In the change of positions which the Union tried, the necessity of every single element in the whole of the Church was impressed upon the convictions. The Union at first tried it with the sentiments of the individual, but came to the conviction that a Church cannot be formed with mere sentiments. It then made an attempt with the form of worship, only to reach the conclusion that there is no use in moving the hands of a clock when the mainspring of the Confession is broken. It then made trial of a Confession, but brought to light nothing but patchwork. It then tried the Constitution, but it will speedily come to the conviction, that two independent Churches cannot be compelled to wear the same coat. The import and meaning of those failures of the Union is to make plain what is requisite for the divine work of the Church.

Church-theology is neither a handmaid of the practice of the Church, nor an adventurer which intrusts itself at random to the high sea of the intellectual life of a time, but it is the scientific self-consciousness of a Church. The Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Church, who works the graces of teaching and ruling in the Church, works also the grace of knowledge, as well as every other grace, for the edification of the Church. The scientific self-consciousness of the Church is an independent object; but it cannot fail to become weak when it puts itself in opposition to other functions for the edification of the body of Christ. That which necessarily constitutes the subject-matter of theology, as the scientific self-consciousness of the Church, is the Confession; but this is designated by our modern theology as unprotestant, unsound,

unscientific. It is designated as unprotestant; for "inasmuch as Scripture is to Protestantism the sole authority for truth, even the doctrinal views of the Reformers cannot be set up as arbiters, as is asserted in even the strictest Confession of the Lutherans." Now, it is certainly unprotestant to hold fast any Confession, simply because it has from the beginning enjoyed, in the Church, public authority as a Confession. But just as it is not only unprotestant, but even unchristian, to boast of Scripture as the sole source of truth, without drawing any truth from Scripture, without knowing and confessing what it teaches for salvation,-just as little would Protestantism have any claim to be a Church, if the life of its congregations did not rest on a firm consciousness of what the word of God has revealed for salvation. The formula concordiae says: "And we confess thus also our adherence to the same first unchanged Augsburg Confession, not because it has been got up by our theologians, but because it has been taken from God's word, and has, in it, its good and firm foundation." This conviction the Lutheran Church still holds, and her sound theologians know how to establish it from Scripture; yea, even those theologians of the Union, who, in the Berlin Kirchentag, professed their adherence to the Augsburg Confession, bear witness to this fact at least, that one may acknowledge Scripture to be the sole rule of truth, and yet be in favour of, and adhere to, a scriptural Confession of Faith. It is farther asserted that such a return to the creed of our fathers is unsound, -an expression of the tendency of our times towards restoration; for he who has become acquainted with the phenomena of Pietism, of Rationalism, of modern science, and, generally, with the intellectual and mental struggles of our time, can only by a violent effort put himself back to, and feel at home in, a bygone and overcome period of

the Church. But this charge would come home to those theologians also, who, while themselves taking their stand on the Confessions of the Reformation, have declared the Augsburg Confession to be the general symbol of the individual Protestant Churches confederated, or to be confederated. It is, indeed, a strange aberration to consider a return to the positive to be something sound, but an earnest and lasting return to the positive to be something unsound. These polemics always declaim against those who, with a mode of thinking thoroughly modern, rush into that which is ancient, simply because it is ancient. But of such it will not be possible to point out a single instance among the theologians of the confessional tendency. Most of them have, after many wanderings, been brought back to the creed of their fathers by the positive tendency, which, as is shown by the mediating theology itself, after all, pervades the Church of the present time. They are attached to the Confession of their fathers, not because it is old, but because it is true and scriptural. As we have endeavoured to show, all the signs of the times are in favour of that tendency towards the Church. "True," it is objected, "but the Church of the Future is not a new edition of the Church of the sixteenth century. That which has once gone, never comes back. In the Church of the Future the great developments of Protestants, since Spener, must be found again preserved and purified. For that very reason, the mediating theology, in which these elements are preserved, very justly calls itself the Church of the Future." But when Ulysses, after twenty years struggles and wanderings, returned to his home, he had become another man, and his home had become something different to him too. Thus, the experience of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries cannot and must not be lost to the Protestant Church; but it is erroneous, and almost

ridiculous to imagine that the systems we have gone through must be preserved as elements in the Theology of the Future. What theology would that be which would, at the same time, be a little Pietistic, a little Rationalistic, a little Speculative, a little Mystic, a little Confessional, etc.? The preservation of these systems and tendencies must, on the contrary, be sought for subjectively, in the experience of theologians. A theologian who has gone through these schools will look upon the Confession with a different eye than did the theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Augustine was something different to Hugo of St Victor, something different to Luther, something different to the Jansenists. But it is, in general, not the question, whether a system and tendency is in harmony with the progress of the time, but whether it is true. If it be true, then it is our part to follow it; but it is the part of the Lord of the Church to make something new to arise in the kingdom of God.— But, finally, we are told that it is unscientific to return to the orthodoxy of the sixteenth century. But let him who asserts that, in the territory of religious development, a tendency which has truth on its side, and which promises to be the tendency of the future, must always appear in the form of science, see how he gets on with the gospel of the fishermen and publicans. Our modern theology, which is disposed to consider Pietism as a supplement of the Reformation, will be obliged to confess that this school was, as regards scientific acquirements and profundity, far inferior to the orthodox masters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Löscher alone was, in that point of view, worth a whole Pietistic theological faculty. And many of our modern theologians should not forget the time when they, being esteemed as Pietists, appealed not to science, but to life only. That which has proved itself in life

as a solid reality, will be acknowledged by science also. The father of the Rauhe Haus,1 who always brought forward and carried out his practical affairs at the expense of modern science, obtained the highest honour of theology, after he had obtained the good opinion of the public. The fame of science follows but too often public opinion, which again is a partizan of success. And the Lutheran theo

2

logy can bring forward a line of theological ancestors, of whom she need not be ashamed. From the dogmatical opinions passed upon the theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which are still current in many theological circles, we may confidently appeal to the more thorough studies of the future. But no such warning instances from the period of orthodoxy, such as the estates possessed by Hoe von Hoenigg, or the many wives whom Calovius outlived, are required in order to warn the Confessional theology against an unreserved alliance with the theology of that period. It is not to the theology, but to the Confession of the Lutheran Church of the sixteenth century, that the Confessional theology wishes to return. And it is not in order to boast, but only to give glory to truth, that it may point to scien

'An establishment near Hamburg, founded by Wichern, D.D., for the carrying out of the various schemes of the Inner Mission.-TR.

2 Matt. Hoe von Hoenigg, born 1580 at Vienna, died 1645 as principal chaplain to the Elector John George I. of Saxony. He was distinguished by his violent hatred of the Reformed, and had considerable influence upon the events of that time. It was at his instigation that John George made, in 1635, the peace of Prague which was so injurious to the Evangelists; and he is even charged with having received a bribe from the Emperor for that purpose. There seems, however, not to be any other foundation for the latter charge except his wealth, which is sufficiently accounted for from his position, and from the circumstance that he was descended from an old noble family.-TR.