THIRD DIVISION. (Continued.) (continued 6)

§ 181.3. The Liturgy.―Under the reign of the Illuminists the liturgy had suffered even more than the hymns. The Lutherans now went back to the old Reformation models, and liturgical services, with musical performances, became popular in Berlin. Conferences held at Dresden did much for liturgical reform, and the able works and collections of Schöberlein supplied abundant materials for the practical carrying out of the movement.

§ 181.4. The Holy Scriptures.―The Calw Bible in its fifth edition adopted somewhat advanced views on inspiration, the canon and authenticity, while maintaining generally the standpoint of the most reverent and pious students of scripture. Bunsen’s commentary assumed a “mediating” position, and the “Protestant Bible” on the New Testament, translated into English, that of the advanced school. Besser’s expositions of the New Testament books, of which we have in English those on John’s gospel, had an unexampled popularity. The Eisenach Conference undertook a revision of Luther’s translation of the Bible. The revised New Testament was published in A.D. 1870, and accepted by some Bible societies. The much more difficult task of Old Testament revision was entrusted to a committee of distinguished university theologians, which concluded its labours in A.D. 1881. A “proof” Bible was issued in A.D. 1883, and the final corrected rendering in A.D. 1886. A whole legion of pamphlets were now issued from all quarters. Some bitterly opposing any change in the Luther-text, others severely criticising the work, so that the whole movement seems now at a standstill.529―In England, in May, 1885, the work of revision of the English version of the Bible, undertaken by order of convocation, was completed after fifteen years’ labour, and issued jointly by the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The revised New Testament, prepared four years previously, had been telegraphed in short sections to America by the representative of the New York Herald, so that the complete work appeared there rather earlier than in England. But in the case of the Old Testament revision such freebooting industry was prevented by the strict and careful reserve of all concerned in the work. The revised New Testament had meanwhile never been introduced into the public services; whether the completed Bible will ever succeed in overcoming this prejudice remains to be seen.530

§ 182. Protestant Theology in Germany.

The real founder of modern Protestant theology, the Origen of the nineteenth century, is Schleiermacher. His influence was so powerful and manysided that it extended not merely to his own school, but also in almost all directions, even to the Catholic church, embracing destructive and constructive tendencies such as appeared before in Origen and Erigena. Alongside of the vulgar rationalism, which still had notable representatives, De Wette founded the new school of historico-critical rationalism, and Neander that of pietistic supernaturalism, which soon overshadowed the two older schools of rational and supra-rational supernaturalism. On the basis of Schelling’s and Hegel’s philosophy Daub founded the school of speculative theology with an evangelical tendency; but after Hegel’s death it split into a right and left wing. As the former could not maintain its position, its adherents by-and-by went over to other schools; and the latter, setting aside speculation and dogmatics, applied itself to the critical investigation of the early history of Christianity, and founded the school of Baur at Tübingen. Schleiermacher’s school also split into a right and left wing. Each of them took the union as its standard; but the right, which claimed to be the “German” and the “Modern” theology, wished a union under a consensus of the confessions, and sought to effect an accommodation between the old faith and the modern liberalism; whereas the left wished union without a confession, and unconditioned toleration of “free science.” This latter tendency, however, secured greater prominence and importance from A.D. 1854, through combination with the representatives of the historico-critical and the younger generation of the Baurian school, from which originated the “free Protestant” theology. On the other hand, under the influence of pietism, there has arisen since A.D. 1830, especially in the universities of Erlangen, Leipzig, Rostock, and Dorpat, a Lutheran confessional school, which seeks to develop a Lutheran system of theology of the type of Gerhard and Bengel. A similar tendency has also shown itself in the Reformed church. The most recent theological school is that founded by Ritschl, resting on a Lutheran basis but regarded by the confessionalists as rather allied to the “free Protestant” theology, on account of its free treatment of certain fundamental doctrines of Lutheranism.―Theological contributions from Scandinavia, England, and Holland are largely indebted to German theology.

§ 182.1. Schleiermacher, A.D. 1768-1834.―Thoroughly grounded in philosophy and deeply imbued with the pious feeling of the Moravians among whom he was trained, Schleiermacher began his career in A.D. 1807 as professor and university preacher at Halle, but, to escape French domination, went in the same year to Berlin, where by speech and writing he sought to arouse German patriotism. There he was appointed preacher in A.D. 1809, and professor in A.D. 1810, and continued to hold these offices till his death in A.D. 1834. In A.D. 1799 he published five “Reden über d. Religion.” In these it was not biblical and still less ecclesiastical Christianity which he sought with glowing eloquence to address to the hearts of the German people, but Spinozist pantheism. The fundamental idea of his life, that God, “the absolute unity,” cannot be reached in thought nor grasped by will, but only embraced in feeling as immediate consciousness, and hence that feeling is the proper seat of religion, appears already in his early productions as the centre of his system. In the following year, A.D. 1800, he set forth his ethical theory in five “Monologues:” every man should in his own way represent humanity in a special blending of its elements. The study and translation of Plato, which occupied him now for several years, exercised a powerful influence upon him. He approached more and more towards positive Christianity. In a Christmas Address in A.D. 1803 on the model of Plato’s Symposium, he represents Christ as the divine object of all faith. In A.D. 1811 he published his “Short Outline of Theological Study,” which has been translated into English, a masterly sketch of theological encyclopædia. In A.D. 1821 he produced his great masterpiece, “Der Chr. Glaube,” which makes feeling the seat of all religion as immediate consciousness of absolute dependence, perfectly expressed in Jesus Christ, whose life redeems the world. The task of dogmatics is to give scientific expression to the Christian consciousness as seen the life of the redeemed; it has not to prove, but only to work out and exhibit in relation to the whole spiritual life what is already present as a fact of experience. Thus dogmatics and philosophy are quite distinct. He proves the evangelical Protestant character of the doctrines thus developed by quotations from the consensus of both confessions. Notwithstanding his protest, many of his contemporaries still found remnants of Spinozist pantheism. On certain points too, he failed to satisfy the claims of orthodoxy; e.g. in his Sabellian doctrine of the Trinity, his theory of election, his doctrine of the canon, and his account of the beginning and close of our Lord’s life, the birth and the ascension.531

§ 182.2. The Older Rationalistic Theology.―The older, so-called vulgar rationalism, was characterized by the self-sufficiency with which it rejected all advances from philosophy and theology, science and national literature. The new school of historico-critical rationalism availed itself of every aid in the direction of scientific investigation. The father of the vulgar rationalism of this age was Röhr of Weimar, who exercised his ingenuity in proving how one holding such views might still hold office in the church. To this school also belonged Paulus of Heidelberg, described by Marheineke as one who believes he thinks and thinks he believes but was incapable of either; Wegscheider of Halle, who in his “Institutions theol. Christ. dogmaticæ” repudiates miracles; Bretschneider of Gotha, who began as a supernaturalist and afterwards went over to extreme rationalism; and Ammon of Dresden, who afterwards passed over to rational supernaturalism.

§ 182.3. The founder of Historico-critical Rationalism was De Wette; a contemporary of Schleiermacher in Berlin University, but deprived of office in A.D. 1819 for sending a letter of condolence to the mother of Sands, which was regarded as an apology for his crime. From A.D. 1822 till his death in A.D. 1849 he continued to work unweariedly in Basel. His theological position had its starting point in the philosophy of his friend Fries, which he faithfully adhered to down to the end of his life. His friendship with Schleiermacher had also a powerful influence upon him. He too placed religion essentially in feeling, which, however, he associated much more closely with knowledge and will. In the church doctrines he recognised an important symbolical expression of religious truths, and so by the out and out rationalist he was all along sneered at as a mystic. But his chief strength lay in the sharp critical treatment which he gave to the biblical canon and the history of the O.T. and N.T. His commentaries on the whole of the N.T. are of permanent value, and contain his latest thoughts, when he had approached most nearly to positive Christianity. His literary career began in A.D. 1806 with a critical examination of the books of Chronicles. He also wrote on the Psalms, on Jewish history, on Jewish archæology, and made a new translation of the Bible. His Introductions to the O.T. and N.T. have been translated into English.―Winer of Leipzig is best known by his “Grammar of New Testament Greek,” first published in A.D. 1822, of which several English and American translations have appeared, the latest and best that of Dr. Moulton, made in A.D. 1870, from the sixth German edition. He also edited an admirable “Bibl. Reallexicon,” and wrote a work on symbolics which has been translated into English under the title “A Comparative View of the Doctrines and Confessions of the Various Communities of Christendom” (Edin., 1873).―Gesenius of Halle, who died A.D. 1842, has won a high reputation by his grammatical and lexicographical services and as author of a commentary on Isaiah―Hupfeld of Marburg and Halle, who died A.D. 1866, best known by his work in four vols. on the Psalms, in his critical attitude toward the O.T., belonged to the same party.―Hitzig of Zürich and Heidelberg, who died A.D. 1875, far outstripped all the rest in genius and subtlety of mind and critical acuteness. He wrote commentaries on most of the prophets and critical investigations into the O.T. history.―Ewald of Göttingen, A.D. 1803-1875, whose hand was against every man and every man’s hand against him, held the position of recognised dictator in the domain of Hebrew grammar, and uttered oracles as an infallible expounder of the biblical books. In his Journal for Biblical Science, he held an annual auto da fe of all the biblico-theological literature of the preceding year; and, assuming a place alongside of Isaiah and Jeremiah, he pronounced in every preface a prophetic burden against the theological, ecclesiastical, or political ill doers of his time. His exegetical writings on the poetical and prophetical books of the O.T., his “History of Israel down to the Post-Apostolic Age,” and a condensed reproduction of his “Bible Doctrine of God,” under the title: “Revelation, its Nature and Record” and “Old and New Testament Theology,” have all appeared in English translations, and exhibit everywhere traces of brilliant genius and suggestive originality.532

