creased, when we observe that this voice proceeds from a son of Germany-the mother-country of the Reformation,-one who has been transplanted to this distant land, as if to render his testimony more striking and impressive; while in the midst of forty or fifty sects, all at variance with each other, he proclaims, in words of power and philosophic insight, the evils with which these divisions have filled the church, and proclaims the need of a catholic reunion among all Christians, who are built on the foundation of faith in the Son of God.

The work before us is indeed of great importance. It bears the marks of a Christian spirit, and of a vigorous intellect, which has pondered deeply on the past course and the present dangers of the church; and, bold in the confidence of truth, suggests the remedy which alone can restore health and strength to the whole body of Christ. As few of our readers will have seen it, we shall consult their profit by a full analysis of the volume, and such extracts as may put them in possession of the main ideas which it unfolds.

From the opening of the work, it appears that the German Reformed Consistory in America had invited Dr. Krummacher of Elberfeld, so well known by his writings, to become the head of their theological seminary. Their request was declined, and Dr. Schaff was recommended by him for the office. He accordingly accepted the offer, and the present volume is composed of the inaugural address which he delivered on the occasion of his appointment. We presume, however, that it has been enlarged in the publication, since it forms a closely printed volume of nearly two hundred pages. The work is thus essentially German in its origin and conception,; but Dr. Nevin, the colleague of Dr. Schaff, has translated it for the use of the American churches, and has prefixed a valuable introduction, in perfect harmony with the views of the author himself.

We shall first quote a striking passage from this introduction, on the present state of the controversy with Popery and kindred

errors.

"To contend successfully with any error, it is all-important that we should understand properly, and acknowledge fairly, the truth in which it finds its life. The polemic who assails such a system as Popery or Puseyism, with the assumption that its pretensions are built upon sheer wind, shows himself utterly unfit for his work, and must necessarily betray more or less the cause he has undertaken to defend. All error of this sort involves truth, apprehended in a one-sided and extreme way, with the sacrifice of truth in the opposite direction. Hence a purely negative opposition to it, bent simply on the destruction of the system as a whole, must itself also become inevitably onesided and false, and can only serve so far to justify and sustain what it labours to overthrow. Romanism includes generally some vast truth in every one of its vast errors; and no one is prepared to make war upon the error, who has not felt, in his inmost soul, the authority of its imprisoned truth, and who is

not concerned to rescue and save this, while the prison itself is torn to the ground. In this view, no respect is due to an infidel or godless zeal, when it may happen to be turned in this direction; and that must be counted always a spurious religious zeal, which can suffer itself to be drawn into communion with such an irreligious element, simply because for the moment it has become excited against Rome. It is greatly to be feared, that the spirit into which some are betrayed in this way is unhallowed and profane, even where they take to themselves the credit of the most active zeal for the glory of God. So with regard to Puseyism. Nothing can well be more shallow, than the convenient imagination that the system is simply a religious monstrosity, engrafted on the body of the church from without, and calling only for a wholesale amputation to effect a cure. Such a supposition is contradicted, to every intelligent mind, by the history of the system itself. No new phase of religion could so spread and prevail as this has done, within so short a period of time, if it did not embody in itself, along with all its errors, the moving force of some mighty truth, whose rights needed to be asserted, and the want of which had come to be felt in the living consciousness of the church, vastly farther than it was clearly understood. If the evils against which the system protests were purely imaginary, it could never have acquired so solid a character itself, as it has done in fact. Most assuredly the case is one, that calls for something more than a merely negative and destructive opposition. Only by acknowledging and honouring that which is true and good in the movement, is it possible to come to any right issue with it so far as it is false. The truth which it includes must be reconciled with the truth it rejects, in a position more advanced than its own, before it can be said to be fairly overcome. In this view, it is not saying too much to affirm, that a large part of the controversy directed against it thus far, has been of very little force. It has been too blind and undiscriminating, as one-sidedly false in its own direction at times, as the error it has opposed in the other. Our newspapers, and reviews, and pamphlets, and books, show too often, that the question is only half understood by those who undertake to settle its merits. While they valiantly defend the citadel of Protestantism at one point, they leave it miserably exposed to the attacks of its enemies at another. With many it might seem to be the easiest thing in the world, to demolish the pretensions of this high-church system. Its theory of the church is taken to be a sheer figment; its idea of the sacraments a baseless absurdity; its reverence for forms a senseless superstition. The possibility of going wrong in the opposite direction, is not apprehended at all. Such a posture, however, with regard to the subject, is itself prima facie evidence that those who occupy it, are not competent to do justice to the case.

