has been equally fatal to its
dogmatic integrity and to its intellectual development. But in the home
of the Reformation a league has been concluded in our time between
theology and religion, and many schools of Protestant divines are
labouring, with a vast expenditure of ability and learning, to devise,
or to restore, with the aid of theological science, a system of positive
Christianity. Into this great scene of intellectual exertion and
doctrinal confusion the leading adversary of Protestantism in Germany
conducts his readers, not without sympathy for the high aims which
inspire the movement, but with the almost triumphant security which
belongs to a Church possessing an acknowledged authority, a definite
organisation, and a system brought down by tradition from the apostolic
age. Passing by the schools of infidelity, which have no bearing on the
topic of his work, he addresses himself to the believing Protestantism
of Germany, and considers its efforts to obtain a position which may
enable it to resist unbelief without involving submission to the Church.

The character of Luther separates the German Protestants from those of
other countries. His was the master-spirit, in whom his contemporaries
beheld the incarnation of the genius of their nation. In the strong
lineaments of his character they recognised, in heroic proportions, the
reflection of their own; and thus his name has survived, not merely as
that of a great man, the mightiest of his age, but as the type of a
whole period in the history of the German people, the centre of a new
world of ideas, the personification of those religious and ethical
opinions which the country followed, and whose influence even their
adversaries could not escape. His writings have long ceased to be
popular, and are read only as monuments of history; but the memory of
his person has not yet grown dim. His name is still a power in his own
country, and from its magic the Protestant doctrine derives a portion of
its life. In other countries men dislike to be described by the name of
the founder of their religious system, but in Germany and Sweden there
are thousands who are proud of the name of Lutheran.

The results of his system prevail in the more influential and
intelligent classes, and penetrate the mass of the modern literature of
Germany. The Reformation had introduced the notion that Christianity was
a failure, and had brought far more suffering than blessings on mankind;
an