Note 126 — Chapter XXI · FREETHOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

6. Another expert of Baur’s school, Albrecht Schwegler, author of works on Montanism, the Post-Apostolic Age, and other problems of early Christian history, and of a Handbook of the History of Philosophy which for half a century had an immense circulation, was similarly driven out of theological research by the virulence of the reaction,126 and turned to the task of Roman history, in which he distinguished himself as he did in every other he essayed. The brains were being expelled from the chairs of theology. But this very fact tended to discredit the reaction itself; and outside of the Prussian sphere of influence German criticism went actively on. Gustav Volkmar, turning his back on Germany in 1854, settled in Switzerland, and in 1863 became professor at Zürich, where he added to his early Religion Jesu (1857) and other powerful works his treatises on the Origin of the Gospels (1866), The Gospels (1869), Commentary on the Apocalypse (1860–65), and Jesus Nazarenus (1881)—all stringent critical performances, irreconcilable with orthodoxy. Elsewhere too there was a general resumption of progress.