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WHY AM I REFORMED?

BY REV. C. CLEVER, D.D.

IT is sometimes necessary to climb a mountain height, that we may get the lay of the land, the course of the rivers or the direction of the highways. If we desire a more definite knowledge, we must go down from our commanding position. and select some circumscribed portion for more careful investigation. It is in the latter spirit that we approach our subject at this time. If we can get a clear conception of the name belonging to the honored Church of which I am a member, we will at once have a position from which, as an integral part of Protestantism, its whole field of practice and theology will be evident, at least in its general outline. A rose might smell as sweet if called by any other name, but no other word in the whole range of language, home or foreign, would be as fragrant with historic meaning as Reformed. Some Churches are called after a man. His towering strength, powerful courage and unwavering constancy and devotion so impressed themselves upon his followers, that they were proud to be called by his name. Others have been so livingly identified with certain forms of government, that this has been the central idea around which the thought and devotion of their followers crystallized. Others have selected some prominent doctrine, and called themselves by that name. With this inscribed upon their banner, they have appealed to their, fellow-men, and determined to win their share in the crowning glory of the consummated kingdom of God. Others have determined that a certain form of worship possesses significance enough to form a rallying-point around which its

sacred memories can cluster, and definiteness enough it intelligently appreciated by those who ask a reason being. Our Church was simply called Reformed. I Reformed Presbyterian, Reformed Episcopalian nor R Lutheran. The question put to us so often, Reformed shows at once a lack of historical information. If Israelite would have said, I belong to the tribe of Juda Dan, it would have been senseless to have asked him what? or Dan what? If he would have belonged to one smallest tribes, the question would have been meaningless. air of historical consequence would not have redeemed i the disgust which it would have provoked.

Dr. Schaff says Reformed, as used in all continental on church history and symbolics, means originally, the C Church reformed of abuses or regenerated by the word of The name originally was applied to that whole moveme the XVIth Century, which liberated Christianity from the dens which ages of superstition and idolatry had piled up Afterwards, when the unseemly controversy waxed so between Luther and the rest of the Reformers, the Lutheran was assumed by those who took such extreme sa mentarian views. Our name then belonged to the oldest F estant body.

Like the great priest that Abraham met when retur from the slaughter of the kings, we are without earthly fat or mother. No king had power enough to lay our cor stone. No single theologian had wisdom enough to constr our theology. We claim no man as leader, and we acknowle no man as Lord. There is a sense in which Zwingli, Mela thon and Calvin are our heroes. But one, or all of the could not have laid the broad foundations on which we ha builded.

If it be needful to designate one man as our Reformer, would be Ulric Zwingli, born A.D. 1484, who preached the pu gospel in Switzerland some years before Luther in German The movement of which he was the head was wholly indepen

dent of Luther-that is to say, Luther was in no way whatever, directly or indirectly, the cause or the occasion of Zwingli making a breach with the Church of Rome and adopting the course which he pursued. "Zwingli had been led to embrace the leading principles of Protestant truth, and to preach them in 1516, the year before the publication of Luther's Theses; and it is quite certain that all along he continued to think and act for himself, on his own judgment and responsibility, deriving his views from his own personal and independent study of the word of God."*

He began with the fundamental thought, that the pure teaching of God's holy word, was the only and sufficient rule of faith and practice. He left a powerful impression upon his followers, and gave the cardinal points for subsequent Reformed theologians to develop. The foreign theologians, whom the advisors of Edward the Sixth invited to their aid, either belonged to the Reformed Church or were largely under its influence. "The Marian exiles breathed the air and imbibed the principles of Zurich; while the same spiritual succession has been continued in Puritanism, in English dissent in the prevailing character of American religion." In speaking of Zwingli, Beard says: "There is an admirable and cheerful good sense about him, a keen apprehension of the simplicities of piety, a firm grasp of religion on the ethical and practical side. But the sense of mystery does not weigh upon him; the contemplation of divine things neither excites him to paradox nor awakens him to rapture." This is the spirit that was impressed on the Reformed Church in the beginning, and it has been its ruling characteristic till the present, and must be in all the future. We are members of the Reformed Church on account of

(1) ITS UNWAVERING LOYALTY TO CHRIST.

The Reformed Church has made current some of the most important watch-words that distinguish the theological thinking of these latter days.

*Cunningham's Reformers and Theology of the Reformation, page 213. † Beard's Hibbert Lectures, page 226.

Christological and Christocentric-Christ the perip Christ the centre—are familiar terms to us, and are fast so to all those who are in the fore-front of the great b truth. Forty or fifty years ago these would have b nounced senseless jargon, the users of which should be from the company of earnest thinkers. Our theology made to revolve around Christ. As little as the move the stars and planets can be explained by making the e centre, so little can redemption be understood by maki thing but Christ the beginning, the middle and the end. the all and in all. By Him were all things made, an before all things. In Him all things stand together. the old confessions of the Reformed Church will be f contain these words.

The sum of the gospel is that our Lord Jesus Christ, t Son of God, has made known to us the will of His he Father, and redeemed us by His innocence from eternal and reconciled us to God.

Therefore Christ is the only way to salvation for al were, who are and who shall be.

Christ is the Head of all believers.

Christ is the one eternal High Priest.

Christ who offered Himself once on the cross, is the suf and perpetual sacrifice for the sins of all believers. Ther the mass is no sacrifice, but a commemoration of the one s fice of the cross and a seal of the redemption through Chri Christ is the only Mediator between God and us. Christ is our righteousness. From this it follows that works are good so far as they are Christ's, but not good so as they are our own.

Christians are not bound to any works which Christ has commanded.

God alone forgives sins through Jesus Christ our Lord. Here already we have the first fruits of that grand, livi Christological theology which has made it worth while for us struggle on, and, though least among the tribes, to furnish

ing who can save the Church from a heartless rationalism. Dr. George P. Fisher says, in his "Church History," p. 576: 'Into the Heidelberg Catechism, the creed of the German Reformed Church, there had flowed influences from the school of Melancthon, the character of which may be described in omewhat vague terms as churchly and sacramental, in conunction with influences from a more defined, yet not rigid type. f Calvinism. In the writings of the Mercersburg school, the ormer of these two elements, that which emanated from Meanethon, was once more brought into the foreground. A cenral position in the system was given to the divine-human person of Christ, by whom, it was taught, not only reconciliaion, but a new spiritual life is introduced into the race which n the first Adam fell from God."

It is a well-known fact that whole ages of Christian effort have been wasted in trying to overcome the hosts of sin and unbelief, and bring peace to the jaded spirits of struggling men with some great doctrine as central.

There are times when

the atonement, for instance, is made the article of a standing or falling Church. At other times a refined humanitarianism enlists the whole current of effort in the Church. Men think and act as though the humanities of life, tinctured with a mild flavor of the heavenly and divine, will bring the relief for which men groan and die.

This is the astronomer studying the course of a planet and its influence among the stars without catching the rays or heat or attractive power of the sun. It is the bearer of the healing salt, scattering it upon the stream of human life hurrying on its way, charged with death, rather than pressing on up to the fountain. "To find the true, original, essential

principle of Christianity, we must go back of all these schemes back of all that man can think, will or do, back of the Church, which is Christ's body, back of His words and works to His divine-human Person, to His divine-human life."* The Reformed Church has always insisted that this is the

* Harbaugh's Christological Theology, p. 36.