46

TRIUMPHS OF SCIENCE.

ling discoveries in the more abstruse departments of science, connected with such names as Faraday, Darwin, Tyndal, Hux ley.

Is the great, eternal law of progress to operate in every de partment of knowledge save one-the most important of all? Is everything to move on except religion? There has been a Galileo to enlighten our ignorance touching the orbit of the earth and the motion of the sun; a Newton to explain to us the career of planets and systems of planets throughout the heavens; a Harvey to detect the circulation of the blood; a Humboldt to unveil for us the Cosmos; a Bacon to organize the exploration of all fields of earthly knowledge. In every department of material and intellectual science, the advance has been from conquest to conquest. But in pneumatology is the end already reached? Has an investigator of religion no longer a legitimate vocation? Shall we say of its doctrines, as a Scottish philosopher did of the learned foundations of Europe that they are not without their lesson for the historian of the human mind: immovably moored to the same station by the strength of their cables and the weight of their anchors, they serve to mark the velocity with which, as it passes them, the rest of the world is borne along.

I thank God that I do not believe this. If it were true, life would be of little worth. How heart-sinking-how utterly unworthy-the conception that, under the Divine Economy, that grand privilege of progress to which man owes all he ever was or ever will be is denied to the science of the Soul, while inhering in every other!

It is not of the arcana of Theology that I am speaking; it is of man's soul, not of God's essence. I do not believe that we of this earth shall ever make progress in the literature of the planet Jupiter, or in the language spoken by the inhabitants of Saturn. There is what to man is the unknowable; and outside the sphere of the knowable, human progress cannot be. Except so far as God's works around us adumbrate their Author and His attributes, I do not think that by searching we can

NO PROGRESS IN THE UNKNOWABLE.

47

make progress in discovering the Creator's ways, or His thoughts, or His judgments; seeing that these are not as ours, but unsearchable and past finding out. When we press on in quest of such mysteries, the power of the highest intellect expires before it attains an object, as waves on a troubled ocean break and lose themselves in the vast expanse.

Evidence is scattered all over God's works of infinite intelligence, mercy, love. But when we seek to know what were the Deity's specific intentions in the original creation of man, for what purpose He permits evil and misery, how He himself exists—when we set about analyzing the divine hypostasis and the like—we come upon mysteries which it is not probable that, even in the next world, we shall have vision to penetrate or means to solve.

Macaulay's argument, then, may be admitted, so far as it applies to the abstruser portions of speculative theology; but only because abstruse theological doctrines are among the unknowable things.*

But as for Spiritual science, I firmly believe that we have the means of studying it, and therefore of advancing in its various branches. When we declare that Truth is mighty and will prevail, we must not except spiritual truth; for that is the mightiest of all. Why Calvinism, why Lutheranism, prevailed not, as against the Roman Church, may be explained without assuming that Christianity lacks the element of progress. To the wholesome truths which the Reformation put forth, it undoubtedly owed its half-century of progress. The hypothesis remains, that while Protestantism may have approached, in many respects, nearer to the truth than Roman Catholicism, it may, in other matters, have failed to meet the wants of the age, and may have made radical mistakes in opinion that have proved fatal to its advancement.

* Said Luther, preaching otherwise than he practised: "Let the Father's good will be acceptable to thee, O man, and speculate not with thy devilish queries, thy whys and thy wherefores, touching God's words and works."-Luther's Table Talk, p. 29.

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GRAND TRUTH IN PROTESTANTISM.

The grand truth inherent in Protestantism, and through which, in the sixteenth century, chiefly came the wonderful im. petus it received, is one that has stirred men's hearts ever since they began to think and to reason. Luther touched upon it: "Argue will I, and write, and exhort," he said, "but compel will I no one. " If he is not entitled to be called the Apostle of freedom in thought and speech, it is because, when men first emerge to the light, its effulgence is wont to blind them; and thus the world advances only step by step. If the Wittenberg Doctor had done nothing more than to demand, and to obtain, for the people the right to read in the vernacular the sayings and doings of Christ, instead of taking the Christian system, at second hand, from a privileged Order, that one deed would entitle him to the eternal gratitude of mankind. Luther was not tolerant, he was not consistent; but how outspoken and fearless was he, even when life was at stake! We cannot think of him without calling to mind the celebrated words: "I will go," he said, when on the arrival of the summons to appear before the Diet of Worms, faint-hearted friends augured for him the fate of Huss,—“ I will go, if there were as many devils

→ “—doch zwingen will ich Niemand." The expression occurs in his first sermon on his return from Wartburg. (Luther's Works, vol. xviii. p. 256.) Similar sentiments are found elsewhere throughout his earlier writings.

