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74 Tlie Inspiring Vision of a Regenerated Russia
forth as in God’s light, His last experiment, if you will. If you have
the requisite historic knowledge, if you have at all an imaginative
faculty that can be quickened into vividness, if you have any power
whereby you can visualize the unseen, then I would ask you to go back
into that period of history ante-dating the great Protestant Reforma-
tion, before Luther and Zwingli and John Knox, and other stalwarts of
the Reformation, go back to that period.
I am only a poor Scotchman, and somebody has said, when a Scotch-
man called himself poor and humble, "I will turn aside and see this
great sight,—a humble Scotchman." But then, even if I am only a
Scotchman, I want to say this: I hope I have got beyond all national
lines, in some respects at least. Among the children of God I am at
home anywhere, and I thank God for having had the privilege of meet-
ing and mingling with people of almost every nation on earth. But I
say that those who do pride themselves in Scotland,—and I love the
land that gave me birth,—those who do, whenever they speak about the
land, I think they never go back beyond the time of John Knox. The
Scotland before John Knox was not worth talking about, and the less
said about it the better. And any part of Europe before the Reforma-
tion was not worth talking very much about; at least the less said
about it, the better. The Reformation, under the blessing of God, was
the greatest uplift the world has ever had since our Lord left the
world. Now then looking at that, we say, "Oh, what a great thing it
was that the Reformation occurred." Yes, and I would to God that it
had been greater. Do you know what stifled the great forces that
were released at the Reformation? Was the truth of justification by
faith the only truth that needed, so to speak, to be restored out of the
depths? Oh no, by no manner of means. I would that those who began
to see so clearly, as some of these great reformers did see, I would thai
they had kept to the New Testament and remembering their freedom
from the bondage of priestcraft and that they had "an unction from
the Holy One" to understand the blessed Word of God that they had
vitalizing Word. But they began to match the world’s power with
similar power, they began to draw the sword to meet the sword. I
believe that for the allied nations, for example, to draw the sword
was their inescapable duty, but I believe for the Church it was a great
crime. I believe it was the beginning of what has made Christendom
a hissing and a by-word, of what has made her weak, has deprived her
of her strength and shorn her locks even as Samson’s locks were
shorn. They created immediately "national" churclies, the national
German Church, the national Dutch Church, the national English
Church, the national Scotch Church; and the idcntitication of secular
interests with sacred; of Christ’s kingdom with the kingdoms of this
world,—was the beginning of the tearing down of the lines of de-
niarcation that should have remained.* Because of this worldly alliance,
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