ance, and thrift shall abound and flourish as Christian virtues. Brotherly love shall continue. The blessing of God shall rest upon labor. The great currents of industry shall acquire increasing volume and force. The circle of production and consumption shall widen and widen, and its blessings extend. And though, as we know on the best of authority, we shall always have the poor with us, Christian philanthrophy shall render their lot less and less grievous. The rich and the poor shall meet together, conscious that the Lord is the maker of them all.

Hail, then, to the method which, unlike the Babel towers of human wisdom and effort that strive to reach the heaven by building from below, itself comes down, descending as did that glorious city which the apostle saw! Hail to the Gospel which, universal in its character, suited to man as man, is specially adapted to the poor, in that it'not only holds out to their faith the compensation of a future life, but is the mightiest instrument in ameliorating and elevating their condition here!

Art. III.-CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.

By THOMAS BALCH, Esq.

CALVINISM has been discussed so often, and in so many ways, and from such diverse standpoints, has been the theme of such acrimonious attack and of such loyal defense and eulogy, that it appears almost superfluous to add another to the numerous essays concerning it. But its regnant force as a political instrument, oftener recognized by publicists than by theologians, does not seem to have been examined with a care worthy of the vast effects it has wrought. The learned historian of the Reformation proposed to make this the subject of the crowning chapter of his last and profoundest work.* He died without having commenced what would have been a much needed and much valued contribution to political science, as well as to religious history, for it may be fairly asserted, that to the social mechanism, instituted by the great reformer, developed and modified by time and the experience of succeeding generations, we owe that form of political organization under which we live, commonly called Constitutional Republicanism. This species of government was wholly unknown to the ancients. As late as Montesquieu, that eminent publicist held that republicanism could flourish only in communities of limited territory, for at the time he wrote, the effects of Calvinism were but partially experienced, and Calvinism itself seemed almost perishing beneath a brutal and unsparing persecution. His rare judicial sagacity failed not, however, to discern that Protestantism, from its very nature,† ought to develop political independence. Not in Europe, not until transplanted beyond the ocean,

* See preface to Mr. Cate's admirable translation of The Reformation in the Time of Calvin, by Merle d Aubigné. London, 1875.

The opinions enunciated by Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, xxiv: 4, have been controverted by a distinguished Roman Catholic writer of our own day, Mr. de Parien, who contends, Principes de la Science Politique, Paris, 1870, p. 16, that although it was asserted that Protestantism should have led to political freedom, "yet it has not attained this result generally, or to a considerable extent, as may be seen by an examination of the constitution of many of the Protestant States of modern Europe."

did the reformed religion yield its most beneficent fruits. The earliest attempts at colonization within the territory occupied by the revolting colonies were made by French Protestants on the banks of the river St. John. These attempts were unsuccessful, but from the day that the Huguenots, sent out by Coligny, put their feet upon the soil of the New World, it seems as though they took possession of it as the home of liberty of conscience and of political liberty.

It is the fashion, perhaps too much so, for historians to seek the solution of great events in purely material causes, and thus our separation from the mother country is laboriously traced to the legislation about taxes and imposts. But so momentous a change in the condition of a people must be ascribed rather to moral and political influences, long existing and rooted in its hearts and habits, chief among which was the Calvinism of a large part of the population. We propose, therefore, to trace in the following pages the political vicissitudes of the combat which that form of religious belief waged with imperial and pontifical absolutism in Europe, and the part it had in the creation of a new nation, whose mere existence is a living, disturbing force in the world's economy, and whose future is far beyond the ken of mortal vision.

The successive reformations of Christianity were the natural results of its development, and here we propose to examine more particularly the last of these phases, Calvinism, the effects of which were felt in France through the Huguenots, in Holland through the Anabaptists, in Scotland through the Presbyterians, and in England through the Non-Conformists and the Puritans. This examination will enable us to see why the agents of France in the English Colonies of America, such as DeKalb and Bon Vouloir, found in the religious principles of the colonists an element of disaffection toward the mother country, and why they counseled the French government to foster and cherish it, as it was the only force capable of arousing public opinion to such a degree as to produce a rupture with England at the first opportunity.*

* See, upon

Paris, 1861.

this subject, La Vie de Thomas Jefferson. By Cornelis De Witt.

