practice of our own ministers who have thoughtlessly slipped over too
far toward the institutional theory. In the present condition of
religious flux we have a mission not only in the field of doctrine, but
also in practical theology, on the question of the Church. For we are
still standing between two antagonists. Catholics on the one hand
attract the masses by the definiteness of their external organization.
Over against them we emphasize the essentially spiritual nature of the
Church. There are Protestants on the other hand who, while placing the
emphasis on the inner life, ignore the importance of the ordinances.
They maintain public worship, it is true, but do so in combination with
secular entertainment or by appealing to the intellectual or esthetic
needs of the community. Others, more spiritually minded, base their
hopes on the evangelist and the revival. But when the evangelist has
taken his leave, and the people have to listen to the same voice they
have heard so long before, having been thoroughly indoctrinated with the
idea that it is not the Church that makes a man a Christian, that
sacraments and ordinances are merely human devices, is it any wonder
that many of them ignore the church altogether?

It is here that the Lutheran Church, with her catholic spirit and her
evangelical doctrine, has a message for our times. Her doctrine of
baptism, of Christian instruction as its corrollary, of repentance,
faith, and the new life, of the Lord's Supper, of church attendance, of
the sanctification of the Lord's Day, and a practical application of
these doctrines to the life in the care of souls, establishes a standard
of membership that ought to make our churches sources of spiritual
power.

The Problem of Religious Education

Historically and doctrinally the Lutheran Church is committed to
week-day instruction in religion. Historically, because in establishing
the public school her chief purpose was to provide instruction in
religion; doctrinally, because from her point of view life is a unit and
cannot be divided into secular and spiritual compartments.

American Christians are confronted with two apparently contradictory
propositions. One is that there can be no true education without
religion. The other is that we must have a public school, open to all
children without regard to creed.

When our country was young, and Protestantism was the prevailing type of
religion, these two ideas dwelt peacefully toge