“The tendency of the Reformation,” declares W. Herrmann, a representative of ultra-liberal Protestant theology, was in the direction of the views he holds, viz. towards a rationalistic Christianity, not at all towards “the view of religion dear to orthodox theology.” He is convinced, that “it is high time for us to resume the work of the Reformers and of Schleiermacher, and to consider what we are really to understand by religion.” Religion is not an “unreasoning” faith in dogmas, nor a “non-moral” assent to alien ideas, “but a personal experience” such as the great Reformation doctrine of Justification rightly assumed. Yet, even now, theologians still lack that “comprehension of religion common to all.” All that is needed is to take Luther’s ideas in real earnest, for, according to Herrmann, the “true Christian understanding of what faith, i.e. religion [in the above, modern sense], is, was recovered at the Reformation. Thus only,” he concludes, “can we escape from the hindrances to belief presented by the present development of science.”[43] It is with a similar appeal to Luther that another theologian, P. Martin Rade, the editor of the “Christliche Welt,” spreads his sails to the blast of modern infidelity. According to him Luther was “one of the fathers of subjectivism and of modern ways”; Luther, by his doctrine of Justification by faith, gave to subjective piety “its first clumsy expression”; the faith which Luther taught the world was an “individual staking” of all on God’s mercy. Yet, he complains, there are people within the Evangelical Church who are still afraid of subjectivism. “This fear torments the best, and raises a mighty barrier in front of those who struggle onwards.” The barrier is composed of the articles of the creed which have remained upstanding since Luther’s day. And yet “each scholar can, and may, only represent Christianity as it appears to him.” “For us Protestants there is in these circumstances only one way. We recognise no external authority which could cut the knot for us. Hence we must take our position seriously, and embrace and further the cause of subjectivism.” Thanks to Luther “religion has been made something subjective; too subjective it can never be ... all precautions adopted to guard against religious subjectivism are really unevangelical.” We must, on the contrary, say with Luther: “God will always prevail and His Word remains for all eternity, and His truth for ever and ever.” “Let the Bible speak for itself and work of itself” without any “human dogma,” and then you have the true spirit of Luther’s Reformation, “the very spirit which breathed through it from the day when it first began to play its part in the history of the world.” This writer is well acquainted with the two great objections to that principle of Luther, which he praises, yet he makes no attempt to answer them any more than Luther himself did.