BR 307 H7 Hough, Lynn Harold, 1877 The significance of the Protestant reformation T»jr>_ 1 rxn^ OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR THE MAN OF POWER i6mo. Net, 75 cents IN THE VALLEY OF DECISION i6mo. Net, so cents THE MEN OF THE GOSPELS i6mo. Net, so cents THE LURE OF BOOKS i2mo. Net, 2S cents ATHANASIUS: THE HERO i2mo. Net, so cents THE THEOLOGY OF A PREACHER i2mo. Net, $1.00 THE QUEST FOR WONDER, AND OTHER PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL STUDIES i2mo. Net, Ji.oo THE LITTLE OLD LADY i2mo. Net, 75 cents The Significance of the Protestant Reformation A Series of Lectures Delivered in Connection with the Observance of the Four Hundredth Anniver- sary of the Posting of the Theses by Luther BY LYNN HAROLD HOUGH Profetsor of Historical Theology in Garrett Biblical Institute ^S}^ OF Pni;Vj>5: ^'^^ MAY 1 191;: ^ ■'^^09iui P^'"^^ THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright, 1918, by LYNN HAROLD HOUGH CONTENTS LECTURE PAGE I. The Background of the Reformation 7 II. The Religious Aspects of the Ref- ormation 30 III. The Political Aspects of the Ref- ormation 56 IV. Completing the Reformation 81 LECTURE I THE BACKGROUND OF THE REFORMATION Things always begin before they start. This paradox must constantly be kept in mind in the study and the interpretation of historical move- ments. The fact before the fact must be sought out and brought into the clear light of knowledge. If the sixteenth century did not come trailing clouds of glory, it did come trailing clouds, and all these clinging remains of an older life must be in the thought of the man who would understand this age of the world's spiritual rebirth. When a man with responsive imagination and intellectual and ethical sympathy has lived over again the life of the earlier 7 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ages, he will admit that there was glory of light as well as glory of purple in the clouds trailed by the sixteenth century when it came. He will also see that there were dark clouds fairly bursting with potential storms. The sixteenth is one of the great melting-pot centuries of the world's life. Here we see the meeting and combination of things different enough in origin and inner spirit. There is all the cataclysmic energy of the sudden rushing together of strange and diverse forces. You may be confused as you watch it all, you may be terrified by the wild energies you see in action, but you cannot deny that it is an age infinitely alive. And soon you come to feel that you are not looking upon scenes of de- struction. You are watching the making of a new age. The Middle Ages were as much 8 PROTESTANT REFORMATION characterized by what they had for- gotten as by what they had remem- bered. Various nations had pro- nounced great words in the ancient life of the world. The older Oriental nations had made arbitrary and far- flung power a part of the imagina- tion and a part of the actual life of man. The river valleys of that older world had brought forth men who dreamed of one stern will bending men to its own purpose, and the older empires had been built about one ab- solute authority. Greece had represented the dawn of confidence in man. The typical Greek felt quite ready to meet one of his deities with a kind of unabashed friendliness far enough from the crushing awe with which many na- tions bowed before their gods. If the Greeks were descended from the gods, they had brought a good deal of the splendor of Olympus with 9 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE them, and had taken more than fire from heaven. To the Greek Hfe was not something to be deHvered from; it was something to be enjoyed. He was seeking self-expression rather than salvation. So out of the Greek spirit there came the sense of liberties which enlarge and inspire men, of artistic expression which captures dreams of beauty in speech of haunt- ing, stately majesty and in material forms which bend to the quality of invisible inspiration. Out of the Greek spirit came that exhaustless interest and curiosity which touched experience from a thousand angles, and gave Aristotle the materials for an encyclopedic interpretation of life. Out of the Greek spirit came a climb- ing idealism which reached its climax and its noblest expression in Plato. Greek pessimism was not the Greek spirit in its hour of achievement. It was the Greek spirit facing the inade- lO PROTESTANT REFORMATION quacy of its achievement. The genius of Greece was a confident gay behef in Hfe and man. And when this confi- dent, glad zest had perished, only the form of Greece was left behind. The spirit had departed. Rome did not represent an inner spirit of inspiration. It stood for a practical power of organization. Greece loved the world; Rome ruled it. Greece inspired men; Rome con- trolled them. Greece was interested in truth and beauty ; Rome was inter- ested in management and expediency. A Roman never asked first if a thing were true. He asked first how it would fit in with his plans of practical administration, Greece was inter- ested in realities; Rome was inter- ested in relationships. Moving in this severely practical fashion, Rome reached a sense of hu- man values as distinct from national values. Confronted with the prob- II THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE lem of ruling all kinds of people in all kinds of places, Rome discovered that despite amazing differences, and under them all, there is only one kind of a people and there is only one kind of a place. It was a politician's con- tribution to the philosophy of human life. This gave a dignity to develop- ing Roman law, and in a measure compensated for the lack of creative inspiration in Roman life. What Rome lacked in ideas it made up in shrewd practical efficiency. The Hebrews had fairly staggered under the weight of the treasure they were carrying for the world. From them the world received the inesti- mable gift of the knowledge of a God with a character. The nation itself did not always have a character, at least not a good one. But it was per- petually haunted by the sense of a God who hated its sins, and pas- sionately sought to form its life into 12 PROTESTANT REFORMATION likeness to his own righteous char- acter. The Greek often blushed for his gods. He had little reason to blush for himself in the presence of his gods. They had done all the bad things he was ever tempted to do. The Hebrews suffered the perpetual discomfort of worshiping a God who had no vices, and He had virtues — such towering, impossible virtues of righteousness and goodness as daz- zled men's thought. In the presence of such a God you instinctively felt that life was intolerable unless you could be changed and made like the divine hero whom you worshiped. So in the deepest sense the Hebrew religion became the religion of ethical salvation. The people who did not rise to the height of this conception made their share in the Hebrew reli- gion a matter of contented observ- ance of ritual. They were all the time tending downward toward the 13 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE conception common enough in the world, of salvation through cere- mony. The prophetic and the priestly elements in Israel tended to center respectively about these two concep- tions. Christianity was, humanly speak- ing, the successor of the prophetic religion of Israel. The God with a character now fills all the horizon. In Jesus Christ he has come into hu- man life for the rescue of men. The glorified abstractions of the Greeks are met by the concrete ethical and spiritual victory of Jesus. Ideals are met by achievements, and in the death of Jesus the supreme moral principles are translated from the realm of ideas into the realm of ac- tions. Men can now be friendly with God, not because they have a God who is a sinner, but because they have a God who will make them saints. So Christianity spread in the Roman 14 PROTESTANT REFORMATION empire like a moral contagion scatter- ing the infection of goodness in a bad world. Then in the fifth century came the end of all things. Saint Augustine's City of God is the attempt of a brave mind to keep from reeling under the shock. Rome is breaking to pieces. The surest of human institutions is trembling with earthquake vibra- tions. Everything in the world seems to be coming apart. Augustine finds security and steadiness and hope as he sees the triumph of the City of God even at the time when he sees the break up of the city of Rome. As we watch the sweeping move- ments of the East Goths, the West Goths and all the invading barbar- ians, we are likely to be caught in de- tails and miss the defining events of the period. If we would understand the sixteenth century, it is absolutely necessary for us to understand the 15 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE fifth and those which immediately followed. The first thing which happened was that the church proved the one strong institution when all others proved weak. Christianity began as a new life. It soon became a new or- ganization. And as an organization it became the successor of the Roman empire. It met the barbarians un- afraid. The great Leo is typical of a powerful and efficient church, for it was the church which tamed the bar- barians. It appropriated the genius for management, the skill in dealing with men, and the efficiency and or- ganization which had characterized Rome. In reality Rome did not fall. The Roman empire was transformed into the Roman Catholic Church. Augustine's City of God became a city of very powerful men. Now a church of powerful govern- ment and a church of vital prophecy i6 PROTESTANT REFORMATION are two things. They may be com- bined. They are rather more Hkely not to be combined. So the church which aspired to be the lawgiver of the world tended to go back to the Old Testament, and appropriate the priestly rather than the prophetic elements there. While using the name of Jesus, Rome was becoming a new Judaism built about ritual and ceremonial. So the church suc- ceeded the Roman empire as or- ganizer and lawgiver, and succeeded Judaism as a religion of brilliant complex ceremonial. Jesus himself seemed captured by this powerful Judaism which wore his name, and the successor of all the prophets seemed to have lived only to lead to a world built about the labors of a rit- ualistic priesthood. The deeper life was not drowned in the ceremonial any more than in ancient Israel the prophetic had been 17 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE lost in the priestly. But when the Middle Ages were in full action the prophetic movement had completely lost the place of command. Summing it all up, we may say that the Middle Ages forgot the deepest things in Greek life and failed to emphasize the prophetic elements in Hebrew and Christian life, while putting in