The Reformation’s Influence on Nations and Communities

Introduction

Herman Bavinck delivered (in English) the speech “The Influence of the Protestant Reformation on the Moral and Religious Condition of Communities and Nations” in 1892 at the fifth general council of the Alliance of the Reformed Churches in Toronto, Canada. This speech, in its full form, is transcribed here.^[1] Bavinck was invited as a delegate of the Gereformeerde Kerken in the Netherlands (Harinck 1997, 151–60; Eglinton 2020, 183–87).

The speech has eleven brief sections. In the first section, Bavinck argues that the Reformation’s positive influence on religion and morality is increasingly questioned by Catholic scholars presenting it as disruptive and harmful to societal flourishing. This leads him in the second section to emphasize the complexity of assessing the Reformation’s impact on nations, and stresses that it must be understood within a broader philosophical and historical context. In the third section, he begins to argue against the position of Rome. The Reformation distinguished itself by prioritizing above all else peace of the soul with God, challenging the Catholic Church’s foundational Pelagian principles.

He expands upon this idea in the sections that follow; he argues the Reformation introduced a new religio-ethical framework hinging on how one answers the question of how sin is pardoned and peace with God obtained. Protestants emphasized salvation by faith and grace, which transformed both religion and morality (see also Simpson 2024, 107–9). He argues that the Reformation liberated religion and life from the Catholic Church’s control in the fifth section, emphasizing the dualistic nature of Rome’s existence between the antithesis of the supernatural and natural (see also Parker 2017, 81–95). The Reformation shifted the focus from ecclesiastical authority to individual faith, fostering a holistic organic Christian life integrated into all aspects of society.

In the seventh section, Bavinck contends that Protestantism’s emphasis on personal faith and liberty has, despite its divisions, led to a more dynamic religious life compared to Catholicism’s authoritarianism and superstition. The antithesis of the supernatural and natural has been replaced by the antithesis of the holy and unholy or sin and grace (see also Eglinton and Harinck 2023). Following this initial distinction, he then considers the two major strands of Protestantism, Lutheranism and Calvinism. This is typical for the methodology found in his Reformed Dogmatics. In the eighth section, he posits that the Lutheran Reformation’s focus on internal spiritual renewal, rather than a holistic transformation, has led to a weaker distinction between the sacred and secular in Lutheran societies. On the contrary, Calvinism’s emphasis on God’s sovereignty created a comprehensive theological worldview that sought to transform all aspects of life under divine authority, the ninth section contends (see also Parker 2021, 23–32).

Bavinck expands upon Calvinism’s supremacy in this regard in the final two sections. Calvinism shaped a disciplined, Scripture-centered religious life focused on God’s sovereignty, producing individuals of strong character and intellectual rigor. In particular, Calvinism’s rigorous moral discipline fostered democratic virtues and societal development, enabling Protestant nations to surpass their Catholic counterparts in civic achievements.

A few editorial remarks are likely necessary to make sense of some of the “Bavinck obscura” the reader will encounter. First, text printed in strikethrough type like this was redacted in Bavinck’s own notes. The archival version has countless small redactions that would have been cumbersome to retain below. However, the larger redactions have been retained for readers to enjoy Bavinck’s own editorial hand. Second, his practice of underlining cited works has been updated to reflect the modern practice of italicizing titles. Where a Dutch or German volume is available in English, I have provided the English title. Numbers indicated in brackets, such as [6], indicate the archival pagination. A few slight alterations of punctuation and capitalization have been made to bring the text closer to current usage, but Bavinck’s unique English style has been left unchanged. All of the subsequent notes are by the editor.

“The Influence of the Protestant Reformation on the Moral and Religious Condition of Communities and Nations” by Herman Bavinck

I.

This subject has without doubt the merit of being timely. The religio-ethical influence of the Reformation is one of those points on which of late years controversies have arisen between Rome and us. It is impossible to speak of the “blessed Reformation” with the same degree of “naivete” and complacency as formerly. Ever more earnestly the right is denied us of speaking of the darkness of the Middle Ages and the dreadful corruption of the Romish, before the period of the Reformation. And especially it will no longer do, without further proof, to praise the exceedingly favorable influence of the Reformation on religion and morals. Appeals to works like Napoléon Roussel’s The Catholic and Protestant Nations, Mutually Compared, from the Threefold Point of View of Prosperity, Intelligence and Morality (Roussel 1856) and Emile de Laveleye’s Protestantism and Catholicism, in their Relation to the Liberty and Prosperity of the Nations (De Laveleye 1875) are no longer sufficient. Arnold’s extremely partisan Unparteiische Kirche und Ketzer Historie of 1699 (Arnold 1729), had already disturbed Protestant illusions, on many points. But others have come after him and have drawn a gloomy picture of the religio-ethical conditions which have been established after and by the Reformation.

I need only to refer to the fifth volume of Buckles’s History of Civilization in England (Buckle 1856) and to several works of Tholuck: The Spirit of the Lutheran Theologians of Wittenberg during the Seventeenth Century (Tholuck 1852), and his The Prehistory of Rationalism series, Academic Life in the Seventeenth Century (Tholuck 1854), and Church Life in the Seventeenth Century (Tholuck 1862).

