of Bohemia in 1618. Likewise, in the East, about this time, great changes took place; the Mandshu Tartars obtained the empire of China in 1610; and in Persia arose the powerful dynasty of the Abbassides, who made extensive conquests. Also in Abyssinia, Tunis, and Morocco, similar changes occurred. If by faith we "see that which is invisible," and consider that there are powers of darkness ever at work in the course of this world, we shall probably find it easier to account for commotions of one and the same description in human history, arising at one and the same period, in countries and circumstances the most different and remote from each other. III.-RELIGIOUS STATE OF GERMANY AT THIS THE opposition made to blind papal superstition in the way of head-knowledge, that is, by intelligent argumentation from the truths of Scripture, had soon become more popular in the Protestant church, than that equally intelligent, and still more important opposition, which vital faith makes against papal errors. Instead of drawing every answer, in the cheerful possession of this faith, from the rich treasures of the word of God; and instead of making these treasures altogether their own in life and conversation; the Protestant clergy were far more occupied in defining, distinguishing, and systematizing the va rious points of church doctrine; and spent their diligence much more in the refutation of errors, than in the positive recognition of Divine truth, or in holding forth the word of life. The Lutheran divines did not rest merely in endeavours to prove the scriptural correctness of their confession of faith, in opposition to the Papists and the Reformed; but, even in the bosom of their own churches, there arose about their common confession a considerable variety of conflicting opinions, to which a too great importance was sure to be attached, and in the discussion and maintenance of which was spent too much of time and toil, especially as these controversies could seldom be conducted with the calmness, moderation, and love of peace which such things always require. Thus, while the controversies among the Reformed ran chiefly upon the doctrines of election and free-will, the Lutherans, in like manner, controverted various errors warmly with one another, and especially such views as seemed to imply that man, by good works, can contribute any thing to his own salvation. There was formed by degrees a cold lifeless orthodoxy, which consisted in mere notions, and which came very far short of vital Christianity. The Protestant church, about the time when the thirty years' war broke out, very much needed a revival; and God, as if to show that his kingdom cannot be destroyed by war, did in that very season of it raise up such worthies as the church stood in need of; men, who insisted more upon living in the Spirit of Christ, with heartfelt piety and genuine conversion to God, than upon accurate definitions of scriptural subjects; and who, amidst the pressures and difficulties arising from the state of the times, and the unnumbered troubles of war, were enabled to render the desired consolations of the word of God accessible to the broken spirits of the oppressed. Such were John Arndt, John Gerard, Stephen Pretorius, Henry Müller, Christian Scriver, John Valentine Andreæ, and others. How needful was the vital counteraction wrought by such men's labours, to oppose the dead ideal theology of the times, may be gathered from the fact, that the writings of Arndt, whose "True Christianity" has, by the Divine blessing, been made useful to so many thousands of souls, were declared by the orthodox Luke Osiander to be pestilential, papistical, and evil; and that Arndt, on account of them, was even charged by him with blaspheming against the Holy Ghost. Philip James Spener, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, followed up the train of those excellent men, and testified in the same spirit against the dry scholastical kind of theology which had so long prevailed; and as he had no prospect of being able to compass the whole church, by reason of its internal differences and divisions, he invited all real Christians to unite in more practically acknowledged communion with one another, and to aim at mutual edification, in the simplicity of devout reflection upon the word of God. The great good he was in this way enabled to effect, may be regarded as a second part of the blessed Reformation; which second part, sooner or later, could not but become developed out of its first important work; and indeed as that real essence of it, which perhaps was not to be so fully disclosed to the world, till what had hitherto confined it was broken open by the sword of war and public calamities. The chief business of the Reformation at its commencement was separation from Popery, the rectifying of abuses and erroneous doctrines, the free possession of the word of God, and the diligent preaching and reading of the same. Now, upon all these things men could become enlightened and convinced, without being really converted to God; and hence the Protestant church exhibited little more than a new medley of persons of various opinions, who were kept together by one and the same general scriptural profession of faith. The reformers had found it necessary to make use of a sieve of the coarser sort, and Spener now used one of a finer texture. The general mass of those who separated from Popery, at the period of the Reformation, remind us of the ten thousand which Gideon, after the first proving of his men, had still remaining; but those whom Spener severed may be compared to the three hundred who lapped at the brook without using their hands. We mean that, in the first hundred years after the Reformation, it was sufficiently evident that the general character of the Protestant church did not amount to the character of a communion of true believers in Jesus, and that the spirit of it could just as easily remain cold and dead, with an evangelical confession of faith, as with a popish one. And yet Spener's aim was, of course, not to obtain such a communion of saints as should have no tares at all mixed with it, the Lord himself having already, in Matt. xiii. 24-30, assured him that this, under the present dispensation, is out of the question; but only a communion of Christians, whose consciences should have become awakened to that certain verity, that nothing but heartfelt conversion and our being born again can fit us for the kingdom of God; that no public confession of faith, be it ever so scriptural and orthodox, can suffice for such a purpose. Now, this distinction, which was the one upon which Spener insisted, together with the effect it was instrumental in producing, must not, in any attempt to contemplate this world's history on scriptural principles, be overlooked or disregarded; inasmuch as the great religious revivals, so remarkable at the beginning of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and which have been even attended with considerable influence on the political world, are intimately connected with this vital distinction in spiritual matters. Especially must it not be forgotten, that the Christian exertions which have been making during the last hundred years for the conversion of the heathen, and which have of late been productive of such surprising and important effects, were actually stirred up through this very same practically essential distinction. Zeal for the salvation of the heathen, as a zeal persevering and successful, can only manifest itself in a community of real and cordially affectionate Christians. Moreover, as heathen tribes becoming converted enter into the |