the place of dominance the ideal of or- ganization which came from Rome and the spirit of ritual and ceremonial emphasis which tended to make the church a sort of Christian Judaism. From this point of view we can readily see that the Renaissance was a going back to reclaim the Greek elements which had been forgotten, and the Reformation was a going back to reclaim the Hebrew and Christian elements which had been allowed to slip out of sight. If we take a long view of the thought of men as it relates itself to i8 PROTESTANT REFORMATION the life of men, we shall discover that two ideas emerge and struggle, and that this struggle is* the very essence of history. Protagoras announced one idea when he declared that the individual man is the measure of all things. At an earlier period Jere- miah and Ezekiel had been dealing with the same problem, when the place of the individual was so boldly declared by them. This view, with its many modifications, builds itself about the concrete man rather than about humanity. It centers in the citizen rather than the state. It has to do with the particular Christian rather than the church; in short, it builds life about the individual. Socrates objected to the view of Protagoras, sensing the danger of a lawless and unchecked individualism, in which there would be as many sys- tems claiming to be true as there were individuals. He made the group, the 19 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE class, rather than the individual, the standard. And Plato carried his view farther and made the general, rather than the particular, the real. The individual in his view was only capable of participating in the real- ity of the general idea. Here we have an emphasis on solidarity rather than on individuality. The state is more important than the citizen, and when this view is interpreted in the forms of Christianity the church is consid- ered more important than the Chris- tian. We would naturally suppose that the emphasis on the individual came first. As a matter of fact, sol- idarity had an earlier literary expres- sion than individuality. The Hebrew prophets of the eighth century, for instance, spoke in the terms of soli- darity. It is Israel, and not the indi- vidual Israelite, of whom they are thinking. It is not until the time of 20 PROTESTANT REFORMATION Jeremiah and Ezekiel that the indi- vidual emerges in Hebrew prophecy. And the whole problem — the same problem at bottom though approached in a different way — is not raised in Greek thought until the fifth century B. C. As a matter of fact, most of ancient and mediaeval thought and life is built about the idea of solidarity rather than the idea of the individ- ual. The realism of the Middle Ages is an application of the Platonic idea of solidarity to the contemporary life. The state and the church are the great realities. The general is the real. The individual is incidental. The Holy Roman Empire is of vastly more significance than the citizen. The Holy Catholic Church is of vastly more significance than the Christian. The individual is crushed under the weight of this great totality. You can never understand the bewildering 21 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE bravery of Luther until you see it against the background of the mighty power of mediaeval Realism. To be sure, Nominalism made a protest. The individual was the real. The general was an abstraction. You cannot ride a horse in general. You cannot milk a cow in general. And so all generalizations must be- come concrete before they have prac- tical worth. But Realism was too deeply intrenched in the organized life and deepest ideals of Europe to surrender easily. It would take more than a brilliant dialectic to remove it from that place among the uncon- scious assumptions of the human mind, which are so much more influ- ential than the professed opinions. The sixteenth century breathed the spirit of Realism in this deeper sense. It believed in solidarity. It had not learned the meaning of individuality. The idea of the Holy Roman Empire 22 PROTESTANT REFORMATION dazzled men's imagination. The idea of the Holy Catholic Church awed men's hearts. A man naturally as- sumed that it was in the church and in the state, participating in their great dignity and power, that he was to find himself and the meaning of his life. To assert yourself over against the church would be like trying to live without air. Life itself was condi- tioned by solidarity. It was in such an atmosphere that Martin Luther grew up. And the marvel of his lead- ership is that such a man in such an environment did dare to defy the church and the state. That act was worth more than a thousand philos- opher's treatises. It proved that whatever the philosophic situation, the practical truth was that some- times the individual must stand out against solidarity in the name of the integrity of his personal life. And philosophy in the long run would be 23 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE sure to follow the lead of the deeds which gave the individual a new place in the world. The relation between the individ- ual and the church, the individual and the state, was not completely worked out in the sixteenth century, but the individual came to have a new meaning through the Reformation. The era of Revolution was the time when the individual made supreme claims. The era of reaction after the Congress of Vienna was a time of new emphasis on solidarity. The nineteenth century tried to find a way to unite the two views in a higher synthesis. The Constitution of the United States is an attempt to make solidarity and individuality do team work. It is at least clear by this time that individuality has to meet one checking power — the common good. It is also clear that solidarity must not crush out that personal life which 24 PROTESTANT REFORMATION is the basis of individual integrity, and which must never be lost from the world. y All this is going ahead of our story. What we must remember now is that the sixteenth century dawned with the individual lost to view in the emphasis on church and state. The century closed with the individual firmly standing to claim his place in the life of the world. And the differ- ence between the beginning and the end of the century was essentially the achievement of Martin Luther. There are many fascinating inci- dentals in the background of the Re- formation. Feudalism, that strange half-way house between absolute monarchy and democracy, had, on the whole, left men believing in a more centralized state. The crusades, whose journey in the name of an ideal and a dream had shaken Europe out of provincialism, had made it ready 25 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE for new ideas and citizenship in a larger world. Humanism as a great gospel of good taste had changed many things. Where it had noble seriousness, as in Germany, it was one of the forces which helped to make for a better day. When it was an aesthetic enthusiasm untempered by ethical passion, as in Italy, it de- generated until it left a trail of poison in its wake. Commerce, developing everywhere after the crusades, was bringing an economic influence into the deeper relations of men in quite a new way. Those who regard the Re- formation as an economic movement are quite beside the mark. But those who insist that economic influences were profoundly significant in the Reformation are declaring no more than the truth. The world of trade reaches, its hand into every relation- ship, and in the sixteenth century you can see it clearly if you are alert and 26 PROTESTANT REFORMATION watchful. Although Roger Bacon lived and wrote in the thirteenth cen- tury, that going back to nature which is the basis of modern science had not become a movement of wide signifi- cance in Luther's time. Copernicus lived in the sixteenth century, but not as one who contributed to its char- acteristic life. The fifteenth century had initiated the era of a new geography. The voyages of Columbus were the achievements of a devout Catholic. But the world of this expanded geog- raphy belonged to the world of break- ing chains. The sixteenth century was a century of great voyages and discoveries. While Luther was at Worms, Magellan was ofiF on his great voyage. Enlargement of feeling, enlargement of life itself were characteristic of the age. Amid all this variety and accumu- lation of interests and activities can 27 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE we find a few defining characteristics of the world into which Luther was born? Looking back from our van- tage ground, it is easy to see what perhaps no one could have declared at the time. The world was tiring of forms and hungering for realities. It would hear Luther because even when mistaken he was always real. The world was restless under the weight of a civilization which crushed the individual. It would hear Luther because he dared in the name of loyalty to the deepest thing in his own life to stand against emperor and pope. After the gloom of ages which had been afraid of life, the world was coming to have a springtime sense of flowers coming to bud and ready to bloom. Luther would be heard be- cause he was the very incarnation of the spirit of spring. It was more than an accident that he carried a flower as he stepped forth to debate 28 PROTESTANT REFORMATION with Eck. The new vitahty was aHve in him. Organization was to be less powerful than life. And Luther saw in organization the servant of life, never its master. The priestly was to retire before the prophetic. And Luther was a prophet. So the ages met in the age. So the age met Martin Luther. The relation between personal and impersonal forces is clearly illus- trated here. There are plenty of im- personal forces. But taken all to- gether they simply mean opportunity. They wait for the touch of the master's hand. And with that touch the world swings about into a new era. