If Protestantism made its easy capitulation before the larger social groups of mankind and its premature peace with them, it developed its most stubborn resistance to the natural appetites of men in its influence upon the individual life. It was precisely in that area of life in which the medieval church was least effective that Protestantism displayed its highest ambition. At this point it becomes impossible to speak in general terms of Protestantism, for the strategies of Calvinism and Lutheranism in dealing with the problems of the inner life differ widely, even more widely than their social policies. The unique characteristics of either are frequently the common characteristics of Protestantism when viewed from some external perspective; but an intimate view may reveal them in the light of very different religions. Calvinism is religion’s most energetic effort to master the ethical life of the individual. In some of its historic forms, in Geneva and Scotland and the American colonies for instance, its social policy was ambitious enough to compare with that of Pope Gregory, but its chief interest was not in the social institution as such. It merely used the political power to reinforce an uncompromising ethical rigor in the life of the individual. In Calvinism the religion of the modern world makes its boldest bid for the ethical mastery of life. Calvinism believed that life could be dominated by the spiritual and ethical ideal if the individual could be persuaded to control his appetites and to overcome his natural indolence. A temperate, industrious, thrifty and honest individual was, in its esteem, the perfect exemplar of the religious ideal and the stuff out of which a new society could be built. It never faced the problem of the conflict between the ideal in the soul of the individual and the intractable forces in human society because its moral ideals were socially and economically very useful and it could therefore indulge the illusion that economic success, social well-being and obvious happiness are the natural and inevitable fruits of the religious life. Hence it was a religion admirably suited for the middle classes who rose to power in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century, for it endowed them with virtues which would insure their success and it doubled their zeal by giving religious sanction to their secular enterprises. The ancient and medieval world had given moral precedence to a life of leisure and meditation, whether of aristocrat or philosopher, of monk or priest. Calvinism was as contemptuous of luxury and leisure as of the arts and amenities which flourished in them. Its sanctification of the common task, of manual toil and of commercial enterprise was in itself a valuable contribution to social progress. It was in a way the spiritual foundation upon which the whole structure of modern civilization has been built. It developed a high type of honesty