itself at present?"

Against the modern demand that the Church shall socialize itself,
that it shall organize as a public center in a community of the
people's civic life, that it shall enter the nation's political
activities for moral uplift, and that ministers should become
what Luther would call "preachers of dreams in material
communities," our book places itself on record[22].

Against the widespread demand that Christianity should get
together into one world-wide visible ecclesiastical order,
Luther's words are peremptory. He declares that the one true
Church is already a spiritual community composed of all the
believers in Christ upon the earth, that it is not a bodily
assembly, but "an assembly of the hearts in one faith," that the
true Church is "a spiritual thing, and not anything external or
outward," that "external unity is not the fulfilment of a divine
commandment," and that those who emphasize the externalization of
the Church into one visible or national order "are in reality
Jews."[23]

Luther refers to those without the unity of the Roman Church as
still within the true Church. "For the Muscovites, Russians,
Greeks, Bohemians, and many other great peoples in the world, all
these believe as we do, baptise as we do, preach as we do, live
as we do."

But if Luther attacks the supremacy of the outer organization in
the Church, he no less forcibly disputes the supremacy of man's
own inner thinking, his reasoning, in theology. He defines human
reason as "our ability which is drawn from experience in temporal
things" and declares it ridiculous to place this ability on a
level with divine law[24]. He compares the man who uses his
reason to defend God's law with the man who in the thick of
battle would use his bare hand and head to protect his helmet and
sword. He insists that Scripture is the supreme and only rule of
faith[25], and ridicules the Romanists who inject their reason
into the Scriptures, "making out of them what they wish, as
though they were a nose of wax to be pulled around at will."

As might be supposed, Luther's book, thus set against the
external unity of human ecclesiastical organization, and against
the inner rule of human thinking, is equally strong against the
human visualization of divine worship. He argues against those
who "turn spiritual edification into an outward show", and those
who chiefly apply the name Church to an assembly in which "the
external rites are in use, such