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LECTURE n THE RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE REFORMATION A DEVOUT Roman Catholic with some knowledge of history is likely to think of the thirteenth as the most wonderful of the centuries. In this century the papacy emerged victori- ous from its struggle with the Hohen- stauf en emperors. It was the century of Innocent III, who stood undazzled at the apex of papal power. It was the century when the church's thought came to supreme expression in the Sunima of Thomas Aquinas. It was a century of great religious revival. Saint Francis of Assisi like a rare flower sheds fragrance over the life of the period ; and in this cen- tury the Dominicans, as well as the 30 PROTESTANT REFORMATION Franciscans, went forth to do by preaching a profounder thing than could be done by the sword. In power, in intellect, and in piety the church has a great story to tell in this century of its attainment of the heights. And in this connection we ought to say that, whatever its limi- tations, the Church of Rome has al- ways been able to produce saints. That authentic canonization of the heart which needs no recognizing or confirming word from pontiff or church has taken place within the Roman system in every age. And never did it reveal itself in more poignant attractiveness than in the gentle, gay, and winsome leader of the Franciscans. Brother to all men and all things, feeling kinship with sun and moon and birds and all people, self-forgetful singer and knight errant of a joyous religion. Saint Francis has won a place never 31 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE to be surrendered in the heart of the world. He had as true and as real a Christian experience as did Martin Luther. But the simple-minded Saint Francis never realized the implica- tions of his own experience in any way which raised problems as to his loyalty to the church. Now, the extraordinary thing about the thirteenth century is its con- trast with the century which follows. In the thirteenth century the church is supreme. In the fourteenth it trails in the dust. Two tragic series of events stand out in this contrast. One is the so-called Babylonian Cap- tivity. From 1309 to 1377 the popes, forsaking Rome, lived at Avignon under the power of the king of France. From being a king of kings the pope descended to be the puppet of the French king. In the new situ- ation he had luxury and opulence enough, but his moral and spiritual 32 PROTESTANT REFORMATION authority was slipping from him. Then, as if this deadly wound were not enough, it was followed by the great schism where rival claimants to the papal throne hurled anathemas at each other, and the world beheld the church torn by inner dissensions. All this was accompanied by an avarice and a faithlessness to every standard of Christian conduct on the part of numbers of churchly leaders. The church claimed to be the moral renewer of the world. It became the dark scandal of the world. Of course the transition had not been so sudden as it seemed. There had been evil and the seed of failure in the church of the thirteenth cen- tury. There was good in the church of the fourteenth century. But the obvious, startling, visible quality of ecclesiastical life in the fourteenth century expressed itself in subser- vience to the French king, inner dis- 33 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE sensions and turmoil, avarice and vice. Noble indignation and discontent sprang up everywhere. Cries for re- form were heard on all sides, and the fifteenth century was the century of attempted ecclesiastical reform. The cure-all in every mind was the appeal from the pope to the General Council. One council after another tried to deal with the problem. The Council of Constance did heal the great schism. But when the century of councils came to an end the church had not been reformed. With the failure of attempts at reform from within, it was but a step to the thought, revolu- tion. In the fourteenth century Wic- lif had gone further than the loyal churchly reformers. Striking at the validity of the mass as a magical rite, and at the authority of the pope, his position required, not the cessation of abuses, but the transformation of 34 PROTESTANT REFORMATION the very churchly organism. John Hus of Bohemia, who received his in- spiration from WicHf, gave eloquent utterance to principles whose inevi- table end was not reform but revolu- tion. This is the reason why the Re-\ forming Council at Constance burned •* Hus in 141 5. It was ready to deter- mine on the cessation of abuses. It was not ready for a revolution which would transform the very nature of the church. We must always care- fully distinguish between the men who wanted the church made clean and honest and free from subservience to evil influences, yet all the while re- maining the old church of the Middle Ages in theory and life, and those who believed that the only hope was in a transformation which would go to the very root of the church itself. The conservative reformers of the fifteenth century found their suc- cessors in the Council of Trent in the 35 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE sixteenth. The radical reformers found their successors in the founders of Protestantism. Two fundamental questions were involved in the whole situation. One had to do with the very nature of re- ligion. The other had to do with the seat of authority. It is from a study of the first of these questions that we must ap- proach an understanding of the Prot- estant Reformation. Later the sec- ond question too emerges and be- comes a matter which is of very far- reaching significance. ' The whole sacramental theory of religion tended to make religion a matter of magic rather than a matter of personal ethical and spiritual rela- tionships. The belief in the transub- stantiation of the elements of the Lord's Supper into the very body and blood of Christ, at the word of the officiating priest, built worship about 36 PROTESTANT REFORMATION a perpetually repeated miracle, only performed through the instrumental- ity of an ordained priest, to whom the church had given this ghostly and august authority. Participation in this miraculously mediated grace could only come through the organ- ized church, and the miracle of the mass did not depend upon the char- acter of the priest, but only upon his actual possession of the authority and power given through ordination and organic connection with the church. The whole theory of mediaeval wor- ship had these magical elements, but it all came to a visible climax in the theory of the mass. The priest stood ^ between a man and God. Ceremonial became a matter of the highest im- portance. Emphasis on character was buried beneath a hundred bril- liant and appealing ecclesiastical forms. The church offered peace through rite and ritual rather than 37 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE peace through personal contact with the Hving God. With all these there was the ascetic theory of self-immolation and the emphasis on endless rounds of effort in the performance of duty with the earning of a deeper peace as the end of the effort. The saint of the mon- astery was an ascetic. The comfort- able Christian on the street was a man who partook of the sacraments. Now, it is important to remember that through ritual and asceticism many men did break their way to God. Many a man was an evangelical at heart whose thinking never became consistently evangelical. Anselm in the eleventh century, and Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth, illustrate the possibility of winging a lofty spir- itual flight without breaking with the church or being conscious of inner contradictions. And doubtless many common men and women quite simply 38 PROTESTANT REFORMATION found their way into the presence of the living God without being thwarted by the forms which the church offered them. The heart out- ran the head, and they found the God beyond the ritual. But multitudes took the form as a substitute for the reality, and to many religion became a matter of exciting magic rather than a fellowship with God issuing in a new life. The church needed to ^ cast off a vast amount of revered rub- bish if it was to become a real aid to the seeker after God. Magic is de- generate religion. Asceticism is hectic morality — and both weighed heavily upon the church. The appeal must be to a triumphant evangelical experience which would fully realize its own implications. Christianity must be rediscovered by a man who would freshly see and loy- ally follow all that the discovery meant for himself and the world. 39 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE This man was Martin Luther. This rugged, human marvel of a man, Hke Abraham Lincoln, was a man of the people. His father was a peas- ant. His grandfather was a peasant. His voice always smacked of the soil, and sometimes his personality reeked with the less lovely but very neces- sary activities of the barnyard. He was the jolliest of the world's great prophets, a jest always upon his lips, a quip always upon his tongue. Here too he resembled Lincoln — the sad- dest jester the world has ever known. Life swept through his personality in blasts of fresh energetic air. His words were hot with feeling, and dripped with human understanding and sympathy. Sometimes he seemed less like a man than a volcano in erup- tion. Life pulled at him, fought him, tore him, allured him, baffled him. He was a professor who never lost the edge of a cutting practical mind. 40 PROTESTANT REFORMATION He was a preacher who knew the push and the pull of every temptation which sapped men's higher alle- giance. He was a poet at heart with a singing lilt to his life. But solid feet were heavy in the soil as his lyric words took wings and moved sky- ward. He had a mind of disconcert- ing honesty, a clearness of thought which amazed less candid and ad- venturous thinkers. And he always had a word or a phrase with an ad- hesive power which fastened its mes- sage in men's minds. A right glori- ous, dangerous, potential sort of a man was Luther in endowment and quality. Such a man is sure to do tremendous work for God or the devil. In the beginning you cannot tell which. Luther was born in 1483 in a world soon to wonder over the discoveries of Columbus. His father, shrewd, practical, and able in his own way, 41 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE had aspirations for his lively and promising son. Through a hard and difficult boyhood Luther moved with the goal of knowledge kept in his mind. He went the way of the poor and ambitious scholar, and his father's desire that he should be a lawyer seemed about to be realized. Then something happened. It had been a good while getting ready to happen. Suddenly the gay and lively young student vanished from the world into an Augustinian monas- tery. After all, it was not the laws of men concerning which he was think- ing. It was the law of God which bent him broken and fearful to the earth. With the fierce impetuosity of his intense nature Luther set about mak- ing friends with the Almighty. He tried the way of asceticism. He did endless things to win the favor of God. He fasted until he fainted. 