THIRD DIVISION. History of the Development of the Church under Modern European Forms of Civilization. (continued 11)

§ 171.3. The German “Illumination.”

Its Precursors. One of the first of these, following in the footsteps of Kuntzen and Dippel, was J. Chr. Edelmann of Weissenfels, who died A.D. 1767. He began in A.D. 1735 the publication of an immense series of writings in a rough but powerful style, filled with bitter scorn for positive Christianity. He went from one sect to another, but never found what he sought. In A.D. 1741 he accepted Zinzendorf’s invitation, and stayed with the count for a long time. He next joined the Berleberg [Berleburg] separatists, because they despised the sacraments, and contributed to their Bible commentary, though Haug had to alter much of his work before it could be used. This and his contempt for prayer brought the connexion between him and the society to an end. He then led a vagabond life up and down through Germany. Edelmann regarded himself as a helper of providence, and at least a second Luther. Christianity he pronounced the most irrational of all religions; church history a conglomeration of immorality, lies, hypocrisy, and fanaticism; prophets and apostles, bedlamites; and even Christ by no means a perfect pattern and teacher. The world needs only one redemption―redemption from Christianity. Providence, virtue, and immortality are the only elements in religion. No less than 166 separate treatises came from his facile pen.―Laurence Schmidt of Wertheim in Baden, a scholar of Wolff, was author of the notorious “Wertheimer Bible Version,” which rendered Scripture language into the dialect of the eighteenth century, and eviscerated it of all positive doctrines of revelation. This book was confiscated by the authorities, and its author cast into prison.

§ 171.4.

The Age of Frederick the Great. Hostility to all positive Christianity spread from England and France into Germany. The writings of the English deists were translated and refuted, but mostly in so weak a style that the effect was the opposite of that intended. Whilst English deism with its air of thoroughness made way among the learned, the poison of frivolous French naturalism committed its ravages among the higher circles. The great king of Prussia Frederick II., A.D. 1740-1786, surrounded by French freethinkers Voltaire, D’Argens, La Metrie, etc., wished every man in his kingdom to be saved after his own fashion. In this he was quite earnest, although his personal animosity to all ecclesiastical and pietistic religion made him sometimes act harshly and unjustly. Thus, when Francke of Halle (son of the famous A. H. Francke) had exhorted his theological students to avoid the theatre, the king, designating him “hypocrite” Francke, ordered him to attend the theatre himself and have his attendance attested by the manager. His bitter hatred of all “priests” was directed mainly against their actual or supposed intolerance, hypocrisy, and priestly arrogance; and where he met with undoubted integrity, as in Gellert and Seb. Bach, or simple, earnest piety, as in General Ziethen, he was not slow in paying to it the merited tribute of hearty acknowledgment and respect. His own religion was a philosophical deism, from which he could thoroughly refute Holbach’s materialistic “Système de la Nature.”―Under the name of the German popular philosophy (Moses Mendelssohn, Garve, Eberhard, Platner, Steinbart, etc.), which started from the Wolffian philosophy, emptied of its Christian contents, there arose a weak, vapoury, and self-satisfied philosophizing on the part of the common human reason. Basedow was the reformer of pedagogy in the sense of the “Illumination,” after the style of Rousseau, and crying up his wares in the market made a great noise for a while, although Herder declared that he would not trust calves, far less men, to be educated by such a pedagogue. The “Universal German Library” of the Berlin publisher Nicolai, 106 vols. A.D. 1765-1792, was a literary Inquisition tribunal against all faith in revelation or the church. The “Illumination” in the domain of theology took the name of rationalism. Pietistic Halle cast its skin, and along with Berlin took front rank among the promoters of the “Illumination.” In the other universities champions of the new views soon appeared, and rationalistic pastors spread over all Germany, to preach only of moral improvement, or to teach from the pulpit about the laws of health, agriculture, gardening, natural science, etc. The old liturgies were mutilated, hymn-books revised after the barbarous tastes of the age, and songs of mere moral tendency substituted for those that spoke of Christ’s atonement. An ecclesiastical councillor, Lang of Regensburg, dispensed the communion with the words: “Eat this bread! The Spirit of devotion rest on you with His rich blessing! Drink a little wine! The virtue lies not in this wine; it lies in you, in the divine doctrine, and in God.” The Berlin provost, W. Alb. Teller, declared publicly: “The Jews ought on account of their faith in God, virtue, and immortality, to be regarded as genuine Christians.” C. Fr. Bahrdt, after he had been deposed for immorality from various clerical and academical offices, and was cast off by the theologians, sought to amuse the people with his wit as a taphouse-keeper in Halle, and died there of an infamous disease in A.D. 1792.

§ 171.5.

The Wöllner Reaction.―In vain did the Prussian government, after the death of Frederick the Great, under Frederick William II., A.D. 1786-1797, endeavour to restore the church to the enjoyment of its old exclusive rights by punishing every departure from its doctrines, and insisting that preaching should be in accordance with the Confession. At the instigation of the Rosicrucians (§ 160, 1) and of the minister Von Wöllner, a country pastor ennobled by the king, the Religious Edict of 1788 was issued, followed by a statement of severe penalties; then by a Schema Examinationis Candidatorum ss. Ministerii rite Instituendi; and in A.D. 1791, by a commission for examination under the Berlin chief consistory and all the provincial consistories, with full powers, not only over candidates, but also over all settled pastors. But notwithstanding all the energy with which he sought to carry out his edict, the minister could accomplish nothing in the face of public opinion, which favoured the resistance of the chief consistory. Only one deposition, that of Schulz of Gielsdorf, near Berlin, was effected, in A.D. 1792. Frederick William III., A.D. 1797-1840, dismissed Wöllner in A.D. 1798, and set aside the edict as only fostering hypocrisy and sham piety.