§ 182.4. Supernaturalism of the older type (§ 171, 8) was now represented by Storr, Reinhard, Planck, Knapp, and Stäudlin. In Württemberg Storr’s school maintained its pre-eminence down to A.D. 1830. Neander, Tholuck, and Hengstenberg may be described as the founders and most powerful enunciators of the more recent Pietistic Supernaturalism. Powerfully influenced by Schleiermacher, his colleague in Berlin, Neander, A.D. 1789-1850, exercised an influence such as no other theological teacher had exerted since Luther and Melanchthon. Adopting Schleiermacher’s standpoint, he regarded religion as a matter of feeling: Pectus est quod theologum facit. By his subjective pectoral theology he became the father of modern scientific pietism, but it incapacitated him from understanding the longing of the age for the restoration of a firm objective basis for the faith. He was adverse to the Hegelian philosophy no less than to confessionalism. Neander was so completely a pectoralist, that even his criticism was dominated by feeling, as seen in his vacillations on questions of N.T. authenticity and historicity. His “Church History,” of which we have admirable English translations, was an epoch-making work, and his historical monographs were the result of careful original research.533―Tholuck, A.D. 1799-1877, from A.D. 1826 professor at Halle, at first devoted to oriental studies, roused to practical interests by Baron von Kottwitz of Berlin, gave himself with all his wide culture by preaching, lecturing and conversing to lead his students to Christ. His scientific theology was latitudinarian, but had the warmth and freshness of immediate contact with the living Saviour. His most important works are apologetical and exegetical. In his “Preludes to the History of Rationalism” he gives curious glimpses into the scandalous lives of students in the seventeenth century; and he afterwards confessed that these studies had helped to draw him into close sympathy with confessionalism. While always lax in his views of authenticity, he came to adopt a very decided position in regard to revelation and inspiration.―Hengstenberg, A.D. 1802-1869, from A.D. 1826 professor in Berlin, had quite another sort of development. Rendered determined by innumerable controversies, in none of which he abated a single hair’s breadth, he looked askance at science as a gift of the Danaides, and set forth in opposition to rationalism and naturalism a system of theology unmodified by all the theories of modern times. Born in the Reformed church and in his understanding of Scripture always more Calvinist than Lutheran, rationalising only upon miracles that seemed to detract from the dignity of God, and in his later years inclined to the Romish doctrine of justification, he may nevertheless claim to be classed among the confessionalists within the union. He deserves the credit of having given a great impulse to O.T. studies and a powerful defence of O.T. books, though often abandoning the position of an apologist for that of an advocate. His “Christology of the Old Testament,” in four vols., “Genuineness of the Pentateuch and Daniel,” three vols., “Egypt and the Books of Moses,” commentaries on Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Ezekiel, the Gospel of John, Revelation, and his “History of the Kingdom of God in the Old Testament,” have all been translated into English.

§ 182.5. The so called Rational Supernaturalism admits the supernatural revelation in holy scripture, and puts reason alongside of it as an equally legitimate source of religious knowledge, and maintains the rationality of the contents of revelation. Its chief representative was Baumgarten-Crusius of Jena. Of a similar tendency, but more influenced by æsthetic culture and refined feeling, and latterly inclining more and more to the standpoint of “free Protestantism,” Carl Hase, after seven years’ work in Tübingen, opened his Jena career in A.D. 1830, which he closed by resigning his professorship in A.D. 1883, after sixty years’ labour in the theological chair. In his “Life of Jesus,” first published A.D. 1829, he represents Christ as the ideal man, sinless but not free from error, endowed with the fulness of love and the power of pure humanity, as having truly risen and become the author of a new life in the kingdom of God, of which the very essence is most purely and profoundly expressed in the gospel of the disciple who lay upon the Master’s heart. The latest revision of this work, issued in A.D. 1876 under the title “Geschichte Jesu,” treats the fourth gospel as non-Johnannine in authorship and mythical in its contents, and explains the resurrection by the theory of a swoon or a vision. In his “Hutterus Redivivus,” A.D. 1828, twelfth edition 1883, he seeks to set forth the Lutheran dogmatic as Hutter might have done had he lived in these days. This led to the publication of controversial pamphlets in A.D. 1834-1837, which dealt the deathblow to the Rationalismus Vulgaris. His “Church History,” distinguished by its admirable little sketches of leading personalities, was published in A.D. 1834, and the seventh edition of A.D. 1854 has been translated into English.

§ 182.6. Speculative Theology.―Its founder was Daub, professor at Heidelberg from A.D. 1794 till his death in A.D. 1836. Occupying and writing from the philosophical standpoints of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling successively, he published in A.D. 1816 “Judas Iscariot,” an elaborate discussion of the nature of evil, but passed over in A.D. 1833, with his treatise on dogmatics, to the Hegelian position. He exerted great influence as a professor, but his writings proved to most unintelligible.―Marheineke of Berlin in the first edition of his “Dogmatics” occupied the standpoint of Schelling, but in the second set forth Lutheran orthodoxy in accordance with the formulæ of the Hegelian system.―After Hegel’s death in A.D. 1831 his older pupils Rosenkranz and Göschel sought to enlist his philosophy in the service of orthodoxy. Richter was the first to give offence, by his “Doctrine of the Last Things,” in which he denounced the doctrine of immortality in the sense of personal existence after death. Strauss, A.D. 1808-1874, represented the “Life of Jesus,” in his work of A.D. 1835, as the product of unintentional romancing, and in his “Glaubenslehre” of A.D. 1840, sought to prove that all Christian doctrines are put an end to by modern science, and openly taught pantheism as the residuum of Christianity. Bruno Bauer, after passing from the right to the left Hegelian wing, described the gospels as the product of conscious fraud, and Ludwig Feuerbach, in his “Essence of Christianity,” A.D. 1841, set forth in all its nakedness the new gospel of self-adoration. The breach between the two parties in the school was now complete. Whatever Rosenkranz and Schaller from the centre, and Göschel and Gabler from the right, did to vindicate the honour of the system, they could not possibly restore the for ever shattered illusion that it was fundamentally Christian. Those of the right fell back into the camps of “the German theology” and the Lutheran confessionalism; while in the latest times the left has no prominent theological representative but Biedermann of Zürich.

§ 182.7. The Tübingen School.―Strauss was only the advanced skirmisher of a school which was proceeding under an able leader to subject the history of early Christianity to a searching examination. Fred. Chr. Baur of Tübingen, A.D. 1792-1860, almost unequalled among his contemporaries in acuteness, diligence, and learning, a pupil of Schleiermacher and Hegel, devoted himself mainly to historical research about the beginnings of Christianity. In this department he proceeded to reject almost everything that had previously been believed. He denied the genuineness of all the New Testament writings, with the exception of Revelation and the Epistles to the Romans, Galatians, and Corinthians; treating the rest as forgeries of the second century, resulting from a bitter struggle between the Petrine and Pauline parties. This scheme was set forth in a rudimentary form in the treatise on “The So-called Pastoral Epistles of the Apostle Paul,” A.D. 1835. His works, “Paul, the Apostle,” and the “History of the First Three Centuries,” have been translated into English. He had as collaborateurs in this work, Schwegler, Zeller, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, etc. Ritschl, who was at first an adherent of the school, made important concessions to the right, and in the second edition of his great work, “Die Entstehung d. alt-kath. Kirche,” of A.D. 1857, announced himself as an opponent. Hilgenfeld of Jena, too, marked out new lines for himself in New Testament Introduction and in the estimate of early church doctrine, modifying in various ways the positions of Baur. The labours of this school and its opponents have done signal service in the cause of science.

§ 182.8. Strauss, who had meanwhile occupied himself with the studies of Von Hutten, Reimarus, and Lessing’s “Nathan,” feeling that the researches of the Tübingen school had antiquated his “Life of Jesus,” and stimulated by Renan’s “Life of Jesus,” written with French elegance and vivacity, in which he described Christ as an amiable hero of a Galilæan village story, undertook in 1864 a semi-jubilee reproduction of his work, addressed to “the German people.” This was followed by a severe controversial pamphlet, “The Half and the Whole,” in which he lashed the halting attempts of Schenkel as well as the uncompromising conservatism of Hengstenberg. He now pointed out cases of intentional romancing in the gospel narratives; the resurrection rests upon subjective visions of Christ’s disciples. His “Lectures on Voltaire” appeared in A.D. 1870, and in A.D. 1872 the most radical of all his books, “The Old and the New Faith,” which makes Christianity only a modified Judaism, the history of the resurrection mere “humbug,” and the whole gospel story the result of the “hallucinations” of the early Christians. The question whether “we” are still Christians he answers openly and honourably in the negative. He has also surmounted the standpoint of pantheism. The religion of the nineteenth century is pancosmism, its gospel the results of natural science with Darwin’s discoveries as its bible, its devotional works the national classics, its places of worship the concert rooms, theatres, museums, etc. The most violent attacks on this book came from the Protestantenverein. Strauss had said, “If the old faith is absurd, then the modernized edition of the ‘Protestantenverein’ and the school of Jena is doubly, trebly so. The old faith only contradicts reason, not itself; the new contradicts itself at every point, and how can it then be reconciled with reason?”534

§ 182.9. The Mediating Theology.―This tendency originated from the right wing of the school of Schleiermacher, still influenced more or less by the pectoralism of Neander. It adopted in dogmatics a more positive and in criticism a more conservative manner. It earnestly sought to promote the interests of the union not merely as a combination for church government, but as a communion under a confessional consensus. Its chief theological organs were the “Studien und Kritiken,” started in A.D. 1828, edited by Ullmann and Umbreit in Heidelberg, afterwards by Riehm and Köstlin in Halle, and the “Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie” of Dorner and Leibner, A.D. 1856-1878.―Although the mediating theology sought to sink all confessional differences, denominational descent was more or less traceable in most of its adherents. Its leading representatives from the Reformed church were: Alexander Schweizer, who most faithfully preserved the critical tendency of Schleiermacher, and, in a style far abler and subtler than any other modern theologian, expounded the Reformed system of doctrine in its rigid logical consistency. In his own system he gives a scientific exposition of the evangelical faith from the unionist standpoint, with many pious reflections on Scripture and the confession as well as results of Christian experience, based upon the threefold manifestation of God set forth without miracle in the physical order of the world, in the moral order of the world, and in the historical economy of the kingdom of God.―Sack, one of the oldest and most positive of Schleiermacher’s pupils, professor at Bonn, then superintendent at Magdeburg, wrote on apologetics and polemics. Hagenbach of Basel, A.D. 1801-1874, is well-known by his “Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology,” “History of the Reformation,” and “History of the Church in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” all of which are translated into English.―John Peter Lange of Bonn, A.D. 1802-1884, a man of genius, imaginative, poetic, and speculative, with strictly positive tendencies, widely known by his “Life of Christ” and the commentary on Old and New Testament, edited and contributed to by him.―Dr. Philip Schaff may also be named as the transplanter of German theology of the Neander-Tholuck type to the American soil. Born in Switzerland, he accepted a call as professor to the theological seminary of the German Reformed church at Mercersburg in 1843. He soon fell under suspicion of heresy, but was acquitted by the Synod of New York in 1845. In 1869 he accepted a call to a professorship in the richly endowed Presbyterian Union Theological Seminary of New York. Writing first in German and afterwards in English, his works treat of almost all the branches of theological science, especially in history and exegesis. He is also president of several societies engaged in active Christian work.