42 PROTESTANT REFORMATION He went the full length of self-casti- gation and abstinence and lowly serv- ice. He became the marvel of the monastery. Men regarded him as a saint. All the while his own heart was eaten up by a gnawing unrest. He would not deceive himself. And he knew that he had not found the way. Rites and ceremonies did not sat- isfy. The most abandoned self-sacri- fice did not bring him content. He did everything the church suggested. He tried every method Ithe church offered — and his empty heart told him plainly enough that God had not entered. But right in his order there were men who knew something of a better way. A word here and there, a friendly understanding on the part of his superior Staupitz, a dawning sense of the Bible as having an un- mediated message for his own soul — 43 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE all these things were portents of the dawn of a new day for Luther. Off to Rome he carried a mediaeval mind in preconceptions, but a shrewd eye which later remembered many a dis- illusioning experience. And all the while his spirit, chafing like an angry, spirited steed, was sensing the near- ness of the freedom he had never known. It was no new experience which re- made the world for Martin Luther. The apostle Paul had traveled the same way centuries before. Many other feet had walked that highway. And now at last Luther broke his way through the undergrowths and came out upon the open road. Reli- gion was personal trust in a mighty Saviour. This was the truth which blazed like a new sun in Luther's sky. He had been trying to earn peace. Now he knew that peace is God's gift. He had been trying to find power in 44 PROTESTANT REFORMATION the church's rites. Now he knew that the day of power is the day when the living Christ enters your own soul. He had been trying to build his life about a purpose. Now he knew that it was to be built about a Saviour. It was not merely that he said these things. It was not merely that he felt the appeal of these things. Weary and torn and despairing, he flung himself with an abandon of trust into the great strength of Christ. And he found himself held in arms of Infinite loving protection and power. He was shaken from the center of his being. Old things passed away. All things became new. It was spring- time everywhere, with flowers bloom- ing and birds singing and God smil- ing. When Luther declared that if anybody should knock at the door of his heart and say "Who dwells there?'' he would not reply, "Martin Luther dwells here," but he would 45 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE say, "J^sus Christ dwells here," he was simply saying in glad and honest fashion what he felt had taken place in his own soul. Such an experience in such a man was sure to have explosive power. Luther moved quietly, however. He had a cautious, conservative mind united with a radical temperament, and "he was quite content with appro- priating to the full his new and wonderful experience and sharing it with others. So we find him going about his duties at the new University of Wittenberg quite unconscious of the storm which is soon to break about his head. Then, in 15 17, comes Tetzel with his trafficking in indulgences. Saint Peter's is to be built, Albert of May- ence is to have his funds replenished, and the selling of spiritual privileges goes on apace. The wily and effec- tive dealer in ghostly values cannot 46 PROTESTANT REFORMATION enter the territory in which Luther lives, but he comes near enough to at- tract excited men and women for whose spiritual welfare Luther feels responsible. The quick effect of the money dropping in the box greatly appeals to them, and Luther beholds those whom he had watched as they began to realize the glorious meaning of religion slipping into disintegrat- ing and superstitious thoughts and ways. It is religion itself which is at stake. Luther always had the heart of a pastor, and as a pastor he cannot watch unmoved the undoing of his deepest work. Even now he moves with caution, and when, on a day in October, he posts ninety-five theses on the door of the church at Wittenberg for aca- demic discussion, he does not feel the earth trembling beneath his feet. But the questions he raises are questions for which Germany is waiting. They 47 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE are questions for which the world is waiting. They are translated into the vernacular. Like wildfire they go here and there and everywhere, and so the fight is on. Luther has no thought of being dis- loyal to the church. The pope will stand with him when once the matter gets to Rome. The church dare not sacrifice the very essentials of true Christian piety. But passing days are full of disillusionment. His own thought clarifies. In the disputation with Eck he admits principles which would dethrone the papacy. For now the second fundamental question of which we have spoken arrives. What is the seat of authority? What if the pope decides against him? What if a general council decides against him? And, facing the awful di- lemma, Luther finds that he is ready to stand by his Christian experience against pope, against council, against 48 PROTESTANT REFORMATION all the world. He has found some- thing which is sure whatever fails. Now, the central meaning of the Reformation fully emerges. Religion is a matter of vital faith in the liv- ing Saviour, and that faith authenti- cates itself against every opposition from ecclesiastical or secular power. One must be loyal to the experience to which faith leads though the heavens fall. The luminous understanding of his own position is expressed with marvelous power by Luther in 1520 in those famous treatises, The Ad- dress to the Christian Nobility, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and The Freedom of the Christian Man. Other men have other motives, but Luther has found a new and tri- umphant life in Christ, and all his efforts during the following years are for the purpose of making room for that sort of life in the world. 49 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE If the pope had been astute enough to avoid a break with Luther while yet allowing him full freedom to preach his glowing gospel, it is prob- able that Luther might never have realized the implications of his own position. In that event he would have died a loyal son of the church, and his movement would have been another revival within the church like that of Saint Francis of Assisi. It is fortunate that the church did not compromise. The day had come for a type of Christian life free from the chains of medisevalism, and Luther was the man to be its leader. He was forced to the place where he saw that the logic of his position meant the turning from the magical theory of the Eucharist and repudi- ating the authority of the pope. Then, indeed, the clearing was made for the building of the new house. The Reformation was entangled SO PROTESTANT REFORMATION with many motives which were not religious, but to Luther the guiding star was always religion. And you always find the basis of his decisions in a religious motive. The relation between the Reforma- tion and humanism illustrates this im- portant matter. Erasmus was the prince of humanists. No other man of letters, with the possible exception of Voltaire, has ever had such a fol- lowing. A man of infinite gifts, of brilliant mentality and incisive, ironic speech; a scholar, a writer, a half-cynical, superior observer of men and movements, Erasmus is the very incarnation of the detached, academic mind. He is inclined to substitute words for deeds, and he is inclined to think that when he has said a thing he has done it. Erasmus was a firm believer in reform. He believed that men of letters with the cutting power of their epigrams and the gay, caustic 51 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE raillery of their sarcasm, could laugh the world out of many of its evils and guide it into better ways. His mind was so poised and balanced that he could never be a whole-hearted advo- cate. He always saw so much to say for the other side. Erasmus ren- dered vast services. His Praise of Folly was indeed a weapon. His New- Testament had a vital place in the Re- formation. But this apostle of learn- ing and the dignified leadership of cool, intellectual life in the very nature of things could not understand Lu- ther. They despised many of the same things. They loved many of the same things. Erasmus did more by means of his powerful influence to protect Luther than is generally real- ized. But the singing glory of the new life whose raptures remade the world was something quite foreign to Erasmus. His soul had never been torn and shaken; his life had never 52 PROTESTANT REFORMATION been lifted to sudden glory. He was a devout and earnest reformer. He was a stranger to the defining evangelical experiences of the Reformation. Luther was ready to train with Erasmus and the humanists un- til it became evident that, in spite of all they had in common, the one thing which was greatest to him was a thing in which they did not share. It is unfortunate that the break was so cruel. It is unfortunate that humanism was not kept nearer to the evangel- ical spirit. But at least we must recognize that Luther was true to his own deepest life and his sense of his mission when he made his decision in the light of an evangelical experience rather than of an enlightened human- ism. Luther's relations to knights and princes and peasants and to other re- formers are always to be examined in 53 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE the light of this same guiding prin- ciple. He allied himself with what- ever he felt would help the cause of the religious life which had wrought a revolution in his own soul and which he believed would work that same transformation in men every- where. He opposed whatever he felt would endanger the Reformation type of religious life. His hostility to Zwingli must be judged from this point of view. Zwingli was a man of splendidly zest- ful earnestness, of reforming enthusi- asm, of clear and cogent thought, and of powerful capacity for leadership. He proudly claimed that he was not dependent upon Luther. The re- formation had mastered his head, it had mastered his working conscience, but it had never swept his soul with cataclysmic energies which renewed all the sources of power in his life. Luther instinctively felt this. Formal 54 PROTESTANT REFORMATION correctness of thinking was never so important as vital adequacy to Luther. The very quahties of clear, lucid exposition which characterized Zwingli aroused Luther's distrust be- cause they were unaccompanied by what a later age would call the evan- gelical note. Zwingli's attitude toward the Eucharist seemed to Luther an aspect of a superficial re- lation to all the deepest things of Christian experience. Luther was unjust to Zwingli. The results were deplorable. But at least we can see that with splendid, dogged loyalty Luther was being faithful to the one great central matter on which he be- lieved everything else depended. There are many interesting and significant aspects of the Reforma- tion, but the defining matter is a new life which renewed men from within and changed all their relations to God and to the world. 