The Association of German Protestants assembled at Berlin, and numbering
about 250 members in actual attendance, are doing all in their power to distinguish between faith and dogma, —in other words, to reduce the number of assumptions on which they rest their faith to the smallest possible number capable of feeding faith at all. Dr. Schiffmann, of Stettin, who preached to the Association on the second day, reduced the number of these assumptions to the acknowledgment of the greatness and love of Gad, of the duty of doing His will, of repentance for leaving it undone, and of prayer ; but these seem to be much larger assump- tions than those made by others of the Association, who reject all dogmatic assumptions ; yet surely to assume the existence of God, of any human knowledge of His will, of any power to do it, and of any power to commune with God, is to make assumptions of the most sweeping kind. What do we assume in assuming the incarnation, except that God has actually revealed to us in act and life what Dr. Schiffmann assumes, without believing that it has been revealed ? In some sense God without Christ is surely a greater and more difficult assumption than God in Christ,—just as a law of Nature without any verification—a theoretical law without its practical embodiment—is much harder to believe than the law as actually embodied in fact.
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