In the beginning of the present
century the missionary spirit among Christians was dead, and their
zeal was wasted in disgraceful squabbles over inoperative and
metaphysical opinions, or over modes of church government of which the
Bible knows nothing.
The Protestant sects were divided into two hostile camps, known as
Calvinists and Arminians. The Calvinist dogma was that Jesus died
only for the elect, who were chosen in a by-gone eternity; that all
men are spiritually as dead and helpless as was the cold dead dust of
the earth out of which Adam was created, but that God will quicken
into a new life dead sinners who are of the elect, and will give them
evidence of their acceptance by the joyful emotions which he will
create in their hearts. And so the supreme interest of men centered in
this, that they were to seek in their own hearts those raptures and
ecstasies that were evidence that they had experienced this spiritual
change. The Arminians gloried in a free salvation. Christ died for
all.
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