§ 171.6. The Transition Theology.―Four men, who endeavoured to maintain their own belief in revelation, did more than all others to prepare the way for rationalism: Ernesti of Leipzig, in the department of N.T. exegesis; Michaelis of Göttingen, in O.T. exegesis; Semler of Halle, in biblical and historical criticism; and Töllner of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, in dogmatics. J. A. Ernesti, A.D. 1707-1781, from A.D. 1734 rector of St. Thomas’ School, from A.D. 1742 professor at Leipzig, colleague to Chr. A. Crusius (§ 167, 3), was specially eminent as a classical scholar, and maintained his reputation in that department, even after becoming professor of theology in A.D. 1758. His Institutio Interpretis N.T., of A.D. 1761, made it an axiom of exegesis that the exposition of Scripture should be conducted precisely as that of any other book. But even in the domain of classical literature there must be an understanding of the author as a whole, and the expositor must have appreciation of the writer’s spirit, as well as have acquaintance with his language and the customs of his age. And just from Ernesti’s want of this, his treatise on biblical hermeneutics is rationalistic, and he became the father of rationalistic exegesis, though himself intending to hold firmly by the doctrine of inspiration and the creed of the church.―What Ernesti did for the N.T., J. D. Michaelis, A.D. 1717-1791, son of the pious and orthodox Chr. Bened. Michaelis, did for the O.T. He was from A.D. 1750 professor at Göttingen, a man of varied learning and wide influence. He publicly acknowledged that he had never experienced anything of the testimonium Sp. s. internum, and rested his proofs of the divinity of the Scriptures wholly on external evidences, e.g. miracles, prophecy, authenticity, etc., a spider’s web easily blown to pieces by the enemy. No one has ever excelled him in the art of foisting his own notions on the sacred authors and making them utter his favourite ideas. A conspicuous instance of this is his “Laws of Moses,” in six vols.―In a far greater measure than either Ernesti or Michaelis did J. Sol. Semler, A.D. 1725-1791, pupil of Baumgarten, and from A.D. 1751 professor at Halle, help on the cause of rationalism. He had grown up under the influence of Halle pietism in the profession of a customary Christianity, which he called his private religion, which contributed to his life a basis of genuine personal piety. But with a rare subtlety of reasoning as a man of science, endowed with rich scholarship, and without any wish to sever himself from Christianity, he undermined almost all the supports of the theology of the church. This he did by casting doubt on the genuineness of the biblical writings, by setting up a theory of inspiration and accommodation which admitted the presence of error, misunderstanding, and pious fraud in the Scriptures, by a style of exposition which put aside everything unattractive in the N.T. as “remnants of Judaism,” by a critical treatment of the history of the church and its doctrines, which represented the doctrines of the church as the result of blundering, misconception, and violence, etc. He was a voluminous author, leaving behind him no less than 171 writings. He sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind, by which he himself was driven along. He firmly withstood the installation of Bahrdt at Halle, opposed Basedow’s endeavours, applied himself eagerly to refute the “Wolfenbüttel Fragments” of Reimarus, edited by Lessing in 1774-1778, which represented Christianity as founded upon pure deceit and fraud, and defended even the edict of Wöllner. But the current was not thus to be stemmed, and Semler died broken-hearted at the sight of the heavy crop from his own sowing.―J. Gr. Töllner, A.D. 1724-1774, from A.D. 1756 professor at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, was in point of learning and influence by no means equal to those now named; yet he deserves a place alongside of them, as one who opened the door to rationalism in the department of dogmatics. He himself held fast to the belief in revelation, miracles, and prophecy, but he also regarded it as proved that God saves men by the revelation of nature; the revelation of Scripture is only a more sure and perfect means. He also examined the divine inspiration of Scripture, and found that the language and thoughts were the authors’ own, and that God was concerned in it in a manner that could not be more precisely determined. Finally, in treating of the active obedience of Christ, he gives such a representation of it as sets aside the doctrine of the church.

§ 171.7. The Rationalistic Theology.―From the school of these men, especially from that of Semler, went forth crowds of rationalists, who for seventy years held almost all the professorships and pastorates of Protestant Germany. At their head stands Bahrdt, A.D. 1741-1792, writer at first of orthodox handbooks, who, sinking deeper and deeper through vanity, want of character, and immorality, and following in the steps of Edelmann, wrote 102 vols., mostly of a scurrilous and blasphemous character. The rationalists, however, were generally of a nobler sort: Griesbach of Jena, A.D. 1745-1812, distinguished as textual critic of the N.T.; Teller of Berlin, published a lexicon to the N.T., which substituted “leading another life” for regeneration, “improvement” for sanctification, etc.; Koppe of Göttingen, and Rosenmüller of Leipzig wrote scholia on N.T., and Schulze and Bauer on the O.T. Of far greater value were the performances of J. G. Eichhorn of Göttingen, A.D. 1752-1827, and Bertholdt of Erlangen, A.D. 1774-1822, who wrote introductions to the O.T. and commentaries. In the department of church history, H. P. C. Henke of Helmstädt and the talented statesman, Von Spittler of Württemberg, wrote from the rationalistic standpoint. Steinbart and Eberhardt [Eberhard] wrote more in the style of the popular philosophy. The subtle-minded J. H. Tieftrunk, A.D. 1760-1837, professor of philosophy at Halle, introduced into theology the Kantian philosophy with its strict categories. Jerusalem, Zollikofer, and others did much to spread rationalistic views by their preaching.520

§ 171.8. Supernaturalism.―Abandoning the old orthodoxy without surrendering to rationalism, the supernaturalists sought to maintain their hold of the Scripture revelation. Many of them did so in a very uncertain way: their revelation had scarcely anything to reveal which was not already given by reason. Others, however, eagerly sought to preserve all essentially vital truths. Morus of Leipzig, Ernesti’s ablest student, Less of Göttingen, Döderlein of Jena, Seiler of Erlangen, and Nösselt of Halle, were all representatives of this school. More powerful opponents of rationalism appeared in Storr of Tübingen, A.D. 1746-1805, who could break a lance even with the philosopher of Königsberg, Knapp of Halle, and Reinhard of Dresden, the most famous preacher of his age. Reinhard’s sermon on the Reformation festival of A.D. 1800 created such enthusiasm in favour of the Lutheran doctrine of justification, that government issued an edict calling the attention of all pastors to it as a model. The most distinguished apologists were the mathematician Euler of St. Petersburg, the physiologist, botanist, geologist, and poet Haller of Zürich and the theologians Lilienthal of Königsberg and Kleuker of Kiel. The most zealous defender of the faith was the much abused Goeze of Hamburg, who fought for the palladium of Lutheran orthodoxy against his rationalistic colleagues, against the theatre, against Barth, Basedow, and such-like, against the “Wolfenbüttel Fragments,” against the “Sorrows of Werther,” etc. His polemic may have been over-violent, and he certainly was not a match for such an antagonist as Lessing; he was, however, by no means an obscurantist, ignoramus, fanatic, or hypocrite, but a man in solemn earnest in all he did. In the field of church history important services were rendered by Schröckh of Wittenberg and Walch of Göttingen, laborious investigators and compilers, Stäudlin and Planck of Göttingen, and Münter of Copenhagen.―Among English theologians of this tendency toward the end of the century, the most famous was Paley of Cambridge, A.D. 1743-1805, whose “Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy” and “Evidences of Christianity” were obligatory text-books in the university. His “Horæ Paulinæ” prove the credibility of the Acts of the Apostles from the epistles, and his “Natural Theology” demonstrates God’s being and attributes from nature.

§ 171.9. Mysticism and Theosophy.―Oetinger of Württemburg [Württemberg], the Magus of the South, A.D. 1702-1782, takes rank by himself. He was a pupil of Bengel (§ 167, 3), well grounded in Scripture, but also an admirer of Böhme and sympathising with the spiritualistic visions of Swedenborg. But amid all, with his biblical realism and his theosophy, which held corporeity to be the end of the ways of God, he was firmly rooted in the doctrines of Lutheran orthodoxy.―The best mystic of the Reformed church was J. Ph. Dutoit of Lausanne, A.D. 1721-1793, an enthusiastic admirer of Madame Guyon; he added to her quietist mysticism certain theosophical speculations on the original nature of Adam, the creation of woman, the fall, the necessity of the incarnation apart from the fall, the basing of the sinlessness of Christ upon the immaculate conception of his mother, etc. He gathered about him during his lifetime a large number of pious adherents, but after his death his theories were soon forgotten.