"Some have told us that the controversy comes simply to this, whether we shall have a religion of forms, or a religion of the spirit. They claim accordingly to be the friends of inward, living, practical piety, and charge upon the opposite tendency a secret disaffection to this great interest, as exalting the letter above the life, and substituting for the fact its mere sign. But the issue in this form is false. Religion is the union of soul and body, spirit and matter. To resolve it into naked forms, is indeed to part with the substance for mere show; but it is just as vain to think of holding the substance, where forms are treated with contempt. The man who takes the issue in the way now stated, shows himself to be disqualified for the controversy. Because it is not a question with him, then, simply as to the quality or quantity of forms; whence they shall come and how far they shall reach; but a question as to the right forms has to be included in the idea of religion at all; in the case of which he shows clearly, that his own conception of the true nature of religion is one-sided and false. He will be a spiritualist only, and not a formalist. Why not then become at once a Quaker? In its own nature, the issue is false. No such alternative as it supposes, has any place in the idea of religion. It separates what God has joined together. Not soul or body, but soul and body, is the formula that represents humanity, as truly after its union

with Christ as before. The issue is false, monstrously false; and the champion who takes ground upon it, is not fit to be entrusted with the interests of truth, in opposition to Oxford or in any other direction.

Again, we are told the controversy has for its object the question, whether salvation be an individual concern or something that comes wholly by the church; the fruit of a private, separate transaction of the subject with God's word and Spirit, or the product of a more comprehensive, inexplicable force, residing in the mystical body of Christ, and showing itself particularly in and through the sacraments. But here again the issue is false, and those who plant themselves upon it, only betray their own incompetency for intermeddling with the subject. Ecclesiasticism, as held by Rome and also by Oxford, is indeed a terrible error; but it does not follow that the mere negation of ecclesiasticism is the truth. The error itself includes a truth; a vast, great, precious, glorious truth; and if our negation annihilate this along with the error, it has become itself an error as false as the other. The position that religion is an individual interest, a strictly personal concern, a question between a man singly and his Maker, is one which it would be treason to the gospel to reject. He that believeth shall be saved; he believeth not shall be damned. Every tree that beareth not good fruit, is hewn down and cast into the fire. Here is a vast, vital truth. But if it be so held as to exclude the dependence of the individual spiritual life, on the general life of the church, it becomes necessarily one-sided and false. Individualism without the church, is as little to be trusted as ecclesiasticism without individual experience. Both separately taken are false, or the truth only in a one-sided way; and the falsehood, sooner or later, must make itself practically felt. The full truth is the union of the two. Every issue then which puts them apart, must be counted an untrue issue; and, as before said, the very fact that any man should make it, in contending with Popery or Puseyism, proves him unfit for the task he has been pleased to assume.'-(pp. 10-13.)

"The case requires a reconciliation of these unhappily divided interests, in such form that the truth which each includes may be saved in the union of both. This of course is not to be reached, by yielding to Rome. The very nature of the papacy is that it sacrifices the rights of the individual wholly to the authority of the church, which so far at the same time becomes itself false and dead. Puseyism is but a return towards the same error. We need not this. But as little may we feel ourselves abidingly satisfied, with the mere contrary. What is to be reached after, as the true normal form of the Christian life, is such an inward marriage of the two general tendencies, as shall be sufficient to make them one. There is no reason at all why zeal for experimental godliness, and zeal for the idea of the church, should not go hand in hand together. The single case of Paul, to say nothing of Augustine, and Anselm, and Luther, and many others that might be named, may furnish full proof to the contrary. Who more zealous for all that is comprehended in the personal piety and personal freedom of the single believer? And yet who more carried away and ruled continually by the idea of the church, as the body of Christ, and the organic whole in which and by which alone all individual Christian vitality must be upheld and carried forward to its proper perfection? This is the only form in which religion can deserve to be considered complete. This is to be regarded as the true consummation of the church, in which the life of the whole body and the life of all its parts, may be expected to proceed harmoniously and vigorously together. Towards the full and final accomplishment of this glorious result, should be directed the prayers and efforts of all, who love the prosperity of Zion or seek the salvation of the world.”—(p. 15.)

We find a similar thought in the last paragraph, which seems to belong to the author rather than his translator.

"The great question of the age undoubtedly is that concerning the church.

