§ 69. The Heidelberg Catechism. A.D. 1563 (part 2 of 2)

4. In the year 1863, three centuries after its first publication, the Heidelberg Catechism witnessed its greatest triumph, not only in Germany and Holland, but still more in a land which the authors never saw, and in a language the sound of which they probably never heard. The Reformation was similarly honored in 1817, and the Augsburg Confession in 1830, but no other catechism.

In Germany the tercentenary celebration of the Heidelberg Catechism was left to individual pastors and congregations, and called forth some valuable publications.¹⁰³⁵

The German Reformed Church in the United States took it up as a body, and gave it a wider scope. She made the three-hundredth anniversary of her confession the occasion for a general revival of theological and religious life, the publication of a triglot edition of the Catechism, the endowment of a tercentenary professorship in her seminary, and the collection of large sums of money for churches, missions, and other benevolent objects. All these ends were accomplished. The celebration culminated in a general convention of ministers and laymen in Philadelphia, which lasted a whole week, January 17-23, 1863, in the midst of the raging storm of the civil war. About twenty interesting and instructive essays on the Catechism and connected topics, which had been specially prepared for the occasion by eminent German, Dutch, and American divines, were read in two churches before crowded and attentive assemblies. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Melanchthon, Frederick III., Ursinus, and Olevianus were called from their graves to reproduce before an American audience the ideas, trials, and triumphs of the creative and heroic age of the Reformation. Altogether the year 1863 marks an epoch in the history of the Heidelberg Catechism and of the German Reformed Church in America.¹⁰³⁶

OPINIONS ON THE CATECHISM.

We close this chapter with a selection from the many warm commendations which the Heidelberg Catechism has received from distinguished divines of different countries.

Henry Bullinger, the friend and successor of Zwingli, himself the author of a catechism (1559) and of the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), wrote to a friend:

'The order of the book is clear; the matter true, good, and beautiful; the whole is luminous, fruitful, and godly; it comprehends many and great truths in a small compass. I believe that no better catechism has ever been issued.'¹⁰³⁷

The Hessian divines quoted by David Pareus:

'There is no catechism more thorough, more perfect, and better adapted to the capacity of adults as well as the young.'

The English delegates to the Synod of Dort, George Carleton (Bishop of Llandaff), John Davenant (afterwards Bishop of Salisbury), Archdeacon Samuel Ward, Dr. Thomas Goade, and Walter Balcanqual, said:

'That neither their own nor the French Church had a catechism so suitable and excellent; that those who had compiled it were therein remarkably endowed and assisted by the Spirit of God; that in several of their works they had excelled other theologians, but that in the composition of this Catechism they had outdone themselves.'¹⁰³⁸

The favorable judgment of the Synod of Dort itself has already been quoted.

Dr. Ullmann (d. 1865), formerly Professor at Heidelberg, and one of the best Church historians of the nineteenth century:¹⁰³⁹

'The Heidelberg Catechism, more systematically executed than Luther's, unfolds upon the fundamental thoughts of sin, redemption, and thankfulness, the Reformed doctrine, yet without touching upon predestination, with rare pithiness and clearness, and obtained through these excellences not only speedy and most extended recognition in the Reformed Churches, but is to-day still regarded by all parties as one of the most masterly productions in this department.'

Dr. Aug. Ebrard, one of the ablest and most prolific German Reformed divines:¹⁰⁴⁰

'For wonderful union of dogmatic precision and genial heartiness,¹⁰⁴¹ of lucid perspicuity and mysterious depth, the Heidelberg Catechism stands alone in its kind. It is at once a system of theology and a book of devotion; every child can understand it at the first reading, and yet the catechist finds in it the richest material for profound investigation.'

Max Göbel, the author of an excellent history of Christian life in the Reformed Church:¹⁰⁴²

'The Heidelberg Catechism may be properly regarded as the flower and fruit of the entire German and French Reformation; it has Lutheran fervor, Melanchthonian clearness, Zwinglian simplicity, and Calvinistic fire blended in one, and therefore—notwithstanding many defects and angles—it has been (together with the Altered Augsburg Confession of 1540), and remains to this day, the only common confession and doctrinal standard of the entire German Reformed Church from the Palatinate to the Netherlands, and to Brandenburg and Prussia.'

Karl Sudhoff, formerly a Roman Catholic priest, then pastor of the German Reformed Church at Frankfort-on-the-Main:¹⁰⁴³

'A peculiar power and unction pervades the whole work, which can not easily be mistaken by any one. The book, therefore, speaks with peculiar freshness and animation directly to the soul, because it appears as a confident, joyous confession of the Christian heart assured of salvation. It is addressed to the heart and will as much as to the head. Keen and popular unfolding of ideas is here most beautifully united with the deep feeling of piety, as well as with the earnest spirit of revival and joyous believing confidence. And who that have read this Catechism but once can mistake how indissolubly united with these great excellences is the powerful, dignified, and yet so simple style! What a true-hearted, intelligible, simple, and yet lofty eloquence speaks to us even from the smallest questions!'

