place us among Ritualists, Sacerdotalists and Crypto-Romanists.

We do not expect to reverse at once the preference of most American
Protestants in favor of the Reformed system. But since we have had no
inconsiderable share in the shaping of modern history, we are confident
that our principles will in due time receive the consideration to which
any historical development is entitled. We would like to be understood,
or at least not to be misunderstood, by our fellow Christians.

But our chief desire is to inspire our own young people with an
intelligent devotion to the faith of their fathers and to persuade them
of its conformity with historical, believing Christianity.

What is Lutheranism? How does it differ from Catholicism? How does it
differ from other forms of Protestantism?

The origin of Lutheranism we are accustomed to assign to the sixteenth
century. We associate it with the nailing of the 95 theses to the church
door at Wittenberg, or with Luther's defence at the Diet of Worms, or
with the Confession of the Evangelicals at Augsburg in 1530.

These events were indeed dramatic indications of a great change, but
they were only the culmination of a process that had been going on for
ages. It was a re-formation of the ancient Catholic Church and a return
to the original principles of the Gospel.

"The Church had become an enormous labyrinthine structure which included
all sorts of heterogeneous matters, the Gospel and holy water, the
universal priesthood and the pope on his throne, the Redeemer and Saint
Anna, and called it religion. Over against this vast accumulation of the