THE race of God's anointed priests shall never pass away ;
Before His glorious Face they stand, and serve Him night and day.
Though reason raves, and unbelief flows on a mighty flood,
There are, and shall be, till the end, the hidden priests of God.
His chosen souls, their earthly dross consumed in fire of love—
In flame their hearts ascending reach the Heart of God above;
The incense of their worship fills His Temple's Holiest place ;
Their song with wonder fills the Heavens, the glad new song of grace,
—G. TERSTEEGEN.
WE sometimes hear of the reformers before the Reformation. That there were such people is very true. In fact, there were a far greater number of them than those would suppose whose idea of a reformer is simply that of a man who desires that Roman Catholics should become Protestants, and that Protestant rites and ordinances should take the place of Roman Catholic ones; or that Roman Catholic doctrines should give place to the teaching of Luther or Calvin.
In order to come to a clear view of the matter we have to drop a good many notions which we have learnt from men and books, and go back to the New Testament, and submit ourselves to the teaching of God the Holy Ghost.
We learn from the New Testament that there never was, and never could be, more than one Church of God. That however many might be the names given by men to differing sects and parties, one true Church alone could exist as the body of Christ and the house of the living God.
We learn further that this one true Church is, was, and always will be, composed of those, and of those only, who, having believed in Jesus, and received from God the forgiveness of sins and eternal life, are thus become living stones in the one temple, living members of the one Christ, united to Him by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven.
If, therefore, we wish to trace the history of this Church through the confusions and ruin and bewilderment of the past eighteen centuries, we must not simply follow the thread of the history of anything called by men the Church.
In fact, the history of this true and living Church is an unwritten and an unwritable history. Just as we could not write the history of those in Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal, so we could not follow this river of living water, which flowed on in hidden places unrecognized by men.
But now and then, in this sect or that, a glimpse of the bright water shows to us the existence of this river of life; and we can see dry places made green and fruitful, and catch here and there words and songs which tell of souls who had passed from death to life, and from the power of Satan unto God.
And wherever there was such a soul redeemed by the blood of Christ, made alive with the life of Christ, there we find one who in heart and soul was a reformer. We find one who desired that the Church, which had lost her first love, should be warmed afresh by the knowledge of the love that forgives and saves. We find one who, having been brought into the Father's house, and having sat down at the Father's feast, desired that the dead and the lost around him should know the same welcome and the same kiss.
We find further, that when such an one shines out now and then from the pages of history, he shared the rejection and persecution of Christ. He might be called by any name. In fact, for many centuries such persons are known to us, not only as Waldenses or Lollards, but chiefly as Roman Catholics, who had, however, no thought of leaving that outward Church, simply because they could not conceive anything but heathendom outside of it.
But remaining in it, and of it, they were yet taught by God the blessed truths which made them, not only witnesses for Christ, but also the objects of the scorn and contempt of the world—mostly of the religious world.
Of such reformers, or rather of such who desired a Reformation, we find, thank God, many in the darkest ages.
And as we find them in the dark ages before the Reformation, so do we find them in the dark ages that followed it. For when we speak of the Reformation as an era in history, we mean the time when some of the doctrines taught as Christianity were reformed ; that is to say, brought more into accordance with the doctrines of the New Testament. And consequently it was also the time when rites and observances were extensively reformed, so as to be in accordance with the reformed doctrines.
But God, who has to teach us in numberless ways that all light and knowledge granted by Him are wasted upon those who are sightless and senseless, has given us the proof in the centuries that followed the Reformation how powerless is the purest and the highest truth, if merely assented to by the natural mind.
Not only so. We find invariably that the purer and the higher the truth, the more will those brought up in the light of it become examples of the power of the world, the flesh, and the devil, if it has reached the mind only, and the heart and conscience remain untouched.
It was to an orthodox teacher that the solemn words were spoken, "Ye must be born again."
And if we needed a proof that light and knowledge alone are as nothing, and that professing Christians as well as heathens, Protestants as well as Catholics, need to be raised from death to life, and saved from sin and condemnation, we find it in the history of the Protestant nations to whom God had in His great mercy restored the Bible, and to whom He had spoken by the saints and martyrs, who in the sixteenth century won back the Bible for the Church.
We find that the lowest depths of wickedness were reached by those who, proud of their Protestantism, had never yet been Christians.
So did Jerusalem fall lower than Sodom; the professing Church than the heathen ; debased Protestants than many ignorant Roman Catholics.
Though it is true that even the records of German Protestant courts acquire a tinge of virtue when compared with the histories of many popes and bishops of earlier times.
Three of the reformers after the Reformation need to be mentioned to complete this part of our story—reformers who desired to see dead souls live, lukewarm souls burn with the love of Christ, lovers of pleasures become lovers of God, children of this world become children of light. To these threeLodensteyn, Labadie, and Spener—may chiefly be traced the great awakening which was the means used by God to stem the torrent of sensuality, rationalism, and infidelity, which broke forth at the period called by a strange irony the period of " enlightenment." (" Aufklarung.")