And similar historical studies have appeared in all countries, which prevent the sons of the Reformation from posing any longer as “laudatores temporis acti.”^[2] Especially two men on the Romish side have controverted this “blissful influence” of the Reformation and have endeavored to prove exactly the contrary. [2] They are Döllinger in his work The Reformation, its Inner Development, and its Consequences in Lutheran Circles (Döllinger 1854) and Johannes Janssen in his History of the German People at the Close of the Middle Ages (Janssen and Pastor 1878–1894).

Especially the first and last volumes of the last-named work are of importance in this respect.^[3] The first volume is a high-keyed eulogy of the universally favorable conditions which obtained among the German people during the rule of the Romish church toward the close of the Middle Ages. Religion and morality, trade and mechanical arts flourished. Existing evils did not originate in the church, but in pagan science, which entered from without, and in the wrong practices of princes and nobles. They were moreover all of such a nature, that they could easily be removed by a “reformatio in capite et membris.”^[4] But the Reformation has disturbed and destroyed all this prosperity. The sixth volume of Janssen’s History when placed beside the first is as darkness compared to light and as night compared to day. Religion and morality, art and literature, science and culture, trade and industry, everything has become degenerated, and infidelity and superstition join hands.

II.

But this subject is not only timely, it also attracts by its importance and difficulty and it introduces us to a broad and extended field. For the nations which have been influenced in a lesser or greater degree by the Reformation are both numerous and widely distributed. The period in which the Reformation exerted its influence on the religious and moral condition of the nations extends already over three long and eventful centuries. And the religio-ethical condition, in so far as it is influenced by the Reformation, falls almost beyond the limits of careful investigation. There are so many dangers threatening on all sides that this subject cannot be satisfactorily disposed of in the brief space of 20 minutes.

And what in the religio-ethical condition of the nations can be definitely ascribed to the Reformation? There are many other factors which have influenced that condition. Race, character, climate; economical, social and political development; humanism, philosophy and general culture — behold all these are powers which have helped to define the religious and ethical life of the nations. [3] The danger is therefore not at all imaginary that one might ascribe to the one what really belongs to the other, and that generally speaking a dreadful misuse is made of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Moreover, the religious and moral condition of a people is no physical or mathematical quantity which can be apprehended with the senses or figured out on one’s fingers, but a phenomenon, whose apprehension and valuation are entirely dependent on the investigating subject. It is true efforts have been made to make this science positive and to define it, according to statistical data. (See for instance Alexander von Oetingen [1882, esp. 605–55]). Ecclesiastical visitation, the solemnization of marriage by the church, the administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the number of churches, church members and ministers, the contributions for foreign and domestic missions, and for all sorts of benevolent operations, the statistics of crimes and extra-nuptial births—all these have from time to time been taken as the gauge of the religio-ethical condition of the nations.

But these statistics are not only as yet extremely defective and unreliable, but they can moreover never be anything but a very deficient aid for the indication of the development of the religio-ethical life of the nations. The largeness of the subject and the briefness of the time given for its treatment prove therefore sufficiently that it does not place us on the plane of historical facts and numbers, but on that of the philosophy of history. Albeit that the latter certainly cannot neglect or invalidate the historical facts, it is really something different from a chronicle or statistics. It is a philosophical search after the leading thought of the divine plan in the history of mankind. In God’s hand the Reformation has been a means for the religious and moral training of the nations. Now it is unquestionably the aim of our subject to determine the place occupied by the Reformation, after God’s’ own counsel, in the religious and moral education of the nations.

III.

The subject proceeds from the supposition that the Reformation was a religio-ethical movement and therefore could exercise a similar influence on the condition of the nations.

And this indeed is the case. It is true the Reformation was accompanied by various other movements of the [4] human spirit; in almost all countries it was associated with political and social interests. Knights and princes, the nobility and the clergy, citizens and farmers, humanists and artists sought its friendship and allied its interests with their own. Let it be understood that the Reformation did not stand by itself. With many other phenomena it was a revelation of that new spirit which in the fifteenth century all over and in every department of life strove after air and light and liberty; a spirit which, tired of the yoke of the Middle Ages, longed for emancipation and independence.

The Reformation was a part of that Renaissance, that regeneration in the broadest sense, which heralded the dawn of the new time. But among all the events which opened a new era, the Reformation bore a peculiar character. When it came to the point of remaining consistent with itself, it has discarded the alliance with princes and nobles, with humanism and science, and has preferred the friendship of God to that of man.

The reformers had another spirit than the men of the Renaissance who for a season desired their friendship and support. They were impelled toward liberty by a holier interest. They did not fight for the emancipation of the natural man, but for the liberty of the Christian. The revival of art and science was not their first ideal, nor political and social liberty. What they sought after, above all things else, was peace of the soul with God; was the liberty to serve God according to his Word. In them a need had been awakened, in whatever way it may have been, which found no satisfaction in the Romish Catholic Church; a sense of guilt had been aroused which was not removed by the penances of Rome; a zeal for the house of God had been kindled which devoured them and which caused them to antagonize, with the glow of holy indignation, the errors and abuses of the Romish church.

