THE LUTHERAN CYCLOPEDIA

edited by

HENRY EYSTER JACOBS, D. D., LL. D.

dean of the lutheran theological seminary, philadelphia, pa.

and

Rev. JOHN A. W. HAAS, B.D.

WITH THE CO-OPERATION OF PROFESSOR O. ZÖCKLER, UNIVERSITY OF GREIFSWALD, AND OTHER EUROPEAN SCHOLARS AND REPRESENTATIVE SCHOLARS FROM THE VARIOUS SYNODS

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

1899

Copyright, 1899, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

PREFACE

The aim of this volume is to present a summary of the chief topics comprised in the doctrine, the life, the customs, the history, and the statistics of the Luth. Church. It has been prepared almost entirely in America, from the standpoint of Lutherans, who either by nativity or adoption are Americans, and who are interested in the growth of their church and the maintenance of its influence in this its new home. The most notable fact in the progress of our Church in this land, has been not so much its rapid increase as the union within it of representatives of the hitherto separated Luth. churches of Europe. At the Reformation, Germany, the birthplace and centre of Lutheranism, was not a compact government, but a loose organization of numerous and chiefly small principalities and cities, in each of which the great religious movement of the time had its peculiar history. Upon the basis of a common confession of faith, the doctrinal, educational, liturgical, and governmental elements assumed in each province or territory a peculiar form, as each ruler selected his own theologians and jurists to aid in the reform, and, by their co-operation, published his own Church Order. In constitutions, liturgies, catechisms, hymn-books, instructions to pastors and customs, there was the greatest diversity. There was fixity of type with many varieties. To a still greater degree, the same principle was exhibited, as the Luth. faith penetrated other lands. The results of the German Reformation were adapted to the circumstances, characteristics, and precedents of the national life. In this country, these various streams, after having followed almost entirely separate courses since the Reformation, have at last met. Here are brought together, in the same synods, Lutherans from diverse parts of Germany, with a common faith, but accustomed to different modes of administering that faith. Here, too, they meet with those having an equal claim to the same name, from Norway and Sweden, Denmark and Iceland, Holland and Finland. These elements, however separated for one or more generations by national lines, must inevitably coalesce. If the Luth. Church, like a number of denominations, were based upon a peculiar polity or form of worship or mode of administering a sacrament, its people would soon be absorbed by churches of English origin. Mere reverence for ancestors is too weak a foundation for any permanence. When a few generations, at most, separate men from the land of their fathers, the attractions of their immediate surroundings overcome the resistance of such remote ties. But ...