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sacred objects, as images, recitative singing on the part of the clergy, the use of the organ, &c., with the single exception of the scripturally based practice of psalm singing on the part of the church; its means of representing truth in public service was confined to the simply-spoken word.

Diverse from the Zwinglian and Calvinistic type is the ritual of the Church of England, which exhibits a nearer relationship to the other Confessions. She follows Romish tradition in the general character of her liturgy, and agrees with the Lutheran Church in this, that the communion is regarded as the crowning ceremony of every principal religious service; varying from the practice of this Church, however, in placing the sermon (before communion, indeed, but) at the close of the liturgy as an entirely disconnected act. It is peculiar in its comprehensive arrangement of Scripture passages, though they are not distributed according to any organic principle. Its prayers are very extended, and by various and multiplied responses, the interest of the people in the liturgy is kept awake. For the rest, however, it does not belie the Reformed spirit and character.

Accordingly we find in the Lutheran Church a critical appreciation of what has grown up in process of time in the Reformed a return in a more or less radical spirit to the original principles as given in Holy Writ; there the personal side has most weight; here, that of the body of believers; there, prevails a direct method of appeal to the feelings, a fullness, and a consecrated sensuousness, taking its rise from the depths of the pious heart, and promoting the heart's peace and comfort; here, a simplicity and plainness, demanded by the Christian understanding, and carried out with a stern and lofty earnestness of purpose.

In the southwest of Germany, where the two Confessions came into contact, in Würtemburg, Baden, the Palatinate, &c., as also in Alsace, a commingling of these two types of Evangelical worship took place. The Würtemburg church-order required the Lord's Supper to be celebrated six times a year, and so often as a sufficient number were present who desired it. This latter is a trait of Lutheranism, but the views of the Reformed were followed in not regarding this Supper as the chief point of every public service; and again, it associates both

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views in prescribing the usual discourse for communion day, yet a shorter one, upon the use and value of the holy sacrament." The Reformed custom is found more fully recognized. in the liturgy of the Palatinate, (1567,) in which it is provided, that the Lord's Supper shall be celebrated every one or two months; and, in addition, that eight days previously it must be announced, so that the whole church may make ready for the service. Upon those occasions the usual discourse was omitted, and, in its place, one upon the death and last supper of the Lord was substituted. In like manner we find in this quarter of Germany the Lutheran order in the liturgy greatly reduced, least of all in Alsace. The weekly preaching service, according to the church order of Baden, was restricted to the singing of a hymn at the commencement and close, and the offering of a prayer, composed of petitions, after the sermon. Richer in ceremonies, is the directory of the Palatinate, (1563,) which united with those acts, a prayer of confession and petition, with "Our Father" before the sermon; and after the sermon, in adherence to the Reformed custom, the public confession, with the absolution and retention. Also the infrequent celebration of the communion, which followed the sermon, was restricted in both these districts to the most essential partsintroductory hymn, commonly the "Deutschen Glauben," then the exhortation, then a petition; after this, "Our Father," reading the words of institution, and distribution, while a hymn was sung, thanksgiving and benediction.

As in these two points of the liturgy, so in the rest we perceive the Lutheran and the Calvinistic elements co-operating. As a consequence of adhering to the Lutheran Church, the principal feasts were retained, and the German church-song adopted; in adhering to the Reformed, the didactic principle was made prominent and assiduously cultivated; that of devotion was somewhat overshadowed, and the means of representation, furnished by symbols and by art, almost entirely done away, although here, too, the German and Lutheran spirit in various ways found a foothold.

There obtains, consequently, in the liturgies of the southwest a certain tendency to union; yet so that in those of Würtemburg and Baden, the Lutheran, and in that of the Palati

nate, the Reformed type was the more prevalent. But this union is by no means such as involves the excellences, but rather the defects of both Confessions-such as rather mixed the two types than associated them together in a higher unity. For from the Lutheran Church it did not draw her historical truth, and the fullness and life of her responses and her symbols; nor from the Calvinistic, the clear psychological order, but it combined with the plainness of the Reformed service the want of a comprehensive principle, which with some propriety may be objected against the Lutheran liturgy itself. Indeed, out of both branches of the Reformed Church, (the Swiss and the Calvinistic,) it had eliminated only the defects-from the church of Zwingle, the preaching service formed from barren fragments; from that of Calvin, the too much simplified communion service.

