not only entitled to an honorable position by the side of Paganistic, Islamistic and Romanistic forms, since like these it represents a peculiar principle dominating the whole of life, but it also meets every required condition for the advancement of human development to a higher stage. And yet this would remain a bare possibility without any corresponding reality, if history did not testify that Calvinism has actually caused the stream of human life to flow in another channel, and has ennobled the social life of the nations. And therefore in closing I assert that Calvinism not only held out these possibilities but has also understood how to realize them. To prove this, just ask yourselves what would have become of Europe and America, if in the 16th century the star of Calvinism had not suddenly arisen on the horizon of Western Europe. In that case Spain would have crushed the Netherlands. In England and Scotland the Stuarts would have carried out their fatal plans. In Switzerland the spirit of halfheartedness would have gained the day. The beginnings of life in this new world would have been of an entirely different character. And as an unavoidable sequence, the balance of power in Europe would have returned to its former position. Protestantism would not have been able to maintain itself in politics. No further resistance could have been offered to the Romish-conservative power of the Hapsburgs, the Bourbons and the Stuarts; and the free development of the nations, as seen in Europe and America, would simply have been prevented. The whole American continent would have remained subject to Spain. The history of both continents would have become a most mournful one, and it ever remains a question whether the spirit of the Leipzig Interim16 would not have succeeded, by way of a Romanized Protestantism, in reducing Northern Europe again to the sway of the old Hierarchy. The enthusiastic devotion of the best historians of the second half of this century to the struggle of the Netherlands against Spain, as one of the finest subjects of investigation, only explains itself by the conviction that if the power of Spain at that time had not been broken by the heroism of the Calvinistic spirit, the history of the Netherlands, of Europe and of the world would have been as painfully sad and dark as now, thanks to Calvinism, it is bright and inspiriting. Professor Fruin justly remarks that: “In Switzerland, in France, in the Netherlands, in Scotland and in England, and wherever Protestantism has had to establish itself at the point of the sword, it was Calvinism that gained the day.”
Call to mind that this turn in the history of the world could not have been brought about except by the implanting of another principle in the human heart, and by the disclosing of another world of thought to the human mind; that only by Calvinism the psalm of liberty found its way from the troubled conscience to the lips; that Calvinism has captured and guaranteed to us our constitutional civil rights; and that simultaneously with this there went out from Western Europe that mighty movement which promoted the revival of science and art, opened new avenues to commerce and trade, beautified domestic and social life, exalted the middle classes to positions of honor, caused philanthropy to abound, and more than all this, elevated, purified, and ennobled moral life by puritanic seriousness; and then judge for yourselves whether it will do to banish any longer this God-given Calvinism to the archives of history, and whether it is so much of a dream to conceive that Calvinism has yet a blessing to bring and a bright hope to unveil for the future.
The struggle of the Boers in the Transvaal against one of the mightiest powers must often have reminded you of your own past. In what has been achieved at Majuba, and recently at the occasion of Jameson's raid, the heroism of old Calvinism was again brilliantly evident. If Calvinism had not been passed on from our fathers to their African descendants, no free republic would have arisen in the South of the Dark Continent. This proves that Calvinism is not dead–that it still carries in its germ the vital energy of the days of its former glory. Yea, even as a grain of wheat from the sarcophagi of the Pharaohs, when again committed to the soil, bears fruit a hundredfold, so Calvinism still carries in itself a wondrous power for the future of the nations. And if we, Christians of both Continents, in our still holier struggle, are still expected to achieve heroic deeds, marching under the banner of the Cross against the spirit of the times, Calvinism alone arms us with an inflexible principle, by the strength of that principle guaranteeing us a sure, though far from easy victory.
SECOND LECTURE - CALVINISM AND RELIGION
THE CONCLUSION arrived at in my previous Lecture was first, that, scientifically speaking, Calvinism means the completed evolution of Protestantism, resulting in a both higher and richer stage of human development. Further, that the world-view of Modernism, with its starting-point in the French Revolution, can claim no higher privilege than that of presenting an atheistic imitation of the brilliant ideal proclaimed by Calvinism, therefore being unqualified for the honor of leading us higher on. And, lastly, that whosoever rejects atheism as his fundamental thought, is bound to go back to Calvinism, not to restore its worn-out form, but once more to catch hold of the Calvinistic principles, in order to embody them in such a form as, suiting the requirements of our own century, may restore the needed unity of Protestant thought and the lacking energy to Protestant practical life.