§ 171.10. The German Philosophy.―As Locke accomplished the descent from Bacon to deism and materialism, so Wolff effected the transition from Leibnitz to the popular philosophy. Kant, A.D. 1724-1804, saved philosophy from the baldness and self-sufficiency of Wolffianism, and pointed it to its proper element in the spiritual domain. Kant’s own philosophy stood wholly outside of Christianity, on the same platform with rationalistic theology. But by deeper digging in the soil it unearthed many a precious nugget, of whose existence the vulgar rationalism had never dreamed, without any intention of becoming a schoolmaster to lead to Christ. Kant showed the impossibility of a knowledge of the supernatural by means of pure reason, but admitted the ideas of God, freedom, and immortality as postulates of the practical reason and as constituting the principle of all religion, whose only content is the moral law. Christianity and the Bible are to remain the basis of popular instruction, but are to be expounded only in an ethical sense. While in sympathy with rationalism, he admits its baldness and self-sufficiency. His keen criticism of the pure reason, the profound knowledge of human weakness and corruption shown in his doctrine of radical evil, his categorical imperative of the moral law, were well fitted to awaken in more earnest minds a deep distrust of themselves, a modest estimate of the boasted excellences of their age, and a feeling that Christianity could alone meet their necessities.―F. H. Jacobi, A.D. 1743-1819, “with the heart a Christian, with the understanding a pagan,” as he characterized himself, took religion out of the region of mere reason into the depths of the universal feelings of the soul, and so awakened a positive aspiration.―J. G. Fichte, A.D. 1762-1814, transformed Kantianism, to which he at first adhered, into an idealistic science of knowledge, in which only the ego that posits itself appears as real, and the non-ego, only by its being posited by the ego; and thus the world and nature are only a reflex of the mind. But when, accused of atheism in A.D. 1798, he was expelled from his position in Jena, he changed his views, rushing from the verge of atheism into a mysticism approaching to Christianity. In his “Guide to a Blessed Life,” A.D. 1806, he delivered religion from being a mere servant to morals, and sought the blessedness of life in the loving surrender of one’s whole being to the universal Spirit, the full expression of which he found in John’s Gospel. Pauline Christianity, on the other hand, with its doctrine of sin and redemption, seemed to him a deterioration, and Christ Himself only the most complete representative of the incarnation of God repeated in all ages and in every pious man.―In the closing years of the century, Schelling brought forward his theory of identity, which was one of the most powerful instruments in introducing a new era.521

§ 171.11. The German National Literature.―When the powerful strain of the evangelical church hymn had well-nigh expired in the feeble lispings of Gellert’s sacred poetry, Klopstock began to chant the praises of the Messiah in a higher strain. But the pathos of his odes met with no response, and his “Messiah,” of which the first three cantos appeared in A.D. 1748, though received with unexampled enthusiasm, could do nothing to exorcise the spirit of unbelief, and was more praised than read. The theological standpoint of Lessing, A.D. 1729-1781, is set forth in one of his letters to his brother. “I despise the orthodox even more than you do, only I despise the clergy of the new style even more. What is the new-fashioned theology of those shallow pates compared with orthodoxy but as dung-water compared with dirty water? On this point we are at one, that our old religious system is false; but I cannot say with you that it is a patchwork of bunglers and half philosophers. I know nothing in the world upon which human ingenuity has been more subtly exercised than upon it. That religious system which is now offered in place of the old is a patchwork of bunglers and half philosophers.” He is offended at men hanging the concerns of eternity on the spider’s thread of external evidences, and so he was delighted to hurl the Wolfenbüttel “Fragments” at the heads of theologians and the Hamburg pastor Goeze, whom he loaded with contumely and scorn. Thoroughly characteristic too is the saying in the “Duplik:” That if God holding in his right hand all truth, and in his left hand the search after truth, subject to error through all eternity, were to offer him his choice, he would humbly say, “Father the left, for pure truth is indeed for thee alone.” In his “Nathan” only Judaism and Mohammedanism are represented by truly noble and ideal characters, while the chief representative of Christianity is a gloomy zealot, and the conclusion of the parable is that all three rings are counterfeit. In another work he views revelation as one of the stages in “The Education of the Human Race,” which loses its significance as soon as its purpose is served. In familiar conversation with Jacobi he frankly declared his acceptance of the doctrine of Spinoza: Ἓν καὶ πᾶν.522 Wieland, A.D. 1733-1813, soon turned from his youthful zeal for ecclesiastical orthodoxy to the popular philosophy of the cultured man of the world. Herder, A.D. 1744-1803, with his enthusiastic appreciation of the poetical contents of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament, was not slow to point out the insipidity of its ordinary treatment. Goethe, A.D. 1749-1832, profoundly hated the vandalism of neology, delighted in “The Confessions of a Fair Soul” (§ 172, 2), had in earlier years sympathy with the Herrnhuters, but in the full intellectual vigour of his manhood thought he had no need of Christianity, which offended him by its demand for renunciation of self and the world. Schiller, A.D. 1759-1805, enthusiastically admiring everything noble, beautiful and good, misunderstood Christianity, and introduced into the hearts of the German people Kantian rationalism clothed in rich poetic garb. His lament on the downfall of the gods of Greece, even if not so intended by the poet himself, told not so much against orthodox Christianity as against poverty-stricken deism, which banished the God of Christianity from the world and set in his place the dead forces of nature. And if indeed he really thought that for religion’s sake he should confess to no religion, he has certainly in many profoundly Christian utterances given unconscious testimony to Christianity.―The Jacobi philosophy of feeling found poetic interpreters in Jean Paul Richter, A.D. 1763-1825, and Hebel, died A.D. 1826, in whom we find the same combination of pious sentiment which is drawn toward Christianity and the sceptical understanding which allied itself to the revolt against the common orthodoxy. J. H. Voss, a rough, powerful Dutch peasant, who in his “Luise” sketched the ideal of a brave rationalistic country parson, and, with the inexorable rigour of an inquisitor, hunted down the night birds of ignorance and oppression. But alongside of those children of the world stood two genuine sons of Luther, Matthias Claudius, A.D. 1740-1815, and J. G. Hamann, A.D. 1730-1788, the “Magus of the North” and the Elijah of his age, of whom Jean Paul said that his commas were planetary systems and his periods solar systems, to whom the philosopher Hemsterhuis erected in the garden of Princess Gallitzin a tablet with the inscription: “To the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness.” With them may also be named two noble sons of the Reformed church, the physiognomist Lavater, A.D. 1741-1801, and the devout dreamer, Jung-Stilling, A.D. 1740-1817. The famous historian, John von Müller, A.D. 1752-1809, well deserves mention here, who more than any previous historian made Christ the centre and summit of all times; and also the no less famous statesman C. F. von Moser, the most German of the Germans of this century, who, with noble Christian heroism, in numerous political and patriotic tracts, battled against the prevailing social and political vices of his age.

§ 171.12. The great Swiss educationist Pestalozzi, A.D. 1746-1827, assumed toward the Bible, the church, and Christianity an attitude similar to that of the philosopher of Königsberg. The conviction of the necessity and wholesomeness of a biblical foundation in all popular education was rooted in his heart, and he clearly saw the shallowness of the popular philosophy, whether presented under the eccentric naturalism of Rousseau or the bald utilitarianism of Basedow. His whole life issued from the very sanctuary of true Christianity, as seen in his self-sacrificing efforts to save the lost, to strengthen the weak, and to preach to the poor by word and deed the gospel of the all-merciful God whose will it is that all should be saved. He began his career as an educationist in A.D. 1775 by receiving into his house deserted beggar children, and carried on his experiments in his educational institutions at Burgdorf till A.D. 1798, and at Isserten till A.D. 1804. His writings, which circulated far and wide, gained for his methods recognition and high approval.523

§ 172. Church Life in the Period of the “Illumination.”

The ancient faith of the church had even during this age of prevailing unbelief its seven thousand who refused to bow the knee to Baal. The German people were at heart firmly grounded in the Christianity of the Bible and the church, and where the pulpit failed had their spiritual wants supplied by the devout writings of earlier days. Where the modern vandalism of the “Illumination” had mutilated and watered down the books of praise, the old church songs lingered in the memories of fathers and mothers, and were sung with ardour at family worship. For many men of culture, who were more exposed to danger, the Society of the Brethren afforded a welcome refuge. But even among the most accomplished of the nation many stood firmly in the old paths. Lavater and Stilling, Haller and Euler, the two Mosers, father and son, John von Müller and his brother J. G. Müller, are not by any means the only, but merely the best known, of such true sons of the church. In Württemberg and Berg, where religious life was most vigorous, religious sects were formed with new theological views which made a deep impression on the character and habits of the people. Also toward the end of the century an awakened zeal in home and foreign missions was the prelude of the glorious enterprises of our own days.

