Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/133

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Discreditable Conduct
113

unconditionally, not universally, but (broadly speaking) racially and territorially. About one-third of Europe was conquered by it; and about two-thirds remain to this day—not indeed unaffected, but certainly not conquered by Lutheranism. If you are to judge of sacred causes by mere numbers, there are still more nominal Catholics than nominal Protestants in the world; and, therefore, by numbers, up to date Luther is condemned.

Luther's real conquest—the thing that he really did bring about, and in which numbers are now on his side, would have horrified him. Luther was the root-cause why there are to-day more nominal Christians in the world who pick and choose doctrines to suit their own taste, than Christians who submissively take their doctrines wholesale from others whether from Luther or from Rome. It is due to Luther, as much as to anybody, that so many Roman Catholics who have no leanings to Lutheranism, are only nominal Catholics. Luther, that is to say, has brought into existence an enormous number of discreditable Christians who will not openly admit that they are free-thinkers.

You have clergy of the Church of England, for instance, who read themselves into their pulpits with the Thirty-nine Articles, and do not believe half of them.

The average young man who enters the ministry of the Church of England has been reasonably mothered by a university education; and when he takes the plunge it is not total