In my present Lecture, therefore, treating of Calvinism and Religion, first of all I will try to illustrate the dominant position occupied by Calvinism in the central domain of our worship of the Most High. The fact that, in the religious domain, Calvinism has occupied from the first a peculiar and impressive position, nobody will deny. As if by one magical stroke, it created its own Confession, its own Theology, its own Church Organization, its own Church Discipline, its own Cultus, and its own Moral Praxis. And continued historical investigation proves with increasing certainty that all these new Calvinistic forms for our religious life were the logical product of its own fundamental thought and the embodiment of one and the same principle. Measure the energy which Calvinism here displayed by the utter incapability Modernism evinced in the same domain by the absolute fruitlessness of its endeavors. Ever since it entered its “mystical” period, Modernism also, both in Europe and in America, has acknowledged the necessity of carving out a new form for the religious life of our time. Hardly a century after the once glittering tinsel of Rationalism, now that Materialism is sounding its retreat in the ranks of science, a kind of hollow piety is again exercising its enticing charms and every day it is becoming more fashionable to take a plunge into the warm stream of mysticism. With an almost sensual delight this modern mysticism quaffs its intoxicating draught from the nectar cup of some intangible infinite. It was even purposed that, on the ruins of the once so stately Puritanic building, a new religion, with a new ritual, should be inaugurated as a higher evolution of religious life. Already, for more than a quarter of a century, the dedication and solemn opening of this new sanctuary has been promised us. And yet it has all led to nothing. No tangible effect has been produced. No formative principle has emerged from the imbroglio of hypotheses. Not even the beginning of am associative movement is as yet perceptible, and the long looked for plant has not even lifted its head above the barren soil.–Now, in contraposition to this. Look at the giant spirit of religious in the sixteenth century, with one master-stroke, placed before the gaze of the astonished world an entire religious edifice, erected in the best Scriptural style. So rapidly was the whole building completed that most of the spectators forgot to pay attention to the wonderful structure of the foundations. In all that the religious modern thought has, I will not say created, as with a master hand. but heaped together. like an unsuccessful amateur.– not one nation, not one family, hardly one solitary soul has (to use Augustine's words) ever found the requiescat for his “broken heart,” while the Reformer of Geneva, by his mighty spiritual energy, unto five nations at once, both then, and after the lapse of three centuries, has afforded guidance in life, the uplifting of the heart unto the Father of Spirits, and holy peace, forever. This naturally leads to the question–what was the secret of this wonderful energy? Allow me to present the answer to this question,–first in Religion as such, next in religion as manifested in the Life of the Church, and lastly in the fruit of Religion for Practical Life.
First, then, we must consider Religion as such. Here four mutually dependent fundamental questions arise:– 1. Does Religion exist for the sake of God, or for Man? 2. Must it operate directly or mediately? 3. Can it remain partial in its operations or has it to embrace the whole of our personal being and existence? and, 4. Can it bear a normal, or must it reveal an abnormal , i.e., a soteriological character? To these four questions Calvinism answers: 1. Man's religion ought to be not egotistical, and for man, but ideal, for the sake of God. 2. It has to operate not mediately, by human interposition, but directly from the heart, 3. It may not remain partial, as running alongside of life, but must lay hold upon our whole existence. And, 4. Its character should be soteriological, i.e., it should spring, not from our fallen nature, but from the new man, restored by palingenesis to his original standard.
Allow me, then, successively to elucidate each of these four points.
