tachment. The Calvinists were no longer tenaciously devoted to their
founder's views of absolute predestination, while the Lutherans, having
departed from the doctrine of the real presence in the Lord's Supper,
had adopted the Zwinglian theory. The rigid authority of the symbolical
books was but loosely held by Lutherans and Calvinists. Frederic William
III., seeing that the separation was more imaginary than real, wrote a
letter on the second of May, 1817, to Bishop Sack and Provost Hanstein,
in which he said: "I expect proposals from you concerning the union of
the two confessions, which are in fact so similar; and as to the easiest
method of effecting the same." On the twenty-seventh day of the same
month he addressed a circular to all ecclesiastical functionaries
within his dominions, calling upon them to exert their influence for the
union of the two churches, and to give notice that the approaching
jubilee would be the signal for it to take place. The thirty-first of
October was the anniversary, and the plan was so far successful that in
many places the people and ministry of both confessions met on that day
for divine worship and partook of the Lord's Supper together. The fruit
of the movement was highly satisfactory to the Prussian King. Very soon
after the anniversary of the Reformation, the terms _Lutheran_ and
_Reformed_ were stricken from official documents, and the united State
Church was henceforth known as the Evangelical Church.

Beyond the limits of Prussia the Union gave rise to animated discussion;
but within the space of five years it was effected in Nassau, Rhenish
Bavaria, the Palatinate, Rhenish Hesse, and Dessau. It encountered the
most decided opposition in the person of Harms, a pastor of the city of
Kiel. He was not opposed to any movement which he thought would conduce
to the advantage of Christ's kingdom, but it was his opinion that a
return to the old Lutheran orthodoxy was more needed than the union of
the two churches. The faith of the fathers, and not the union of
Rationalistic divines, was, in his view, the only method of deliverance.
Harms was little known outside his own province until the publication of
his ninety-five _Theses_ in connection with the original ninety-five
nailed by Luther to the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg. He was
the son of a plain Holstein miller, and had been indoctrinated into the
Lutheran catechism during his early youth. His first lessons in Latin
and