From A.D. 1817 Prussia favoured and furthered the scheme for union between the two evangelical churches, and over this question a split arose in the camp of pietism. On the one hand were the confessionalists, determined to maintain what was distinctive in their symbols, and on the other, those who would sacrifice almost anything for union. For the most part both churches cordially seconded the efforts of the royal head of the church; only in Silesia did a Lutheran minority refuse to give way, which still maintains a separate existence.
§ 177.1. The Evangelical Union.—Circumstances favoured this movement. Both in the Lutheran and in the Reformed church comparatively little stress was laid upon distinctive confessional doctrines, and pietism and rationalism, for different reasons, had taught the relative unimportance of dogma. And so a general accord was given to the king’s proposal, at the Reformation centenary of A.D. 1817, to fortify the Protestant church by means of a Union of Lutherans and Calvinists. The new Book of Common Order of A.D. 1822, in the preparation of which the pious king, Frederick William III., had himself taken part, was indeed condemned by many as too high-church, even Catholicizing in its tendency. A revised edition in A.D. 1829, giving a wider choice of formularies, was legally authorized, and the union became an accomplished fact. There now existed in Prussia an evangelical national church with a common government and liturgy, embracing within it three different sections: a Lutheran, and a Reformed, which held to their distinctive doctrines, though not regarding these as a cause of separation, and a real union party, which completely abandoned the points of difference. But more and more the union became identified with doctrinal indifferentism and slighting of all church symbols, and those in whom the church feeling still prevailed were driven into opposition to the union (§ [193]). The example of Prussia in sacking the union of the two churches was followed by Nassau, Baden, Rhenish Bavaria, Anhalt, and to some extent in Hesse (§§ [194], [196]).
§ 177.2. The Lutheran Separation.—Though the union denied that there was any passing over from one church to another, it practically declared the distinctive doctrines to be unessential, and so assumed the standpoint of the Reformed church. Steffens (§ [174, 3]), the friend of Scheibel of Breslau, who had been deprived of his professorship in A.D. 1832 for his determined opposition to the union, and died in exile in 1843 (§ [195, 2]), headed a reaction in favour of old Lutheranism. Several suspended clergymen in Silesia held a synod at Breslau in A.D. 1835, to organize a Lutheran party, but the civil authorities bore so heavily upon them that most of them emigrated to America and Australia. Guericke of Halle, secretly ordained pastor, ministered in his own house to a small company of Lutheran separatists, was deprived of his professorship in A.D. 1835, and only restored in A.D. 1840, after he had apologised for his conduct. From A.D. 1838, the laws were modified by Frederick William IV., imprisoned clergymen were liberated in A.D. 1840, and a Lutheran church of Prussia independent of the national church was constituted by a general synod at Breslau in A.D. 1841, which received recognition by royal favour in A.D. 1845. The affairs are administered by a supreme council resident in Breslau, presided over by the distinguished jurist Huschke. Other separations were prevented by timely concessions on the part of the national church. The separatists claim 50,000 members, with fifty pastors and seven superintendents.
§ 177.3. The Separation within the Separation.—Differences arose among the separate Lutherans, especially over the question of the visible church. The majority, headed by Huschke, defined the visible church as an organism of various offices and orders embracing even unbelievers, which is to be sifted by the divine judgment. To it belongs the office of church government, which is a jus divinum, and only in respect of outward form a jus humanum. The opposition understood visibility of the preaching of the word and dispensation of sacraments, and held that unbelievers belonged as little to the visible as to the invisible church. The distribution of orders and offices is a merely human arrangement without divine appointment, individual members are quite independent of one another, the church recognises no other government than that of the unfettered preaching of the word, and each pastor rules in his own congregation. Diedrich of Jabel and seven other pastors complained of the papistical assumptions of the supreme council, and at a general synod in A.D. 1860 refused to recognise the authority of that council, or of a majority of synods, and in A.D. 1861, along with their congregations, they formally seceded and constituted the so called Immanuel Synod.
§ 178. Evangelical Confederation.
The union had only added a third denomination to the two previously existing, and was the means of even further dissension and separation. Thus the interests of Protestantism were endangered in presence of the unbelief within her own borders and the machinations of the ultramontane Catholics without. An attempt was therefore made in A.D. 1840 to combine the scattered Protestant forces, by means of confederation, for common work and conflict with common foes.
§ 178.1. The Gustavus Adolphus Society.—In A.D. 1832, on the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of the saviour of German Protestantism, on the motion of Superintendent Grossman of Leipzig, a society was formed for the help of needy Protestant churches, especially in Catholic districts. At first almost confined to Saxony, it soon spread over Germany, till only Bavaria down to A.D. 1849, and Austria down to A.D. 1860, were excluded by civil enactment from its operations. The masses were attracted by the simplicity of its basis, which was simply opposition to Catholicism, and the demagogical Friends of Light soon found supremacy in its councils. Because of opposition to the expulsion of Rupp, in A.D. 1846, as an apostate from the principle of protestantism, great numbers with church leanings seceded, and attempted to form a rival union in A.D. 1847. After recovering from the convulsions of A.D. 1848, under the wise guidance of Zimmermann of Darmstadt, the society regained a solid position. In A.D. 1883 it had 1,779 branches, besides 392 women’s and 11 students’ unions, and a revenue for the year of about £43,000.—The same feeling led to the erection of the Luther Monument at Worms. This work of genius, designed by Rietschel, and completed after his death in A.D. 1857 by his pupils, and inaugurated on 25th June, A.D. 1868, represents all the chief episodes in the Reformation history. It was erected at a cost of more than £20,000, raised by voluntary contributions, and the scheme proved so popular that there was a surplus of £2,000, which was devoted to the founding of bursaries for theological students.
