f the religious sap of Catholicism, barely
succeeded in galvanizing a little. Hence the exactness of the remarks of
Oliveira Martins in his magnificent _History of Iberian Civilization_,
in which he says (book iv., chap, iii.) that "Catholicism produced
heroes and Protestantism produced societies that are sensible, happy,
wealthy, free, as far as their outer institutions go, but incapable of
any great action, because their religion has begun by destroying in the
heart of man all that made him capable of daring and noble
self-sacrifice."

Take any of the dogmatic systems that have resulted from the latest
Protestant dissolvent analysis--that of Kaftan, the follower of Ritschl,
for example--and note the extent to which eschatology is reduced. And
his master, Albrecht Ritschl, himself says: "The question regarding the
necessity of justification or forgiveness can only be solved by
conceiving eternal life as the direct end and aim of that divine
operation. But if the idea of eternal life be applied merely to our
state in the next life, then its content, too, lies beyond all
experience, and cannot form the basis of knowledge of a scientific kind.
Hopes and desires, though marked by the strongest subjective certainty,
are not any the clearer for that, and contain in themselves no guarantee
of the completeness of what one hopes or desires. Clearness and
completeness of idea, however, are the conditions of comprehending
anything--_i.e._, of understanding the necessary connection between the
various elements of a thing, and between the thing and its given
presuppositions. The Evangelical article of belief, therefore, that
justification by faith establishes or brings with it assurance of
eternal life, is of no use theologically, so long as this purposive
aspect of justification cannot be verified in such experience as is
possible now" (_Rechtfertigung und Versoehnung_, vol. iii., chap. vii.,
52). All this is very rational, but ...

In the first edition of Melanchthon's _Loci Communes_, that of 1521, the
first Lutheran theological work, its author omits all Trinitarian and
Christological speculations, the dogmatic basis of eschatology. And Dr.
Hermann, professor at Marburg, the author of a book on the Christian's
commerce with God (_Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott_)--a book the
first chapter of which treats of the opposition between mysticism and
the Christian religion, and which is, according to Harnack, the most
perfect Luth