Published weekly. Price $1.50 a year, or 5 cents single copy Entered at the Post-office, Boston, Mass., as second-class mail matter. Life. 12mo. Bluffton: A Story of To-day. 12mo The Minister's Hand-book. For Christenings, Weddings, Sacred Songs for Public Worship. A Hymn and Tune 1.50 1.00 1.00 1.00 .75 1.00 Leather 1.50 Unitarian Catechism. With an Introduction by E. A. Horton. 1.50 Cloth, ་ 30 2.50 Mr. Savage's weekly sermons are regularly printed in pamphlet form in "Unity Pulpit." Subscription price, for the season, $1.50; single copies, 5 cents. GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher, 141 Franklin St., Boston, Mass. THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION.* On the 19th of April, 1529, at the second Diet of Spire, the minority protested against the action of the majority. Hence they and those associated with them thereafter came to be called Protestants; and a movement which was intended at first only to be a reform within the Church won an historic name and an historic place as an independent movement beyond the limits of the old Church. Thus historically came into being that great revolution which has been moving along the lines of the historic growth of the modern world, and which to-day, far from being completed, is only in process towards an end dimly discerned, but far away. I propose this morning to speak on three things. First, I wish to make you comprehend the causes which led to this Protestant revolution. Then I wish to touch on some points wherein the Protestant position was no great improvement over the Catholic which it displaced. Third, I shall come to the more pleasant task of showing what Protestantism has contributed towards this great movement that promises so much still in the future. I shall not trouble you with many names, many dates, or many historical facts. I propose almost entirely to deal with the principles which were involved. You may find the names and dates in any book of reference or any historic work; but it seems to me that not always are the principles involved made so readily apparent. I. At the outset, then, what were the causes of the Protestant revolution? No great event in this world is ever sudden. It appears to be, because people do not trace the Phonographically reported. forces that have led up to that which they are apt to regard as the essential thing. Sometimes a great mass of rock, that has for ages hung on a mountain side, suddenly becomes detached, and with a great roar is hurled down the mountain side, creating devastation in its track. Its fall was sudden; but the preparation that led to it, and of which it was only the culmination, might have been going on for years, possibly for centuries. First, some little tiny crack, and then, under the influence of the snow and rain, heat, cold, sun, and frost, the cleavage widens and widens, until the power of gravity becomes mightier than the power of cohesion, and the cleavage becomes apparent: that is all. So this Protestant revolution seemed suddenly to break on Europe, yet it had been some hundreds of years since the processes began which led inevitably to it. The first one of the causes to which I will direct your attention is that which is popularly spoken of as the Renaissance, which I prefer to call the rediscovery of this world. If I could transport you into the Middle Ages, so that you could see its conditions and feel its atmosphere, and look on the universe through the eyes of people who were then alive, you would see to what an extent this present world had become obscured. It was of almost no account. Matter, all forms of matter, were regarded as evil, as essentially evil, so that studying in any direction the natural forms or forces of the world was a dangerous business for the Churchman. It was regarded as tending to heresy, and so was frowned upon by the authorities. The man who indulged in it did so at his peril. The body, which was made up of matter, which was physical, as much so as the earth of which it appeared to be a product, the body was frowned upon. "Bodily exercise profiteth little," said the old apostle; and, carrying out that idea further and further, the Church had come to look upon the body as only a prison-house, and the enemy of the soul. Those who cared for spiritual life, who cared for loyalty to the Church, were expected to abuse the body, to put down all its appetites, its tastes, its feelings under their feet. This world was regarded very little, and wealth was frowned upon as an evil. Poverty was praised, not as a condition of things in the midst of which the highest and noblest virtues of life might possibly be produced or developed, but it was looked upon as itself a virtue, so that men in those days were expected to renounce not only the flesh and the devil, but the world in all its forms. People knew, or thought they did, a good deal more about heaven, about purgatory, about hell, than they knew about the planet on which was their home. Everything pertaining to this life was belittled; everything pertaining to the other was exaggerated. People used to think that the air was a scene of perpetual spiritual conflict. Angels and devils thronged the earth, and engaged in year-long battle for human souls. This was the mental condition of the people through the Middle Ages. It touched every phase and form of human life. Art, for example, was purely conventional. It was in the service of the Church. There was no such thing as painting natural, real objects. There was no such thing as painting a real man or a real woman in all their living freshness and beauty. The altar-pieces were conventional human figures, starved and attenuated until they could properly represent the triumph of the spirit over the flesh. So music was nothing except a servant of the Church. It sang almost wholly of other worlds - death, judgment, vengeance, the triumph of God. Humanity was of no account. Literature was lost. Almost the only literature of those who could read in the Middle Ages was made up of those popular fairy tales which were called the lives of the saints. Literature, art, music,- everything, then, that we consider today as making up civilization, was obscured and out of sight. Suddenly there came what was called the Renaissance, the rediscovery of the literature of the ancient world. This was the first step; but this first step did not include it all. There came to be a revival of interest on the part of men and women in this world. They dared to look it in the face, and see its beauty, its glory. They dared to study its fair |