§ 182.10. Among those belonging originally to the Lutheran church were Schleiermacher’s successor in Berlin, Twesten, whose dogmatic treatise did not extend beyond the doctrine of God, a faithful adherent of Schleiermacher’s right wing on the Lutheran side; Nitzsch, professor in Bonn A.D. 1822-1847, and afterwards of Berlin till his death in A.D. 1868, best known by his “System of Christian Doctrine,” and his Protestant reply to Möhler’s “Symbolism,” a profound thinker with a noble Christian personality, and one of the most influential among the consensus theologians. Julius Müller of Halle, A.D. 1801-1878, if we except his theory of an ante-temporal fall, occupied the common doctrinal platform of the confessional unionists. His chief work, “The Christian Doctrine of Sin,” is a masterpiece of profound thinking and original research. Ullmann, A.D. 1796-1865, professor in Halle and Heidelberg, a noble and peace-loving character, distinguished himself in the domain of history by his monograph on “Gregory Nazianzen,” his “Reformers before the Reformation,” and most of all by his beautiful apologetical treatise on the “Sinlessness of Jesus.”―Isaac Aug. Dorner, A.D. 1809-1884, born and educated in Württemberg, latterly professor in Berlin, applied himself mainly to the elaborating of Christian doctrine, and gave to the world, in his “Doctrine of the Person of Christ,” in A.D. 1839, a work of careful historical research and theological speculation. The fundamental ideas of his Christology are the theory favoured by the “German” theology generally of the necessity of the incarnation even apart from sin (which Müller strongly opposed), and the notion of the archetypal Christ, the God-Man, as the collective sum of humanity, in whom “are gathered the patterns of all several individualities.” His “System of Christian Doctrine” formed the copestone of an almost fifty years’ academical career. Christ’s virgin birth is admitted as the condition of the essential union in Him of divinity and humanity; but the incarnation of the Logos extends through the whole earthly life of the Redeemer; it is first completed in his exaltation by means of his resurrection; it was therefore an operation of the Logos, as principle of all divine movement, extra carnem. His “System of Christian Ethics” was edited after his death by his son.535―Richard Rothe, A.D. 1799-1867, appointed in A.D. 1823 chaplain to the Prussian embassy at Rome, where he became intimately acquainted with Bunsen. In A.D. 1828 he was made ephorus at the preachers’ seminary of Wittenberg, and afterwards professor in Bonn and Heidelberg. Rothe was one of the most profound thinkers of the century, equalled by none of his contemporaries in the grasp, depth, and originality of his speculation. Though influenced by Schleiermacher, Neander, and Hegel, he for a long time withdrew like an anchoret from the strife of theologians and philosophers, and took up a position alongside of Oetinger in the chamber of the theosophists. His mental and spiritual constitution had indeed much in common with that great mystic. In his first important work, “Die Anfänge der chr. Kirche,” he gave expression to the idea that in its perfected form the church becomes merged into the state. The same thought is elaborated in his “Theological Ethics,” a work which in depth, originality, and conclusiveness of reasoning is almost unapproached, and is full of the most profound Christian views in spite of its many heterodoxies. In his later years he took part in the ecclesiastical conflicts in Baden (§ 196, 3) with the Protestantenverein (§ 180, 1), and entered the arena of public ecclesiastical life.536―Beyschlag of Halle, in his “Christologie d. N. T.,” A.D. 1866, carried out Schleiermacher’s idea of Christ as only man, not God and man but the ideal of man, not of two natures but only one, the archetypal human, which, however, as such is divine, because the complete representation of the divine nature in the human. From this standpoint, too, he vindicates the authenticity of John’s Gospel, and from Romans ix.-xi. works out a “Pauline Theodicy.”―Hans Lassen Martensen, A.D. 1808-1884, professor at Copenhagen, Bishop of Zealand and primate of Denmark, with high speculative endowments and a considerable tincture of theosophical mysticism, has become through his “Christian Dogmatics,” “Christian Ethics,” in three vols., etc., of a thoroughly Lutheran type, one of the best known theologians of the century.

§ 182.11. Among Old Testament exegetes the most distinguished are: Umbreit, A.D. 1795-1860, of Heidelberg, who wrote from the supernaturalist standpoint, influenced by Schleiermacher and Herder, commentaries on Solomon’s writings and those of the prophets, and on Job; Bertheau of Göttingen, of Ewald’s school, wrote historico-critical and philological commentaries on the historical books; and Dillmann, Hengstenberg’s successor in Berlin, specially distinguished for his knowledge of the Ethiopic language and literature, has written critical commentaries on the Pentateuch and Job.―Among New Testament exegetes we may mention: Lücke of Göttingen, known by his commentary on John’s writings; Bleek, the able New Testament critic and commentator on the Epistle to the Hebrews; Meyer, A.D. 1800-1873, most distinguished of all, whose “Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament,” begun in A.D. 1832, in which he was aided by Huther, Lunemann, and Düsterdieck, is well-known in its English edition as the most complete exegetical handbook to the New Testament; Weiss of Kiel and Berlin, author of treatises on the doctrinal systems of Peter and of John, “The Biblical Theology of the New Testament,” “Life of Christ,” “Introduction to New Testament,” revises and rewrites commentaries on Mark, Luke, John, and Romans, in the last edition of the Meyer series.―A laborious student in the domain of New Testament textual criticism was Constant. von Tischendorff [Tischendorf] of Leipzig, A.D. 1815-1874, who ransacked all the libraries of Europe and the East in the prosecution of his work. The publication of several ancient codices, e.g. the Cod. Sinaiticus, a present from the Sinaitic monks to the czar on the thousandth anniversary of the Russian empire in A.D. 1862, the Cod. Vaticanus N.T., a new edition of the LXX., the most complete collection of New Testament apocrypha and pseudepigraphs, and finally a whole series of editions of the New Testament (from A.D. 1841-1873 there appeared twenty-four editions, of which the Editio Octava Major of 1872 is the most complete in critical apparatus), are the rich and ripe fruits of his researches. A second edition, compared throughout with the recensions of Tregelles and Westcott and Hort, was published by Von Gebhardt, and a third volume of Prolegomena was added by C. R. Gregory. As a theologian he attached himself, especially in later years, to the Lutheranism of his Leipzig colleagues, and on questions of criticism and introduction took up a strictly conservative position as seen in his well known tract, “When were our Gospels written?”

§ 182.12. Among the university teachers of his time John Tob. Beck, A.D. 1804-1878, assumed a position all his own. After a pastorate of ten years he began in A.D. 1836 his academical career in Basel, and went in A.D. 1843 to Tübingen, where he opposed to the teaching of Baur’s school a purely biblical and positive theology, with a success that exceeded all expectations. A Württemberger by birth, nature, and training, he quite ignored the history of the church and its dogmas as well as modern criticism, and set forth a system of theology drawn from a theosophical realistic study of the Bible. He took little interest in the excited movements of his age for home and foreign missions, union, confederation, and alliances, in questions about liturgies, constitution, discipline, and confessions, in all which he saw only the form of godliness without the power. Better times could be hoped for only as the result of the immediate interposition of God. His “Pastoral Theology” and “Biblical Psychology” have been translated into English.

§ 182.13. The Lutheran Confessional Theology.―Sartorius, A.D. 1797-1859, from A.D. 1822 professor in Dorpat, then from A.D. 1835 general superintendent at Königsberg, made fresh and vigorous attacks upon rationalism, and supported the union as preserving “the true mean” of Lutheranism. He is best known by his “Doctrine of Divine Love.” Rudelbach,―a Dane by birth and finally settled in Copenhagen, occupying the same ground, became a violent opponent of the union.―Guericke of Halle, beginning as a pietist, passed through the union into a rigorous Lutheran, and joined Rudelbach in editing the journal afterwards conducted by Luthardt of Leipzig.―Alongside of these older representatives of Lutheran orthodoxy there arose a second generation which from A.D. 1840 has fallen into several groups. Their divergencies were mainly on two points:

On the place and significance of the clerical order, some viewing it as based on the general priesthood of believers and resting on the call of the congregation for the orderly administration of the means of grace, others regarding it as a divine institution, yet without adopting the Romanizing and Anglican theory of apostolic succession; and

On the more important question of biblical prophecy, where one party maintained the spiritualistic, widely favoured since the time of Jerome, and another party, attaching itself to Crusius and Bengel, insisted upon a realistic interpretation.

At the head of the first group, which maintained the old Protestant theory of church and office and looked askance at chiliastic theories, supporting the old doctrines by all available materials from modern science, stands Harless, A.D. 1806-1879, professor in Erlangen and Leipzig, the chief ecclesiastical commissioner in Dresden, and finally at Munich. His theological reputation rests upon his “Commentary on Ephesians,” A.D. 1835, his “Christian Ethics,” A.D. 1842. Alongside of him Thomasius of Erlangen, A.D. 1802-1875, wrought in a similar direction.―Keil, A.D. 1807-1888, from A.D. 1833 professor in Dorpat, since A.D. 1858 living retired in Leipzig, of all Hengstenberg’s students has most faithfully preserved his master’s exegetical and critical conservatism. He began in A.D. 1861 in connexion with Delitzsch his “Old Testament Commentary” on strictly conservative lines. We have an English translation of that work, and also of his “Introduction to the Old Testament” and his “Old Testament Archæology.”―Philippi, A.D. 1809-1882, son of Jewish parents, during his academic career in Dorpat, A.D. 1841-1852, exercised a powerful influence in securing for strict Lutheranism a very widespread ascendency among the clergy of Livonia. From A.D. 1852 till his death in A.D. 1882 he resided in Rostock. As exegete and dogmatist, he has, like a John Gerhard and Quenstedt of the nineteenth century, reproduced the Lutheran theology of the seventeenth century, unmodified by the developments of modern thought. He is known to English readers by his “Commentary on Romans.” His chief work is “Kirchl. Glaubenslehre,” in six vols.―Alongside of him, and scarcely less important, stands Theodosius Harnack, who went from Dorpat in A.D. 1853 to Erlangen, but returned to Dorpat in A.D. 1866, and retired in A.D. 1873. He has written upon the worship of the church of the post-apostolic age, on Luther’s theology, and practical theology.

