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!