And that a great mass of these existed is not only proven by Protestantism, but also by Rome herself, in an array of unimpeachable witnesses. Divines and humanists like Gerson, d’Ailly, Wimpeling, Agricola, and Nicholas Cusanus; popes like Adrian VI; the councils of Pisa, Constanz, Basel, nay even the Council of Trent (the twenty-fifth session’s “Decree Concerning Indulgences” and the twenty-first session’s “Decree on Reformation,” chapter 9) are unanimous in this acknowledgment.

[5] Loud and general are the complaints about traffic in indulgences and worship of relics, about the value ascribed to works and about superstition, about the secularization of the church, the immorality of the priests, the nepotism of the prelates, etc. The Reformation started with a protest against those errors and abuses, but it could not rest there; it penetrated deeper, it traced those errors and abuses to their very roots and most distant origin. And thus it came to the surprising and saddening discovery that those abuses had not accidentally crept in from without ab extra, but that they were most closely related with the principle of the Romish church and that they proceeded from its very essence. The reformers saw that both system and practice originated in the principle of creature worship and of salvation by works and that they had their foundation in Pelagianism.

IV.

The Reformation placed over against this an entirely new religio-ethical principle. It did not merely consist in the removal of certain abuses, but it was an entirely new conception of religion and morality, a radical change in the religio-ethical life.

Even the general Christian things which the Reformation retained in common with Rome were placed in an entirely new light. Every religious movement, among all nations and at all times, is born from a deeply felt unrest and want of peace of the soul, from the need of reconciliation and peace with God, from the longing of the soul after a lasting and permanent good. Now by this the Reformation ranges itself among the mightiest movements which ever have moved the nations in the realm of religion. For it was born from the downcast heart, from the deep sense of guilt, from the confusion of the spirit. It proceeded from the presupposition that man is a sinner separated from God, and thereby already in its starting point it was diametrically opposed to Humanism. It moved in the old, that is in the Christian, antithesis of sin and grace, of guilt and reconciliation; and therefore it did not seek its point of vantage in classical antiquity, but in the writings of the apostles and prophets.

But over against Rome it sought an answer to the question how sin is pardoned [6] and peace with God is obtained—that it is not by works, but by faith; not by merit, but by grace; not by any righteousness in us, but by an applied and graciously imputed righteousness external to us; not by moral improvement, but by an objective restoration to the lost favor with God; not by the saints, but by the only mediator Jesus Christ; not by any creature, but by God alone. And with this answer the Reformation placed itself on principle over against all open and disguised Pelagianism of earlier and later times. The Reformation was and could be, if it were to stand by its principle, nothing but Augustinian.

By this position alone it could attack Rome in its very root and not merely in some existent abuses. Thus it was enabled to place over against Rome an entirely new and complete conception of life and of the world. Thus it became a power which could regenerate the nations and renew the world.

V.

Thus the Reformation has in the first place changed and purified the religio-ethical consciousness. With Rome the church is the incarnation of religion, the absolute institute of salvation, the realized kingdom of God, the continuous incarnation of the logos, the living Christ on earth, the only owner and dispenser of all gifts of grace, the “mater fidelium” and—in order that she may be all this and may be able to accomplish this divine task— ONE, HOLY, UNIVERSAL, CLAD WITH INFALLIBLE POWER and INSTITUTED and GOVERNED as a hierarchy. To obtain salvation, man is absolutely dependent on her. The individual receives his salvation from the hands of the church, i.e. of the priest, who distributes it physically and materially and “ex opere operato” in the sacrament. The sacrament is not sign or seal but vessel and bearer of grace, grace itself embodied. Whoever receives this grace, is thereby received into a higher world order, introduced into a supranatural relation of things, into a sphere of heavenly divine powers; he acquires thereby the power to do good works and “ex condigno” to merit heavenly bliss. For even as in Adam’s case the “dona supernaturalia” stand above the “dona naturalia”, so the church stands above the world, grace above nature, the religious and heavenly life above the common everyday life of creation. The true life is therefore an ascetic life and exclusively directed toward heaven. It tolerates the common everyday life of creation in marriage, occupation, society and state, beside and below itself, but at the same time suppresses it, as of a lower order and of less value.

[7] Rome therefore moves in the antithesis between supernatural and natural, between sacred and profane. Her ideal of life is ascetic, her ethics dualistic. The religious life is stamped as meritorious service, and the common moral life as profane. In this same direction the religio-moral consciousness among Roman Catholics has been developed. The priests and monks are the really true, the pneumatic men, “les religieux,” as they are called in France, the especially spiritual. The common people, who of necessity have to live in a worldly calling, are thereby as a matter of course destined for a lower degree of bliss.

VI.

