It is a well known fact that the Lutheran Reformation has found entrance mostly into the nations of the Germanic race. The larger part of Germany and the northern countries around the Baltic Sea are Lutheran. Lutheranism has also gathered small groups in France, Holland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, but it is safe to say that there exists a certain affinity between the Lutheran faith and the Germanic race. The Reformed faith, in the form of Calvinism or of the Zwinglian Reformation, has a more international character. From its birthplaces in Zürich and Geneva it penetrated into France, Holland, Scotland, Hungary, Lithuania, and conquered even the House of Hohenzollern. The relationship between the two confessions, considered from a statistical point of view, has undergone but little change in the last few centuries. The most important alterations perhaps have taken place as a result of the union in the Church of Prussia and of the formation of the Czechoslovak Church of the Czech Brethren. The Reformed faith has been nearly extinguished in Russia where the larger parishes disappeared or were dissolved into Lutheran parishes. In Greece a young Presbyterian church is in the process of formation, and was considerably increased by the emigration of Greek refugees from Anatolia where the Southern Presbyterians had planted a hopeful missionary church.

The age of Saint Augustine was for the episcopate of the West a period of training for future duties. Before the end of the fifth century, in almost every community the real leader, both in temporal and spiritual matters, was the bishop. During the next two centuries there came into being the medieval prelate, a prince in the church and in the state; but the foundations of his ecclesiastical and civil jurisdiction had already been laid by the early part of the fifth century. The African bishops shared with their colleagues of the other western provinces the same line of evolution, until it was interrupted, first by the Vandal invasion, and then by the Islamic conquest. However, by that time Augustine of Hippo, Alypius of Thagaste, the primate Aurelius of Carthage, and their fellow-bishops had made contributions of permanent value to the whole church, and they had created a noble standard of duty and conduct to be emulated by prelates of a later day.

With no other country save possibly Italy has the Roman Catholic Church been more closely linked than with Spain. To think Spain was to think Roman Catholicism. Ferdinand and Isabella whom the world remembers best in relation to the discovery of the western world were known as the Catholic kings and their oft expressed motive in the conquest of the new continent was that of extending the holy faith. Mohammedanism with its resistless armies had made heavy inroads upon the Christian world; Luther and his fellow reformers in Germany, France, and Switzerland had wrought still further havoc, separating vast numbers of the faithful from their allegiance to Rome. To Spain and the Spanish monarchs was to belong the glory of restoring, by their zealous conversion of the western peoples, the power and prestige of Rome. In a few short years Spanish conquerors followed by Spanish priests and nuns had planted the cross from Mexico to the southern end of South America.

Although Frederick Denison Maurice, from about 1853 until his death in 1872, was frequently spoken of as a member of the Broad-Church school in the Church of England, and was considered by some of his contemporaries both the founder of that school and the greatest of the Broad-Churchmen, and although he is today usually referred to as a leader of the Broad-Church movement, his relation to it was not simple. He himself steadfastly refused to accept the label of “Broad-Churchman” for himself and to admit the need for a Broad-Church party. What the school stood for is as elusive of definition, furthermore, as his own thought was complex. Yet the question, in spite of its difficulty, is well worth going into, since its exploration serves to illustrate not only the difference between conservatism and liberalism, but also the differences between some of the forms of liberalism within itself. A satisfactory answer to the question would also do much to make clear the meaning and the nature of the Broad-Church movement.