55 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LECTURE III THE POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE REFORMATION The outstanding ideal of the Middle Ages was the Holy Roman Empire. It was an ideal rather than a fact. But it was a very significant ideal, and Voltaire's clever saying, that it was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire, must not prevent our see- ing how profoundly it influenced mediaeval life. The crowning of Charlemagne by the pope in A. D. 800, successor to the old Roman emperors by the authority of the church, brought the thought of far- flung political solidarity once more clearly into the mind of Europe. And although Charlemagne was always master of the pope, the idea now got 56 PROTESTANT REFORMATION into the mind of men in quite a new way that the church was a source of poHtical power. With the Othos in the tenth century began the Holy Roman Empire in Germany, and now the power and quahty of the poHtical life of the Middle Ages began clearly to take its final aspect. The theory was easy to grasp. Christendom was one world. The emperor was its \ secular head. The pope was its reli- ^ gious head. It was inevitable that there would be a clash between the two authorities. A strong pope would set about mastering the em- peror. A strong emperor set about mastering the pope. The dramatic episode of Gregory VII and Henry IV at Canossa in the eleventh cen- tury, the struggle between Frederick Barbarossa and the papacy in the twelfth century, and the conflict be- tween Frederick II and popes of the thirteenth century are all aspects of 57 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE this battle which was prolonged through centuries. When at last the Hohenstaufen emperors had been conquered by the papacy, not only had papal power received a very marvel- ous expression but papal theory with its soaring consciousness of imperial authority had entered deeply into the mind of Europe. In the meantime something else was in the process of happening whose influence was to be of the most far-reaching character. This was the rise of the nations. Feudalism had / given some sort of order to Europe, but except in the case of the feudal system put into practice by William the Conqueror in England, it tended away from centralization rather than toward it. If nationality was to be- come a fact, the feudal lords must be made subservient to a central national authority. Such a movement was in the interest of the people, for a steady 58 PROTESTANT REFORMATION dependable national government was infinitely preferable to the disorder which was a necessary by-product of feudalism. We see the movement most distinctly in France. Step by step the king increases in power until the government is built about his authority and the feudal lords are changed into flattering courtiers. This full consummation is seen in the seventeenth century in the reign of Louis XIV. But even as early as the fourteenth century the French king had become powerful enough to take the pope under his control. So in the papal captivity at Avignon you see the international pope quite under the dominance of the French monarchy. Nationality has emerged in the life of Europe with tremendous power. England too, with its insular geo- graphical position and its sharply self-conscious life, is all the while growing in truly national quality. 59 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE The days of supreme royal power came with the Tudors in the sixteenth century, but a genuine nationality came before the Tudors. In the . latter part of the fifteenth century the ^ last of the Mohammedans were ex- pelled from Spain, and with the mar- riage of Ferdinand and Isabella the foundation was laid for a truly na- tional life in that country. In Italy the national movement did not come to fruition until the nineteenth cen- tury. Papal power and imperial am- bition for long made such a consum- mation impossible. In Germany the emperor was so busy fighting the pope and trying to get a hold on Italy that he quite failed to centralize German life. Even as late as the accession of Napoleon to power in 1800 there were about three hundred separate states in Germany. At the end of Napo- leon's career there were upward of forty German states, and it was not 60 PROTESTANT REFORMATION until after 1870-71 that actual unifi- cation came to Germany under the presiding genius of Bismarck. In fact, if one understands that by the middle of the eighteenth century France was suffering from too much centralization and Germany was fac- ing the tragedy of too little central- ization, he will have a key to much of significance in later European life. The Reformation period found France, England, and Spain fully alive as national powers. Italy and Germany were still in bits. The dream of the empire threw its glam- our over men's minds, but nationality had become a very real fact. All this time the papacy was living in a realm of exalted claims. And it was drain- ing the world's purse by endless finan- cial exactions. In fact, the whole na- tional idea was endangered by papal interferences and taxation. This was felt particularly by England and Ger- 61 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE many. The support of Wiclif as early as the fourteenth century was in no small measure a matter of natural national policy in respect of a man who was opposing a foreign menace. Germany felt the tug of the papacy at its purse strings. And the feeling that the religious sovereign in Italy was coolly and remorselessly bleeding Germany was a genuine force in se- curing support for Luther on the part of the German princes. The play of complicated political forces was all about and in and through the Reformation. Charles V, who ruled over more territory than any man following Charle- magne, was born in 1500. The wealth poured into Spain from America was part of his capital. He was a cold, able politician. He held a clever hand and played the political game with energy and skill. If he had any enthusiasm in his still, un- 62 PROTESTANT REFORMATION kindled way, it was a loyalty for the old church. He was a conservative by instinct, and while he believed in the necessity of ecclesiastical reform, he hated the very thought of ecclesi- astical revolution. Charles V and Francis I of France were rival can- didates for the imperial throne. Both were Catholics. Francis I was a fine later Renaissance gentleman to whom humanitarianism was more vital than Catholicism, but a man essentially to be ranked with the Catholic forces of the century. Charles V emerged tri- umphant in the early rivalry and was elected emperor. The later rivalries and wars between Charles V and Francis I in the most extraordinary way gave the Protestant movement time to grow. Just when Charles was ready to set about crushing the Protestants he was likely to find him- self caught in the toils of a new war with Francis. And all the while the 63 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE Protestant infant was hurrying along toward a lusty manhood, when it would be impossible to crush him. The papal throne too was watching with suspicion and anxiety the power of Charles. It was no part of the papal plan to have too strong a Cath- olic emperor or too strong a French Catholic king. The days of deadly battle with great emperors had not been forgotten, and the days at Avi- gnon had not passed out of mind. So while in mutual suspicion the Catholic powers continued their jealous and self-protecting activities, the follow- ers of Luther were becoming a host. The political situation was not the source of the Lutheran movement, but it did give the movement breath- ing room and living room and time to become strong. When other things were out of the way and the day of conflict seemed to have arrived, an- other power held the hand of Charles 64 PROTESTANT REFORMATION V. This time it was the Turks. While Europe with shuddering anxiety was meeting the Turkish menace an internal conflict between Catholics and Protestants was impos- sible. So the Protestant movement continued to grow. All this was not the result of astute political manipu- lation on the part of the Protestant leaders. They reaped the benefit, but it was none of their planning. In fact, if the reformers saw any hand in this bending of human jealousies and the turbulent movement of war- like nations to the protection of Pro- testantism during its days of weak- ness, itjwas the hand of God. Nowhere does the political element in the Reformation seem to loom larger than in England. Henry VIII came to the throne in 15C9, a hand- some, able, humanistically inclined king, to whom men of learning looked with enthusiastic appreciation and 6s THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE hope. If Henry VIII had not been infinitely restless as the husband of Catherine, the aunt of Charles V, and if he had not been captured by the charms of a beautiful young woman at the court, the formal history of the Reformation in England would have been different. But the English Re- formation is not for a moment to be thought of as synonymous with Henry VIII's spectacular endeavor to get a divorce from Catherine. It was as a movement of the English people, and not as a method of the English king, that the Reformation won the land. The deep meaning of the move- ment must be seen apart from its political entanglements in England, even as in Germany. In studying the political aspects of the Reformation we must look into its significance for the future as well as its contemporary environment; we must see the fashion in which the 66 PROTESTANT REFORMATION spirit of the Reformation had polit- ical implications of the most far- reaching character. Altogether the appearance of Luther at the Diet of Worms in 1521 is one of the few outstanding poten- tial events of history. The newly crowned young emperor Charles, now about twenty-one years of age, was holding an assembly of the most august and imposing dignity. The highest claims to lordship and the most revered and lofty political au- thority — all the dream of Christen- dom organized about one great leader, which had been handed down, made golden by the imagination of the Middle Ages — centered in the emperor, the electors, and the princes and nobles who gathered about him. And Europe's supreme religious force was amply represented by the papal Nuncio and a glittering group of powerful ecclesiastics. The power 67 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE and the splendor and the organized strength of the civiHzed world seemed visibly set forth in that brilliant as- sembly which met to greet the young emperor. To this stately and splendid gathering the monk of Wittenberg was summoned. He was a peasant. He was the son of a peasant. He was the grandson of a peasant. What- ever distinction had come to him had been