This Romish consciousness has been purified by the Reformation of its unchristian ingredients and has been restored to its original purity. It liberated religion from the hands of the infallible church and priesthood. The individual becomes a partaker of salvation, not by sacrament and priest and church, but by personal faith. Religion is thereby removed from the circumference to the centrum, the heart of man, and becomes personal and individual.

Even the strictest orthodoxism is willing to acknowledge that eternal membership of the church and historical confession of her faith are utterly insufficient for salvation. Religion is a personal relation of man to God. Therefore, of course, all meritorious service or wage service is removed from religion. There are no good works and no penances that merit salvation.

The relations between religion and morality are essentially changed and inverted. With Rome a certain measure of morality of holiness and good works precedes communion with God. The certainty of salvation is here always undecided; it is guessed at, but never known; there is no room for the triumphant praise and thanksgiving of faith. But among Protestants religion is no longer the observance of ecclesiastical commandments and ceremonies, but a disposition, or better still an objective relation to God, which though not separable from is yet independent from the moral condition of the heart, and can therefore exist before the latter. And the certainty of salvation is therefore given, a priori, in and with faith, fixed and reliable, not originating in good works, but itself the cause and origin of a holy life.

Of course, a change in the moral consciousness was associated herewith. Rome profanes the common ethical life and ascribes a holy character only to those good works which are prescribed by the church and are directly related [8] to salvation. But the Protestant, assured by faith of his salvation in Christ, no longer seeks this in the way of commandments. He possesses it perfectly and surely in his Savior and Lord. And from this relation to God, restored in Christ, he receives the desire and the power to do good works. The element of anxiety is lifted out of them; he no longer works for a reward. The spirit of bondage unto fear has made place for the spirit of adoption unto children, by which he cries, “Abba, Father.” No longer as servant but as child he serves the Lord. He does not ask whether he must do good works, but he does them, before they are required.

The entire ethical life therefore originates in religion, in faith, and is itself nothing but a serving the Lord. The antithesis of consecrated and unconsecrated collapses, and makes place for that of holy and unholy. The natural is recognized in its value and is sanctified by faith in Christ. Marriage, riches, calling, art, science, the entire rich human life becomes a Christian life. Sanctification, and no longer asceticism, becomes the ideal of life. Not the removal out of the world, but the keeping of one’s self from evil in the world is the Christian’s calling.

The Reformation has banished all self-willed religion, all self-conceived sanctity, and for the accomplishment of his divine calling has referred man to, and placed him in the midst of, earthly relations. For the Christian life reveals itself in the faithful administration of earthly concerns. The way to heaven does not lead through the lonely desert, but through the rich fullness of human life.

And this ethical life is not an aggregate of good works, which each by themselves deserve a stipulated reward; but one organic whole, growing from one principle and developing itself according to one law.

VII.

The Reformation has, however, not only enlightened and purified the consciousness, it has also changed and renovated the religious and moral condition of the nations. For in this respect there is a striking difference between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic nations.

As regards religion the difference especially appears as follows: the Reformation made of religion a personal matter. Its doctrine of the “perspicuity” of the Holy Scriptures led her to place them in every hand and to leave their explanation to the individual conscience. In principle it thus announced [9] the liberty of religion and of conscience, although it did not itself at first come to this conclusion and did not appreciate the consequence of the principle, nay even denied and opposed the same.

But from this liberty, postulated in principle by the Reformation and denied by Rome, the phenomenon arises that Protestantism has divided itself into so many churches and sects. For there is nothing which, on comparing the two, stands forth as prominently as the woeful division of Protestantism. Without doubt this division is to be regretted on many accounts: it proves an exaggerated subjectivism, it destroys power, it tears apart the unity of the church.

And still Rome should not too loudly boast of her unity. The separation of the Reformation in a Lutheran and a Reformed tendency has its analogy in the schism of the Greek and Latin churches. And under the appearance of an outward unity there is hidden in Rome a division not a whit less important. The number of indifferent people and unbelievers is not a whit less great in Catholic countries than it is in Protestant lands. In Belgium, France, Italy, Austria, etc. the members of this same Romish church are antagonizing each other, as “liberals” and “clericals,” in the bitterest way. Rome, as little as Protestantism, has been able to stem the flood of unbelief, nor to ward off the detriment which arose therefrom to the Christian religion. Even before and in the period of the Reformation, unbelief had widely extended itself, e.g. in Italy.

The Reformation did not cause but it restricted this unbelief and it has incited Rome itself to watchfulness and a sense of self-preservation. Furthermore, Cartesius, the father of modern rationalistic philosophy, was a Roman Catholic; Voltaire and Rousseau, the French Materialists and the German Rationalists, Renan and Strauss — behold, do they not balance each other?

The revolution had its taproots in Roman Catholic lands and there it bore its bitterest fruits. And finally, it is an open question whether the number of tendencies, parties and sects, which ever and anon rise up in the bosom of Rome, does not equal that among Protestants.

But Rome has the power and courage to smother, as in the cradle, all such errors, as soon as they show themselves. For surely we do not owe it to Rome that so many flourishing Christian churches have arisen by her side. What she attempted, in regard to the Reformation, she undertakes to do for every newly revealed tendency.

