n the throats of their communicants, their
spirit of aloofness from ministers of other denominations, and their
refusal to cooperate with them, has been the chief cause of this lack of
progress in our Church. They have, in their strict and even painful
adherence to dogma and form, taken the spirit and life out of the Church
and its worship. The enthusiasm and warmth of natural religion have
given way to a religion of form and ceremony. They have taken the life
and beauty out of the Bible, and made it a code of dry and inspired
theology. Instead of preaching, they have almost invariably talked
theology, and theology alone. Our Church has never been in need of
would-be theologians, but we have been and are now sorely in need of
pastors and preachers. They have discouraged honest investigation, if
that investigation has the least taint of rationalism. In their supreme
disgust for innovations they have made our Church as inflexible and
unfit for the various conditions of modern life as the customs and
practises of the Middle Ages would be out of place now. They have been
completely oblivious of the fact that there are necessarily change and
progress in theology and religion as well as in everything else. True,
there are certain fundamentals that never grow old; equally true is it
that there are some non-essentials that change with the varying hours.
The non-essential has been made essential, and so strongly insisted upon
that it is almost a sacrilege even to insinuate against its authority."
The _Visitor_, March 15, 1917, referring to this publication, remarks:
"Well, we admit the excerpt from the article is pretty raw. But the
_Visitor_ believes in allowing some freedom even to the religious
press.... Unanimity ere long becomes monotony. _Varietas sine unitate
diversitas. Unitas sine varietate mors_."

UNLUTHERAN PRACTISE.

149. Lodge-, Pulpit-, and Altar-Fellowship.--Forbearance with all manner
of weakness in doctrine and practise does not _per se_ conflict with
confessional Lutheranism. But a refusal on principle to take the correct
position, also as to Lutheran practise, is indeed incompatible with true
Lutheranism. The attitude of the United Synod, however, toward lodge-,
pulpit-, altar-, and church-fellowship has always been of a kind which
practically amounted to a denial of its confessional basis. Dr. Voigt
confesses: "As a matter of fact and actual practise, Lutheran ministers
in the United Synod do not invite o