Formation of the Church Confederation.

285

the way for concord in deliberation. Very special prominence was given to acts of humiliation for the sins and disorders of the times, in which one after another confessed his own share; and the hearts of all present were melted as in the same furnace of affliction. At the same time, the fullest liberty of debate was indulged, and all the grievances and heart-burnings that had arrayed the Lutheran against the Reformed, and both against the United Church, as a mongrel and latitudinarian body, hardly deserving the name of a Church at all, came freely to light. There was no want in the Assembly of open difference, and even open rebuke," but love triumphed over all, and every important decision was carried through with remarkable harmony.

The grand result of the Wittenberg Conference was, the formation of an ecclesiastical confederation, or league, adapted to the altered circumstances of the German Church. The constitution and objects of this union were defined almost in terms of the programme which the requisitionists who had called the Assembly had drawn up, and which they defended, with admirable sagacity and eloquence, against all conflicting proposals. In these debates Drs. Nitzsch, Sack, and especially Müller, greatly distinguished themselves, and, along with Dr. Stahl of Berlin, the well-known jurist, and the admirable president Von Bethmann Hollweg, turned aside all important objections. It was agreed without a dissenting voice, after an exceedingly animated discussion, that the Confederation should neither be, on the one hand, an incorporating union of Churches, nor a mere alliance of individual Christians, but an intermediate body, having for its ultimate object the gathering up of all the German State-Churches into one common national Church; and, in conformity with this fundamental principle, it was resolved, with almost equal harmony, that its membership should be limited to the three prevailing Confessions-the Lutheran, Reformed, and United, with the addition of the Moravian brethren, there being a kind of understanding that dissenters of older and newer date, though not expressly included, might yet take a friendly interest in the movement. It was also resolved, that no other test should be required for membership than a profession of honest adherence to the Confession of the particular Church to which the individual belonged, and of readiness to act in the spirit of that Confession; and certain general regulations were passed for the election of members-lodging this power in the hands of the existing Church rulers with the congregations, and securing an equal number of lay and clerical deputies at the annual meetings of the Confederation. While the Confederation disclaimed all power to interfere authoritatively in the administration of the particular Churches represented in its membership, it yet avowed its intention to exhibit and promote, by all suitable

means, their internal union-to protest against all anti-Evangelic movements, within or without their pale-to give counsel and decision in all cases submitted by them for advice or arbitration -to protect their common rights and liberties-to forward all their joint religious enterprises at home or abroad-and at the same time assist in drawing closer the bonds of union with all foreign Churches of Evangelical principles.

Such is a sketch of that ecclesiastical organization which emerged from the debates of these memorable days, differing, as our readers will see, very greatly from the Evangelical Alliance formed in London in 1846, and, in our opinion, much more suited to the exigencies of the German Church, though some German members of that Alliance in the Wittenberg Conference at first advocated strenuously the superiority of the latter association. It was justly urged, in reply, that no important end of the Evangelical Alliance was sacrificed in such a confederation, while the ultimate union of Churches was superadded as a higher and nobler aim;—that in a troublous period a body reserving to itself the right of counsel in ecclesiastical questions, was a common oracle which would command respect; and that in the apprehended dissolution of State-Churches, the Confederation would rally round it more of the fragments, and act more powerfully as a check upon the formation of divergent sects, by assuming from the first an ecclesiastical character.

The happy effects of such a convocation must be at once apparent. The feelings of strangeness and alienation between the adherents of the different confessions utterly disappeared, more especially in relation to the United Church of Prussia, which was now for the first time treated as a genuine Church-proving that union is not to be effected by the power of kings or ministers of state, but of Christian love alone. A silencing reply was given to the mocking questions of those who asked in triumph, whether the German Church still existed; and the assembled deputies were strengthened, not only for the work of evangelization in an evil time, but in the prospect of actual persecution at the hands of that infidel party which was in the ascendant in the counsels of the State, and which, as the experience of the Canton de Vaud had sufficiently taught, was quite capable of interdicting religious worship, and harassing the ministers of the gospel by civil pains and penalties. This sense of mutual strength in union, reached its highest point, when, in response to the warm-hearted appeals of Dr. Krummacher, whose fiery eloquence formed a very characteristic feature of the Wittenberg Conference, the whole assembly, with one voice, pledged themselves to receive each other in case of persecution to house and home.

Dr. Wichern and the Inner-Mission.

287

The Wittenberg Conference, like other great events in the history of Christianity, reached farther than its projectors had contemplated; and what came to it directly from God's own hand, was destined to cast into the shade what man had planned and brought laboriously to birth. An instrument, before unknown, was chosen as the advocate or apostle of the greatest and most fertile idea which that Conference produced. This was Candidate Wichern of Hamburg, who came forth amidst world-renowned professors and eloquent preachers, to enforce a truth, which, if all others had not missed, none else had discerned with such clearness, or stated with such emphasis. It was the great truth that the only atmosphere in which Christian union can flourish, is that of selfdenying Christian labour; and that the Christianity of a nation can only be harmonized in all its parts by common efforts to evangelize all classes of the people. This truth gave birth to the "Inner-Mission," as an integral part of the Church Confederation; and of this Candidate Wichern is the acknowledged founder. He had been qualified for his destined work in the humblest school of training. Renouncing in the prime of life, we believe from choice, all prospects as a candidate or licentiate of the Church, he devoted himself to the obscure and thankless task of superintending the Rauhe Haus at Horn, near Hamburg, a species of house of refuge, devoted to the recovery of juvenile criminals. Here for upwards of twelve years he had pursued his quiet way amid the most reckless specimens of youthful depravity, eating, working, and sleeping with them, at once master-workman, schoolmaster, singing-master, and chaplain,-till the number of children committed to his charge had increased from three to one hundred at one time, most of whom were sent out thoroughly reformed and subjected to the grace of the gospel. All the while he was exploring the moral statistics of his entire country, opening his ear to every recital of profligacy far and wide, and collecting a very Newgate Calendar of the immorality, crime, and blasphemy of the German people at home and in the great capitals of Europe. This training would have made an ordinary man narrow-minded, and by the age of fifty it would have crushed him beneath the loathsome burden, or driven him from the field in despair-but Wichern came forward before the Wittenberg Conference with all the fire of youth glowing under his prematurely grey hairs and weather-beaten visage, to develop a remedy for the spiritual evils of Germany, which struck every one, not more by the fulness of its details, than the breadth and maturity of all its leading principles. It was immediately felt that none more profoundly imbued with the spirit of Luther had spoken on that occasion from his ancient pulpit; and the thrill of a strange and irresistible eloquence, of