§ 172.1. The Hymnbook and Church Music.―Klopstock, followed by Cramer and Schlegel, introduced the vandalism of altering the old church hymns to suit modern tastes and views. But a few, like Herder and Schubert, raised their voices against such philistinism. The “Illuminist” alterations were unutterably prosaic, and the old pathos and poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth century hymns were ruthlessly sacrificed. The spiritual songs of the noble and pious Gellert are by far the best productions of this period.―Church Music too now reached its lowest ebb. The old chorales were altered into modern forms. A multitude of new, unpopular melodies, difficult of comprehension, with a bald school tone, were introduced; the last trace of the old rhythm disappeared, and a weary monotony began to prevail, in which all force and freshness were lost. As a substitute, secular preludes, interludes, and concluding pieces were brought in. The people often entered the churches during the playing of operatic overtures, and were dismissed amid the noise of a march or waltz. The church ceased to be the patron and promoter of music; the theatre and concert room took its place. The opera style thoroughly depraved the oratorio. For festival occasions, cantatas in a purely secular, effeminate style were composed. A true ecclesiastical music no longer existed, so that even Winterfeld closed his history of church music with Seb. Bach. It was, if possible, still worse with the mass music of the Roman Catholic church. Palestrina’s earnest and capable school was completely lost sight of under the sprightly and frivolous opera style, and with the organ still more mischief was done than in the Protestant church.

§ 172.2. Religious Characters.―The pastor of Ban de la Roche in Steinthal of Alsace, “the saint of the Protestant church,” J. Fr. Oberlin, A.D. 1740-1826, deserves a high place of honour. During a sixty years’ pastorate “Father Oberlin” raised his poverty-stricken flock to a position of industrial prosperity, and changed the barren Steinthal into a patriarchal paradise. The same may be said of a noble Christian woman of that age, Sus. Cath. von Klettenberg, Lavater’s “Cordata,” Goethe’s “Fair Soul,” whose genuine confessions are wrought into “Wilhelm Meister,” the centre of a beautiful Christian circle in Frankfort, where the young Goethe received religious impressions that were never wholly forgotten.―Community of religious yearnings brought together pious Protestants and pious Catholics. The Princess von Gallitzin, her chaplain Overberg, and minister Von Fürstenberg formed a noble group of earnest Catholics, for whom the ardent Lutheran Hamann entertained the warmest affection.

§ 172.3. Religious Sects.―In Württemberg there arose out of the pietism of Spener, with a dash of the theosophy of Oetinger, the party of the Michelians, so named from a layman, Michael Hahn, whose writings show profound insight into the truths of the gospel. He taught the doctrine of a double fall, in consequence of which he depreciated though he did not forbid marriage; of a restitution of all things; while he subordinated justification to sanctification, the Christ for us to the Christ in us, etc. As a reaction against this extreme arose the Pregizerians, who laid exclusive stress upon baptism and justification, declared assurance and heart-breaking penitence unnecessary, and imparted to their services as much brightness and joy as possible. Both sects spread over Württemberg and still exist, but in their common opposition to the destructive tendencies of modern times, they have drawn more closely together. In their chiliasm and restitutionism they are thoroughly agreed.―The Collenbuschians in Canton Berg propounded a dogmatic system in which Christ empties Himself of His divine attributes, and assumes with sinful flesh the tendencies to sin that had to be fought against, the sufferings of Christ are attributed to the wrath of Satan, and His redemption consists in His overcoming Satan’s wrath for us and imparting His Spirit to enable us to do works of holiness. The most distinguished adherents of Collenbusch were the two Hasencamps and the talented Bremen pastor Menken.

§ 172.4. The Rationalistic “Illumination” outside of Germany.―In Amsterdam, in A.D. 1791, a Restored Lutheran Church or Old Light was organized on the occasion of the intrusion of a rationalistic pastor. It now numbers eight Dutch congregations with 14,000 adherents and 11 pastors. Under the name of Christo Sacrum some members of the French Reformed church at Delft, in A.D. 1797, founded a denomination which received adherents of all confessions, holding by the divinity of Christ and His atonement, and treating all confessional differences as non-essential and to be held only as private opinions. In their public services they adopted mainly the forms of the Anglican episcopal church. Though successful at first, it soon became rent by the incongruity of its elements. In England the dissenters and Methodists provided a healthy protest against the lukewarmness of the State church. In William Cowper, A.D. 1731-1800, we have a noble and brilliant poet of high lyrical genius, whose life was blasted by the terrorism of a predestinarian doctrine of despair and the religious melancholy produced by Methodistic agonies of soul.

§ 172.5. Missionary Societies and Missionary Enterprise.―In order to arouse interest in the idea of a grand union for practical Christian purposes, the Augsburg elder, John Urlsperger, travelled through England, Holland, and Germany. The Basel Society for Spreading Christian Truth, founded in A.D. 1780, was the firstfruits of his zeal, and branches were soon established throughout Switzerland and Southern Germany. The Basel Bible Society was founded in A.D. 1804, and the Missionary Society in A.D. 1816.―At a meeting of English Baptist preachers at Kettering, in Northamptonshire, in A.D. 1792, William Carey was the means of starting the Baptist Missionary Society. Carey was himself its first missionary. He sailed for India in A.D. 1793, and founded the Serampore Mission in Bengal. The work of the society has now spread over the East and West Indies, the Malay Archipelago, South Africa, and South America. A popular preacher, Melville Horne, who had been himself in India, published “Letters on Missions,” in A.D. 1794, in which he earnestly counselled a union of all true Christians for the conversion of the heathen. In response to this appeal a large number of Christians of all denominations, mostly Independents, founded in A.D. 1795, the London Missionary Society, and in the following year the first missionary ship, The Duff, under Captain Wilson, sailed for the South Seas with twenty-nine missionaries on board. Its operations now extend to both Indies, South Africa, and North America; but its chief hold is in the South Seas. In the Society Islands the missionaries wrought for sixteen years without any apparent result, till at last King Pomare II. of Tahiti sought baptism as the first-fruits of their labours. A victory gained over a pagan reactionary party in A.D. 1815 secured complete ascendency to Christianity. The example of the London Society was followed by the founding of two Scottish societies in A.D. 1796 and a Dutch society in A.D. 1797, and the Church Missionary Society in London in A.D. 1799, for the English possessions in Africa, Asia, etc. The Danish Lutheran (§ 167, 9) and the Herrnhut (§ 168, 11) societies still continued their operations.524―Continuation, §§ 183, 184.

FOURTH SECTION. CHURCH HISTORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

I. General and Introductory.

§ 173. Survey of Religious Movements of Nineteenth Century.

A reaction had set in against the atheistic spirit of the French Revolution, and the victories of A.D. 1813, 1815, encouraged the pious in their Christian confidence. Princes and people were full of gratitude to God. Alexander I., Francis I., and Frederick William III., representing the three principal churches, in A.D. 1815, after the political situation had been determined by the Congress of Vienna, formed “the Holy Alliance,” a league of brotherly love for mutual defence and maintenance of peace, to which all the European princes adhered with the exception of the pope, the sultan, and the king of England. Through Metternich’s arts it ultimately degenerated into an instrument of repression and tyranny.―Incongruous elements were present everywhere. The restoration of the papacy in A.D. 1814 had given a new impulse to ultramontanism, as did also the Reformation centenary of A.D. 1817 to Protestantism; while supernaturalism and pietism prevailing in the Lutheran and Reformed churches led to renewed attempts at union. Old sects were strengthened and new sects arose. Pantheism, materialism, and atheism, as well as socialism and communism, without concealment attacked Christianity; while pauperism and vagabondage, on the one hand, and the Stock Exchange swindling of capitalists, on the other, spread moral consumption through all classes of society. The ultramontanes, led by the Jesuits, reasserted the most arrogant claims of the papacy. The climax was reached when Pius IX. obtained a decree of council affirming his infallibility, while by the Nemesis of history the royal crown was torn from his head.