§ 182.14. At the head of the second group, characterized by a decided biblical realism and inclined to a biblical chiliasm, stands Von Hofmann of Erlangen, A.D. 1810-1877, whose “Weissagung und Erfüllung,” 1841, represents the very antipodes of Hengstenberg’s view of the Old Testament, placing history and prophecy in vital relation to one another, and studying prophecy in its historical setting. In his “Schriftbeweis” we have an entirely new system of doctrine drawn from Scripture, the doctrine of the atonement being set forth in quite a different form from that generally approved, but vindicated by its author against Philippi as “a new way of teaching old truth.” In his commentary on the New Testament, he takes up a conservative position on questions of criticism and introduction.―Franz Delitzsch, in Rostock, A.D. 1846, Erlangen, A.D. 1850, in Leipzig since A.D. 1867, more intimately acquainted with rabbinical literature than any other Christian theologian, became an enthusiastic adherent of Hofmann’s position. His theology, however, has a more decidedly theosophical tendency, while his critical attitude is more liberal. He is well known by his “Biblical Psychology,” commentary on Psalms, Isaiah, Solomon’s writings, Job, Hebrews, and a new commentary on Genesis in which he accepts many of the positions of the advanced school of biblical criticism.―Luthardt of Leipzig in the domain of New Testament exegesis and dogmatics works from the standpoint of Hofmann. His “Commentary on John’s Gospel,” “Authorship of Fourth Gospel,” and “Apologetical Lectures on the Fundamental, Saving and Moral Truths of Christianity,” are well known.―Hofmann’s conception of Old Testament doctrine is admirably carried out by Oehler, A.D. 1812-1872, with learning and speculative power, in his “Theology of the Old Testament,” and in various important monographs on Old Testament doctrines.―The most important representatives of the third group, which strongly emphasizes the extreme Lutheran theory of the church and office, are Kliefoth of Schwerin, liturgist and biblical commentator; and Vilmar, who opened his academic career at Marburg, in 1856, with a controversial programme entitled “The Theology of Facts against the Theology of Rhetoric.” Vilmar’s lectures, able, though sketchy and incomplete, were published after his death in A.D. 1868 by some of his disciples. To the same school belonged Von Zezschwitz of Erlangen, A.D. 1825-1886, whose “Catechetics” is a treasury of solid learning.

§ 182.15. Among Lutheran theologians taking little or nothing to do with these controversial questions, Kahnis, A.D. 1814-1888, from A.D. 1850 professor at Leipzig, occupied a strict Lutheran confessional standpoint, diverging only in the adoption of a subordinationist doctrine on the person of Christ, a Sabellian theory of the Trinity, and a theory of the Lord’s supper in some points differing from that of the strict Lutherans. His historical sketches are vigorous and lively.―Zöckler of Giessen and Greifswald has made important contributions to church history, exegesis, and dogmatics, and especially to the theory and history of natural theology. In 1886 he began the publication of a short biblical commentary contributed to by the most distinguished positive theologians, he himself editing the New Testament and Strack the Old Testament. It is to be in twelve vols., and is being translated into English.―Von Oetingen of Dorpat has devoted himself to social problems and moral statistics.―Frank of Erlangen has proved a powerful apologist for old Lutheranism, and in his “System of Christian Evidence” has introduced a new branch of theology, in which the subjective Christian certitude which the believer has with his faith is made the basis of the scientific exposition of the truth set forth in his “System of Christian Truth,” a thoughtful and speculative treatise on doctrine, followed by “The System of Christian Morals” as the conclusion of his theological work.―Lutheran theology had also zealous representatives in several distinguished jurists: Göschel, president of the consistory of Magdeburg, who wrote against Strauss, sought to derive profound Christian teaching from Goethe and Dante, and wrote on the last things, and on man in respect of body, soul, and spirit; Stahl, A.D. 1802-1861, professor of law at Erlangen and Berlin, leader since A.D. 1849 of the high-church aristocratic reactionary party in the Prussian chamber, supported his views by reference to the Scripture doctrine of the divine origin of magisterial authority.

§ 182.16. As zealous representatives of Reformed Confessionalism who set aside the dogma of predestination and so show no antagonism to the union, may be named: Heppe, opponent of Vilmar in Marburg, who devoted much of his career as a historian to the undermining of Lutheranism, then wrought upon the histories of provincial churches, of Catholic mysticism and pietism, etc.; and Ebrard, A.D. 1818-1887, a brilliant believing theologian who combated rationalism and Catholicism, professor from A.D. 1847 of Reformed theology at Erlangen, known by his “Gospel History: a Compendium of Critical Investigations in Support of the Historical Church of the Four Gospels,” his “Apologetics,” in 3 vols., “Commentary on Hebrews,” etc.

§ 182.17. The Free Protestant Theology.―This school originated in the left wing of Schleiermacher’s following, and has as its literary organs, Hilgenfeld’s Zeitschrift and the Jahrbücher für prot. Theologie.―The distinguished statesman, Von Bunsen, A.D. 1791-1860, ambassador at Rome and afterwards at London, at first stood at the head of the revival of the church interests and life; but in his “Church of the Future,” conceived a constitutional idea on a democratic basis, for which he sought support in historical studies on the Ignatian age, etc., and the historical refutation of the orthodox Christology and trinitarianism. His elaborate work on “Egypt’s Place in the World’s History,” full of arbitrary criticism, negative and positive, on the chronological and historical data of the Old Testament, seeks to show that, by restoring the Egyptian chronology, we for the first time make the Bible history fit into general history. “The Signs of the Times” comprise glowing philippics against the hierarchical pretensions of Papists and even more dangerous Lutherans, insists on Scripture being translated out of the Semitic into the Japhetic mode of speech, to which end he devoted his last great works, “God in History” and his “Bible Commentary,” the latter finished after his death by Kamphausen and Holtzmann.―Schenkel, A.D. 1813-1885, professor at Heidelberg from A.D. 1851 till his resignation in A.D. 1884, from the right wing of the mediating school, through unionism and Melanchthonianism advanced to the standpoint of his “Charakterbild Jesu,” which strips Christ of all supernatural features, yet proclaims him the redeemer of the world, and strives to save his resurrection as a historical and saving truth, and explains his appearances after the resurrection as “real manifestations of the personality living and glorified after death.” In later years he sought to draw yet more closely to positive Christianity. Keim of Zürich and Giessen, A.D. 1825-1878, the ablest of all recent historians of the life of Jesus, and with all his radicalism preserving some conservative tendencies, is best known by his “Jesus of Nazareth,” in six vols.―Holtzmann of Heidelberg and Strassburg, passed from the mediating school over to that of Tübingen, from which in important points he has now departed.―To the same rank belongs Hausrath of Heidelberg, whose “History of the New Testament Times” is well known. Under the pseudonym of George Taylor he has composed several highly successful historical romances.―The organs of this school are Hilgenfeld’s Zeitschrift, and since 1875 the Jena “Jahrbücher für protest. Theologie.”

§ 182.18. In the Old Testament Department a liberal critical school has arisen which has reversed the old relation of “the law and the prophets,” treating the origin of the law as post-exilian, and as in not coming at the beginning, but at the end of the Jewish history. Reuss, whose “History of the New Testament Books” marked an epoch in New Testament introduction, was the first who moved in this direction, in his lectures begun at Strassburg in A.D. 1834, the results of which are given us in his “History of the Theology of the Apostolic Age” and in his “History of the Canon.” Meanwhile Vatke of Berlin had, in A.D. 1835, undertaken to prove that the patriarchal religion was pure Semitic nature worship, and that the prophets were the first to raise it into a monotheistic Jehovism. Little success attended his efforts. Greater results were obtained by Reuss’ two pupils, Graf in A.D. 1866, and Kayser in A.D. 1874. The most brilliant exposition of this theory was given by Julius Wellhausen of Greifswald, transferred in A.D. 1882 to the Philosophical Faculty of Halle, in his “History of Israel.” In his “Prolegomena to History of Israel,” and article “Israel” in “Encyclopædia Britannica,” he gives expression with clearness and force to his radical negative criticism, and develops a purely naturalist conception of the Old Testament. Professor Kuenen of Leyden transplanted these views to the Netherlands, and Robertson Smith has introduced them into Scotland and England, while in Germany they are taught by a number of the younger teachers, Stade in Giessen, Merx in Heidelberg, Smend in Basel, etc. And now at last in A.D. 1882 the venerable master of the school, Edward Reuss, has himself in his “Geschichte d. h. Schr. d. A. Test.” given a brilliant and in many points modified exposition of these radical theories. The history of Israel, according to him, divides itself into the four successive periods of the heroes, of the prophets, of the priests, and of the scribes, characterized respectively by individualism, idealism, formalism, and traditionalism. Even before the close of prophetism the priestly influence began to assert itself, but it was only in the post-exilian period under the domination of the priests that the construction and codification of the law began to make impression on the Jewish people. So too in the age of the kings there existed a Levitical tradition about rites and worship, which traced back its first outlines to the time of Moses, though at this period there could have been no written official codex of any kind. In regard to Moses, we are to think not only of his person as historical, but also of his career as that of a man inspired by the divine spirit and recognised as such by his contemporaries and fellow-countrymen.―Also Wellhausen, who has hitherto concerned himself only with the critical introduction to the Old Testament books, not with their historical or theological interpretation, supplied this defect to some extent by his “Prolegomena to the History of Israel.” He admits that much of the history of Israel related in the Old Testament is credible. He even goes so far as to allow that this history was a preparation and forerunner of Christianity, but without miracle and prophecy, and without any immediate interposition of God in the affairs of Israel.

§ 182.19. Among the most distinguished free-thinking dogmatists of recent times, Biedermann of Zürich, A.D. 1819-1885, has occupied the most advanced position. His principal work, “Christliche Dogmatik,” A.D. 1869, defined God and the origin of the world as the self-development of the Absolute Idea according to the Hegelian scheme, recognises in the person of Christ the first realization of the Christian principle of the divine sonship in a personal life, then proceeds with free exposition of the Scripture and church doctrines, and combats openly the doctrines of the church and through them also those of Scripture, as setting religion purely in the domain of the imagination.―Lipsius of Leipzig, Kiel, and Jena, in his earliest treatise on the Pauline Doctrine of Justification in A.D. 1853, held the position of the mediating theology, but under the influence of Kant, Hegel, and Baur has been led to adopt the standpoint of the “Free Protestant” school. His history of gnosticism and his researches in early apocryphal literature are important contributions to our knowledge of primitive Christianity. His “Lehrbuch d. ev. prot. Dogmatik,” 1876, 2nd ed., 1879, on the basis of Kant and Schleiermacher, fixing the limits of science with the former, and maintaining with the latter the necessity of religious faith and life, not rejecting metaphysics generally, but only its speculations on God and divine things lying quite outside of human experience, seeks from the common faith of the Christian church of all ages, as it is expressed in the Scriptures and in the confessions, by the application of the freest subjective criticism of the letter of revelation, to secure a theory of the world in harmony with modern views.―Pfleiderer, Twesten’s successor in Berlin, in his “Paulinism,” “Influence of Paul on Development of Christianity” and “History of the Philosophy of Religion,” occupies more the Hegelian speculative standpoint than that of Kantian criticism.