This tendency to union in the time of the Reformation upon the sphere of the liturgy, bears in one word, a negative, rather than a positive character; and the consequence is, that those liturgies, not excepting those of Baden and the Palatinate, fell far behind the prescribed liturgies of both churches, in intrinsic value and in edifying power.

We have, therefore, in these mixed liturgies an anticipation of the condition to which the Lutheran Church in Germany, as in some degree the Reformed Church abroad, was, in the following centuries, reduced.

The Lutheran Church had, as already remarked, in unison with the entire development of the Primitive Church, adhered to the practice of making the Lord's Supper the crowning ceremony of every Sabbath day's public service. The same event, however, happened to her case as to the fourth and fifth centuries-communicants were not forthcoming at the service. In the Romish Church, adherence to this weekly celebration was made practicable by the change which was gradually wrought in the significance of the Supper-from that of an eucharistic offering to that of a sacrifice for sin; for to the celebration of the mass sacrifice, the presence of communicants was not indispensable, as the priest alone could offer the sacrifice to God on behalf of the people. This expedient was of course a thing not to be thought of in the Evangelical Church. Were there no

communicants present, the communion must be passed over and the service be restricted to the acts of worship which had preceded. At first, as remarked above, the idea of the service was kept up at least as of something which ought to have been done, by introducing in place of the neglected communion, a discourse reprehensive of the church. This, however, availed not to alter the state of the case. After the thirty years' war, during which the practice continued to decay, an attempt was made, by the aid of church discipline, to restore as far as possible the outward service, but the inner life could not be roused. The re-establishment of the weekly communion was beyond the reach of that movement; only the ancient forms of the liturgy could be upheld.

From the pietistic movements of the subsequent period, a renewal of the spirit and form of public worship, carried forward in continuity with these efforts, was to have been expected; for the pietists were really instrumental in reviving the spiritual life of the Evangelical church. But they took a subjective course, somewhat at variance with the spirit of the Reformation. The established usages of worship were no more regarded as valuable for the religious training of the people, and as expressions of the popular religious life, but as means of personal inward edification. For reaching this object, a pungent exposition of Scripture, connected with hymns of a meditative cast, and with free extempore prayers, expressive of the existing wants of the pious heart, were viewed as most appropriate and most satisfactory. Affairs took no other turn, certainly did not improve in the subsequent era of rationalism, which required the eclaircising of religious things, and morality, as the grand object of public worship.

It is to these influences that Dr. S. ascribes the great changes and reductions which the German mass has suffered, and which he deeply deplores. The communion became a special service, designed only for certain fixed days, and in place of the usual sacrament, came the proclamation of the word of God, taking, in its subjective form, as the sermon, the highest place in the Sabbath-day services. Hence, too, the omission. from the liturgy (through the influence of Pietism) of such portions as gave expression to that life of faith in the Church

which never varies; also, (under the influence of Rationalism,) of such as alluded to our need of saving grace-the Kyrie and the Gloria. What remained, received a character bearing especially upon the sermon, and indeed others were added at the close, carrying the mind back to the text appointed for the

sermon.

The principles upon which Dr. S. proceeds in the farther discussion of his theme, are perhaps too much colored with the natural preferences of a Lutheran, to accord with the tastes and meet the views of a Reformed Church. Whatever of these may seem for edification will perhaps on another occasion be selected for our readers.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

I. Germany; its Universities, Theology and Religion; with sketches of Neander, Tholuck, Olshausen, Hengstenberg, Twesten, Nitzsch, Müller, Ullmann, Rothe, Dorner, Lange, Ebrard, Wichern, and other distinguished German divines of the age. By Philip Schaff, D.D., Professor in the Theological Seminary, Mercersburg, Pa. Philadelphia Lindsay & Blakiston. 1857. pp. 418.

We would characterize this book as valuable, containing much information, by a man of talent and cultivation, and yet as rather popular than esoteric. It does not go so deeply into the matter as scholars would expect from Dr. Schaff, but it gives every intelligent man a more complete view of its subject than could perhaps be obtained in any one book. The tone of the sketches is hopeful for Germany, and for the world. The phases through which theology has passed are most remarkable, and yet the plain, simple, old-fashioned truth is again manifesting its power. A book, which we presume Dr. S. is competent to write,―midway between this and the intensely metaphysical histories of opinion, which not one man in five hundred can understand-beginning with the first rationalistic tendencies, and carrying the matter through all the phases of philosophical and theological opinion again into the light of orthodoxy, would be most interesting. We copy a paragraph touching the darkest form of German philosophical theology:

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