§ 174. Nineteenth Century Culture in Relation to Christianity and the Church.

Down to A.D. 1840, when zeal for it began to abate, philosophy exercised an important influence on the religious development of the age, both in the departments of science and of life. While rationalism was not able to transcend the standpoint of Kant, the other theological tendencies were more or less determined formally, and even materially by the philosophical movements of this period. Alongside of philosophy, literature, itself to a great extent coloured by contemporary philosophy, exerted a powerful influence on the religious opinions of the more cultured among the people. The sciences, too, came into closer relations, partly friendly, partly hostile, to Christianity; and art in some of its masterpieces paid a noble tribute to the church.

§ 174.1. The German Philosophy (§ 171, 10).―Fries, whose philosophy was Kantian rationalism, modified by elements borrowed from Jacobi, influenced such theologians as De Wette. Schelling, in his “Philosophy of Identity,” had advanced from Fichte’s idealism to a pantheistic naturalism. From Fichte he had learned that this world is nothing without spirit; but while Fichte recognised this world, the non-ego, as reality only in so far as man seizes upon it and penetrates it by his spirit, and so raises it into real being, Schelling regards spirit as nothing else than the life of nature itself. In the lower stages of this nature-life spirit is still slumbering and dreaming, but in man it has attained unto consciousness. The nature-life as a whole, or the world-soul, is God; man is the reflex of God and the world in miniature, a microcosmos. In the world’s development God comes into objective being and unfolds his self-consciousness; Christianity is the turning point in the world’s history; its fundamental dogmas of revelation, trinity, incarnation, and redemption are suggestive attempts to solve the world’s riddle. Schelling’s poetic view of the world penetrated all the sciences, and gave to them a new impulse. Though hateful to the old rationalists, this system found ardent admirers among the younger theologians. As Schelling to Fichte, so Hegel was attached to Schelling, and wrought his pantheistic naturalism into a pantheistic spiritualism. Not so much in the life of nature as in the thinking and doing of the human spirit, the divine revelation is the unfolding of the divine self-consciousness from non-being into being. Judaism and Christianity are progressive stages of this process; Judaism stands far below classic paganism; but in Christianity we have the perfect religion, to be developed into the highest form of philosophy. The Protestant church doctrine was now again accorded the place of honour. Marheincke developed Lutheran orthodoxy into a system of speculative theology based on Hegelian principles; while Göschel infused into it a pietist spirit, which made many hail the new departure as the long-sought reconciliation of theology and philosophy. But after Hegel’s death in A.D. 1831 the condition of matters suddenly changed. His school split into an orthodox wing following the master’s ecclesiastical tendencies, and a heterodox wing which deified the human spirit. Strauss, Bauer, and Feuerbach led this heterodox party in theology, and Ruge in reference to social, æsthetic, and political questions. Persecuted by the state in A.D. 1843, the Young Hegelians joined the rationalists, whom they had before sneered at as “antediluvian theologians.” Schelling, who had been silent for almost thirty years, took Hegel’s chair in Berlin as his decided opponent in A.D. 1841, and with his dualistic doctrine of potencies, from which he finally advanced to a Christian gnosticism, obtained a temporary influence among the younger theologians. He died at the baths of Ragaz in Switzerland in A.D. 1854. He flashed for a moment like a meteor, and as suddenly his light was quenched.

§ 174.2. The domination of the Hegelian philosophy was overthrown by the split in the school and the radicalism of the adherents of the left wing, and Schelling in the second stage of his philosophical development had not succeeded in founding any proper school of his own. A group of younger philosophers, with I. H. Fichte at their head, starting from the Hegelian dialectic, have striven to free philosophy from the reproach of pantheism and to develop a speculative theism in touch with historical Christianity. Other members of this school are Weisse, Braniss, Chalibæus, Ulrici, Wirth, Romang, etc.―Herbart renounces all that philosophers from Fichte senior to Fichte junior had done, and declares the metaphysical end of their systems beyond the horizon of philosophy, which must limit itself to the province of experience. His realism is in diametrical opposition to Hegel’s idealism. Toward Christianity his philosophy occupies a position of indifference. Influenced by Kant’s theory of knowledge as well as by the Fichte-Schelling-Hegel idealism and Herbart’s realism, with an infusion of Leibnitz’s monad doctrine, Hermann Lotze of Göttingen has, since A.D. 1844, set forth a system of “teleological idealism.” He develops his metaphysical principles from what we have by immediate experience internal and external, and the invariability of the causal mechanism in everything that happens in the inner and outer world he explains as the realizing of moral purposes.―Schopenhauer’s philosophy, which only in the later years of his life (died A.D. 1860) began to attract attention, is in spirit utterly opposed to the religion and ethics of Christianity. Its task is to describe “The World as Will and Idea;” first at that stage of entering into visibility which is represented in man does will, the thing-in-itself, become joined with idea, and makes its appearance now with it over against the world as a conscious subject. But since idea is regarded as a pure illusion of the will, this leads to a pessimism which takes absolute despair as the only legitimate moral principle. E. von Hartmann went still further in the same direction in his “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” published in 1869, of which an English translation in three vols. appeared in 1884. He identifies the will with matter and idea with spirit, demands in addition to the absolute despair of the individual here and hereafter, the complete surrender of the personality to the world-process in order to the attainment of its end, the annihilation of the world. This dissolution of the world consists in the complete withdrawal of the will into the absolute as the only unconscious, so that at last the wrong and misery of being produced by the irrational will are abolished in this withdrawal. From this philosophical standpoint Hartmann attempted in A.D. 1874 to take Christianity to pieces, showing some favour to Vatican Catholicism, but pouring out the vials of his wrath upon Protestantism. His “religion of the future” consists in a yearning for freedom from all the burden and misery of being and share in the world-process by relapsing into the blessedness of non-being.―In France, England, and America much favour has been shown to the atheistic-sensual Positivism of Aug. Comte, which, excluding every form of theology and morals, requires only the so-called exact sciences as the object of philosophy. On his later notions of a “religion of humanity,” see § 210, 1. On essentially similar lines proceeds Herbert Spencer, in his “System of Synthetic Philosophy,” to whose school also Darwin belonged. His followers are styled agnostics, because they regard all knowledge of God and divine things as absolutely impossible, and evolutionists, because their master endeavours to construct all the sciences on the basis of the evolution theory.

§ 174.3. The Sciences.―Schelling’s profound theories were of all the more significance from their not being restricted to the philosophical strivings of his time, but inspiring the other sciences with the breath of a new life. To the fullest extent the natural sciences exposed themselves to this influence. There was not wanting indeed a certain shadowy mysticism, to which especially the fancies of mesmeric magnetism largely contributed; but this fog gradually cleared away, and the Christian elements were purified from their pantheistic surroundings. Steffens and Von Schubert taught that the divine book of nature is to be regarded as the reflex and expansion of the divine revelation in Scripture. The Hegelian philosophy, too, seemed at first likely to infuse a Christian spirit into the other sciences. In Göschel, at least, there was a thinker who imparted to jurisprudence a Christian character, and to Christianity a juristic construction. In other respects Hegel’s philosophy in its application to the other departments of science gave in many ways a predominance to an abstruse dialectic tendency. Its adherents of the extreme left sought to construct all sciences a priori from the pure idea, and at the same time to root out from them the last vestiges of the Christian spirit.