achieved in ecclesiastical insti- tutions, .and his whole life was inter- woven with that churchly and polit- ical articulation of the interests of the world of which the Diet of Worms was so impressive an expression. The church was the air he breathed. The empire was the earth on which he walked. To oppose them seemed like trying to fight the very constitu- tion of the universe. The question was more than a question of right. It was a question of possibility. Could any human being born and 68 PROTESTANT REFORMATION trained in the mediaeval life, with the mediaeval sanctions warp and woof of his life, with every memory and ex- perience of life bound up with these things, tear himself away from them ? Could any lone man bear the crushing weight of such a declaration of inde- pendence ? Would not the very brain of a man who was staggering under the awful pressure break apart under the shattering load of it? When state and church and organized life were against him could one man stand alone ? Luther did it. This sturdy peas- ant prophet, Atlas-like, lifted the weight of the world's hostility, and neither mind nor body broke under the strain. Probably no modern man can understand the tragic glory of that hour. All the glittering pageant of the empire, all the ghostly author- ity of the mighty church, all the steel strength of the emperor's purpose 69 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE were pressed upon this man of the common Hfe. And in sheer vital tri- umphant personal power he defied them all. It was the supreme expres- sion, the right and power of the indi- vidual, which made the hinges turn from the mediaeval to the modern world. It was the birth hour of De- mocracy. For democracy begins not with a theory but with a practice. This lonely man, standing out against the pressure of civilization, gave a new definition of the rights and powers of the individual man and the man out of the common life. Luther was not thinking of Democracy. He was do- ing a much profounder thing. He was illustrating democracy. In all ages lowly men have wanted to stand up against tyrannical author- ity. But age after age has been char- acterized by an atmosphere of hope- lessness. There has been the lethargy 70 PROTESTANT REFORMATION of despair. What Luther did put new heart in the common man. It put new belief in the individual into the world's thought. It put a new sense of the power of the individual into the world's life. Men saw that they did not need to be lost in institutions. Men saw that they did not need to be !, overwhelmed by the big organized powers of the world. One Atlas pro- 'duced a situation where it became possible to believe that a man can take the world on his back. That a man can, that a man ought, that a man must be loyal to the deepest integrity \ of his own personal life became part [ of the common moral consciousness ' of the world. And that conception . with its corollaries gives us the very ) genius of democracy. The details of the Diet at Worms in relation to Luther are of fascinat- ing interest. The multitude in the city with their alert and eager inter- 71 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE est; the German princes, some with their faces toward Rome, some with their faces toward a new Germany; the ecclesiastics thinking in the terms of that ancient papal authority which was the supreme thing in the world to them; the young emperor, with that cool maturity and unhesitating quiet strength and shrewdness which made him a master politician and a dominant figure in his age; and Luther himself, fairly dazzled by the splendor in which he found himself, but holding tight that inner loyalty which had the seed of the Reforma- tion in it — all these were a back- ground for a series of swiftly moving events which came to a climax in Luther's unhesitating stand — one man_ag;ainst jthe world! How little his friends were able openly to protect him was seen when he was secretly carried off to the Wartburg for safety, while men of light and lead- 72 PROTESTANT REFORMATION ing like Albert Durer mourned him as dead. In due time he emerged and about his leadership the New World began to form. We have already indicated that Luther's own interests were religious I and not political. His services to de- mocracy were all a by-product of his loyalty to his religious mission. This will help us to understand how so great an incarnation of the very genius of democracy became in a very practical and real way its foe. The peasants of Germany had long been restless under the pressure of , manifold injustices. To them the ap- / pearance of Luther was like the blast of a trumpet. He was one of their \ own number. He came out of their \life. He knew their lot. His prin- ciples would emancipate them. He would be their friend. So when the great peasants' upris- ing came in 1524 Luther may be char- 73 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE acterized as almost its patron saint. The demands of the peasants were, on the whole, just and in some regards surprisingly reasonable. They had real and deep wrongs. They claimed necessary and essential rights. Luther saw the reasonableness of their position. He knew the hardness of their lot. Then came an ugly and terrible dilemma. There were excesses on the part of the peasants. There be- gan to spread over Germany the sense that Luther's movement meant the breaking of every old tie and the tear- ing apart of every old sanction. His foes saw in him an apostle of anarchy in whose presence no old principle was sacred and no old standard safe. A thousand forces of unrest were ready to use his name. Cautious and steady men everywhere were ready to draw back. It was a critical moment in Luther's career. Would he go 74 PROTESTANT REFORMATION down as a prophet of chaos from whom all right-thinking men turned away, or would he be able to pilot his ship through the storm and make port in safety with the religious re- sults of the Reformation secure? To Luther the situation seemed perfectly clear. The only way to save his religious work was to cut clear from the peasants' insurrection. He did not hesitate. He turned against them with remorseless energy. He advised that they be cut down merci- lessly, and with terrible literalness his monitions were heeded by the princes. The peasant insurrection perished in a river of blood. And the fairest hopes of the peasant group perished with it. More bitter wrongs, more hopeless servitude weighed heavily upon the peasant group. Luther's name was no more quoted with joy- ous hope. The peasants regarded him as a renegade and a traitor. 75 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE With our present social vision and sympathy it is not quite easy for us to be just to Luther. What seems commonplace to us had not become clear to him. He was a religious leader who saw his work seemingly about to be overwhelmed in the peas- ant uprising, and he sought what he felt was the only way to keep his work from perishing from the earth. We must realize that all the implications of Luther's assertion of the rights of the individual could not be worked out in one generation or one century. If Luther had tried to be a political as well as a religious reformer it is al- most certain that he would have failed in both. None the less it is true that the crushing of the peasants is a sad, dark tragedy of which we cannot even think without pain. But this is not the end of the matter. From this day on Luther de- veloped an increasing distrust of the , 76 PROTESTANT REFORMATION common people. More and more his interests and his confidences were re- moved from the group from which he had sprung. More and more he trusted in the princes for the sustain- ing of the Reformation. More and more he beHeved in the benevolent authority of the few rather than the rights of the many. The great things were to be the gift of a few wise leaders to the thoughtless incapable mass of men. A noble paternalism became Luther's ideal in church and state. In after days, when Luther became the national hero, this conception of his entered deeply into the life of Ger- many. His later attitude of distrust of common men, rather than his ear- lier example of supreme democracy, became a part of the thought of his people. Of course many other influ- ences entered in. But we cannot free Luther from a genuine and important 17 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE share in responsibility for a temper on the part of Germany which issued in paternaHsm rather than in democ- racy. When a man becomes the idol of a nation's memory his weaknesses as well as his strength will enter deeply into the national life. So it happened with Luther. Here we have the explanation of the curious paradox which Luther's life presents. At heart he was the mighty democrat of the sixteenth cen- tury. His action at Worms was the very charter in action of democ- racy. But the hard experiences of later years made him believe that the people must receive from their princes what they could not be trusted to se- cure nobly for themselves. And less and less as years went by was he cap- able of seeing the political implica- tions of his own life. The important matter is to appeal from the Luther of later years to the 78 PROTESTANT REFORMATION Luther of the Diet of Worms. When the spirit of the earher Luther has captured his native land, Germany will be a Democracy indeed. And in the meantime we must never forget that in his deepest achievement Luther did more than to serve the cause of religion. Life is organic, and a principle fully operative in one realm will break over into others. In the Reformation organization faces limitations which it must admit when it confronts the meaning of the life of the individual man. And the lonely monk standing dauntless against em- peror and pope is niore than the repre- sentative of the religious rights of the individual. He is the unconscious prophet of political democracy. ^a'^'- The Reformation is like a vast for- <^tvon^ est in which it is easy to lose your -i^*'^ way. Political, social, economic, and religious influences were playing upon every leader and every move- 79 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ment. We may easily mistake the incidental for the essential. If we think of the Reformation as an essen- tially religious movement, constantly relating itself to a complicated and entangled political situation, we shall not go far wrong. And if we add to the religious result of the Reforma- tion an uncommon propulsion of the world toward democracy, we shall see the political corollary of the move- ment which is of most far-reaching meaning. Political liberty is, after all, the child of religious liberty. And the two are true descendants of the Re- formation. 