[10] Romish infallibility from the very nature of things does not tolerate contradiction. Silent obedience is the duty of the individual toward her. The present pope even dictates to his believing subjects in France in matters of domestic politics. And in case of disobedience, censure, excommunication, interdict and, if necessary and possible, even the sword are ready to compel obedience. In this way Rome maintains an external unity.

But the price thus paid for unity is too dear for the Protestant. It consists of nothing less but liberty of conscience, the right of individuality, the personal character of religion.

And the retention of these moral possessions is of infinitely greater value than a forced and often superficial unity. Rome kills both individuality and subjectivity; the Reformation restores and strengthens them. Rome stands on the ground of law; the Reformation on that of grace and liberty. Jesuitism, which more and more becomes identified with Romanism, has its ideal in the “perinde ac cadaver”;^[5] the Reformation strives to make man free and independent.

And although the division among Protestants has its dark shadows, it does prove at the same time that Protestantism is a power, and that it is able evermore to create new forms.

And the most wonderful thing in all this is the fact, which is forgotten too often, that nearly all churches and sects in Protestantism continue to move within the circle of the one and universal and undoubted Christian faith. The unity, which binds them all together and which retains them in this oneness, is always far greater than the differences, which separate and divide them. A free and richly variegated unity, such as was evidenced by the general missionary assembly of London in June 1888, morally stands a great deal higher than the servile subserviency, wherewith the Council of the Vatican in 1870 announced the dogma of the infallibility of the pope.

Another important difference in the religious condition of Romish and Protestant lands consists in the dreadful superstition to which Romish Catholics are always more abandoning themselves. To investigate the influence which Romanism exerts on the religious condition of mankind we must not only observe it in its noblest form, in a few choice spirits and heroic figures. But it is necessary especially to consider those nations and countries where Romanism for many centuries has held undisputed sway. And then there is but one testimony regarding the steadily increasing power of superstition which enslaves the Roman Catholic nations. In this respect Rome vies with the Greek church. [11] If anyone does not know this from personal observation and investigation, he can be convinced by the important work of Trede, Das Heidenthum in der Romischenkirche (1889–1892). The worship of Mary, of relics, of images, and the adoration of saints are increasingly supplanting the worship of the only true God and of the only mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ.

Of course this does not deny that Rome also has, and in large numbers, its noble figures, its men of high stature, its deeply religious natures, its heroes of the faith and its apostles of love; as well in the past as in the present; men who by their total self-denial and perfect consecration to the cause of Christ deserve our admiration and imitation. But notwithstanding all this Romanism exerts an influence on the people which dulls the religious consciousness, which kills liberty, which causes the personal character of religion to languish, and leads men to seek in the external keeping of religious commandments their justification before God. Hence the assurance of salvation among Romanists is, generally speaking, in practice much greater than among Protestants.

The believing Romanist does simply what the church says and further he does not worry about his salvation; the church cares for him and settles this matter for him; for the church is the common agent of salvation. Now this certainty may be easy and may practically wipe out the doctrine of the “incertitudo salutis,” still it is in many cases unfounded and false. The Protestant neither can nor may satisfy himself therewith. No church, nor priest, nor sacrament can guarantee his salvation. He himself must be assured of it by the Holy Spirit in his heart. The Protestant therefore searches himself, he seeks for the signs by which he can distinguish the work of grace, and does not rest till he can say, with certainty and clearness: I know that my Redeemer lives. I acknowledge that this self-investigation may often degenerate into a vain and fruitless self-contemplation; but even here the Protestant religion characterizes itself as a matter of the subject, of every man personally, as a thing between God and every individual soul.

Finally, the Romish religion does not yet distinguish itself from the Protestant by its external exhibition. I do not deny that warm and fervent religiosity may be concealed by it. But with Rome everything is more adapted to the eye, with the Protestants more to the ear. The Romish church is that of the sacrament; the Protestant that of the Word. [12] This is most closely connected with the inner life-principle of both churches. It is the aim of the Pelagian to bend the will, and to that end he works on the heart and the emotions; he makes much of feeling in religion; he nurtures it through the senses; he enchants the eye.

Rome attracts by its magnificent churches, its rich ceremonies, its detailed cultus. But the Protestant addresses himself to the mind, he wishes to convince, he wants to change the consciousness, and thus he tries to reach the will. Protestant worship is therefore simple and serious. It does not address itself to the emotions, but to the consciousness, in a reasonable and spiritual, not in a sensual way. Its churches are no temples, but tents of assembly, houses of prayer, generally speaking they afford no room for images, paintings, wax candles, and priestly garments. At best, organs accompany the songs of the sanctuary. Even in the work of missions and of charity this love of display is evident in the Romish church.

But even here I do not wish to set aside the truly good and beautiful, which Rome, in this respect, has established to our shame. Nay, there is an element of truth in the statement of Janssen, I, 8 that the doctrine of the meritoriousness of good works has been rich in fruits (see Janssen and Pastor 1878–1894, 8). It was this doctrine which gave the church the inheritance and legacies, which called into existence the hospitals, the orphanages, the poorhouses, which built temples and churches, which originated the works of art for the embellishment of the houses of God, and which established numerous institutions of education. The wrongness of the principle may not close our eyes to the good which underlies these works, and ought to be an incitement to us, from a more beautiful principle, to do still more glorious works.

