HUMAN PROPS | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 6, 1898

HUMAN PROPS.

TO THOSE earnest but misguided people who think the cause of God needs propping up, supporting or promoting by government aid or religious legislation, the following from the Sunday School Times is especially commended:—

When Luther was at Coburg, watching the proceedings of the Diet of Augsburg—which he, as an outlaw, dare not attend—he made a noteworthy discovery. Looking out of his window one night, he saw the stars bestud the canopy of the sky, and, tho there were no pillars to prop them up, they kept their place, and the sky fell not. Of this discovery, he writes to his friends at Augsburg, to uphold their faith in one of the darkest hours of the Reformation. Charles V. had got through with his wars in Italy, had made peace with France, and now had his hands free to put down Protestantism. He was brushing aside the Augsburg Confession as an impertinence, and telling the Protestant princes that by next spring they must restore the old order of things in their dominions, or be outlawed, as Luther was. Truly, the sky seemed to be falling at Augsburg, and timid men in the party of reform were longing for a good, stout prop to hold it up. Luther felt that, if it was God’s cause, he could leave the matter to Him. “We plainly tell our Lord God,” he said on another occasion, “that, if He will have His church, He must see to it, for we can not, and, if we could, we should be the proudest asses under heaven.” And the Lord did see to it. Before the emperor could take a single step to enforce the policy he announced at Augsburg, the sultan was coming up the Danube valley with his myrmidons. To drive him back the forces of a united Germany were needed, and the Protestants had to be conciliated, not coerced.