Dr. K. B. Hundeshagen, Professor of Theology at Heidelberg, afterwards in Bonn (d. 1873), calls the Heidelberg Catechism a 'witness of Reformed loyalty to the Word of God, of Reformed purity and firmness of faith, of Reformed moderation and sobriety,' and a work 'of eternal youth and never-ceasing value.'¹⁰⁴⁴

Dr. Plitt, formerly Pastor in Heidelberg, then Professor of Theology in Bonn:¹⁰⁴⁵

'The Heidelberg Catechism still lives; it has not died in three hundred years. It lives in the hearts of Christians. How many catechisms have since then disappeared, how many in the last thirty or forty years, and have been so long sunk in the "sea of oblivion," that one scarcely knows their titles. The Heidelberg Catechism has survived its tercentenary jubilee, and will, God willing, see several such jubilees. It will not die; it will live as long as there is an Evangelical Church.'

Dr. Henry Harbaugh, late Professor of Theology at Mercersburg (d. 1867), a gifted poet and the author of several popular religious works:¹⁰⁴⁶

'It is worthy of profound consideration, that the Heidelberg Catechism, which has always ruled the heart, spirit, and body of the Reformed side of the Reformation, has no prototype in any of the Reformers. Zwingli and Calvin can say, It is not of me; it has the suavity but not the compromising spirit of Melanchthon. It has nothing of the dashing terror of Luther. What is stranger than all, it is farthest possible removed from the mechanical scholasticism and rigid logic of Ursinus, its principal author. Though it has the warm, practical, sacred, poetical fervor of Olevianus, it has none of his fire and flame. It is greater than Reformers; it is purer and sounder than theologians.'

Dr. J. W. Nevin, successively Professor of Theology in the Presbyterian Seminary at Alleghany, in the German Reformed Seminary at Mercersburg, and President of Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa.:¹⁰⁴⁷

'In every view, we may say, the Catechism of the Palatinate, now three hundred years old, is a book entitled, in no common degree, to admiration and praise. It comes before us as the ripe product of the proper confessional life of the Reformed Church, in the full bloom of its historical development, as this was reached at the time when the work made its appearance. Its wide-spread and long-continued popularity proclaims its universal significance and worth. It must have been admirably adapted to the wants of the Church at large, as well as admirably true to the inmost sense of its general life, to come in this way into such vast credit. Among all Protestant symbols, whether of earlier or later date, there is no other in which we find the like union of excellent qualities combined and wrought together in the same happy manner. It is at once a creed, a catechism, and a confession; and all this in such a manner, at the same time, as to be often a very liturgy also, instinct with the full spirit of worship and devotion. It is both simple and profound; a fit manual of instruction for the young, and yet a whole system of divinity for the old; a text-book, suited alike for the use of the pulpit and the family, the theological seminary, and the common school. It is pervaded by a scientific spirit, beyond what is common in formularies of this sort; but its science is always earnestly and solemnly practical. In its whole constitution, as we have seen, it is more a great deal than doctrine merely, or a form of sound words for the understanding. It is doctrine apprehended and represented continually in the form of life. It is for the heart every where full as much as for the head. Among its characteristic perfections deserves to be noted always, with particular praise, its catholic spirit, and the rich mystical element that pervades so largely its whole composition. . . . Simple, beautiful, and clear in its logical construction, the symbol moves throughout also in the element of fresh religious feeling. It is full of sensibility and faith and joyous childlike trust. Its utterances rise at times to a sort of heavenly pathos, and breathe forth almost lyrical strains of devotion.'

Dr. Hagenbach, the well-known historian (d. at Basle, 1874):¹⁰⁴⁸

'The Heidelberg Catechism was greeted not only in the Palatinate but in all Reformed churches as the correct expression of the Reformed faith, and attained the authority of a genuine symbolical standard. It was translated into nearly all languages, and has continued to be the basis of religious instruction to this day. . . . Its tone, notwithstanding the scholastic and dogmatizing or (as Ullmann says) constructive tendency, is truly popular and childlike.'

Then he quotes several questions as models of the catechetical style.

Dr. Dalton, of St. Petersburg:¹⁰⁴⁹

'The Heidelberg Catechism exhibits the harmonious union of the Calvinistic and the Melanchthonian spirit. It is the ripe fruit of the whole Reformation and the true heir of the treasures gathered, not in ten years, but during that entire period. It is thoroughly Biblical, and represents its particular denominational type with great wisdom and moderation. We feel from beginning to end in the clear and expressive word the warm and sound pulse of a heart that was baptized by the fire and Spirit from above, and knows what it believes.'

It is gratifying that the Lutheran hostility of former days has given way to a sincere appreciation. Drs. Guericke and Kurtz, two prominent champions of Lutheran orthodoxy in the nineteenth century, in almost the same words praise the Heidelberg Catechism for 'its signal wisdom in teaching, its Christian fervor, theological ability, and mediating moderation.'¹⁰⁵⁰ Dr. Julius Stahl, an eminent jurist and the ablest apologist of modern Lutheranism within the Prussian Union, derived the religious revival of the Lutheran Church in his native Bavaria and his own conversion chiefly from the late venerable Reformed pastor and professor, Dr. J. Chr. G. L. Krafft, in Erlangen (died 1845). 'The man,' he said, before the General Synod at Berlin, 1846, 'who built up the Church in my fatherland, the most apostolic man I ever met in my life, Pastor Krafft, was a strict adherent of the Reformed creed. Whether he carried the Heidelberg Catechism in his pocket I know not, but this I know, that he caused throughout the whole land a spring to bloom whose fruits will ripen for eternity.'¹⁰⁵¹