Yet even this principle has often led to outward exhibition and has promoted the desire to make a name for one’s self.

And James Johnston, a secretary of the London missionary conference, in June 1888, in his work A Century of Christian Progress and its Lessons (Johnston 1888) and Dr. G. Warneck, in his Protestantische Beleuchtung der römischen Angriffe auf die evangelische Heidenmission (Warneck 1884–1886) have proved the Romish exaggeration in the field of missions and have clearly shown that the Catholics, all their external growth notwithstanding, are yet not outstripping the Protestants in our century. According to percentage the Catholics decrease in all countries, except in America, and there the exception is due to immigration. In the Netherlands for example they have decreased, according to the latest [13] census, in ten years, from 39 to 35 percent of the population. And in general the Catholics have increased, in a century, only 1.9 times; the Protestants on the contrary 3.7 times. In the field of missions, it is the same story. According to Warneck, the Romish Christians in heathen lands number p.m. 3 million, the Protestant Christians p.m. 2 ½ million; so that the former, in the last century, were increased by 0.90 and the latter by 44 percent.^[6]

Now, however uncertain these statistical data may be, they prove in each case that the religious condition of Protestant nations may safely challenge comparison with that of Romish lands. The Protestants will act wisely if they do not allow the Romish pomp and ecclesiastical display to blind their eyes.

VIII.

But morally, also, the influence of the Reformation on the condition of the nations has neither been very large and unfavorable. It must be admitted, however, that in this respect the Lutheran Reformation comes behind the Calvinistic. For this there are several reasons.

The German Reformation, though at first just as Augustinian and just as radical as the Swiss, was early dulled into conservatism. Luther, frightened by the peasant insurrection and the radicalism of the Anabaptists, restrained the working of his reformatory principle to the realm of the religious life and for the rest left everything, as much as possible, as it was. Especially since the Diet of Spiers, he left the settlement of the entire earthly life to the princes of the Realm, who neither from principle nor from noble motives were all favorably disposed to the Reformation. It is true he liberated the ethical life from the impress of the profane, but he had neither the power nor the inclination to reform it entirely, from the standpoint of the Christian principle, so that the Lutheran Reformation was only a reformation of the religion, a change of the inner man.

Christ, says Luther, is not come, “dass er aüsserlich etwas andere, sondern das der Mensch inwendig im Herzen anders werde”. (that it may become something different externally, but that man may become different inwardly in his heart) (Luthard, “Die Ethik Luthers in ihren grund zugen.” 2te Auflage 1875. S.81 v).^[7]

Luther makes the worldly free from ecclesiastical, but further he allows it, in a dualistic way, to stand side by side with the spiritual, and sometimes he speaks, as if the external is an indifferent matter and incapable of moral renewal. [14] The great and rich thought is not grasped that Christ is not only king of the soul, but of the body as well; not only of the church but of the entire plane of all human life. This explains why even the Lutherans of today separate themselves very little from the world. In their common daily life there rules something cosmic, a “being conformed unto the world,” which seriously endangers the Christian life and not rarely gives occasion for some serious complaints.

The field of the adiaphora is very wide and takes in nearly the whole external life. Dancing, the theater, concerts, etc. are frequented by believers and unbelievers alike. The keeping of the Sabbath in Lutheran countries differs but little from that in Romish lands.

In a direct way, the influence of the Lutheran Reformation is only appreciable in religious life and in pure doctrine. From this stationary and conservative tendency of Lutheranism, Pietism has also originated, i.e. the tendency which attaches value only to piety and leaves all the rest, art, science, the state, society, etc. to the world.

IX.

The religio-ethical influence of the Reformation is most powerfully and purely observable, not among the Lutheran, but among the Calvinistic nations. The Swiss Reformation was radical and total. In principle it went deeper down and therefore its practical compass was greater. Lutheranism took its point of vantage in history, in the concrete reality, and there it rested. It did not ascend higher; it did not penetrate deeper; it was completely satisfied with justification by faith, i.e. with the religion of the heart and the pure doctrine.

But Calvinism had no peace before it found the eternal in and behind the temporal. Its motto was, as it were, “caducum eterna tuetur,” the temporal is bearer of the eternal. The Calvinist found no rest for his thinking, no more than for his heart, unless he rested in God, the eternal and unchangeable. He penetrated into the holiest of holies of the temple to the final ground of things, and did not cease his search after the “αιτια,” the “διότι” of things, till he had found the answer in the eternal and sovereign pleasure, in the “εὐδοκία τοῦ Θεοῦ.”