§ 178.2. The Eisenach Conference.—The other German states borrowed the idea of confederation from Prussia and Württemberg. It took practical shape in the meetings of deputies at Eisenach, begun in A.D. 1852, and was held for a time yearly, and afterwards every second year, to consult together on matters of worship, discipline and constitution. Beyond ventilating such questions the conference yielded no result.
§ 178.3. The Evangelical Alliance.—An attempt was made in England, on the motion of Dr. Chalmers (§ [202, 7]), at a yet more comprehensive confederation of all Protestant churches of all lands against the encroachments of popery and puseyism (§ [202, 2]). After several preliminary meetings the first session of the Evangelical Alliance was held in London in August, A.D. 1846. Its object was the fraternizing of all evangelical Christians on the basis of agreement upon the fundamental truths of salvation, the vindication and spread of this common faith, and contention for liberty of conscience and religious toleration. Nine articles were laid down as terms of membership: Belief in the inspiration of Scripture, in the Trinity, in the divinity of Christ, in original sin, in justification by faith alone, in the obligatoriness of the two sacraments, in the resurrection of the body, in the last judgment, and in the eternal blessedness of the righteous and the eternal condemnation of the ungodly. It could thus include Baptists, but not Quakers. In A.D. 1855 it held its ninth meeting at the great Paris Industrial Exhibition as a sort of church exhibition, the representatives of different churches reporting on the condition of their several denominations. The tenth meeting, of A.D. 1857, was held in Berlin. The council of the Alliance, presided over by Sir Culling Eardley, presented an address to King Frederick William IV., in which it was said that they aimed a blow not only against the sadduceanism, but also against the pharisaism of the German evangelical church. The confessional Lutherans, who had opposed the Alliance, regarded this latter reference as directed against them. The king, however, received the deputation most graciously, while declaring that he entertained the brightest hopes for the future of the church, and urged cordial brotherly love among Christians. Though many distinguished confessionalists were members of the Alliance none of them put in an appearance. The members of the “Protestantenverein” (§ [180]) would not take part because the articles were too orthodox. On the other hand, numerous representatives of pietism, unionism, Melanchthonianism, as well as Baptists, Methodists, and Moravians, crowded in from all parts, and were supported by the leading liberals in church and state. While there was endless talk about the oneness and differences of the children of God, about the universal priesthood, about the superiority of the present meeting over the œcumenical councils of the ancient church, about the want of spiritual life in the churches, even where the theology of the confessions was professed, etc., with denunciations of half-Catholic Lutheranism and its sacramentarianism and officialism, and many a true and admirable statement of what the church’s needs are, Merle d’Aubigné introduced discord by the hearty welcome which he accorded his friend Bunsen, which was intensified by the passionate manner in which Krummacher reported upon it. The gracious royal reception of the members of the Alliance, at which Krummacher gave expression to his excited feelings in the words, “Your Majesty, we would all fall not at your feet, but on your neck!” was described by his brother, Dr. F. W. Krummacher, as a sensible prelude to the solemn scenes of the last judgment. Sir Culling Eardley declared, “There is no more the North Sea.” Lord Shaftesbury said in London that with the Berlin Assembly a new era had begun in the world’s history; and others who had returned from it extolled it as a second Pentecost.
§ 178.4. The Evangelical Church Alliance.—After the revolution of A.D. 1848, the most distinguished theologians, clergymen and laymen well-affected toward the church, sought to bring about a confederation of the Lutheran, Reformed, United, and Moravian churches. When they held their second assembly at Wittenberg, A.D. 1849, many of the strict Lutherans had already withdrawn, especially those of Silesia. The Lutheran congress, held shortly before at Leipzig under the presidency of Harless, had pronounced the confederation unsatisfactory. The political reaction in favour of the church had also taken away the occasion for such a confederation. Yet the yearly deliberations of this council on matters of practical church life did good service. An attempt made at the Berlin meeting of A.D. 1853 to have the Augustana adopted as the church confession awakened keen opposition. At the Stuttgart meeting of A.D. 1857 there were violent debates on foreign missions and evangelical Catholicity between the representatives of confessional Lutheranism who had hitherto maintained connection with the confederation and the unionist majority. The Lutherans now withdrew. The attempt made at the Berlin October assembly of A.D. 1871, amid the excitement produced by the glorious issue of the Franco-Prussian War and the founding of the new German empire with a Protestant prince, to draw into the confederation confessional Lutherans and adherents of the “Protestantenverein,” in order to form a grand German Protestant national church, miscarried, and a meeting of the confederation in the old style met again at Halle in the following year. But it was now found that its day was past.