r would only construe its utterances as Reason would dictate.

With the Reformers there was a conflict between the Bible and the Roman
church, but harmony between Reason and the Bible; hence these two
homogeneous elements should be united and the rebellious one forever
discarded. But with the Rationalists there was an irreconcilable
difference between Reason and Revelation, and the latter must be moulded
into whatever shape the former chose to mark out. The Reformers
celebrated the reunion of both; but the Rationalists never rested as
long as there was any hope of putting asunder those whom they believed
God had never joined together. But the later Rationalists, least of all,
could claim consanguinity with the Reformers. How could they who
banished miracles from the Scriptures and reduced Christ to a much lower
personality than even the Ebionites declared him to be, dare to range
themselves in the circle of the honored ones who had unsealed the
long-locked treasures of inspiration, and declared that Christ, instead
of being an inferior Socrates, was divine, and the only worthy mediator
between God and man? After we accept every reasonable apology for this
destructive skepticism there will still be found a large balance against
it. There are four considerations which must always be borne in mind
when we would decide on the character of any development of religious
doubt and innovation. 1. _The necessity for its origin and development_;
2. _Its point of attack_; 3. _The spirit with which it conducts its
warfare_; and 4. _The success which it achieves_.

Let us see how Rationalism stands the test of these criteria. It must
be confessed that the German Protestant church, both the Lutheran and
Reformed, called loudly for reinvigoration. But it was Faith, not
Reason, that could furnish the remedy. The Pietistic influence was
gaining ground and fast achieving a good work; but it was reprobated by
the idolaters of Reason, and the tender plant was touched by the fatal
frost. Had Pietism, with all its extravagances, been fostered by the
intellect of the pulpits and universities it would have accomplished the
same work for Germany in the seventeenth that the Wesleys and Whitefield
wrought in England in the eighteenth century. There was no call for
Rationalism, though its literary contributions to the church and the
times will eventually be highly useful; but they were ill-timed in that
season of remarkable religious doubt. It was