[15] Calvinism is the only consistent theological view of the world and of humanity. And therefore it is particularly apparent, but in reality it is most universal and catholic. From the high, spiritual, theological standpoint which the Calvinist occupies, he looks over the whole world. He sees everything “sub specie aeternitatis”—broad and wide and far. In his system all depends not on any creature, but only on God Almighty. There is no limit to His grace and mercy but that which He Himself, in His unsearchable and adorable good pleasure, may have established. The love of the Father, the grace of the Son and the communion of the Holy Ghost have no limitation or condition, outside of themselves, in any quality of the creature. Neither country nor people, neither error nor sin, neither sex nor age bind them. “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things.”^[8]

X.

Of course this Calvinism gave a peculiar character to the religious life. The religious life among the Calvinists is not only different from that among the Catholics, but also from that among the Lutherans. The difference is that in the religious life as it reveals itself in Reformed circles, as well as in doctrine, the Sovereignty of God stands foremost. Not the love of the Father, as in many modern circles; not the person of Christ, as among the Moravians; not the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, as among the Anabaptists and Friends; but the sovereignty of God in the entire work of salvation and over the whole expanse of the religious life is here the starting point and ruling idea. That sovereignty is the divine in the divinity, and the unity, in the several operations of the three persons of the adorable Trinity.

And now it may be true that Calvinism, by its strict preaching of God’s justice and law, awakens a deep feeling of guilt and unworthiness in man, and that it prostrates him deeply in the dust before God’s sovereign majesty; but equally true it is that afterward it elevates him to a singular height of blessedness and that it causes him to rest in the free, eternal, and unchangeable good pleasure of the Father. This system is certainly not adapted to the making of “soft and dear” people, and it is averse to all sickly sentimentality. But it creates men of marble, with a character of steel, with a will of iron, with an insuperable power, with an extraordinary energy. The word of Bismarck, “Wir, Deutsche, fürchten Gott und sonst nichts in der Welt” [“We Germans fear God and nothing else in the world”], is spoken from the heart of the Calvinist. Elected by God, he recognizes [16] in himself and in all creatures, nothing but instruments, in the divine hand. He distinguishes sharply between the Creator and the creature, and, in his religion, he will know nothing but God and his Word. His piety links itself therefore most closely to the Scriptures, and not a whit less to the Old than to the New Testament. For in the leadings of Israel and in the dispensation of the old covenant, this sovereignty speaks louder yet than in the New Testament.

The study of the Holy Scriptures therefore occupies a larger place in Reformed circles. And because Calvinism is more masculine than feminine, more mental than emotional, it endeavors to develop the religious life in others chiefly by instruction. It possesses a sharply defined Dogmatics and owes a great share of its influence and extension to the clearness of its conceptions and the sobriety and healthfulness of its entire view of life and of the world.

XI.

But, yet more than in matters of religion, the difference between Lutheranism and Calvinism is apparent in the influence on the moral condition of the nations. It must be acknowledged that the Calvinistic Reformation in many countries has also too early become stationary and conservative. In the Netherlands, for example, the activity of the Reformed ceased very nearly altogether after the Synod of Dordt. Other powers then obtained a hearing. The magistrates bound the church and broke its influence. Philosophy passed theology in the race. Literature and art were directed in unreformed paths. Riches and luxury stifled the simple Calvinistic spirit, so that we retain certain religious and moral conditions which are little in harmony with the demands of the Reformation. But notwithstanding all this, Calvinism has exerted a mighty influence on the moral condition of the nations. In the mighty mind of the French reformer, regeneration was no system which filled out creation, as among Romanists; no religious reformation which left creation intact, as among Lutherans; much less an entirely new creation, as among the Anabaptists— but a reformation and a renewal of all creatures. Calvin traced the working of sin wider than Luther, deeper than Zwingli. But on this very account, grace is narrower with Luther and poorer with Zwingli than with Calvin. The Calvinist therefore is not satisfied when he is personally reconciled with God and assured of His salvation; his work begins then in dead earnest, and he becomes a co-worker with God. For the Word of God is not only the fountain of the truth of salvation, but [17] also the norm of the whole life; not only glad tidings of salvation for the soul, but also for the body and for the entire world. The Reformed believer continues therefore “ad extra” that reformation which began with himself and in his own heart. The conversion of his soul is not aim and end, but the beginning and starting point of his new life. He is therefore active and aggressive and hates all false conservatism. The family and the school, the church and church government, the state and society, art and science, all are fields which he has to work and to develop for the glory of God. The Swiss Reformation bore thus not only a religious, but also an ethical, social and political character.

