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"And I intend to go to church." "Edward Newbury's kind of church?" he asked her, uneasily. She shook her head. "No. I'm an Evangelical." "Thank the Lord! So am I," he said, fervently. She laughed. "It's true," he insisted. "Peace on earth goodwill to men that I can understand. So that's settled. Now then a fortnight next Wednesday?" "No, no!" she said, in alarm, "certainly not.
The truths of Christianity required not only to be defended, but to be applied to the heart and life; and this was the special work of what has been called, for want of a better term, 'the Evangelical school. The term is not altogether a satisfactory one, because it seems to imply that this school alone held the distinctive doctrines of Christianity. But this was by no means the case.
Hypocrisy is at its worst; for we not only persecute bigotedly but sincerely in the name of the cure-mongering witchcraft we do believe in, but callously and hypocritically in the name of the Evangelical creed that our rulers privately smile at as the Italian patricians of the fifth century smiled at Jupiter and Venus.
Secondly, As the promises of spiritual and eternal blessings, so the promises of peace and temporal deliverances are not legal, but even evangelical.
To this end, it was important to alarm the Elector of Saxony and the other Evangelical powers, and accordingly the Union were diligent in propagating a rumour that the preparations of the League had for their object to deprive them of the ecclesiastical foundations they had secularized.
So clearly has this come to be recognized that the American Presbyterian Church formally adopted it, and put it in their "Brief Statement" some years ago. It is also proposed for acceptance in the creed of the united churches of Canada, if that union is consummated. And despite all theories to the contrary, it is believed and preached in most if not all Evangelical Churches. Very well.
Shortly afterwards, in October 1526, a Hessian synod, convoked by the Landgrave Philip at Homberg, actually adopted the draft of a constitution, which provided that those Christians who acknowledged the Word of God should voluntarily enrol themselves as members of a Christian Evangelical Brotherhood or congregation, who should elect in assembly their pastors and bishops, and that the latter, together with other deputies, should constitute a general synod for the national Church.
Therefore we should contribute according to our means to charitable institutions, and indeed to all institutions that promote the glory of God and the good of our religion. To explain more fully, religious are self-sacrificing men and women who, wishing to follow the evangelical counsels, dedicate their lives to the service of God.
The evangelical method is this: it has not occupied itself with communities, yet has wrought the profoundest of the social revolutions; it has not demanded any reform, yet has accomplished all of them; the atrocities of war and of torture, the gladiatorial combats and immodest spectacles, the despotism of fathers and the debasement of women, all have disappeared before a profound, internal action, which attacks the very roots of the evil.
It is, perhaps, on the whole, the strongest book, as its author was the strongest man of any who appeared among the Evangelicals. To find its equal we must go back to the previous century. We have hitherto been tracing the work of the Evangelical clergy in remote country villages and in London. We have now to turn to one whose most important work was done in a different sphere from either.
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