TO WHAT extent does the organic union of the Evangelical Synod of North America with the Reformed Church in the United States, recently consummated, represent a merging of Lutheranism and Calvinism? The Evangelical Synod, which had its origin on American soil in 184o as the Kirchenverein des Westens (Evangelical Church Society of the West), was conceived in the spirit of the Evangelical Union of 1817 in Germany, which sought to bring the Reformed and Lutheran branches of German Protestantism together. The origin of the Reformed Church in the United States, on the other hand, is to be traced to the German immigration of the pre-colonial period which settled in the East long before the union issue had become acute in Germany. Although the Evangelical Synod sought to preserve both the Reformed and Lutheran witnesses side by side, as its subscription to the Augsburg Confession and the Heidelberg and Luther's Catechism indicates, careful observers have noted that the spirit of Luther, rather than that of Calvin, has dominated its religious temperament-to the extent, indeed, that a certain antagonism to Calvinistic viewpoints was at times apparent. The doctrinal heritage of the Reformed Church, on the other hand, was definitely Calvinistic, as its exclusive committal to the Heidelberg Catechism suggests. It would thus appear that, with the merging of these two denominations, there was consummated on American soil a union of two diverse ecclesiastical