It is evidently drawing to itself all minds of the more earnest order, more and more, in all parts of the world. Where it comes to be apprehended in its true character, it can hardly fail to be of absorbing interest; nor is it possible, perhaps, for one who has become thus interested in it, to dismiss it again from his thoughts. Its connections are found to reach, in the end, through the entire range of the Christian life. Its issues are of the most momentous nature, and solemn as eternity itself. No question can be less of merely curious or speculative interest. It is in some respects just now of all practical questions decidedly the most practical. In these circumstances, it calls for attention, earnest, and prayerful, and profound. At the same time, the subject is clearly one of great difficulty and hazard; as we may see from the strange confusion and contradiction, in which the controversy with regard to it has come already to be involved. A subject manifestly, that is not be disposed of in any way satisfactorily, in such flippant wholesale style as with some might seem to be considered sufficient for the purpose. Both the solemnity and difficulty of it have been deeply felt, in the preparation of the present work. It is the fruit of painfully severe thought, baptized it is trusted in the element of prayer. Not without true spiritual conflict, does it make its appearance in the world. And not without prayerful anxiety is its course followed, now that it is launched from the press, as the first fruit of the author's labours in this form, in the new hemisphere. Should the views it offers be disapproved in any direction, it is desired only that it may be in the same spirit of earnestness in which they are presented. If any one can show them to be wrong, not by declamation or positive assertion, but with deeper and more thorough exposition of the question itself, it will be not only respectfully but thankfully received. For the theme is one that calls for light; and if the publication should only indirectly serve this end, by leading to the exhibition of some higher and better view, in which its own position shall be fairly and truly surmounted, it will be felt that it has not appeared in vain."—(p. 26.)

Let us now hasten on to the work itself. It consists of two parts. The first of these treats of Protestantism in its birth, and its historical relation to the Roman Catholic church. The second views it in "its relation to the later development of the Protestant church, and its state at the present time."

First of all, the author observes that a Reformation is distinct alike from a Restoration and a Revolution. A Revolution is the violent overthrow of an existing system; a Restoration, a simple repetition of something which has gone before. But a Reformation is like a birth from the womb of the past. It implies a certain unity with all that goes before, and a living progress to a fuller and freer life. Such was Christianity in its connexion with the elder economy of the law; and such also was the Reformation of the sixteenth century, as a new and higher growth from the stem of the visible and truly Catholic Church.

The first view, then, of this great event on which the author dwells, is its catholic union with the past. It was not the sudden chance of a moment, nor a work disjoined from all the previous life of the Church of Christ. Its preparation had been going on for ages, though the breath of heaven was needed to quicken it into full activity and vital power. "No work so vast could be the product

of a single man, or a single day. When Luther uttered the bold word which called it into being, the sound was echoed, as in obedience to an enchanter's wand, not only from every part of Germany, but from England, and France, and Italy and Spain. He gave utterance to what was already darkly present to the consciousness of his age. German Protestantism is no sudden growth, springing up like a mushroom of the night. Its roots reach back to the day of Pentecost."

This work of preparation is then traced, first, in politics and literature. Here the way of the Reformation was opened by the inward and meditative character of the German nation, which found all its peculiar traits reflected, as in a focus, in the character of Luther. It is traced, secondly, in the revival of the sciences; and Melancthon, Calvin, and Beza, surpassed nearly all their contemporaries in these pursuits. It may be traced, more directly, in the sphere of theology, both in the negative action of extreme protesters, like Arnold of Brescia, the Beguards and Catharists, who made war on truth and error at the same time; and in the positive action both of communities and of single witnesses. Of the former, the Waldenses are specified; of the latter, Wickliffe, Huss, Gerhard Groot, Thomas à Kempis, and the school of the mystics. Above all, as the author well observes, the predominant legal spirit of the middle ages was a school-master to the evangelic doctrine of justification. The Jewish dispensation looked always towards the gospel, and in like manner the discipline of the Roman Church involved an inward struggle, that became satisfied at last only in the evangelical freedom of Protestant truth. And hence the conclusion is drawn that "the Reformation is the legitimate offspring, the greatest act of the Catholic Church, and on this account, of true catholic nature itself in its genuine conception; while the Church of Rome, instead of following the conduct of history, has continued in the old law of commandments, the garb of childhood, like the Jewish hierarchy in the time of Christ, and thus, being fixed as Romanism, has ceased to be catholic, and become exclusive and particular."

The direct and positive nature of the Protestant principle is next examined. The Reformation is an advance, not of Christianity in itself, but of its hold on the consciousness of the Christian world. "The Reformers have brought into clear light what existed before darkly in the soul, and have made that to be common property in the Church, which belonged previously only to single and highly-gifted individuals." The material principle, or inner life of the Reformation, is the doctrine of grace, or "the justification of the sinner before God by the merit of Christ