The moral life which has been fostered by the Calvinistic Reformation distinguishes itself both from the Anabaptist “avoidance” and from the Lutheran “cosmism.” The Anabaptists and the Friends avoid the world; they break all contact with unbelievers and withdraw within the narrow circle of their own spiritual kindred. Their dress is as simple as possible; their lives are sober; they do not cultivate art or science; they do not join in the enjoyments of life. There is a perfect separation and a dualism, carried on at times to the verge of the ridiculous. The Lutherans, on the contrary, maintain an unrestrained association with unbelievers; they take part in worldly pleasures and there is here a manifest mixing of world and church; in the common everyday life, the distinction between believers and unbelievers is almost totally lost sight of. Now, Calvinism has taken position between the two, and has desired distinction but no full separation between church and world. It foresaw that a complete separation would lead back to Romish asceticism and to monasticism; that it would compel the believers, contrary to the word of Paul (1 Corinthians 5:10) to go out of the world; that it would only promote the unnatural; and that it would finally terribly avenge itself in all manner of sins. But on the other hand, it has not left the moral life to itself and to individual tendency and social caprice. Its conception of sin was too deep for this. The Calvinist has little faith in man, who is inclined to all manner of evil. It feared the play of emotions and the arousal of sensations which might very easily degenerate into sinful lusts and passions. It knew how easily the flesh was awakened and then spurred on by the enticements of the world. And therefore the Calvinist has put the entire moral life under the discipline of the law and under the rule of the divine commandment.

[18] The moral life therefore reveals in all Reformed circles a strict legal character; it has always more or less of the Puritanical stamp. It characterizes itself by the strictness of Sabbath observation, by the antagonism to all worldly pleasures, by a serious conception of the entire life. Concerts and theaters, song and dancing parties, feasts and drinking bouts are forbidden enjoyments of the world.

Even loud wit, excited merriment, excessive laughter are more or less suspected. Enjoyments, which are innocent in themselves, as e.g. walking on Sunday, skating, piano-music, etc. are not rarely placed on the index, on account of their conformity to the world.

And although contact with the world need not be avoided in an ascetic or Anabaptist way, Calvinism has yet never promoted a real communion of life with unbelievers on festive occasions, in marriage, in enjoyments, etc.; nay, it has rather kept back from such communion and disapproved of it. The Geneva of Calvin’s day, the legislation of the Presbyterian churches in Scotland, in America, and in the Netherlands, prove it sufficiently.

Puritanism has thus sometimes nourished a hardness of sentiment, a coldness of heart, and a severity of judgment, which cannot impress favorably. The free, the genial, the spontaneous, in the moral life, have often been oppressed and killed by it. Far more classic than romantic in its nature, it has for the whole of life a norm and type to which it must answer and be conformed. This is evident even in external matters. Simple garments, smooth hair, a serious countenance, a dry voice and a bent attitude mark but often the true Puritan; and the entire manner of life often justifies but too much the remark of Buckle that —“whatever was natural was wrong.”

And yet, we must not forget that Calvinism, even in its strictest form, differs on principle from the Romish asceticism and from the Anabaptist “avoidance.” These originate in despisal of the world; in the thought that the natural life, as being of a lower order, cannot be sanctified. But the Calvinistic rigorism was born from the desire to consecrate the whole life to God. Like Calvin himself imposed on the consistory at Geneva the task— “invigilare gregi Domini, ut Deus pure colatur”. (Kampschulte, Joh. Calvin. 433). ^[9] Rome tries to bridle the natural man; Calvinism tries to sanctify him. And if it has thus been guilty of exaggeration, and if it has often disowned and killed the natural—everyone, who recognizes the power and extensive dominion of sin will feel the difficulty here to walk in the right way and equally to avoid conformity to and flight from the world, the worship and the despisal of the same.

[19] The strict morality of Calvinism has moreover nourished a series of beautiful virtues: domesticity, order, neatness, temperance, chastity, obedience, earnestness, industry, sense of duty, etc. These may not belong to the brilliant and heroic virtues; they are especially civic virtues, and are of inestimable value to a people. Thereby the Calvinistic nations have laid by, in store, a capital of moral possessions on which the present generations are still living. Nay, by this strict morality, Calvinism has not only promoted the simple domestic taste and has called into existence a solid “bourgeoisie”; but has also regenerated nations and founded states. For, in distinction from Pelagianism, which is always more or less aristocratic and hierarchical, because it transfers from nature to the realm of grace the self-distinctions of men; Calvinism is democratic in character and seeks its strength among the common people. It tolerates neither hierarchy in the church, nor tyranny in the state. It is a principle of liberty and has a republican mien. It had the greatest success among the nations who were strongly active and mostly set on liberty. It has defended, extended and maintained the rights and liberty of the people in Switzerland, the Netherlands, England, and America. The character of the people and the nature of the religion here agreed and joined hands. This is the reason why Calvinism extended itself much farther than Lutheranism. It has prosecuted its march through and around the world. It is a missionary power; in it lives an impetus to conquer all the world. Methodism as well as the Salvation Army here betray their Calvinistic origin. All the nations among whom Calvinism became a power distinguish themselves by extraordinary activity, clearness of thought, religious spirit, love of liberty, and by a treasure of civic virtues which are not found, to that extent, among Catholic nations. A comparison between Scotland and Ireland, between Prussia and Austria, between Holland and Spain, between North and South America, will always result in favor of the Protestant countries. In the centuries which have elapsed since the Reformation, the more serious Protestant and Germanic North of Europe and America has unquestionably, in almost every domain, passed in the arena the fickle Romish and Romanic South of both continents. The Reformation continues therefore to occupy an important place among the means by which God has promoted the religio-ethical education of the nations and humanity.