A New Journey in North America. By the Abbé Robin.

Philadelphia, 1782.

The religious perturbations set three different peoples in motion, and had a different character and result in each of them.

Among the Sclaves, the movement of which John Huss was the leader, was rather national than religious. It resembled the last glimmers of the pile lit by the Council of Constance, in which the reformer perished (1415).*

The Reformation promoted by Luther, took its deepest roots among the Germans. It was also more thorough, while preserving an exclusively national character. The diatribes of Hans Sachs were in verses, scarcely understood except by the laboring classes of Franconia. The fiercest invectives of the chivalrous but unhappy Von Hütten were in the uncouth dialect of the day. It not only denied the authority of the Pope, but rejected that of Councils, then that of the Fathers, in order to bring itself face to face with the Holy Scripture. This manly and energetic monk, whose square and jovial face made him popular, exercised a commanding influence. The vigorous hatred with which he combated the Roman clergy, then owning one-third of the soil of Germany, drew around him all who suffered in fortune from this imposition, all who detested the alien occupants of their native land, all who revolted at the vices and disorders of the professed teachers of holiness. The war, which the German princes then had to maintain against the Catholic sovereigns and the allies of the Pope, ended in giving to Luther's Reformation that essentially Teutonic character which it ever afterward maintained.

In the Latin race, the most advanced of all in an intellectual point of view at that period-which to-day still pretends to the empire of the world (urbi et orbi)—John Calvin organised a

"Intolerant Presbyterianism must have long ago sowed the seeds of hatred and discord between them and the mother country."

Presbyterianism and the Revolution.

By the Rev. Thomas Smith. 1845. The Real Origin of the Declaration of Independence. By the Rev. Thomas Smith. Columbia, 1847.

DeKalb's Correspondence, has lately been given to us by the industry and labor of Dr. Frederic Kapp, member of the German Imperial Parliament, in his genial and eloquent life of DeKalb.

* See The Reformers and the Reformation; John Huss and the Council of Constance. By Emile de Bonnechose. 2 vols. 12 mo, 3d edition. Paris, 1870. A

very learned and interesting work.

tran sformation, the most thorough and most fruitful in political results. Born in France, at Noyon (in Picardy), in 1509, the new reformer, after having studied thelogy and subsequently law, published at Basle, when twenty-seven years of age, his Institutio Christianæ Religionis,* which he dedicated to the King of France. Driven from Geneva, and then recalled to that city, thenceforth he was all powerful there. He desired to reform alike morals and creeds, and himself furnished an example of the most austere morality. His theocratic rule deprived the Genevese of some of the most innocent enjoyments of life; but owing to his vigorous impulse, Geneva acquired great importance in Europe.

Bolder in his reforms than Luther, he was also more thorough and systematic. He clearly comprehended that his doctrines would neither spread nor last if they were not condensed into a code. A summary of them, the Profession of Faith, in twenty-one articles, was given to the world (Nov. 10. 1536),§ and we find the spirit of it, though not the letter, in many a political document of after days. According to this code, the pastors were to preach, to administer the sacraments, to examine candidates for the office of the ministry. Authority was in the hands of a synod or consistory, essentially democratic in its construction, for it was composed one-third of pastors and two-thirds of laymen.

Calvin perfectly understood the secret of the increasing strength of the disciples of Loyola. Like the founder of the order of Jesuits, he desired to place the new social condition

*Calvin writes Oct. 13, 1536, to his friend Farel, about a French edition which preceded that cited in the text, As far as known this French publication is lost. The copy in the library at Zurich seems to be a translation of it into Latin, and in a lengthy title-page is stated to be by Joanne Calvino, Novio dunensi autore, Basiliæ, MDXXXVI. The Amsterdam edition of Calvin's work from Shipper's Press, 1668, has a finely engraved portrait of the Reformer.

This sternness of character had been early displayed. While at school his comrades had nicknamed him, "the accusative case."

As to the real authorship. see Merle d'Aubigné, vi: 337, who examines the question, whether Calvin's draft was probably lost and Farel's adopted. But the two friends labored so much in common, and Calvin dominated Farel so much, that the document is generally considered to have been the work of Calvin.

D'Aubigne, citing Registers of Council.