§ 182.20. Ritschl and his School.―Ritschl, 1822-1889, from A.D. 1846 in Bonn, from A.D. 1864 in Göttingen, on his withdrawal from the Tübingen party, applied himself to dogmatic studies and founded a school, the adherents of which, divided into right and left wings, have secured quite a number of academical appointments. After the completion of his great dogmatic work on “Justification and Reconciliation,” Ritschl resumed his historical studies in a “History of Pietism,” which he traces back through the persecuted anabaptists of the Reformation age to the Tertiaries of the Franciscan order and the mysticism of St. Bernard. He earnestly maintains his adherence to the confessions of the Lutheran church, and regards it as the task of his life to disentangle the pure Lutheran doctrine from the accretions of scholastic metaphysics. Even more decidedly than Schleiermacher, he banishes all philosophy from the domain of theology. The grand significance of Kant’s doctrine of knowledge, with its assertion of the incomprehensibility of all transcendent truth except the ethical postulates of God, freedom and immortality, as set forth in a more profound manner by Lotze, is indeed admitted, but only as a methodological basis of all religious inquiries, and with determined rejection of every material support from Kant’s construction of religion within the limits of the pure reason. Ritschl rather pronounces in favour of the formal principle of Protestantism, and declares distinctly that all religious truth must be drawn directly from Scripture, primarily from the New Testament as the witness of the early church uncorrupted by the Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysic, but also secondarily from the Old Testament as the record of the content of revelation made to the religious community of Israel. The truthfulness of the biblical, especially of the New Testament, system of truth, rests, however, not on any theory of inspiration, but on its being an authentic statement of the early church of the doctrine of Christ, inasmuch as to this witness the necessary degree of fides humana belongs. Ritschl’s Christology rests on the witness of Christ to himself in the synoptists, through which he proclaims himself the one prophet who in the divine purpose of grace for mankind has received perfect consecration, sent by God into the world to represent the founding of the kingdom of God on earth foreshadowed in the Old Testament revelation; but no attempt is made to explain how Christ became possessed of the secrets of the divine decree. To him, as the first and only begotten Son of God, standing in essential union with the Father, belongs the attribute of deity and the right of worship. But of an eternal pre-existence of Christ we can speak only in so far as this is meant of the eternal gracious purpose of God to redeem the world through him by means of the complete unfolding of the kingdom of God in the fellowship of love. Whatever goes beyond this in the fourth gospel, its Johannine authenticity not being otherwise contested, as well as in Paul’s epistles and in the Epistle to the Hebrews, resulted from the necessity felt by their writers for assigning a sufficient reason for the assumption of such incomparable glory on the part of Christ. As the archetype of humanity destined for the kingdom of God, Christ is the original object of the divine love, so that the love of God to the members of his kingdom comes to them only through him. And as the earthly founding, so also the heavenly completion, of the kingdom of God is assigned to Christ, and hence after his resurrection all power was given to him, of the transcendent exercise of which, however, we can know nothing. The universality of human sin is admitted by Ritschl as a fact of experience, but he despairs of reaching any dogmatic statement as to the origin of sin through the temptation of a superhuman evil power. But that sin is inherited and as original guilt is under the condemnation of God, is not taught or pre-supposed by the teaching either of Christ or of the apostles. Redemption (reconciliation and justification) consists in the forgiveness of sins, by which the guilt that estranges from God is removed and the sinner is restored into the fellowship of the kingdom of God. Forgiveness, however, is not given on condition of the vicarious penal sufferings of Christ, whose sufferings and death are of significance rather because his life and works were a complete fulfilment of his calling, and witnessed to as such by God’s raising him from the dead. Justification secures the reception of the penitent sinner into the fellowship of the kingdom of God, preached and perfectly developed by Christ, and the sonship enjoyed in its membership, prefigured in Christ himself, which contains in itself the desire as well as the capacity to do good works out of love to God.―The school of Ritschl is represented in Göttingen by its founder and by Schultz and Wendt, in Marburg by Herrmann, in Bonn by Bender, in Giessen by Gottschick and Kattenbusch, in Strassburg by Lobstein, in Basel by Kaftan, formerly of Berlin.537

§ 182.21. Opponents and critics of the school of Ritschl, especially from the confessional Lutheran ranks, have appeared in considerable numbers. Luthardt of Leipzig in A.D. 1878 opened the campaign against Ritschilianism, followed by Bestmann, charging it with undermining Christianity. The Hanoverian synod of A.D. 1882 decided by a large majority that the scientific results of theological science must be ruled by the confessions of the evangelical church. The chief theme at the following Hanoverian Pentecost Conference was the “Incarnation of the Son of God,” the discussion being led by Professor Dieckhoff of Rostock, against whom no voice was raised in favour of the views of Ritschl. Not long after, Professor Fricke of Leipzig published a lecture given by him at the Meissen Conference, on the Present Relations of Metaphysics and Theology, followed by utterances of Kübel of Tübingen, Grau of Königsberg, Kreibig and H. Schmidt at Berlin, all unfavourable to Ritschl’s theology.―The main objections are, according to Bestmann: idolatry of Kant, depreciation of the religious factor in Christianity in favour of the ethical by laying out a moral foreground without providing a dogmatic background, reducing the objective fundamental truths of the confession into subjective ethical ideas, etc.; according to Luthardt: Ritschl’s position that it does not matter so much what the facts of the Christian faith are in themselves, as what they mean for us, makes his whole dogmatic system hang in the air, if in Christianity we have to do not with what God, Christ, the resurrection are, but only what significance we attach to them, Christianity is stript of all importance, the significance of a thing must have its foundation in the thing itself, etc.; according to Dieckhoff: Ritschl on his accepting the divinity of Christ lays down the rule that the special content of what is meant by the term divinity must be transferable to the believer, and so for Ritschl, Christ is a mere man who in his person was the first to represent a relation to God which is destined for all men in like measure, etc.; according to Fricke: new Kantian scepticism with regard to ideals and transcendentals, reducing religious elements to moral, with Ritschl’s removal of all metaphysical facts the chief verities of our Christian faith are taken away, at least in the scientific form in which we have them, e.g. the doctrine of the Trinity, our Christology, our theory of satisfaction, in place of which comes the Catholic justitia infusa, etc.; according to Münchmayer: “the object of justification with Ritschl is not the individual but the community, it is no act of God upon the individual but an eternal purpose of God for the community, its effect on the individual is not objective divine forgiveness of guilt but a subjective act of incorporation of the individual into the redeemed community; Christ and his work are not the ground of justification, but only the means of revealing the eternal justifying will of God, and therefore finally a continuation of the historical work of Christ by means of his church takes the place of the personal intercession of the exalted Redeemer for the penitent sinner.” Kreibig and Schmidt express themselves in a similar manner.―Ritschl has not himself undertaken any reply, but his disciples have sought to remove what they regard as misunderstandings, and generally to vindicate the system of their master.

§ 182.22. Writers on Constitutional Law and History.―The most distinguished writers on the constitutional law of the church are Eichhorn and Dove of Göttingen, Jacobsen of Königsberg, Wasserschleben of Giessen, Richter and Hinschius of Berlin, Friedberg of Leipzig, who belong to the unionist party; while Bickell of Marburg, Mejer of Göttingen and Hanover, Von Scheuerl of Erlangen, and Sohm of Strassburg belong to the confessional Lutherans.―Of ecclesiastical historians (§ 5, 4, 5) the number is so great that we cannot even enumerate their names.―The “Theologische Literaturzeitung” of Schürer and Harnack is a liberal scientific journal, distinguished for its fair criticisms by writers whose names are given.

§ 183. Home Missions.

In regard to home mission work, the Protestant church long lagged behind the Catholic, which had wrought vigorously through its monkish orders. England first entered with zeal into the field, especially dissenters and members of the low church party, and subsequently also the high church ritualistic party (§ 202, 1, 3), which now takes an active interest in this work. Germany, in view of the scanty means at the disposal of the pietists and the church party, made noble efforts. In other continental countries, but especially in North America, much was done for home missions. Soon the whole Protestant world began to organize benevolent and evangelistic institutions. The laborious Wichern, in A.D. 1849, went through all Germany to arouse interest in home missions, and started a yearly congress on the subject in Wittenberg. Till his death in A.D. 1881, Wichern continued to direct this congress and further the interests which it represented.

§ 183.1. Institutions.―The earliest charity school was that founded at Düsselthal by Count Recke-Volmarstein, in A.D. 1816, followed by Zeller’s at Beuggen in A.D. 1820. One of the most famous of these institutions was the Rauhe Haus of Wichern, at Horn, near Hamburg, A.D. 1833.538 Fliedner’s Deaconess Institute at Kaiserswerth is the pride of the evangelical church. It has now 190 branches, with 625 sisters, in the four continents. There are many independent institutions modelled upon it in Germany, England, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Russia, and France. In A.D. 1881 there were in Germany 31, and in the cities of other lands 22, principal deaconess institutions of this German order, with 4,751 sisters and 1,491 fields of labour outside of the institution. The original institute of Kaiserswerth comprises a hospital with 600 patients, a refuge for fallen women and liberated prisoners, an orphanage for girls, a seminary for governesses, and a home for female imbeciles.539 Löhe founded the deaconess institute of Neuendettelsau, on strict Lutheran principles, with hospital, girls’ school, and asylum for imbecile children. In France a most successful institution was founded by pastor Bost of Laforce, in A.D. 1848, for foundlings, imbeciles, and epileptics. In England, George Müller, a poor German student of Halle, a pupil of Tholuck, beginning in A.D. 1832, founded at Bristol five richly endowed orphanages after the pattern of that of A. H. Francke, in which thousands of destitute street children have been educated, and for this and other purposes has spent nearly £1,000,000 without ever asking any one for a contribution, acting on the belief that “the God of Elijah still lives.” The London City Mission employs 600 missionaries. In New York, since A.D. 1855, about 60,000 street children have been placed, by the Society for Poor Children, in Christian families, and 21 Industrial schools are maintained with 10,000 scholars.―Tract Societies in London, Hamburg, Berlin, etc., send out millions of tracts for Christian instruction and awakening. The Society for North Germany successfully pursues a similar work; the Calw Publication Society circulates Christian text-books with woodcuts at a remarkably small price. In Berlin the Evangelical Book Society issues reprints of the older tracts on practical divinity. Christian women, like the English Quakeress Elizabeth Fry, the noble Amalie Sieveking of Hamburg, Miss Florence Nightingale, the heroine of the Crimean war, and the brave Maria Simon of Dresden, who organized the female nursing corps of the wars of 1866, 1870, 1871, helped on the work of home missions in all lands, especially in the departments of tending the poor and the sick.