The greatest names in natural science, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Haller, Davy, Cuvier, etc., are household words in Christian circles. All these and many more were firmly convinced that there was no conflict between their most brilliant discoveries and Christian truth. In A.D. 1825 the Earl of Bridgwater founded a lectureship, and treatises on the power, wisdom, and goodness of God as manifested in the creation, have been written by Buckland, Chalmers, Whewell, Bell, etc. It was otherwise in Germany. Even Schleiermacher, in his “Letters to Lücke,” in A.D. 1829, expressed his fears of the prophesied overthrow of all Christian theories of the world by the incontrovertible results of physical research, and Bretschneider in his “Letters to a Statesman,” in A.D. 1830, proclaimed to the world without regret that already what Schleiermacher only feared had actually come to pass. Physicists, awakening from the glamour of the Schelling nature philosophy, pronounced all speculation contraband, and declared pure empiricism, the simple investigation of actual things, the only permissible object of their labour. And although they handed over to theologians and philosophers questions about spirit in and over nature, as not belonging to their province, a younger generation maintained that spirit was non-existent, because it could not be discovered by the microscope and dissecting knife. Carl Vogt defined thought to be a secretion of the brain, and Moleschott regarded life as a mere mode of matter and man’s existence after life only as the manuring of the fields. Feuerbach proclaimed that “man is what he eats,” and Buchner [Büchner] popularized these views into a gospel for social democrats and nihilists. Oersted, the famous discoverer of electro-magnetism, had sought “the spirit in nature,” but the spirit which he found was not that of the Bible and the church. The grandmaster of German scientific research, Alex. von Humboldt, saw in the world a cosmos of noble harmony as a whole and in its parts, but of Christian ideas in God’s great book of nature he finds no trace. In A.D. 1859 the great English naturalist Darwin, died A.D. 1882, introduced into the arena the theory of “Natural Selection,” by means of which the modification and development of the few primary animal forms through the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest by sexual selection is supposed, in millions, perhaps milliards, of years, to have brought forth the present variety and manifoldness of animal species. Multitudes of naturalists now accept his theory of the descent of men and apes from a common stem.―In Medicine De Valenti on the Protestant side, with pietistic earnestness, maintains that Christian faith is a vehicle of healing power; while a circle in Munich on the Catholic side make worship of saints and the host a conditio sine qua non of all medicine. A more moderate attitude is assumed by the Roman Catholic Dr. Capellmann of Aachen, in his “Pastoral Medicine.”

§ 174.4. Of Christian Jurists we have, on the Protestant side, Stahl, Savigny, Puchta, Jacobson, Richter, Meier, Scheuerl, Hinschius, etc.; and on the Catholic side, Walther, Philipps, etc. Among Historians, the greatest in modern times is Leopold von Ranke, who, with his disciples, occupies a thoroughly Christian standpoint. There has appeared, however, on the part of many Protestant historians, such as Voigt, Leo, Mentzel, Vorreiter, Hurter, Gfroerer [Gfrörer], etc., a tendency in the most conspicuous manner to recognise and admire the brilliant phenomena of mediæval Catholicism, even going to the length of renouncing the vital principles of Protestantism, and glorifying a Boniface, a Gregory VII., and an Innocent III., and characterizing the Reformation as a revolution. Ultramontanes have been only too ready to turn to their own use all such concessions, but show no inclination to make similar admissions damaging to their side, so that with them history consists rather in the abuse of everything Protestant as vile and perfidious, instead of being a record of independent research. Janssen [Jansen] of Frankfort stands out prominently above the billows of the “Kulturkampf” (§ 197), as the greatest master of this ultramontane style of history making.―Geography, first raised to the rank of a science by Carl Ritter, received from its great founder a Christian impress and owes much of its development to the researches of Christian missionaries. Finally, Philology, in the hands of Creuzer, Görres, Sepp, etc., unfolds in a Christian spirit the religion and mythology of classical paganism; and in the hands of Nägelsbach and Lübker expounds the religious life of the ancient world in relation to Christian truth.

§ 174.5. National Literature (§ 171, 11).―To some extent Goethe, but much more decidedly the romantic school of poets, was attached to Schelling’s philosophy of nature. The romanticists developed a deep religiousness of feeling, as shown in Novalis and La Motte Fouqué, and violent opposition to rationalistic theology as shown in Tieck, which in the case of Fr. Schlegel ran to the other extreme of moral frivolity as seen in his “Lucinde.” The romantic school as thus represented by Schlegel was joined by the party of Young Germany with its gospel of the rehabilitation of the flesh. Its mouthpiece was the gifted poet Heine. The pantheistic deification of nature by Schelling, and the self-deification of the Hegelian school obtained poetic expression in Leop. Schafer’s Laienbrevier und Weltpriester, as well as in Sallet’s Laienevangelium; while the sympathies of the young Hegelians with the revolutionary movements gained utterance in the poems of Herwegh, and in a more serious tone in those of Freiligrath. More recently the views of the Protestantenverein (§ 180) have found their poetical representative in Nic. Eichhorn, whose “Jesus of Nazareth,” a tragical drama, 1880, deals with the life, works, and sufferings of the “historical Christ,” after the style of free Protestant science, with rich psychological analysis of the character in a brilliant imaginative production. Though composed with a view to theatrical representation, it has never yet been put on the stage.

§ 174.6. The Christian element was present in the noble patriotic songs of E. M. Arndt525 and Max. von Schenkendorf much more distinctly than in the romantic school. Enthusiasm in the struggle for freedom awakened faith in the living God. Uhland’s lovely lyrics, with their enthusiasm for the present interests of the Fatherland, entitle him to rank among patriotic poets, and their brilliant and profound rendering of the old German legends places him in the romantic school, which, however, in clearness and depth he leaves far behind. Without being a distinctively Christian poet, his warm sympathy with the life of the German people gives him a genuine interest in the Christian religion. The same may be said of Rückert’s highly finished poems, which transplanted the fragrant flowers of oriental sensuousness and contemplativeness into the garden of German poetry. A more decided Christian consecration of poetic genius is seen in the noble and beautiful lyrics of Emanuel Geibel, died 1884, the greatest and most Christian of the secular poets of the present. Of those ordinarily ranked as sacred poets may be named Knapp, Döring, Spitta, Garve, Vict. Strauss, etc., who for the most part contributed their sacred songs to Knapp’s “Christoterpe” (1833-1853). A later publication of equal merit, called the “Neue Christoterpe,” has been edited since 1880 by Kögel, Baur, and Frommel. But with all the Christian depth and spirituality, freshness and warmth, which we meet with in the productions of these Christian poets, none of them has been able to rise to the noble simplicity, power, popular force, and fitting them for church use, objectivity which are present in the old evangelical church hymns. In this respect they all bear too conspicuously the signature of their age, with its subjective tone and the noise and turmoil of present conflicts. Of all modern poets, Rückert alone approaches in his advent hymn the measure and spirit of the old church song.―In the department of novels and romance there has been shown an almost invariable hostility toward Christianity, religion being either entirely avoided or held up to contempt by having as its representatives, simpletons, hypocrites, or knaves.

