In Reformed theology the doctrine of the ministry is an essential part of the doctrine of the church. The ministry is never a matter of indifference to theology. Its character, authority, forms and functions are prescribed and described in doctrinal statements of the churches, and the subject has been doctrinally and historically expounded by many theologians. While these writers differ in detail in their teaching on the ministry, they agree in main outline and together present a body of doctrine that is both consistent and explicit.

In words familiar to us all St. Paul observes that in Christ there is “neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free.” This is usually, and I think correctly, not taken to mean that the Apostle's ideal is the abolition of human distinctions in a blank uniformity. His own love for the figure of the Body with its various members suggests rather the maintenance of differences, freed from the stigma of inferiority, in the harmony of corporate life. We were reminded last year of the importance of the Barbarian, that is the non-Greek element in the Christian tradition. My subject this address is one of the chief representatives of another element—the Roman. Neither in the passage just quoted nor in the similar one in Galatians does the Roman appear in St. Paul's listing of the differences capable of being united in Christ. But St. John tells us that the titulus upon the cross of Jesus was written in Latin as well as in Hebrew and Greek. Pious as well as scholarly comment has seen in his emphasis on this point a reference to the place of Roman along with Greek and Jew in the Christian body, and in so doing has probably sensed correctly the intent of the Evangelist. Certainly the Roman striving for liberty under law is of great concern for us today, when the alternative to law appears to be not anarchy but despotism.

Religious, political, and economic forces have given direction to the stream of modern history. Though all these forces operate in every age, each has exercised the major influence for a definite period of the modern era. Religious forces were dominant in the sixteenth century. Then religious values were regarded as of primary concern. The great thinkers on political and economic subjects usually based their ideas on religious principles. The major wars were Wars of Religion.

The story of learning in the Middle Ages has been patiently reconstructed from a great many sources, and one of its principal themes has rightly been the preeminent service of the Christian Church in the preservation of classical writings, the stimulation of thought, and the instruction of its members. The distinction is not always carefully drawn, however, between the enthusiasm felt by clerical individuals and the institutional policies of the Church. A detailed enumeration and analysis of its official pronouncements about education may qualify the general impression and, by eliminating certain misconceptions, leave a clearer path for tracing the rise of schools after the barbarian invasions. The legislation will not reveal the whole attitude of the ecclesiastics, since the Middle Ages were less likely to define their institutions than we are, but it provides an indication that should not be minimized.

A strange contrast exists in the status of the Christian Church in the past seventy years. On the one hand the Church has clearly lost some of the ground which once appeared to be safely within its possession. On the other hand it has become more widely spread geographically and, when all mankind is taken into consideration, more influential in shaping human affairs than ever before in its history. In a paper as brief as this must of necessity be, space can be had only for the sketching of the broad outlines of this paradox and for suggesting a reason for it. If details were to be given, a large volume would be required. Perhaps, however, we can hope to do enough to point out one of the most provocative and important set of movements in recent history.

The history of the great Disruption in the Scottish Church of a century ago has already been related in detail by various writers. Other students have described specific aspects. For instance, in a stimulating, thematic essay, Laski has outlined the political theory of the schism; from the vantage point of seventy-five years and the Baedeker of Figgis he saw the path of the Disruption more clearly than the seceders. This present paper, however, is concerned not with the Scottish phase or with Laski's pluralistic bias: it relates an English extension of the schism and suggests a few implications of that extension.

Considerable mystery has long surrounded the antecedents of the Society of Friends. George Fox, an unlettered country lad, has been pictured as having gathered the Society after receiving, through a series of direct revelations, a full-blown message of redemption. Quaker historians have sought to confirm this portrayal by emphasizing that it was “in communion with his deepest self” that he made his “great spiritual discovery,” and that it came to him from no outward source. This explanation seemed rather naive to the more sophisticated mind of Rufus M. Jones, and he set himself to the task of uncovering the actual source from which Fox's religious thinking was derived. His two volumes—Studies in Mystical Religion and Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries —are sufficient testimony of the thoroughness and scholarship with which he tackled the problem. Nevertheless, after long and careful investigation, he felt obliged to confess that nothing more positive could be affirmed than that the possible influences in Fox's environment, for the most part, “worked upon him in subconscious ways, as an atmosphere and climate of his spirit, rather than a clearly conceived body of truth.” This conclusion was tenable so long as Fox was regarded as the founder of the Quakers. It now seems evident, however, by his own admissions, that he was not the founder but simply joined a sect already in existence. This fact necessitates an attempt to identify the group with which Fox became affiliated.

Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago an ugly old man sat in the market place of ancient Athens trying to teach his fellow citizens how to think. If we may believe Plato, his pupil, the wise old Socrates once observed that human beings were far too prone to assume that the mastery of one field of learning qualified them to speak with equal authority in all others. It was some similar modern rash generalizations in two recent publications which led to the present inquiry. With a natural aversion for polemics we shall, however, refrain from dealing with this controversial material but shall rather investigate our theme on the basis of the best available evidence from the sources and recent European scholarship.

In the minds of many Americans Russia was born in the Revolution of 1917. Many Russians who first awakened to cultural life after that Revolution share this misconception. Yet Russia has a thousand-year-old past: she is one of the oldest nations in Europe. Her literature, her arts, particularly her music, had won the attention and the admiration of the world long ago. At the same time, the primitivity or backwardness of Russia in certain respects is undeniable. How can the highly refined civilization of a cultured few be reconciled with the barbarism of large strata of the people? And, on the other hand, what bridge can be thrown over the gulf created by the Revolution between the Russia of the past and the Russia of today? Radical and ruthless as any revolution may be, it is unable to destroy completely the continuity of life. After the waters of the flooded river recede into their shores the natural, permanent contours of the land reappear. A historically trained observer recognizes in Boishevist Russia the features of days long gone by.

Among the outstanding figures of the period of the “flowering of the Czech Reformation,” Peter Chelčický occupies a prominent, and in some respects à unique, position. Although not as well known as John Hus, from certain points of view Peter is more important, certainly more original, than the great Czech Reformer, insofar as in his radical biblicism he went far beyond the latter. Moreover, his influence lived on in the Unity of Brethren and affected the course of history more than Utraquism did. His unyielding and unequivocal insistence on the separation of church and state, and to a somewhat less degree his pacifism, raised him to the rank of a pioneer of the future types of Christianity.

Those who had once experienced the power and blessedness of the Gospel as revealed by Luther felt that he had restored to them a lost treasure greater than all worldly riches. So it is in the work of Luther that we find the roots of Lutheran church music. The story of carrying over the old in music and tracing its influence in the new era is an unending maze of facts and conjectures, none the less interesting, however. This new church body would become distinctive in its music. It would substitute for the ritualistic and even pantomimical where every feature of the architecture, of the altar, and environment, as well as the liturgie services, symbolized religion, a new vitality, direct interest, and instructiveness. This would mean a breaking away from that form of church services where reverence is voiced by every appeal to eye and ear, where one would feel himself verily to be in the House of Prayer and before the throne of the Holy One.

A small book appeared in Geneva in 1629 under the title, Confessio Fidei Reverendissimi Domini Cyrilli, Patriarchae Constantinopolitani. French, English, and German translations circulated during the same year. Two years later a Greek edition of the same book turned up in Constantinople under a more elaborate title,—“Eastern Confession of the Christian Faith. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. For the benefit of those asking and inquiring about the faith and the religion of the Greeks, i. e. of the Eastern Church, as to how they think of their Orthodox faith, Cyril, Patriarch of Constantinople, publishes in the name of all the Christians this brief Confession as a testimony to God and to men, in a clear conscience and without any reservations.” Below this were the words, “I, Cyril, Patriarch of Constantinople, wrote it in my own hand. Given in Constantinople, in the month of January, 1631.”

From the middle of the seventeenth until the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century Marius Mercator was regarded by theologians and historians as one of the most valuable extant sources of information concerning both the Pelagian and Nestorian controversies. The basis of the notable reputation which he so long enjoyed was of course the erroneous belief that he was the compiler of the Palatine Collection, a vast and impressive mass of papal and episcopal letters, remonstrances, sermons, confessions of faith, and memoirs used in the two ecumenical councils of the fifth century. This material concerned, almost exclusively, the heresies of Pelagius and Nestorius and apparently had been gathered together for use against the adherents of those two heresiarchs. Though little could be learned about Mercator himself, the available information gave him an impeccable position in the ranks of the orthodox. He was a disciple and correspondent of Augustine, whom he supported by savage attacks on Pelagius and other leaders of the Western heresy, and he was also known to Jerome, who, in a letter sent from distant Palestine to the Roman Donatus in the year 419, included a message to Mercator, encouraging him in his opposition to the Pelagians.