atform. In an issue
of January, 1856, he maintained that the Platform offered nothing new;
in the past every member of the General Synod had practised according to
its principles; now one merely was to do openly and honestly what
heretofore he had been doing with a _reservatio mentalis_. (_L. u. W._
1856, 64.) Several months later Kurtz published the list of rejected
errors of the Symbolical Books, and in a number of subsequent articles
supported the Platform, and, at the same time, attacked the distinctive
doctrines of Lutheranism, misrepresenting them in Calvinistic fashion.
(_L. u. W._ 1856, 140 ff.; 1857,61; 1862,152; 1917,375.) Nor did Kurtz
in the following years repent of, or change, his attitude. In the
_Observer_ of June 29, 1860, he declared: "We are qualified to formulate
a confession of faith not only just as well, but better than those who
lived three hundred years ago. We now have men in our Church who
understand just as much of the Bible and of theology as our fathers. If
this were not the case, we must be stupid scholars, a degenerated
generation." (_L. u. W_. 6, 252.) In the same year: "May those, then,
who are opposed to the progress backwards, to liturgies, to priestly
gowns, to bands, candles, crucifixes, baptismal regeneration, the real
presence, priestly confession and absolution, and all other phases of
the half-papists, stand firmly by the old _Observer_." (_L. u. W._ 1860,
318.) In the _Observer_, December 26, 1862, Kurtz said: Wisdom did not
die with the Reformers; nor would it die with the present generation.
Giant strides had been made in science, history, chemistry, philology.
The progress in astronomy enabled us to understand the Bible better than
our fathers. Geology taught us to explain the first chapter of Genesis
more correctly than a hundred years ago. Even if we were dwarfs compared
with the Reformers, with our increased advantages we ought to understand
the Bible better than they. A dwarf, standing on the shoulders of a
giant, can see farther than the giant himself. A confession of faith,
therefore, ought not to be like the laws of the Medes and Persians, but
subject to improvement and growing perfection. Luther and his colaborers
explained the Bible more correctly than any like number of their
contemporaries. But we do not believe that they understood it as well as
God's enlightened people of the present. Indeed, an intelligent
Sunday-school child has a clearer insight into the plan o