Hallam reminds us that we should be careful, in considering the Reformation as part of the history of mankind, not to be misled by the idea that Luther contended for freedom of inquiry and boundless privilege of individual judgment. (Literature of Europe, Boston Ed. 1864; vol. i. pp. 306-7.)

But I think we should not deny merit to those who may have advanced, if it be but a few steps, on the road to mental enfranchisement, because, clogged by the intolerant and dogmatical spirit of their age, they failed to go farther.

I shall have occasion also, before closing these remarks, to show, that Luther held, and boldly expressed, advanced ideas on the subject of literalism and plenary inspiration.

AT MARBURG.

there as there are tiles on the roofs of the houses." and the world will long remember the issue.*

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He went,

§ 5. THE SIN AT MARBURG AND AT GENEVA.

Deep must be the regret felt by every friend of the fearless Wittenberger, in calling to mind that history was soon to present the reverse of the medal. Eight years later, Luther was summoned by Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, to another meeting; this time at Marburg; † not, as before, to face emperor, and nobles, and ecclesiarchs; but, in friendship to confer with a man as brave and honest as himself; a fellow-soldier in the good fight of faith, stout Ulrich Zwingli; who brought with him other of the Swiss Reformers. They differed on the doctrine of the Eucharist, and the Landgrave hoped to recon

* "Little monk," said the veteran commander Freundsberg, tapping him on the shoulder as he entered the hall-"little monk, little monk, thou art on a passage more perilous than any I have ever known on the bloodiest battle fields. But if thou art right, fear not! God will sustain thee." Quaint and undaunted that monk stood before nobles of the Empire and dignitaries of the Church. When admonished that argument was unfit, and that the Diet wanted only a straightforward answer as to whether he would recant, he said they should have an answer that "had neither horns nor teeth" (die weder Hörner noch Zähne haben soll "); and it was that well-known one: "I am consciencebound in God's Word, and cannot and dare not recant; since it is neither safe nor advisable to do anything against conscience. Here I stand; I cannot otherwise; God help me! Amen!"

A town of Hesse Cassel, on the Lahn.

Luther believed in the "real presence" of Catholicism; defending his opinion with his usual plump directness, in his treatise: Dass die Worte Christi, “das ist mein Leib,” etc., noch fest stehen; and in his Grosses Bekenntniss (1528). He says (alluding to the text, Matthew xxvi. 26): "We are not such fools as not to understand these words. If they are not clear, I don't know how to talk German. Am I not to comprehend when a man puts a loaf of bread before me, and says: 'Take, eat, this is a loaf of bread; ' and again, 'Take, drink,

50.

LUTHER REFUSES HIS HAND

cile this difference; but each held to his opinion. At the close Zwingli exclaimed: "Let us confess our union in all things in which we agree, and as for the rest let us remember that we are brothers." The Landgrave again earnestly urged concord. Zwingli, addressing the Wittenberg doctors, said: "There is no one on earth with whom I more desire to be united than with you." Then the noble Swiss Reformer, bursting into tears and approaching Luther, extended his hand. The obdurate German rejected it. "You have a different spirit from ours," was all he said.*

Ah, Martin Luther! Valiant wert thou in defence of the modicum of holy truth thou sawest; and, for that, honored forever be thy name! But at Marburg, like other disciples before thee, thou knewest not what spirit thou wert of. Quick

this is a glass of wine'? In the same manner, when Christ says, Take, eat, this is my body,' every child must understand that he speaks of that which he gives to his disciples."—Luther's Works, Walch's Ed. Halle, 1740-53, vol. xx. p. 918.

And again, in his Larger Catechism, Art. Lord's Supper (p. 554), he says: 'A hundred thousand devils, with a pack of visionaries to boot, may come at me, asking: How can bread and wine be Christ's body and blood?' still I know that all the Spirits, and all the learned heads that can be lumped together, haven't as much wisdom as God's Majesty has in his least little finger.

ye

re

Zwingli, on the contrary, regarded the words in question simply as a trope, like the other words of Christ: "I am the true vine : are the branches" (John xv. 1, 5). "The bread," he said, mains the same, but the dignity of the Lord's Supper gives it value." HAGENBACH: History of Doctrines, vol. ii. p. 313 (New York Ed. 1862).

* It was in 1529. Two years later, Zwingli gave his life, on the battlefield, for the Protestant cause. One wonders what Luther's sensations may have been when the news reached him.

Since writing the above, I find, in a biography of Luther by one of his warmest admirers, the following: "When Luther heard of the death of the brave Swiss, on the sanguinary field of Cappel, fighting for the liberties of his country, there is no sympathy, but a grating harshness in the tone in which he received the sad news. "-TULLOCH: Leaders of the Reformation. London, 1859, p. 62.