§ 183.2. The Order of St. John, secularized in A.D. 1810, was reorganized by Frederick William IV. in A.D. 1852 into an association for the care of the sick and poor. Under a grand-master it has 350 members and 1,500 associates. Its revenues are formed from entrance fees and annual contributions. It has thirty hospitals. In A.D. 1861 it founded a hospital for men in Beyrout during the persecution of Christians in Syria, and in A.D. 1868 gave aid during the famine that followed the typhus epidemic in East Prussia, and did noble service in the wars of A.D. 1864, 1866, and 1870.

§ 183.3. The Itinerant Preacher Gustav Werner in Württemberg.―Abandoning his charge in A.D. 1840, Werner began his itinerant labours, and during the year formed more than a hundred groups of adherents over all Württemberg. His preaching was allegorical and eschatological, and avoided the doctrines of satisfaction and justification. On his repudiating the Augsburg Confession, the church boards refused to recognise him, and he went hither and thither preaching a Christian communism. In A.D. 1842 he bought a site in Reutlingen, built a house, and founded a school for eighty children. In order to develop his views of carrying on industrial arts on a Christian basis, he bought, in A.D. 1850, the paper factory at Reutlingen for £4,000, and subsequently transferred it to Dettingen on a larger scale, at an outlay of £20,000. By A.D. 1862 he had established no less than twenty-two branches, in which manufacturing was carried on, with institutions of all kinds for education, pastoral work, rescuing the lost and raising the fallen. Each member lives and works for the whole; none receives wages; surplus income goes to increase the number and extent of the institutions. Vast multitudes of sunken and destitute families have been by these means restored to respectable social positions and to a moral religious life.

§ 183.4. Bible Societies.―The Bible societies constitute an independent branch of the home mission. Modern efforts to circulate Scripture began in England. As a necessary adjunct to missionary societies, the great British and Foreign Bible Society was founded in London in A.D. 1804, embracing all Protestant sects, excepting the Quakers. It circulates Bibles without note or comment. The Apocryphal controversy of A.D. 1825-1827 resulted in the society resolving not to print the Apocrypha in its issues. In consequence of this decision, fifty German societies, including the present society of Berlin, seceded. The New York Association, founded in A.D. 1817, is in thorough accord with the London society. The Baden Missionary Society revived the discussion in A.D. 1852 by making it the subject of essay for a prize, which was won by the learned work of Keerl, who, along with the stricter Lutherans, condemned the Apocrypha. The other side was taken by Stier and Hengstenberg, and most of the consistories advised adherence to the old practice, as all misunderstanding was prevented by Luther’s preface and the prohibition against using passages from the Apocrypha as sermon texts.―Bible societies altogether have issued during the century 180,000,000 Bibles and New Testaments in 324 different languages.540

§ 184. Foreign Missions.

Protestant zeal for missions to the heathen has gone on advancing since the end of last century (§ 172, 5). Missionary societies increase from year to year. In A.D. 1883 there were seventy independent societies with innumerable branches, which contribute annually about £1,500,000, or five times as much as the Romish church, and maintain 2,000 mission stations, 2,940 European and American missionaries, and 1,000 ordained native pastors and 25,000 native teachers and assistants, having under their care 2,214,000 converts from heathenism. In missionary enterprise England holds the first place, next comes America, and then Germany. Among Protestant sects the Methodists and Baptists are most zealous in the cause of missions, and the Moravian Brethren have wrought most successfully in this department. The missions also did much to prepare the way for the suppression of the slave trade by the European powers in A.D. 1830, and the emancipation of all slaves in the British possessions in A.D. 1834, at a cost of £20,000,000. The noble English philanthropist, William Wilberforce, unweariedly laboured for these ends.―Also in England, Germany, Russia, and France new associations were formed for missions to the Jews, and the work was carried on with admirable patience, though the visible results were very small.

§ 184.1. Missionary Societies.―The great American Missionary Society was founded at Boston in A.D. 1810, the English Wesleyan in A.D. 1814, the American Methodist in A.D. 1819, the American Episcopal in A.D. 1820, and the Society of Paris in A.D. 1824. The new German societies were on confessional lines: that of Basel in A.D. 1816, of Berlin in A.D. 1823, the Rhenish with the mission seminary at Barmen in A.D. 1829, the North German, on the basis of the Augsburg Confession, in A.D. 1836. The Dresden Society, which resumed the old Lutheran work in the East Indies (§ 167, 9), founded a seminary at Leipzig in A.D. 1849, in order to get the benefit of the university. Lutheran societies, mostly affiliated with that of Leipzig, were started in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Russia, Bavaria, Hanover, Mecklenburg, Hesse, and America. The Neuendettelsau Institute wrought through the Iowa Synod among the North American Indians, and through the Immanuel Synod among the aborigines of Australia. The Hermannsburg Institute under Harms prosecuted mission work with great zeal. In A.D. 1853, Harms sent out in his own mission ship eight missionaries and as many Christian colonists. It has been objected to this mission, that endeavours after social elevation and industrial training have driven to the background the main question of individual conversion.―The advanced liberal school in Switzerland and Germany sought in A.D. 1883 to start a mission on their own particular lines. They do not propose any opposition to existing agencies, and intend to make their first experiment among the civilized races of India and Japan.

§ 184.2. Europe and America.―The Swedish mission in Lapland (§ 160, 7) was resumed in A.D. 1825 by Stockfleth. The Moravians carried on their work among the Eskimos in Greenland, which had now become a wholly Christian country, and also in Labrador, which was almost in the same condition. The chaplain of the Hudson Bay Company, J. West, founded a successful mission in that territory in A.D. 1822. Among the natives and negro slaves in the British possessions, the United States, and West Indies, Moravians, Methodists, Baptists, and Anglican Episcopalians patiently and successfully carried on the work. Among the natives and bush negroes, descendants of runaway slaves, in Guiana, the Moravians did a noble work.―Catholic South America remained closed against Protestant missions. But the ardent zeal of Capt. Allen Gardiner led him to choose the inhospitable shores of Patagonia as a field of labour. He landed there in A.D. 1850 with five missionaries, but in the following year their corpses only were found. The work, however, was started anew in A.D. 1856, and prosecuted with success under the direction of an Anglican bishop.

§ 184.3. Africa.―The Moravians have laboured among the Hottentots, the Berlin missionaries among the wild Corannas, and the French Evangelical Society among the Bechuanas. Hahn of Livonia is the apostle of the Hereros. On the East Coast the London Missionary Society has wrought among the warlike Kaffirs, and other British societies are labouring in Natal among the Zulus. On the West Coast the English colony of Sierra Leone was founded for the settling and Christianizing of liberated slaves, and farther south is Liberia, a similar American colony; both in a flourishing condition, under the care of Methodists, Baptists, and Anglican Episcopalians. The Basel missionaries labour on the Gold Coast, Baptists in Old Calabar, and the American and North German Societies on the Gaboon River.―The London missionaries won Radama of Madagascar to Christianity in A.D. 1818, but his successor Ranavalona instituted a bloody persecution of the Christians in A.D. 1835, during which David Jones, the apostle of the Malagassy, suffered martyrdom in A.D. 1843. In the island of Mauritius, where there is an Anglican bishop, many Malagassy Christians found refuge. After the queen’s death in A.D. 1861, her Christian son Radama II. recalled the Christian exiles and the missionaries. He soon became the victim of a palace revolution. His wife and successor Rosaherina continued a heathen till her death in A.D. 1868, but put no obstacle in the way of the gospel. But her cousin Ranavalona II. overthrew the idol worship, was baptized in A.D. 1869, and in the following year burned the national idols. Protestantism now made rapid strides, till interrupted by French Jesuit intrigues, which have been favoured by the recent French occupation.

§ 184.4. Livingstone and Stanley have made marvellous contributions to our geographical knowledge of Central Africa and to Christian missions there. The Scottish missionary, David Livingstone, factory boy, afterwards physician and minister, wrought, A.D. 1840-1849, under the London Missionary Society in South Africa, and then entered on his life work of exploration in Central Africa. During his third exploring journey into the interior in A.D. 1865 as a British consul, he was not heard of for a whole year. H. M. Stanley, of the New York Herald, was sent in A.D. 1871, and found him in Ujiji on Lake Tanganyiká. Livingstone died of dysentery on the southern bank of this lake in A.D. 1873. Still more important was Stanley’s second journey, A.D. 1874-1877, which yielded the most brilliant scientific results, and was epoch-making in the history of African missions. He got the greatest potentate in those regions, King Mtesa of Uganda, who had been converted by the Arabs to Mohammedanism, to adopt Christianity and permit a Christian church to be built in his city. Stanley’s letters from Africa roused missionary fervour throughout England. The Church Missionary Society in A.D. 1877 set up a mission station in the capital, and put a steamer on the Victoria Nyanza. The church services were regularly attended, education and the work of civilization zealously prosecuted, Sunday labour and the slave trade prohibited, etc. French Jesuits entered in A.D. 1879, insinuating suspicions of the English missionaries into the ear of the king, and the machinations of the Arab slave-dealers made their position dangerous. Missionaries arrived by way of Egypt with flattering recommendations from the English foreign secretary in the name of the queen. But the traders, by means of an Arabic translation of a letter purporting to be from the English consul at Zanzibar, cast suspicion on the document as a forgery, and represented its bearers as in the pay of the hostile Egyptians. Mtesa’s wrath knew no bounds, and only his favour for the missionary physician saved the mission and led him to send an embassy of three chiefs and two missionaries to England in June, A.D. 1879, to discover the actual truth. His anger meanwhile cooled, and the work of the mission was resumed. He was preparing to put an utter end to the national heathenism, when suddenly a report spread that the greatest of all the Lubaris or inferior deities, that of the Nyanza Lake, had become incarnate in an old woman, in order to heal the king and restore the ancient religion. The whole populace was in an uproar; Mtesa, under threat of deposition, restored heathenism, with human sacrifice, man stealing, and the slave trade. Then the Lubari excitement cooled down. Mtesa, moved by a dream, declared himself again a Mohammedan, and converted the Christian church into a mosque. The English missionaries, stripped of all means, starved, and subjected to all sorts of privations, did not flinch. At last, in January, A.D. 1881, the embassy, sent eighteen months before to England, reached home again, and, by the story of their reception, caused a revulsion of feeling in favour of the English mission, which again flourished under the protection of the king. But Mtesa died in 1884. His son and successor, Mwanga, a suspicious, peevish young despot, addicted to all forms of vice, began again the most cruel persecution, of which Bishop Hannington, sent out from England, with fifty companions, were the victims. Only four escaped.

