its members together, and which had been used from the beginning; yet he would temper severity with mildness and charity, since only God is able to judge the heart.  And herein he departed from the customs of the Middle Ages, and did not regard the excommunicated as lost, but to be prayed for by the faithful.  No one, he maintained, should be judged as deserving eternal death who was still in the hands of God.  He made a broad distinction between excommunication and anathema; the latter, he maintained, should never, or very rarely, be pronounced, since it takes away the hope of forgiveness, and consigns one to the wrath of God and the power of Satan.  He regarded the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper as a means to help manifold infirmities,—­as a time of meditation for beholding Christ the crucified; as confirming reconciliation with God; as a visible sign of the body of Christ, recognizing his actual but spiritual presence.  Luther recognized the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist, while he rejected transubstantiation and the idea of worshipping the consecrated wafer as the real God.  This difference in the opinion of the reformers as to the Eucharist led to bitter quarrels and controversies, and divided the Protestants.  Calvin pursued a middle and moderate course, and did much to harmonize the Protestant churches.  He always sought peace and moderation; and his tranquillizing measures were not pleasant to the Catholics, who wished to see divisions among their enemies.

Calvin had a great dislike of ceremonies, festivals, holidays, and the like.  For images he had an aversion amounting to horror.  Christmas was the only festival he retained.  He was even slanderously accused of wishing to abolish the Sabbath, the observance of which he inculcated with the strictness of the Puritans.  He introduced congregational singing, but would not allow the ear or the eye to be distracted.  The music was simple, dispensing with organs and instruments and all elaborate and artistic display.  It is needless to say that this severe simplicity of worship has nearly passed away, but it cannot be doubted that the changes which the reformers made produced the deepest impression on the people in a fervent and religious age.  The psalms and hymns of the reformers were composed in times of great religious excitement.  Calvin was far behind Luther, who did not separate the art of music from religion; but Calvin made a divorce of art from public worship.  Indeed, the Reformation was not favorable to art in any form except in sacred poetry; it declared those truths which save the soul, rather than sought those arts which adorn civilization.  Hence its churches were barren of ornaments and symbols, and were cold and repulsive when the people were not excited by religious truths.  Nor did they favor eloquence in the ordinary meaning of that word.  Pulpit eloquence was simple, direct, and without rhetorical devices; seeking effect not in gestures and postures and modulated voice, but earnest appeals to the heart and conscience.  The great Catholic preachers of the eighteenth century—­like Bossuet and Bourdaloue and Massillon—­ surpassed the Protestants as rhetoricians.