Their word was "Reformation"--"the completion of the Reformation"; not Luther's nor Calvin's, they expressly say; they cannot themselves imagine it. Hitherto it is unconceived by men. God must reveal it in the light that breaks forth from him. And this he will do in his own good time. It is already clear to us that, in order to any further progress in this direction, it was necessary for a new movement to begin that should loosen the joints of despotism and emancipate the mind of the world. And in order to this a new republic must be planted and have time to grow. It must be seen rising up in the strong majesty of freedom and youth, outstripping the old prescriptive world in enterprise and the race of power, covering the ocean with its commerce, spreading out in populous swarms of industry,--planting, building, educating, framing constitutions, rushing to and fro in the smoke and thunder of travel along its mighty rivers, across its inland seas, over its mountain-tops from one shore to the other, strong in order as in liberty,--a savage continent become the field of a colossal republican empire, whose name is a name of respect and a mark of desire to the longing eyes of mankind. And then, as the fire of new ideas and hopes darts electrically along the nerves of feeling in the millions of the race, it will be seen that a new Christian movement also begins with it. Call it reformation, or formation, or by whatever name, it is irresistible because it is intangible. In one view it is only destruction. The State is loosened from the Church. The Church crumbles down into fragments. Superstition is eaten away by the strong acid of liberty, and spiritual despotism flies affrighted from the broken loyalty of its metropolis. Protestantism also, divided and subdivided by its dialectic quarrels, falls into the finest, driest powder of disintegration. Be not afraid. The new order crystallizes only as the old is dissolved; and no sooner is the old unity of orders and authorities effectually dissolved than the reconstructive affinities of a new and better unity begin to appear in the solution. Repugnances melt away. Thought grows catholic. Men look for good in each other as well as evil. The crossings of opinion by travel and books, and the intermixture of races and religions, issue in freer, broader views of the Christian truth; and so the "Church of the Future," as it has been called, gravitates inwardly towards those terms of brotherhood in which it may coalesce and rest. I say not or believe that Christendom will be Puritanized or Protestantized; but what is better than either, it will be Christianized. It will settle thus into a unity, probably not of form, but of practical assent and love--a Commonwealth of the Spirit, as much stronger in its unity than the old satrapy of priestly despotism, as our republic is stronger than any other government of the world. RELIGIOUS MUSIC From 'Work and Play'