§ 184.5. Asia.―The most important mission field in Asia is India. The old Lutheran mission there had great difficulties to contend against: the system of caste distinctions, the proud self-sufficiency of the pantheistic Brahmans, the politico-commercial interests of the East India Company, etc. The Leipzig Society has sixteen stations among the Tamuls, and alongside are English, American, and German missionaries of every school. The Gossner Society works among the Kohls of Chota Nagpore, where a rival mission has been started by the puseyite bishop of Calcutta, Dr. Milman, to which, in A.D. 1868, six of the twelve German missionaries and twelve of the thirty-six chapels were transferred. The Basel missionaries labour in Canara and Malabar. The military revolt in Northern India in A.D. 1857 interrupted missionary operations for two years; but the work was afterwards resumed with great vigour. The Christian benevolence shown during the famine of A.D. 1878, in which three millions perished, made a great impression in favour of the Protestant church. In the preceding years throughout all India only between 5,000 and 10,000 souls were annually added; but in A.D. 1878 the number of new converts rose to 100,000, and in A.D. 1879 there were 44,000.―The island of Ceylon was, under Portuguese and Dutch rule, in great part nominally Christianized; but when compulsion was removed under British rule, this sham profession was at an end. Multitudes fell back into heathenism, and in the first ten years of the British dominion 900 new idol temples were erected. From A.D. 1812 Baptist, Methodist, and Anglican missionaries have toiled with small appearance of fruit. In Farther India the American missionaries have wrought since A.D. 1813. Judson and his heroic wife did noble work among the Karens and the Burmans. Also in Malacca, Singapore, and Siam the Protestant missions have had brilliant success. The work in Sumatra has been retarded by the opposition of the Malays and deadly malarial fever. The preaching of the gospel was eminently successful in Java, where since A.D. 1814 Baptist missionaries and agents of the London Society have wrought heroically. In Celebes the Dutch missionaries found twenty Christian congregations of old standing, greatly deteriorated for want of pastoral care, but still using the Heidelberg Catechism. At Banjermassin, in A.D. 1835 the Rhenish Society founded their first station in Borneo, and wrought not unsuccessfully among the heathen Dyaks. But in A.D. 1859 a rebellion of the Mohammedan residents led to the expulsion of the Dutch and the murder of all Christians. Only a few of the missionaries escaped martyrdom, and subsequently settled in Sumatra.

§ 184.6. The work in China began in A.D. 1807, when the London Missionary Society settled Morrison in Canton, where he began the study of the language and the translation of the Bible. Gutzlaff of Pomerania, in A.D. 1826, conceived the plan of evangelizing China through the Chinese converts, but, though he continued his efforts till his death in A.D. 1854, the scheme failed through the unworthiness of many of the professors. The war against the opium traffic, A.D. 1839-1842, opened five ports to the mission, and led to the transference of Hongkong to the English. The Chinese mission now made rapid strides; but the interior was still untouched. The conflict between the governor of Canton and the English, French, and Americans, and the chastisement administered to the Chinese in A.D. 1857, led the emperor, in A.D. 1858, to make a treaty with the three powers and also with Russia, by which the whole land was opened up for trade and missions, and full toleration granted to Christianity. Popular hatred of strangers, and especially of missionaries, however, occasioned frequently bloody encounters, and in A.D. 1870 there was a furious outburst directed against the French missionaries. During a terrible famine in North China, in A.D. 1878, when more than five millions perished, the heroic and self-sacrificing conduct of the missionaries brought them into high favour. Throughout China there are now 320 organized Christian congregations with 50,000 adherents under 238 foreign missionaries.―After seclusion for three centuries, Japan, about the same time as China, was opened by treaty to European and American commerce, notwithstanding the opposition of the old feudal nobility, the so-called Daimios. In A.D. 1871 the mikado’s government succeeded in overcoming completely the power of the daimios and setting aside the shiogun or military vizier, who had exercised supreme executive power. European customs were introduced, but the rigorous enactments against native converts to Christianity were still enforced. A cruel persecution of native Christians was carried on in A.D. 1867, but the Protestant missionaries continued to work unweariedly, preparing dictionaries and reading books. The Buddhist priests sought to get up a rival mission to send agents to America and Europe, whereas many of the leading newspapers expressed the opinion that Japan must soon put Christianity in the place of Buddhism as the state religion.

§ 184.7. Polynesia and Australia.―The flourishing Protestant church of Tahiti, the largest and finest of the Society Islands (§ 172, 5), suffered from the appearance of two French Jesuits in A.D. 1836. When Queen Pomare compelled them to withdraw, the French government, resenting this as an indignity to their nation, sent a fleet to attack the defenceless people, proclaimed a French protectorate, and introduced not only Catholic missionaries, but European vices. Amid much persecution, however, the Protestants held their own. In December, 1880, Pomare V. resigned, and the Society Islands became a dependency of France.―In the south-east groups great opposition was shown, but in the north-west Christianity made rapid progress. The island of Raiatea was the centre of the South Sea missions. There from A.D. 1819 John Williams, the apostle of the South Seas, wrought till he met a martyr’s death in A.D. 1839. He went from place to place in a mission ship built by his own hands. The Harvey Group were Christianized in A.D. 1821, and the Navigator Group in A.D. 1830. The French took the Marquesas Islands in A.D. 1838, and introduced Catholic missionaries. The attempt to evangelize the New Hebrides led to the death of Williams and two of his companions. Missionaries of the London Society, A.D. 1797-1799, had failed in the Friendly Islands through the savage character of the natives, but in A.D. 1822 the Methodists made a successful start. The gospel was carried thence to Fiji, which is now under British rule. Both groups have become almost wholly Christianized. The Sandwich Islands form a third mission centre, wrought by the American board. Kamehameha I. gladly adopted the elements of Christian civilization, though rejecting Christianity: while his successor Kamehameha II. in A.D. 1829 abolished tabu and overthrew the idol temples. In A.D. 1851 Christianity was adopted as the national religion. The work was more difficult in New Zealand, where the Church Missionary Society, represented by Samuel Marsden, the apostle of New Zealand, began operations in A.D. 1814. For ten years the position of the missionaries was most hazardous; yet they held on, and the conversion of the most bloodthirsty of the chiefs did much to advance their cause. In New Guinea the London Society has been making steady progress. Among the stolid natives of the continent of New Holland, the so called Papuans, the labours of the Moravians since A.D. 1849 have not yielded much fruit. Since A.D. 1875 the German-Australian Immanuel Synod, supported by Neuendettelsau, has laboured for the conversion of the heathen in the inland districts.

§ 184.8. Missions to the Jews.―In A.D. 1809 the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews (§ 172, 5) was formed by a union of all denominations, but soon passed into the hands of the Anglicans. By the circulation of the Scriptures and tracts, and by the sending out of missionaries, mostly Jewish converts, the work was persevered in amid many discouragements. In A.D. 1818 Poland was opened to its missionaries, and there some 600 Jews were baptized. The society carried on its operations also in Germany, Holland, France, and Turkey. The work in Poland was interrupted by the Crimean war, and was not resumed till A.D. 1875. In Bessarabia Faltin has laboured successfully among the Jews since A.D. 1860. He was joined in the work in A.D. 1867 by the converted Rabbi Gurland, who had studied theology at Halle and Berlin. In A.D. 1871 Gurland accepted a call to similar work in Courland and Lithuania, and since A.D. 1876 has been Lutheran pastor at Mitau. In A.D. 1841 the evangelical bishopric of St. James was founded in Jerusalem by the English and Prussian governments conjointly, presentations to be made alternately, but the ordination to be according to the Anglican rite. The first bishop was Alexander, a Jewish convert. He died in A.D. 1845 and was succeeded by the zealous missionary Gobat, elected by the Prussian government. He died in A.D. 1879 and was succeeded by Barclay, who died in A.D. 1881. It was now again Prussia’s turn to make an appointment. The English demand to have Lutheran ministers ordained successively deacon, presbyter, and bishop had given offence, and so no new appointment has been made. In June 1886 the English-Prussian compact was formally cancelled and a proposal made to found an independent Prussian Evangelical bishopric.

§ 184.9. Missions among the Eastern Churches.―In A.D. 1815 the Church Missionary Society founded a missionary emporium in the island of Malta, as a tract depôt for the evangelizing the East; and in A.D. 1846 the Malta Protestant College was erected for training native missionaries, teachers, physicians, etc., for work in the various oriental countries. In the Ionian islands, in Constantinople, and in Greece, British and American missionaries began operations in A.D. 1819 by erecting schools and circulating the scriptures. At first the orthodox clergy were favourable, but as the work progressed they became actively hostile, and only two mission schools in Syra and Athens were allowed to continue. In Syria the Americans made Beyrout their head quarters in A.D. 1824, but the work was interrupted by the Turco-Egyptian conflicts. Subsequently, however, it flourished more and more, and, before the Syrian massacre of A.D. 1860 (§ 207, 2), there were nine prosperous stations in Syria. The founding of the Jerusalem bishopric in A.D. 1841, and the issuing of the Hatti-Humayun in A.D. 1856 (§ 207, 2), induced the Church Missionary Society to make more vigorous efforts which, however, were afterwards abandoned for want of success. Down to the outbreak of the persecution of Syrian Christians in A.D. 1860, this society had five flourishing stations. From A.D. 1831 the Americans had wrought zealously and successfully among the Armenians in Constantinople and neighbourhood, but in A.D. 1845 the Armenian patriarch excited a violent persecution which threatened the utter overthrow of the work. The British ambassador, Sir Stratford de Redcliffe, however, insisted upon the Porte recognising the rights of the Protestant Armenians as an independent religious denomination, and since then the missions have prospered. Among the Nestorians in Turkey and Persia the Americans, with Dr. Grant at their head, began operations in A.D. 1834; but through Jesuit intrigues the suspicions of the Kurds and Turks were excited, and in A.D. 1843 and 1846 a war of extermination was waged against the mountain Nestorians, which annihilated the Protestant missions among them. Operations, however, have been recommenced with encouraging success. Among the deeply degraded Copts in Egypt, and extending from them into Abyssinia, the Moravians had been working without any apparent result from A.D. 1752 to A.D. 1783. In A.D. 1826 the Church Missionary Society, under German missionaries trained at Basel (Gobat, Irenberg, Krapf [Krapff], etc.), took up the work, till it was stopped by the government in A.D. 1837. In A.D. 1855 the Basel missionaries began again to work in Abyssinia with the approval of King Theodore. This state of things soon changed. Theodore’s ambition was to conquer Egypt and overthrow Islam. But when in A.D. 1863 this scheme only called forth threats from London and Paris, he gave loose rein to his natural ferocity and put the English consul and the German missionaries in chains. By means of an armed expedition in A.D. 1868, England compelled the liberation of the prisoners, and Theodore put an end to his own life. After the withdrawal of the English the country was desolated by civil wars, and at the close of these troubles in A.D. 1878 the mission resumed its operations.