Modern religious philosophy ascribes the origin of religion to a potency, from which it could not originate, but which acted merely as its supporter and preserver. It has mistaken the dead prop of the living shoot for the living shoot itself. Attention is called, and very properly, to the contrast between man, and the overwhelming power of the cosmos which surrounds him; and now religion is introduced as a mystical energy, trying to strengthen him against this immense power of the cosmos which inspires him with such deadly fear. Being conscious of the dominion which his unseen soul exercises over his own tangible body, he infers, quite naturally, that Nature, also, must be moved by the impulse of some hidden spiritual power. Animistically, therefore, he first explains the movements of nature as the result of an indwelling army of spirits, and tries to catch them, to conjure them, to bend them to his advantage. Then, rising from this atomistic idea to a more comprehensive conception, he begins to believe in the existence of personal gods, expecting from these divine beings, who stand above nature, effectual assistance against the fiendish power of Nature. And finally, grasping the contrast between the spiritual and the material, he pays homage to the Supreme Spirit, as standing over against all that is visible, till, in the end, having abandoned his faith in such an extramundane Spirit, as a personal being. and charmed by the loftiness of his own human spirit, he prostrates himself before some impersonal ideal, of which in self adoration he deems himself to be the worshipful incarnation. But whatever may be the various stages in the progress of this egoistic religion, it never overcomes its subjective character, remaining always a religion for the sake of man. Men are religious in order to conjure the spirits hovering behind the veil of Nature, to free themselves from the oppressive sway of the cosmos. It matters not whether the Lama priest confines the evil spirits in his jugs, whether the nature-gods of the Orient are invoked to afford shelter against the forces of nature, whether the loftier gods of Greece are worshipped in their ascendency above nature, or whether, finally. idealistic philosophy presents the spirit of man himself as the real object of adoration;–in all these different forms it is and remains a religion fostered for man's sake, aiming at his safety, his liberty, his elevation, and partly also at his triumph over death. And even when a religion of this kind has developed itself into monotheism. the god whom it worships remains invariably a god who exists in order to help man, in order to secure good order and tranquility for the State, to furnish assistance and deliverance in time of need, or to strengthen the nobler and higher impulse of the human heart in its ceaseless struggle with the degrading influences of sin. The consequence of this is that all such religion thrives in time of famine and pestilence, it flourishes among the poor and oppressed, and it expands among the humble and the feeble; but it pines away in the days of prosperity, it fails to attract the well-to-do, it is abandoned by those who are more highly cultured. As soon as the more civilized classes enjoy tranquility and comfort, and by the progress of science feel more and more delivered from the pressure of the cosmos, they throw away the crutches of religion, and with a sneer at everything holy go stumbling forward on their own poor legs. This is the fatal end of egoistic religion;– it becomes superfluous and disappears as soon as the egoistic interests are satisfied. This was the course of religion among all non-Christian nations, in earlier times, and the same phenomenon is repeating itself in our own century, among nominal Christians of the higher, more prosperous and more cultured classes of society.
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, or as props which gave it support, but he refuses to honor them as the reason for its existence. Of course, religion, as such, produces also a blessing for man, but it does not exist for the sake of man. It is not God 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, God, in all the earth.” “The Heavens declare the glory 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 vapor, the abyss and the hurricane–everything does 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 implanted of the “seed of religion” (semen religionis), as Calvin defines it, sown in our human heart.17
God Himself makes man religious by means of the sensus divinitatis, 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 not 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 God,” 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 our 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 daring 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 Blessed Virgin, in the host of angels, in the saints and martyrs, and in the priestly hierarchy of the clergy; and although Luther took the field against all priestly mediation, yet the church which is called by his name, renewed by its title of “ecclesia 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 spiritual religion. Religion, as he conceived it, must “nullis mediis 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 martyrs, 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-mam 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 make 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 intermediate position between the Triune God and the layman. And although prominent 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 man 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 branches 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 innocentium, 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 of 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 bons catholiques are most closely confined in the fetters of the clerus. Only the Roman Catholic whose piety has decreased is able to secure for himself a partial liberty by loosening more than halfway the tie which connects him with his church. In the Lutheran churches the clerical fetters are less confining, yet 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 antagonists, 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 from all eternity binds the inward soul directly to God Himself, and where 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 be found in man himself and if its realization be 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 organ through which, in the sphere in which, and in the group of persons among which, religion has to thrive and flourish.
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 arc 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 is 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 honor 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,” yet 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 in part of it, being confined to our feelings and our will, consequently also the sphere of religious life must assume in consequence the same partial character. Religion is excluded from science, and its authority from the domain of public life; henceforth the inner chamber, the cdl for prayer, and the secrecy of the heart should be its exclusive dwelling place. By his du Sollst, 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. It 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 really 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 favor 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 cloister 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 sway 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 God. 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 concentrate 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 divinitat*, and how then could he exclude his rational consciousness,– the logos 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 center 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 very 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 the Calvinist 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 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 he may apply his hand, in agriculture, in commerce. and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science, he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of his God, he is employed in the service of his God, he has strictly to obey his God, and above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God. Consequently, it is impossible for a Calvinist 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 has to radiate 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 wedges of dualism into life, but the true Calvinist 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.
