RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Staehelin Stalker
STAFFORTIAN BOOK: The name of a confession of Baden-Durlach in the seventeenth century. After the religious peace of Augsburg, the Margrave Karl II. introduced in 1556 the Lutheran church order. After his death in 1577, the guardians of the three sons subscribed to the Book of Concord (q.v.); but when they had attained to the government in 1584, the eldest, Ernst Friedrich, who received as his share the lower part including the cities of Durlach and Pforzheim, manifested his dissatisfaction with the Lutheran confession, and introduced Calvinistic theologians at the school at Durlach, and attempted to introduce by force the Reformed faith in his dominion. A printing-press was established at the castle at Staff ort, 1599, and the Staffortian Book was issued. In the shorter edition, covered by pp. 359-555 of the larger, only the articles are treated on which the adherents of the Augsburg Confession (q.v.) differed. Caution is prescribed against the new Semipelagians who accept foreseen faith as the cause of election. Reprobation is very guardedly touched upon. Earnest protest is raised against the doctrine of ubiquity and the confusion of natures. Appeal is made to the Augsburg Confession and Apology in behalf of a doctrine of the sacrament that does not coerce faith out of its proper position. Regeneration is represented as the redemptive gift of baptism, and spiritual sustenance of the " essential body and blood of Christ, together with all his treasures and merits," is claimed for believers only. The larger edition, Christliches Bcdencken und erhebliche wolfundierte Motiven, attempts (pp. 1-358) a criticism of the text of the Formula of Concord (q.v.). The effort to enforce it raised a stubborn conflict. At Pforzheim the recalcitrant clergy were dismissed; for weeks there were no pastors; and the new Calvinistic preachers met with organized civic resistance. Ernst Friedrich prepared to move against the city by force of arms, when his death (1604) ended the strife. His successor returned to Lutheranism. (E. F. Karl Muller.)
Bibliography: C. A. Salig, Vollstandige Historie der augsburgischen Confession, pp. 748 sqq., Halle, 1730; J. G. Sachs, Einleitung in die Geschichte der Markgravschaft Baden, iv. 252 sqq., Carlsruhe, 1770; K. F. Vierordt, Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche in dem Grossherzogthum Baden, ii. 29 sqq., ib. 1856; E. F. K. Muller, Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche, Leipsic, 1903.
STAHL, shtal, FRIEDRICH JULIUS: German ecclesiastical jurist and statesman; b. at Munich Jan. 16, 1802; d. at Briickenau (50 m. e.n.e. of Frankfort-on-the-Main) Aug. 10, 1861. He was of Jewish parentage, but embraced Christianity in his seventeenth year. He studied jurisprudence at Wurzburg, Heidelberg, and Erlangen; and was professor at Erlangen, 1832; at Wurzburg, 1832; and at Berlin, 1840. In Berlin he gathered crowded audiences, not only of juridical students, but of men of all ranks; as when, in 1850, he lectured on Die gegenwdrtige Parteien in Stoat und Kirche (Berlin, 1863). He also held the highest positions in the state government of the Church, and took an active part in Prussian politics. His brilliant parliamentary talent soon made him one of the most prominent leaders of the conservative party, both in political and ecclesiastical affairs. His ideas are clearly de-
fined in Die Philosophic des Rechts (vol. i., Geschichte der Rechtsphilosophie, Heidelberg, 1830, vol. ii., Rechts- und Staatslehre, 1833; rev. ed., 1847). Of the fundamental problems of human life, he considered two solutions as possible, both philosophically and juridically, — one on the basis of pantheism, and one on the basis of faith in a personal God who has revealed himself to man; one giving the absolute power to the mass of the people, the majority, and one organizing the State after the idea of the highest personality, as a sphere of ethical action. What lay between those two extremes he despised as destitute of character. But his own choice he expressed in " No majority, but authority!" In Die Kirchenverfassung nach Lehre und Recht der Protestanten (Erlangen, 1840), he aimed at a restoration of the old Protestant doctrine of church constitution. He held that the three systems, episcopal, territorial, and collegia!, represented different views of the nature of church government, and were the outgrowths of the prevailing sentiment of three epochs of development; respectively, the orthodox, the Pietistic, and the rationalistic. Stahl advocated the Episcopal order. In his Die lutherische Kirche und die Union (1860) he opposed a formal union of the two Protestant churches. Among his other works are Der christliche Staat und sein Verhdltniss zu Deismus und Judenthum (Berlin, 1847) ; and Der Protestantismus als politisches Princip (1856) . (Rudolph KoGELf.)
Bibliography: P. A. S. van L. Brouwer, Stahl redivivus,
The Hague, 1862; Pemice, Savigny, Stahl, Berlin, 1862
(biographies).
STAHR, star, JOHN SUMMERS: Reformed (German); b. at Applebachsville, Pa., Dec. 2, 1841. He was educated at Franklin and Marshall College (A.B., 1867), with which he has been connected ever since, being tutor in German and history (1867- 1868), assistant professor of the same subjects (1868- 1871), professor of natural science and chemistry (1871-89), acting president (1889-90), and president (since 1890) . After studying theology privately, he was ordained to the German Reformed ministry in 1872 and assisted Benjamin Bausman, later supplying the pulpit of the First Reformed Church, Reading, Pa. He has been a member of the International Sunday-school Lesson Committee since 1890, and has also been a consulting member of the editorial staff of the Standard Dictionary, a member of the eighth Council of the Alliance of Reformed Churches held at Liverpool in 1904, and president of the Eastern Synod of the Reformed Church. In theology he is a progressive conservative, " holding to the fundamental verities of the Christian faith and doctrine in the sense that our apprehension of them is advancing with the progress of human experience and scholarship." He has been an editor of The Reformed Church Review since 1905, and translated J. Grab's Life of Zwingli (New York, 1883).
STALKER, JAMES : United Free Church of Scotland; b. at Crieff (17 m. w. of Perth), Perthshire, Feb. 21, 1848. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh (M.A., 1869), New College, Edinburgh (1870-74), and the universities of Berlin (1872) and Halle (1873). He held pastorates at St. Brycedale's,
Stall Stanley