as social, not mental, sociality in its
widest sense: the right of the individual; his inherent majesty, which
the accident of birth should not be able to impair--this and this only
was the natural outcome of the new birth which came to humanity; this
and this only was the sequel which German profundity and integrity, not
Italian brilliancy and carelessness, placed before the mind of Europe.

The Reformation, then, this Protestantism, is distinctive of the new
era. It was a protest, not only religious, as the word is usually
applied, but scientific. It is the basis in the modern Western world of
those laws of criticism which have submitted, or will submit, everything
to searching analytical investigation, and as in the case of the natural
world, so in the moral and ethical, men, by the light of revealed truth,
or by those higher instincts of nobility which emanate from the Eternal
Love, seek to apply to the reformation of society those principles of
love, justice, and recompense which each would wish applied individually
to self.

As an inspirer of thought and man of action, the world has seen few such
men as Luther. His genius, as it were, discovered and laid bare the
inexhaustible treasures of the German language; his sympathy and genial
humanity sent a thrill of song, poetical and tonal, throughout the
fatherland. He was the great awakener of German emotion. To Luther, a
man who cared not for song was without the pale of humanity. But his
enthusiasm was practical. In the church, as we have seen, he gathered
from all sources whatever was of the best, and gave it to the people. In
the schools he advocated the cause of song. In the streets the people
needed not advocacy. Wherever two or three gathered together, song was
in the midst of them, and it is not too much to say that the Lutheran
hymn was the saviour of German poetry and a font of German song. In the
seventeenth century there was in Germany little poetry worthy of the
name save that inspired by the devotional character of Luther's genius.
His heir and successor in the realm of tone was Sebastian Bach.

True, two centuries had elapsed between the death of the great reformer
in morals and the birth of the great reformer in tone; but the work of
the latter could not have been without the former. The chorale was
introduced by Luther; it was perfected by Bach. To what other influence
than the Lutheran can we attribute the growth of Bach? Are there any
other resour