§ 174.7. In France, Chateaubriand in his “Genie du Christianisme” pronounces an eloquent eulogy on the half-pagan Christianity of the Middle Ages. In another work he makes the representatives of heathenism in the age of Constantine act like Homeric heroes, and those of Christianity speak “like theologians of the age of Bossuet.” Lamartine may be described as a Christian romanticist. Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand, Sue, Dumas, etc., influenced by the Revolution, developed an antichristian tendency; while naked naturalism, photographic realism in depicting the lowest side of Parisian life, especially adultery and prostitution, is represented by Flaubert, Daudet, De Goncourt, Zola, etc.―In Italy, the amiable Manzoni gave noble expression to Christian feeling in his “Inni Sacri,” and in his masterly romance “Promessi Sposi;” and the famous poet Silvio Pellico, in his “La mia Prigioni,” affords a noble example of the sustaining power of true religion during ten years’ rigorous imprisonment in an Austrian dungeon. The most gifted of modern Italian poets, Giacomo Leopardi, sank into despairing pessimism, which expressed itself in the domain of religion in biting satire and savage irony. Among the poets of the present who, with glowing patriotism, not only yearned for the deliverance and unity of Italy, but also lived to see these accomplished, and have since given expression, though from different political and religious standpoints, to the desire for the reconciliation of the free united kingdom with the irreconcilable church, the most distinguished are Aleardi, Carducci, Imbriani, Guercini, Cavalotti.―In Spain, Caecilia Böhl von Faber, although the daughter of a German father, and educated in Germany, introduced, under the name Fernan Caballero, the modern romance in a thoroughly national Spanish style, and in a purely moral and catholic Christian spirit. In the Flemish Provinces, Hendrik Conscience, the able novelist, has described Flemish village life in a spirit fully in sympathy with Christianity.―England had in Lord Byron a poet of the first rank, who more than any other poet had experience in himself of the convulsions and contradictions of his age. In powerful and impressive tones he sets forth the unreconciled disharmonies of nature and of human life. Incurable pain, despair, weariness of life, and hatred of mankind, without hope, yet without desire for reconciliation, enthusiastic admiration of the ancient world, passionate love of liberty and titanic pride in human might mingle with scenes of grumbling, misery, and profligacy. On the other hand, the rich and mostly solid English novel literature is prevailingly inspired by a Christian spirit.

§ 174.8. Popular Education.―While the poetic national literature for the most part found entrance only among the cultured and adult circles, this age, almost as fond of writing as of reading, produced an enormous quantity of books for the people and for children. But only a few succeeded in catching the proper tone for the masses and the youth, and still fewer supplied their readers with what was genuinely pious. Pestalozzi’s “Lienhard und Gertrud,” Hebel’s “Schatzkästlein,” and Tschokke’s “Goldmacherdorf,” respected at least the Christian feeling of the people, although they did not strengthen or foster it. But, on the other hand, in recent years a number of writers have appeared, thoroughly popular, and at the same time thoroughly Christian, who, as popular poets and novelists, have become apostles of Christian views, morals, and customs to the people. The most distinguished of these are Jeremiah Gotthelf (Albert Bitzius, died 1854), whose “Kate the Grandmother” was translated in the Sunday Magazine for 1865, Von Horn, Carl Stöber, Wildenhahn, Nathusius, Frommel, Weitbrecht, etc. In the Catholic church Albanus Stoltz, died 1883, developed a wonderful power of popular composition, which, however, he subsequently put at the service of a fanatical ultramontanism, and so sacrificed much of its nobility and worth. From the enormous mass of children’s books only extremely few attain their aim. In the front rank stands the brilliant patriarch of Christian tale writing, Von Schubert, died 1860. After him are Barth, the author of “Poor Henry,” Stöber, and the Swiss Spyri, and the Catholic Christian Schmid, author of the “Easter Eggs.”―The Public Schools, especially under Dinter (died 1831), member of the consistory and schoolboard of Königsberg, were for a long time nurseries of the tame, flat, and self-satisfied rationalism of the ancien régime; but since 1830, and more particularly in consequence of the violent agitations of the seminary director Diesterweg, who died in 1866, put to silence in 1847, but still for his work in connexion with education always highly respected, many of the teachers took a higher flight in the naturalistic-democratic direction. By word and pen Diesterweg carried on a propaganda in favour of a free and liberal education for the people. His disciples, wanting his earnest Christian spirit, carried out recklessly his radical tendencies, and now the Christian faith has no more persistent foes than the teachers of the public schools. In A.D. 1870, a Teachers’ Association in Vienna gave a vote of 6,000 in favour of radicalism. At a Hamburg meeting in A.D. 1872 of 5,100 teachers, progress was shown by individuals raising their voices in defence of Christianity, which, however, were generally drowned in shrieks and hisses. A Teachers’ Evangelical Association held its ninth assembly at Hamburg in A.D. 1881 with 1,500 members. Christian opinions are now ably represented in schools, educational journals, and literature. A burning question at present is whether the national school should be preferred to the denominational school. Liberals in church and state say it should; conservatives say it should not; while both parties think their views supported by the experience of the past. The Prussian minister of education, Falk, A.D. 1872-1879, firmly insisted upon the development of the national system, but his successors Von Puttkamer and Von Gossler reverted to the denominational system. The German Evangelical School Congress of Hamburg in October, 1882, demanded that both elementary and secondary schools should have a confessional character.

§ 174.9. Art.―The intellectual quickening called forth with the opening of the new century imparted new spirit and life to the cultivation of the arts. Winckelmann, died A.D. 1768, had opened the way to an understanding of pagan classical art, and romanticism awakened appreciation of and enthusiasm for mediæval Christian art. The greatest masters of Architecture were Schinckel, Klenze, and Heideloff. The foundation stone of the final part of the Cologne cathedral was laid by a Protestant king, Frederick William IV., in A.D. 1842, and the work was finished by a Protestant builder in A.D. 1880. Statuary had three great masters, who gave expression to profound Christian ideas in bronze and marble, the Italian Canova, the German Dannecker, and greatest of all, the Dane Thorwaldsen, whose Christ and the Apostles and other works form a main attraction to visitors in Copenhagen. Three younger German masters of the art, who have heired their fame, are Rauch, Rietschl, and Drake.―In Painting too a new era now began. A group of gay German artists in Rome, with Overbeck at their head, formed a Society in A.D. 1813, and mostly became perverts to Romanism. Peter Cornelius, the ablest of the school, himself born a Catholic, answered his friends’ request to place Luther in a picture of the last judgment, in hell: “Yes, but with the Bible in his hands and the devils trembling before him”; and in a subsequent picture of the judgment, he gave the German reformer his place among the saints in heaven. His pupil, Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld is well known by his “Bibel in Bildern.” Ludwig Richter, the Albert Dürer of the nineteenth century and creator of the modern woodcut, has filled German houses with his artistic and poetic creations, which breathe of God, nature, and the family fireside. The Frenchman, Gustave Doré of Strassburg, has also illustrated the Bible in a manner worthy of ranking alongside of Schnorr, though a characteristically French striving for effect is everywhere discernible.―Painted Glass (§ 104, 14) for church windows had during the eighteenth century passed almost wholly out of use, but again in the nineteenth came into favour, and was made at Dresden, Nuremberg, and Munich. The most eminent artist in this department was Ainmiller of Munich, specimens of whose workmanship are to be seen in all parts of the world.