80 PROTESTANT REFORMATION LECTURE IV COMPLETING THE REFORMATION The Reformation is like Tenny- son's brook. Men may come and men may go, but it goes on forever. And sometimes it must be confessed that it is like those streams which flow- part of their course underground, and then when they seem quite lost to the world suddenly emerge again into the clear light of day. Indeed, some cyn- ical observers might declare that the assertion as to the continual potency of the forces which made the Refor- mation can only be justified by faith. But in this case there is an appeal to facts as well as to faith, and the facts prove the perpetual vitality of the 8i THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE creative and energizing forces set loose by the Reformation. The rapid reading of history is a good deal like taking a ride in an amusement park on one of those start- ling givers of thrills vividly called ''roller-coasters.'* There are many sudden ups and downs and there is not that quiet and stately progress which the staid and proper historian might desire. The period after the Reformation brings us to an intel- lectual situation which is not very inspiring. The era of Protestant scholasticism is unlovely enough. Men kept the skeleton of the Refor- mation, but they had lost its heart. They had the bones of the movement, but its life was gone. It is worth our while to see in an intimate way one aspect of the changed emphasis which produced this situation. We may connect it with the meaning attached to the word '^faith.'' To Luther faith '^2 PROTESTANT REFORMATION meant vital personal appropriation. To the age of Protestant scholasti- cism faith meant intellectual assent. To Luther the leaping out of the whole personality to receive and de- pend upon the message of salvation, the decisive act of trust, was the cen- tral matter in faith. To the Protes- tant scholastic the truth carefully articulated and expressed in adequate formulas was a body of doctrine to be definitely received — and that was faith. Now, whenever the formula is taken instead of the reality which the formula represents there is a tragic movement toward lifelessness. You cannot take the formula H2O as a sub- stitute for water, and the principle is equally sound as regards the water of life. This is not an attack upon close and definite thinking. The reality does correspond to a definite analysis. And mistakes here may be tragic. 83 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE The old College nonsense rhyme ex- presses it clearly enough: "Poor Willie is gone from us. We'll see his face no more : For what he thought was HgO Was H2SO,." You want to be sure of your reality. But none the less even a true formula can never be a substitute for the thing which it represents. The subtle change of emphasis by which faith began to be thought of as intellectual acceptance rather than vital appropriation brought a barren and arid period to German theology which suggests a desert with burning sands and hot winds everywhere. But the river emerged, and no- where with more effect than in the work of Schleiermacher. Quite definitely now a Christian experience is made the basis of Christian theol- ogy. And without stopping to an- 84 PROTESTANT REFORMATION alyze the relation of the Pietists to the whole movement, we may say that since Schleiermacher the relation of a living Christian experience to a liv- ing theology has been increasingly recognized. Here we come upon a principle whose corollaries are yet to be completely worked out. Men like Bushnell and Dale — far apart as they are in some regards — illustrate in striking fashion what new quality comes into a theology constantly fed by the fresh fountains of the Chris- tian life. It is a curious and anomal- ous thing that Methodism, with its continued and effective emphasis upon Christian experience, has never pro- duced a theologian who has worked out the implications of this position in such a fashion as to command the attention of the whole Christian Church. The Methodist Schleiermacher is yet to come. And when he comes, if 85 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE he gathers all the aspects of the em- phasis of his ecclesiastical group upon Christian experience and interprets all this material in a theology drip- ping with vitality, he will be one of the great theologians of the Christian Church. Methodism owes this debt to the Church catholic. Its very genius should be expressed in a theol- ogy electric with the energy of actual experience of the things of men and the things of God. When this is done the significance of Methodism in theology will reach the level of its significance in evangelism. But more to the point is the fact that such a product will have its share in working out the implications of the Reformation. John Wesley dated his conversion from the hour at Alders- gate when he heard a reading of Luther's exposition of Paul's doctrine of justification by faith. The life which made the Reformation and the 86 PROTESTANT REFORMATION life which made Methodism are one, and that Hfe must find its adequate expression in a theology deHberately built about it as a defining principle. The appeal to life and its command- ing experience which was so deep in the movement of Luther found sig- nificant philosophical expression. Kant's Critique of Practical Reason involves this very principle lifted to a commanding place in philosophical speculation. Albrecht Ritschl grasped the same principle and in his theory of value judgments brought it back into theol- ogy. The pragmatists have given it a range and a position which would make it the all-inclusive matter in phi- losophy. When they use it as a method for reaching the real they do good work. When they exalt it to metaphysical significance and deny that there is any reality outside it, they cause grave questions to arise in 87 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE our minds. For all this, it is clear that the appeal to experience has come to exert a wide influence and to stay in philosophy as in theology. Three principles involved in the Reformation which must yet be worked out more fully deserve our close consideration. Two were ex- plicit. One was implicit. Put in per- sonal fashion they may be phrased thus: I. No man has a right to come be- tween me and God. IL No man has a right to come be- tween me and truth. III. No man has a right to come between me and my fellow men. They may also be expressed in this way: I. Every man his own priest. II. Every man his own prophet. III. Every man a personal worker for the advancement of the kingdom of God among his fellow men. 88 PROTESTANT REFORMATION We will examine them in a more de- tailed fashion. I. The principle of justification by faith makes religion a sharply indi- vidual matter. No priest has a right to a place between a man and God. No church rite is an essential medium without which the divine grace can- not reach the human heart. No eccle- siastical machinery of salvation is an essential part of the soul's reaching vital contact with God. Every Chris- tian belongs to the priesthood. And he enters the brotherhood by an act of personal trust. Not something done for him in a churchly act at the word of a priest, but something done in him in response to an act of per- sonal self-commitment constitutes the central matter in religion. To be sure, there is one great priest in whose priesthood no man shares. There is one mighty deed of suffer- ing rescue which places Calvary alone 89 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE among the achievements of the world. But this priest has not delegated his work to others, and this need is not repeated in the miracle of the mass. Jesus Christ is God in human life. And no churchly ceremony and no church official has a right to claim a defining and necessary place between the human soul and the living Christ. Of course a man must hear of Christ in order to believe in him. And in this sense the church is an in- strument for bringing the gospel to men. But the man who hears must find the moment of crisis in his own decision and his own trust. And he trusts not in the church which brought him the message. He trusts not in the forms or officials of an august institution. He trusts directly in the living Christ who died for him. In this profound sense no man has a right to come between another man and Christ. In this deep fashion of 90 PROTESTANT REFORMATION approaching God through a personal act and not through a necessary churchly rite, every man is his own priest. One is walking in high places as religion is kept personal. Many men become dizzy, and there is a constant tendency to lower the pressure of re- ligion by making it more a matter of ritual and less a matter of personal relationship. The ritual which is the expression of a personal relationship is a noble thing. The ritual which is a substitute for a personal relation- ship is the beginning of a process by which religion is emasculated. The completing of the Reformation from the standpoint of this principle in- volves a perpetual testing of ecclesias- tical forms of their capacity to min- ister to personal relationships. You have to watch religion to keep it from drifting back into magic. II. The right of private judgment 91 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE has secured a fairly real place in the modern world. We believe that no man has a right to stand between another man and truth. In the sense of a direct personal grapple with truth, and the right of a fearless indi- vidual declaration of it, we have a democratic sense of the meaning of the phrase "every man his own prophet/' Freedom to teach and freedom to learn are in process of being gen- uinely established in our colleges and universities. The scientist who de- clared that he never got very far without being confronted by the words, "No Thoroughfare," signed "Moses," belonged to an earlier gen- eration. The battle for freedom has been fought and in most lines of intel- lectual activity has been securely won. We are beginning now to ask further questions. We are begin- ning to feel that freedom itself must 92 PROTESTANT REFORMATION be justified by its fruits. We are beginning to inquire, "Freedom for what ?" We are beginning to under- stand that just abstract freedom is not a good thing unless it is put to good uses. All this is a movement toward a fuller appreciation of what was really very deeply involved in the Refor- mation. The right of private judg- ment was a right to be exercised in the name of something real and vital and true. It was not to be an instrument of anarchy. It was to be a method of loyalty to the deepest things in human life in its contact with the unseen. The right of private judgment does not mean that a man has a right to be- lieve in anything at any time in any way. It means that he has a right to discover what is involved in being completely