QUOTE OF CHARLEMAGNE

 PREAMBLES TO THE CONSTITUTIONS OF THE STATES OF THE UNION - Virginia

 THE FAMILY ALTAR

June 25.

"I will speak of Thy testimonies also before kings, and will

not be ashamed". Ps. 119:46.

On this memorable 25th of June, in the year of our Lord

1530, our Lutheran forefathers presented our Augsburg Confession

of faith to the imperial diet, or Reichstag, being held under Em-

peror Charles V at the City of Augsburg, in Bavaria. This first

and foremost confession of Evangelical Christendom contains

twenty-one fundamental articles of our Christian faith and seven

articles protesting against papal abuses. Like the Bible, it has

been translated into almost every language of the world and has

served to lead millions of souls to the saving truth as it is in

Jesus; for it is founded on the Scriptures and maintains and

defends the justifying power of faith in the all-sufficient merit

of our Savior. It forms the basis of the Thirty-nine Articles of

the Episcopalians and of the Creed of the Methodists. The Pres-

byterian theologian Dr. Philip Schaff lauds it by declaring : "The

Augsburg Confession is the first and foremost of all the Evangelical

Confessions — the most churchly, the most catholic, and the most

conservative creed of Protestantism/' The sainted Dr. Krauth

cites other great Protestant divines in its honor, and writes: "To

it, under God, more than to any other cause, the whole Protestant

world owes civil and religious freedom. Under it, as a banner,

the pride of Eome was broken, and her armies destroyed. It is

the symbol of pure Protestantism, as the three General Creeds

are symbols of that developing catholicity to which genuine Prot-

estantism is related as the maturing fruit is related to the blossom."

He then points clearly to the fact that a union of the different

Protestant church-bodies is possible only on the basis of the Augs-

burg Confession. Every Lutheran ought to be acquainted with

its history and know its sacred contents. Let us read it again

in these days and through it be brought to greater love and loyalty

to our Lutheran Church, the Church of the pure Gospel and

Sacraments.

My Church! my Church! my dear old Church!

My fathers' and my own!

On Prophets and Apostles built,

And Christ, the Corner-stone!

All else beside, by storm or tide,

May yet be overthrown ;

But not my Church — my dear old Church —

My fathers' and my own!