If there is any doctrine that distinguishes Christianity from every other religion, it is its spirituality. A heavenly life brought down to man—such is its work; thus the opposition of the spirit of the Gospel to the spirit of the world was the great fact which signalized the entrance of Christianity among the nations. But what its Founder had separated, had soon come together again; the Church had fallen into the arms of the world; and this criminal Union had reduced it to the deplorable condition in which it was found at the era of the Reformation.
Thus one of the greatest tasks of the sixteenth century was to restore the spiritual element to its rights. The Gospel of the Reformers had nothing to do with the world and with politics. While the Roman hierarchy had become a matter of diplomacy and a court intrigue, the Reformation was destined to exercise no other influence over princes and people than that which proceeds from the Gospel of peace.
TWO STRIKING LESSONS.
If the Reformation, having attained a certain point, became untrue to its nature, began to parley and temporize with the world, and ceased thus to follow up the spiritual principle that it had so loudly proclaimed, it was faithless to God and to itself.
Henceforward its decline was at hand.
It is impossible for a society to prosper if it be unfaithful to the principles it lays down. Having abandoned what constituted its life, it can find naught but death.
It was God's will that this great truth should be inscribed on the very threshold of the temple He was then raising in the world; and a striking contrast was to make this truth stand gloriously forth.
One portion of the Reform was to seek the alliance of the world, and in this alliance find a destruction full of desolation.
Another portion, looking up to God, was haughtily to reject the arm of the flesh, and by this very act of faith secure a noble victory.
If three centuries have gone astray, it is because they were unable to comprehend so holy and solemn a lesson.