loyal to the integrity of his own inner life, to his growing vi- 93 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE sion of truth, and then to stand in unalterable faithfulness by these things. Without doubt some men are char- acterized by greater insight than is possessed by others. Some men come with living words to tell men that which had not come within their mental or moral horizon. The man who insists upon his own prophetic position does not turn from such leadership, but he insists on his right to test it. He insists on his right to measure it by the dim and yearning- outreaches of his own soul, by the sense of need it awakens, by the deep places in his life to which it calls. Even when a man follows another man's guidance he follows as one who in the freedom of the mind facing its own deep demands feels impelled to follow. It is also true that there is a com- munity consciousness which comes 94 PROTESTANT REFORMATION pressing upon a man. He does not find his way alone. He finds his way as one of a company of struggHng and growing minds. Some of them are fooHsh, and they all cry for a hearing. The right of private judg- ment does not mean that a man ig- nores these minds. It means that he discriminates among these minds. They have a real place in the process. But they do not coerce and overwhelm the individual. There is the pressure of the age- long Christian consciousness upon the individual mind. It must be heard. It must be taken very seriously. It may shock a man into consciousness of folly and inadequacy and failure. But not even its pressure can override the deepest sense of personal integ- rity. The Christian consciousness is a perpetual aid and guide. It is not a tyrannical master. The working out of this principle 95 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE involves the constant endeavor to use freedom as a method for discovering the deepest truth in the individual, in society, and in relation to God as these emerge in actual experience. It is human life being loyal to its own meaning and to all that is taught by its own experience. III. The two principles which we have already discussed were very clearly a part of the essential meaning of the Reformation movement in the sixteenth century. The third did not come to such clear and visible form. It was implicit rather than explicit. But for all that, it is one of the most important principles of the Reforma- tion. And it is particularly signifi- cant for the life of to-day. This third principle is that no man has a right to stand between a man and his fellow men. It implies the responsibility ot every Christian for the advancement of the kingdom of God. With the 96 PROTESTANT REFORMATION practical apotheosis of the church, naturally the clergy would be consid- ered experts to deal with matters of salvation. To the clergy men would look for guidance in the way of life. The priesthood had a logical and unique position in all matters pertain- ing to the bringing of the soul to God. But once admit the fundamental Protestant principles, once acknowl- edge that every Christian is a priest and every Christian is a prophet, and it must immediately follow that every Christian ought to be an evangelist. The laymen have no right to employ the ministers to be experts in the of- fering of salvation. Every Christian must be an expert in pointing to the open door which leads to God. Lay- men have no right to employ a min- ister to be their substitute in doing personal work. Every Christian must be a personal worker. Now, it is a curious thing that in 97 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE this important regard most Protes- tant churches are essentially Roman Catholic. They employ their minister to do what comes as an essential re- sponsibility upon every individual Christian. They are willing to ac- cept the privileges the Reformation has brought to them. They glory in the right of immediate access to God unhindered by priest or ceremony. They glory in the right of private judgment. But the great responsi- bility implicit in the heart of the Re- formation, the solemn demand which comes to every Christian to have his personal share in winning men to Christ, they too often ignore. They resemble those men who are willing enough to accept every boon which Democracy confers, but who are not at all willing to accept the responsi- bilities which Democracy places upon their shoulders. The truly Protestant church is a church where every mem- 98 PROTESTANT REFORMATION ber is a personal worker. Every member of a truly Protestant church is one of its pastors. The minister has an administrative but not a sacer- dotal position. The whole church is mobilized for the tasks of the king- dom of God. One or two other matters deserve final consideration. Luther's rela- tion to matters of nationality is one of them. He was the typical German. He is the nation's hero. He did much to create the German language and gave characteristic form to the Ger- man spirit. He gave an inner spirit- ual unity to Germany felt even in the south where Rome kept its hold — cen- turies before Bismarck achieved the final and completely effective making of Germany into one nation. When Luther began to translate the Bible into German he might have tried to use German w^ords and keep the Latin spirit. He was very fa- 99 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE miliar with Latin. He knew its fine sonorous dignity. He knew its rela- tion to a stately and glorious past. But he did not make a book to be the echo of a great past. He made a book to be the inspiration of a great future. He picked live German words and vital German phrases, and re- vealed to a surprised world the ca- pacity of the German tongue for ef- fective and compelling and vigorous expression. He was coming to know something of Greek at this time. He might have tried to make a Bible Greek in spirit but German in words. What a travesty of a book it would have been! Instead he listened to the very breathings of the spirit of his own people. And he translated the Bible into a tongue which was re- fashioned into new energy and qual- ity through his use of it. He was loyal to the potential present and not merely to the stately past. 100 PROTESTANT REFORMATION America needs to ponder deeply this aspect of Luther's activity. We are eager listeners to voices from over the sea. Ancient and modern civili- zations have spoken right potently to us, and it has become a profound ne- cessity that we should do for the America of to-day what Luther did for the Germany of his time. We must listen to the breathings of the spirit of America. We must believe in the genius of our land. We must discover its inner potencies. We must be loyal to its dimly realized possibilities. And so from the deep and glorious common human ex- perience of this continent, up from the inarticulate life of the men of this land shall come a quality of life, a type of culture, a contribution to civilization, which shall be our gift to the world. We may love the old voices. We must speak our own tongue. If Luther were alive among lOI THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE us, he would be the supreme exponent of the American spirit. Another matter presses for atten- tion. Luther never forgot the mean- ing of soHdarity. Like the rest of the world's greatest reformers, he had a profound sense of the need of conser- vation. He wanted to carry into the new every really valuable thing in the old. Like John Wesley, who never severed his relation with the Anglican Church, Luther had a highly de- veloped sense of loyalty to everything which seemed good in the ancient way of life and worship. Although he broke down many things he was not an iconoclast in spirit. He did not believe in the pope's final authority, and he did not believe in the power of the church to stifle the individual, but he did believe in the church. He knew that men come to their best in relations and not out of them. He knew that Christianity is a religion I02 PROTESTANT REFORMATION of relationships, and only where the life of man was crushed or thwarted by its too great claims did he wish to break with an organized form of churchly life. He was not an eccle- siastical anarchist. He was a re- former of profoundly conservative in- terests. The men who are at the task of world-building to-day must have a deep sense of solidarity as they do their work. Liberty is not the denial of solidarity. It is the interpretation of solidarity in such a fashion that it protects the interests of the growing individual life while at the same time it keeps constantly before it the com- mon good. Perhaps the point where modern Christian consciousness is most de- finitely supplementing that sixteenth- century consciousness which we asso- ciate with the Reformation has to do with the social expression of Chris- 103 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE tianity. We have a new sense that the inner relations must become the outer relationships. We are learning the meaning of Christianity for the cleansing of the political life of the people, for the building of economic life about principles of brotherhood, for the securing of fresh air and good food and adequate clothing for all the people, for the efficient organization of all life about the principles of Jesus in a fashion which goes far and away beyond the vision of Luther and the sixteenth century. Even in all this, however, we are simply realizing more fully the meaning of that em- phasis on the individual life which was at the heart of the Reformation. And in it all we must preserve that inner experience whose secret Luther knew so well, or we will have lost the soul from the wonderful body which we are seeking to form for the world. One word, indeed, sums up the 104 PROTESTANT REFORMATION meaning of the Reformation. The word is vitahty. The sixteenth cen- tury was a century of reviving life. Luther embodied that hfe. He fought for that Hfe, and in its power he brought in a new epoch for Europe and the world. The great quest is the quest for life. If we obtain God's life in our life, if we express it in our activities; if we express it in all our relationships; if we put it in command of our com- merce and our industry; if we put it in authority lOver our international relationships; if we express it in our poetry and in our art and our theol- ogy, if we let it possess our souls and work itself through every aspect of our inner and outer relationships, then shall the vitality of the twen- tieth century be like that of the six- teenth — but vaster. Luther fearlessly applied living principles forged in the heat of his 105 PROTESTANT REFORMATION experience to the life of his time. Those who complete the Reforma- tion must do this very thing for the life of to-day. 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