This brings us, without any further transition, to our fourth main question, viz, Must religion be normal or abnormal, i.e., soteriological? 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, favors 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 and gradual progress from the lowest forms to the highest ideals, the development demanded by 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, and as the homo sapiens develops 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 bands of Church and dogma, to pass on to what is again considered a higher stage, the unconscious feeling for the Unknown infinite. Now, 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) animals 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 outcome of his Fall. These low and imperfect forms of religion are not to be understood 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. himself, with this question, too, before the face of God, the Calvinist was so impressed with the holiness of God that the consciousness of guilt immediately lacerated his soul, and the terrible nature of sin pressed on his heart as with an intolerable weight Every attempt to explain sin as an incomplete stage on the way to perfection. aroused 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 that 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 sixteenth 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 deep-rooted 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,” and 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 shows a want of sincerity in our confession of the holiness of God, and of the destructive power of sin. And on the contrary, 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 by 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. Scripturae i.e, the need of Scriptural revelation This necessitas S. 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 today 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 dear 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 interposes a book between God and your heart. Oral communication excludes writing. 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, i.e., the need of artificial light, 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 eyes, 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 pure and full 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 Scriptures does not rest in ratiocination, but on the immediate testimony of the Holy Spirit, on the testimonium Spiritus Sancti. Our theory of inspiration is the product of historical deduction, and so is also every canonical declaration of the Scriptures. But the magnetic power with which the Scripture influences the soul, and draws it to herself, just as the magnet draws the 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 consequence of this regeneration is an irreconcilable conflict between the inner world of our heart and the world outside, and this conflict is ever the more intensified the more the regenerative 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 Holy 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 looked 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 breaks up the divine ray of light into its brilliant tints and colors. 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 utilitarian, or eudaemonistic 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 the Church, as its organized form, or its phenomenal appearance, I shall present, in three successive stages, the Calvinistic concept 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 center, and the starting-point for its action, not upon earth, but in heaven. This is to be understood thus: God created the Cosmos geocentrically, i.e., He placed the spiritual center of this Cosmos on our planet, and caused all the divisions of the kingdoms 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 fell off the tree of the human race, yet the tree itself shall be saved; on its new root in Christ, it shall once more blossom gloriously. For regeneration does not save a few isolated individuals, finally to be joined together mechanically as an aggregate heap. Regeneration saves the organism, itself, of our race. And therefore all regenerate human life forms one organic body, of which Christ is the Head, and whose members are bound together by their mystical union with Him. But not before the second Advent shall this new all-embracing organism manifest itself as the center of the cosmos. At present it is hidden. Here, on earth, it is only as it were its silhouette that can be dimly discerned. In the Future, this 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 Melchizedek's 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 celestial 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 to renew the tangible sacrifice on earth, and this at last brought the church to create 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 sacerdotium, but against sacerdotalism,18 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 summus episcopus and the divisions of ecclesiastical ranks were imitated; 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 intuitive instruction by types and symbols, now 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 in heaven, The Westminster Confession beautifully sets 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, pilgrims, meaning thereby that they were marching from the portal unto the Sanctuary itself, no possibility of salvation after death remaining 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 repentance 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 first, 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 sanctuary 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 local 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 endeavoring 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 individuals 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 be 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 a&ere to His ordinances; and for this reason the Church on earth has to preach the Word, to administer the sacraments, and to 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 rules, 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, concentrated from the congregation in 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 local churches are of equal rank, and as manifestations of one and the same body, can only be united synodically, 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 hierarchical priesthood distributes the treasury of grace entrusted to it, the result must be that this hierarchy itself extends 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 in some way or other a manifestation of one holy and catholic Church 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 their 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, wedge-like, 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 full 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 favorable to the growth and prosperity of religious life than the compulsory uniformity in which others 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; its teaching on the subject of infant baptism showing quite the contrary. Believers who meet together do not thereby sever the natural bond that binds them to their offspring. On the contrary, they consecrate this bond, and 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 all-importmt Calvinistic dogma of the Covenant; a prominent 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 mankind in its 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 interpermeation of grace by nature tends to lower the purity of the Church. From the Calvinistic point of view, therefore, it is impossible to speak of a national Church as being destined to embrace all the inhabitants of a whole country. A national Church, i.e., a Church comprising only one nation, and that nation entirely, is a Heathen, or at most, a Jewish conception. The Church of Christ is not national but ecumenical. Not 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 into 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 our Synod of Dordt, and your not less venerable Westminster Assembly, have honored again the ecumenical character of our Reformed Churches, thereby censuring as um