III. Catholicism in General.

§ 185. The Papacy and the States of the Church.

The papacy, humiliated but not destroyed by Napoleon I., was in A.D. 1814 by the aid of princes of all creeds restored to the full possession of its temporal and spiritual authority, and amid many difficulties it reasserted for the most part successfully its hierarchical claims in the Catholic states and in those whose Protestantism and Catholicism were alike tolerated. Many severe blows indeed were dealt to the papacy even in the Roman states by revolutionary movements, yet political reaction generally by-and-by put the church in a position as good if not better than it had before. But while on this side the Alps, especially since the outbreak of A.D. 1848, ultramontanism gained one victory after another in its own domain, in Italy, it suffered one humiliation after another; and while the Vatican Council, which put the crown upon its idolatrous assumptions (§ 189, 3), was still sitting, the whole pride of its temporal sovereignty was shattered: the States of the Church were struck out of the number of the European powers, and Rome became the capital and residence of the prince of Sardinia as king of United Italy. But reverence for the pope now reached a height among catholic nations which it had never anywhere attained before.

§ 185.1. The First Four Popes of the Century.―Napoleon as First Consul of the French Republic, in A.D. 1801 concluded a concordat with Pius VII., A.D. 1800-1823, who under Austrian protection was elected pope at Venice, whereby the pope was restored to his temporal and spiritual rights, but was obliged to abandon his hierarchical claims over the church of France (§ 203, 1). He crowned the consul emperor of the French at Paris in A.D. 1804, but when he persisted in the assertion of his hierarchical principles, Napoleon in A.D. 1808 entered the papal territories, and in May, A.D. 1809, formally repudiated the donation of “his predecessor” Charlemagne. The pope treated the offered payment of two million francs as an insult, threatened the emperor with the ban, and in July, A.D. 1809, was imprisoned at Savona, and in A.D. 1812 was taken to Fontainebleau. He refused for a time to give canonical institution to the bishops nominated by the emperor, and though at last he yielded and agreed to reside in France, he soon withdrew his concession, and the complications of A.D. 1813 constrained the emperor, on February 14th, to set free the pope and the Papal States. In May the pope again entered Rome. One of his first official acts was the restoration of the Jesuits by the bull Sollicitudo omnium, as by the unanimous request of all Christendom. The Congregation of the Index was again set up, and during the course of the year 737 charges of heresy were heard before the tribunal of the holy office. All sales of church property were pronounced void, and 1,800 monasteries and 600 nunneries were reclaimed. In A.D. 1815 the pope formally protested against the decision of the Vienna Congress, especially against the overthrow of the spiritual principalities in the German empire (§ 192, 1). Equally fruitless was his demand for the restoration of Avignon (§ 165, 15). In A.D. 1816 he condemned the Bible societies as a plague to Christendom, and renewed the prohibition of Bible translations. His diplomatic schemes were determined by his able secretary Cardinal Consalvi, who not only at the Vienna Congress, but also subsequently by several concordats secured the fullest possible expression to the interests and claims of the curia.―His successor was Leo XII., A.D. 1823-1829, who, more strict in his civil administration than his predecessor, condemned Bible societies, renewed the Inquisition prosecutions, for the sake of gain celebrated the jubilee in A.D. 1825, ordered prayers for uprooting of heresy, rebuilt the Ghetto wall of Rome, overturned during the French rule (§ 95, 3), which marked off the Jews’ quarter, till Pius IX. again threw it down in A.D. 1846. After the eight months’ reign of Pius VIII., A.D. 1829-1830, Gregory XVI., A.D. 1831-1846, ascended the papal throne, and sought amid troubles at home and abroad to exalt to its utmost pitch the hierarchical idea. In A.D. 1832 he issued an encyclical, in which he declared irreconcilable war against modern science as well as against freedom of conscience and the press, and his whole pontificate was a consistent carrying out of this principle. He encountered incessant opposition from liberal and revolutionary movements in his own territory, restrained only by Austrian and French military interference, A.D. 1832-1838, and from the rejection of his hierarchical schemes by Spain, Portugal, Prussia, and Russia.541

§ 185.2. Pius IX., A.D. 1846-1878.―Count Mastai Feretti in his fifty-fourth year succeeded Gregory on 16th June, and took the name of Pius IX. While in ecclesiastical matters he seemed willing to hold by the old paths and distinctly declared against Bible societies, he favoured reform in civil administration and encouraged the hopes of the liberals who longed for the independence and unity of Italy. But this only awakened the thunder storm which soon burst upon his own head. The far resounding cry of the jubilee days, “Evviva Pio Nono!” ended in the pope’s flight to Gaeta in November, 1848; and in February, 1849, the Roman Republic was proclaimed. The French Republic, however, owing to the threatening attitude of Austria, hastened to take Rome and restore the temporal power of the pope. Amid the convulsions of Italy, Pius could not return to Rome till April, 1850, where he was maintained by French and Austrian bayonets. Abandoning his liberal views, the pope now put himself more and more under the influence of the Jesuits, and his absolutist and reactionary politics were directed by Card. Antonelli. From his exile at Gaeta he had asked the opinion of the bishops of the whole church regarding the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, to whose protection he believed that he owed his safety. The opinions of 576 were favourable, resting on Bible proofs: Genesis iii. 15, Song of Sol. iv. 7, 12, and Luke i. 28; but some French and German bishops were strongly opposed. The question was now submitted for further consideration to various congregations, and finally the consenting bishops were invited to Rome to settle the terms of the doctrinal definition of the new dogma. After four secret sessions it was acknowledged by acclamation, and on 8th December, 1854 (§ 104, 7), the pope read in the Sixtine chapel the bull Ineffabilis and placed a brilliant diadem on the head of the image of the queen of heaven. The disciples of St. Thomas listened in silence to this aspersion of their master’s orthodoxy; no heed was paid to two isolated individual voices that protested; the bishops of all Catholic lands proclaimed the new dogma, the theologians vindicated it, and the spectacle-loving people rejoiced in the pompous Mary-festival. The pope’s next great performance was the encyclical, Quanta cura, of December 8th, 1864, and the accompanying syllabus cataloguing in eighty-four propositions all the errors of the day, by which not only the antichristian and anti-ecclesiastical tendencies, but also claims for freedom of belief and worship, liberty of the press and science, the state’s independence of the church, the equality of the laity and clergy in civil matters, in short all the principles of modern political and social life, were condemned as heretical. Three years later the centenary of Peter (§ 16, 1) brought five hundred bishops to Rome, with other clergy and laymen from all lands. The enthusiasm for the papal chair was such that the pope was encouraged to convoke an œcumenical council. The jubilee of his consecration as priest in A.D. 1869 brought him congratulatory addresses signed by one and a half millions, filled the papal coffers, attracted an immense number of visitors to Rome, and secured to all the votaries gathered there a complete indulgence. On the Vatican Council which met during that same year, see § 189.542

§ 185.3. The Overthrow of the Papal States.―In the Peace of Villafranca of 1859, which put an end to the short Austro-French war in Italy, a confederation was arranged of all the Italian princes under the honorary presidency of the pope for drawing up the future constitution of Italy. During the war the Austrians had vacated Bologna, but the French remained in Rome to protect the pope. The revolution now broke out in Romagna. Victor Emanuel, king of Sardinia, was proclaimed dictator for the time over that part of the Papal States and a provisional government was set up. In vain did the pope remind Christendom in an encyclical of the necessity of maintaining his temporal power, in vain did he thunder his excommunicatio major against all who would contribute to its overthrow. A pamphlet war against the temporal power now began, and About’s letters in the Moniteur described with bitter scorn the incapacity of the papal government. In his pamphlet, “Le Pope et le Congrès,” Laguéronnière proposed to restrict the pope’s sovereignty to Rome and its neighbourhood, levy a tax for the support of the papal court on all Catholic nations, and leave Rome undisturbed by political troubles. On December 31st, 1859, Napoleon III. exhorted the pope to yield to the logic of facts and to surrender the provinces that refused any longer to be his. The pope then issued a rescript in which he declared that he could never give up what belonged not to him but to the church. The popular vote in Romagna went almost unanimously for annexation to Sardinia, and this, in spite of the papal ban, was done. A revolution broke out in Umbria and the March of Ancona, and Victor Emanuel without more ado attached these states also to his dominion in A.D. 1860, so that only Rome and the Campagna were retained by the pope, and even these only by means of French support. At the September convention of A.D. 1864 Italy undertook to maintain the papal domain intact, to permit the organization of an independent papal army, and to contribute to the papal treasury; while France was to quit Roman territory within at the latest two years. The pope submitted to what he could not prevent, but still insisted upon his most extreme claims, answered every attempt at conciliation with his stereotyped non possumus, and in A.D. 1866 proclaimed St. Catherine of Siena (§ 112, 4) patron of the “city.” When the last of the French troops took ship in A.D. 1866 the radical party thought the time had come for freeing Italy from papal rule, and roused the whole land by public proclamation. Garibaldi again put himself at the head of the movement. The Papal State was soon encircled by bands of volunteers, and insurrections broke out even within Rome itself. Napoleon pronounced this a breach of the September convention, and in A.D. 1867 the volunteers were utterly routed by the French at Mentana. The French guarded Civita Vecchia and fortified Rome. But in August, 1870, their own national exigencies demanded the withdrawal of the French troops, and after the battle of Sedan the Italians to a man insisted on having Rome as their capital, and Victor Emanuel acquiesced. The pope sought help far and near from Catholic and non-Catholic powers, but he received only the echo of his own words, non possumus. After a four hours’ cannonade a breach was made in the walls of the eternal city, the white flag appeared on St. Angelo, and amid the shouts of the populace the Italian troops entered on September 20th, 1870. A plebiscite in the papal dominions gave 133,681 votes in favour of annexation and 1,507 against; in Rome alone there were 40,785 for and only 46 against. The king now issued the decree of incorporation; Rome became capital of united Italy and the Quirinal the royal residence.