No doubt a fundamental reform might be effected without disruption. But when did anything great and good make its appearance among men without causing agitation? This fear of seeing evil mingle with good, if legitimate, would arrest the noblest and holiest enterprises. We must not fear the evil which may be heaved up in the course of great agitation, but be strong in combating and destroying it. Besides, is there not an entire difference between the commotion which human passions produces and that which emanates from the Spirit of God? The one shakes society, the other consolidates it. How erroneous to imagine, like Erasmus, that in the state in which Christianity then was, with that mixture of opposite elements, truth and falsehood, life and death, violent shocks might still be prevented! As well might you try to shut the crater of Vesuvius, when the angry elements are actually at war in its bosom! The middle ages had seen more than one violent commotion in an atmosphere less loaded with storms than at the period of the Reformation. The thing wanted at such a time is not to arrest and suppress, but to direct and guide. If the Reformation had not burst forth, who can tell the fearful ruin by which its place might have been supplied? Society, a prey to a thousand elements of destruction, and destitute of regenerating and conservative elements, would have been dreadfully convulsed. Assuredly it would not have been a reform to the taste of Erasmus, or such an one as many moderate but timid men in our day dream of, that would then have overtaken society. The people, devoid of that light and piety which the Reformation carried down into the humblest ranks, giving themselves up to the violence of their passions, and to a restless spirit of revolt, would have burst forth like a wild beast broken loose from its chain, after having been goaded to madness. The Reformation was nothing but an interposition of the Spirit of God among men, a setting of the world in order by the hand of God. No doubt, it might stir up the fermenting elements which lie hidden in the human heart; but God was there to overrule them. Evangelical doctrine, heavenly truth, penetrating the masses of the population, destroyed what deserved to perish, but, at the same time, gave new strength to all that deserved to remain. The Reformation exerted itself in building up, and it is mere prejudice to allege that it destroyed. "The ploughshare, too," it has been truly said, in speaking of the Reformation, "might think it hurts the earth, because it cuts it asunder, whereas it only makes it productive." The great principle of Erasmus was, "Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself." The principle is good, and Luther acted on it. But when the enemies of the light strive to extinguish it, or to force the flambeau out of the hand which carries it is it necessary, from a love of peace, to let them do so? ought not the wicked to be resisted?