which the great charm was an intensely glowing earnestness, turning masses of statistics into life, kindling all argument into passion, and throwing out, unconscious of their brightness, dazzling gleams of poetry in its rapid track, soon mastered the whole assembly. As he laid open the depths of Satan which existed in Germany, in the form of social disorganization, all-pervading immorality, contempt of religious observances, and infidel conspiracies against the very idea of a God, his audience stood aghast at the brink of the gulf on which they stood. As he narrated examples of the power of self-sacrificing Christian love, in the manifold forms of home-mission labour, the opposite feelings of hope and emulation returned; and when, recapitulating all the varieties of such exertion already scattered over Germany, and with a creative hand, sketching others as yet non-existent, he appealed to the Confederation to take these under its wing, and to find in them its true impulse and rallying point of union, the impression was overwhelming, and the whole multitude started to their feet, and, with uplifted hands, solemnly bound themselves to make the "Inner-Mission" the business of the Confederation, and the work of their life. Arrangements were made without delay for the carrying on of the work of the Inner-mission in connexion with the scheme of Church-union; and though it was judged advisable that the two associations should be formally distinct, and be managed by different committees, the leading men in the one were nominated to office in the other, and their annual meetings arranged to be held together.

We have dwelt thus long upon the Wittenberg Conference, because the whole subsequent religious life of Germany has run in the channel thus dug out, and is really incapable of being understood without the knowledge of its source. Almost all that is interesting and hopeful has been connected either with the Church Confederation or the Inner-Mission; and hence a few details must be added respecting the progress of these kindred operations. Since 1848, three meetings of the Church Confederation have been held, with evidently growing interest in the mere act of assembly, though the contemplated union is perhaps more remote than ever. The meeting in 1849 at Wittenberg fell short of the first in excitement, but surpassed it in numbers, being attended by about 700 persons. It took up the ecclesiastical questions that had lain over from the former year; such as, the relation of the Church to the School-the separation of Church and State-the rights of the people to Church-representation-and the evils of union without Confessions of Faith. On all these points interesting debates took place; a spirit of conciliation prevailed; and, though the differences of the three Confessions gave birth to very conflicting views-the Lutherans

Conferences of Stuttgardt and Elberfeld.

289

opposing all popular influence, and going farther than the rest in denouncing the separation of the Church from the Statethe bond of peace was not only unbroken but undisturbed. Only one individual, Pastor Bonnet of Frankfort, contended for the separation of Church and State; the rest were divided into what would be called in this country, the Erastian and nonErastian theories,

The next Conference, in the autumn of 1850, at Stuttgardt, was invested with peculiar interest as having been held in the capital of the kingdom of Würtemberg, that part of the country where religious life had suffered less than elsewhere, either from rationalism or revolution, and which has been justly called the Scotland of Germany. The attendance rose to 2000 members, chiefly from the South; and the proceedings were of a peculiarly cheerful and exhilarating character. The North and South, lately in violent antagonism respecting leadership in the Empire, here shook hands; and the more cold and critical theology of the former, learned to appreciate the deep and somewhat mystic experience of the latter. The chief topics of public discussion were two; the duty of civil obedience, especially on the part of the clergy, in which Dr. Dorner distinguished himself by a manly assertion of the most liberal principles, with especial reference to the case of the Schleswig-Holstein clergy, against the more slavish views of Dr. Stahl; and the question of Lord'sday observance, which, amidst much theoretical difference as to its grounds, was unanimously recommended as indispensable to personal or national religion, and an address agreed upon by the Conference to the governments and people of Germany, urging them to the long-neglected duty of Sabbath-sanctification. The last Conference, that of September 1851, in Elberfeld, of which the programme stands at the head of this Article, had the great advantage, like the Stuttgardt meeting, of being surrounded by an atmosphere of living piety in that flourishing town, long blessed with the ministrations of two of the most eloquent men in Germany, and two of the leading spirits in the Church Confederation, Dr. Krummacher and Dr. Sander. It afforded perhaps a better mixture of all the elements of the Church-union than any foregoing assemblage, though the Reformed predominated, gathered from Westphalia and the banks of the Rhine. Two long and instructive discussions took place-one on the gymnasial system of education and its urgent need of religious improvement-the other on the relation of lay-agency to the pastoral office, which shewed, on the whole, a spirit of concession by the high Lutherans to the growing necessities of the InnerMission. Two less animated debates arose on the constitution of district synods, and the right of the congregations to the use of the

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