§ 174.10. Music and the Drama.―In Vienna the three great masters of musical composition, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, produced in the department of sacred music some of their noblest works. Mendelssohn, in his St. Paul and Elijah and in his Psalms, sought to reproduce the power and truth of the simple word of God. An early death prevented him giving expression to his ideal of Christ in music. The Hungarian virtuoso Liszt sacrifices sacred calmness and dignity to theatrical effect. His son-in-law, Richard Wagner, inspired by Schopenhauer’s philosophy, a richly endowed poet and composer, proclaimed by his followers as the Messiah of the music of the future, going back to mediæval legend, has produced a quasi-Christian musical drama, in which the gospel of pessimism takes the place of the gospel of the grace of God.―Quite different is the Passion Play of the Bavarian village Oberammergau, which is a reproduction of the mediæval mysteries (§ 115, 12). It originated in a vow made in 1633 on the occasion of a plague which visited the place, and is repeated every ten years on the Sundays from the end of May to the middle of September. The history of the Saviour’s passion is here represented with interludes from Messianic Old Testament passages explained by a chorus like that of the classical tragedy, with appropriate scenery, drapery, and musical accompaniment. In the presence of an immense concourse of strangers for whose accommodation a large amphitheatre was been built, almost all the villagers, men, women, and children, take part in the performance and show rare artistic power. The text of the drama for the most part agrees with the gospel narrative, only occasionally interspersed with legend, and quite free from ultramontane hagiology and mariolatry. The performance of A.D. 1850, and still more that of A.D. 1880, attracted crowds of pilgrims and tourists to the quiet and remote valley. An independent exhibition, falling little behind the original in the artistic character of its composition and production, was given, in 1883, on the Sundays of July and August in the Tyrolese village of Brixlegg, and was visited by similar crowds.

§ 175. Intercourse and Negotiations between the Churches.

Protestants could recognise, as Catholics could not, elements of truth and beauty in the creeds of their opponents. When a peaceful and conciliatory spirit was shown by individual Catholic clergymen, it was the occasion of suspicion and persecution on the part of the old Romish party. Schemes of union were entertained by the Old Catholics (§ 190), and negotiations were entered on by the Greek Orthodox church, on the one hand, and the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, on the other, but in both cases without any practical result. On the union negotiations between the different Protestant sects, see § 178; and on the Prusso-Anglican bishopric of Jerusalem, see § 184, 8. Of the numerous conversions from Protestantism to Catholicism and from Catholicism to Protestantism, we can here mention only such as have excited public interest in some special way.

§ 175.1. Romanizing Tendencies among Protestants.―Not only in England, where an important high-church party embraced a more than half-Catholic Puseyism (§ 202, 2), but even in Protestant Germany a Romanizing current set in on many sides. A taste for the romantic, artistic, historical (§ 174, 5, 9, 4), as well as feudalist-aristocratic and hyper-Lutheran ecclesiastical tendencies led the way in this direction. Many sought rest in the bosom of the church “where alone salvation is found,” while others, too deeply rooted in evangelical truth, bewailed the loss of “noble and venerable” institutions in the worship, life, and constitution of the church, but were unable to accept the various unevangelical accretions which made void the doctrine of justification by faith alone. This was the position of Löhe of Neuendettelsau, in point of doctrine a strict Lutheran, who published a selection of Catholic legends as patterns of self-denial for his deaconesses, wished to restore anointing of the sick, etc. Some Protestant pastors expressed warm sympathy with the Pope during his misfortunes in A.D. 1860, and approved of the continuance of the papacy and the pope’s temporal dominion. A conference of Catholics (Count Stolberg, Dr. Michelis, etc.) and Protestants (Leo, Bindewald, etc.) at Erfurt in A.D. 1860, on the basis of a common recognition of the moral advantages of the papacy, sought to bring about a union of the churches. Still more remarkable is the story told by the Old Catholic professor Friedrich. Just before the opening of the Vatican Council, certain evangelical pastors of Saxony wrote letters to Bishop Martin of Paderborn, which Friedrich himself read, urging that at the council permission should be given to priests to marry and to give the cup in the communion to the laity, and promising that in that case they themselves and many like-minded pastors would join the Romish church. That the letters were written and received is unquestionable; but it is doubtful whether folly and imbecility or a wish to hoax and mystify, directed the pen. The writer or writers, as the examination before the consistory of the locality proved, are not to be sought among the pastors whose names are appended. How far the Protestant ultra-conservative reactionary party goes with the ultramontanes and how far it would aid the overthrow and undermining of the Protestant state and evangelical church, is shown by the conduct of the Privy Councillor and Chief Justice Ludwig von Gerlach (§ 176, 1), who, in 1872, in the Prussian House of Representatives, took his place among the ultramontane party of the centre, hostile to the empire and friendly to the Poles, and in his pamphlet “Kaiser und Papst” of 1872 described the new German empire as an incarnate antichrist. Also the Lutheran Guelphs of Hanover are zealous supporters of all the demands of the centre in the Prussian parliament and in the German Reichstag.

§ 175.2. The Attitude of Catholicism toward Protestantism.―Every Catholic bishop has still on assuming office to take the oath, Hæreticos pro posse persequar. The Jesuits, restored in A.D. 1814, soon pervaded every section with their intolerant spirit. The huge lie that Protestantism is in matters of State as well as of church essentially revolutionary, while Catholicism is the bulwark of the State against revolution and democracy, was affirmed with such audacity that even Protestant statesmen believed it. The Roman Jesuit Perrone (§ 191, 9) taught the Catholic youth in a controversial Italian catechism that “they should feel a creeping horror come over them at the mere mention of the word Protestantism, more even than when a murderous attack was made upon them, for Protestantism and its defenders are in the religious and moral world just the same as the plague and plague-stricken are in the physical world, and in all lands Protestants are the scum of all that is vile and immoral,” etc. In a pastoral of A.D. 1855, Von Ketteler, Bishop of Mainz, compared the Germans, who by the Reformation rent the unity of the church, to the Jews who crucified the Messiah. Romish prelates have vied with one another in their abuse of Protestants and Protestantism. In A.D. 1881, Leo XIII. speaking of the spread of Russian nihilism, charged Protestant missionaries with spreading the dominion of the prince of darkness. Prof. Hohoff of Paderborn, in his “Hist. Studies on Protestantism and Socialism,” Paderb., 1881, reiterated the accusation: “Yes, it is so, Protestantism has begotten atheism, materialism, scepticism, nihilism. The Reformation was the murderer of all science, the greatest foe of culture and learning, and the falsifier of all history.... Melanchthon’s Loci may be styled the most unscientific production in the domain of dogmatics.... Yes, the Reformation has proved a prime source of superstition, a step backward in the history of civilization.... The Catholic church has been the champion of conscience, reason, and freedom.... No one is thoroughly capable of judging historical facts without prejudice as the believing Catholic Christian.”―But while the vast majority of Catholic writers thus abuse Protestantism, others like Seltmann of Eberswald seek to win over to the ranks of the Romish church those who can be befooled by fair speeches. The “Protestant” correspondents in Seltmann’s periodical write under the cloak of anonymity.―In Spain the Reformation was long attributed to the Augustinians, who were jealous of the Dominicans as the only dispensers of indulgences, and to Luther’s desire to marry; but the poet Nuñez de Arca in his “Vision de Fray Martin,” attributed it to the corruption of the church and papacy of its time, and regarded with sympathy the spiritual struggles of the reformer. Though as a good Catholic he concludes his poem with the ban of the church against Luther, he yet describes him as a just and well-deserving man.

§ 175.3. Romish Controversy.―In the beginning of A.D. 1872 the Waldensian Professor Sciarelli published as a challenge the thesis that the Apostle Peter never set foot in Rome, and Pius IX. with childlike simplicity gave his consent to a public disputation, which came off at Rome on 9th and 10th February. Three Protestant champions, with Sciarelli at their head, were confronted by three Catholics, headed by Fabiani, before 125 auditors admitted by ticket. Both sides claimed the victory; but the shorthand reports were more widely read through Italy than could be agreeable to the papal court.

§ 175.4. Roman Catholic Union Schemes.―While American Protestant missionaries strove zealously for the conversion of the schismatical Eastern Churches, Rome with equal diligence but little success endeavoured to win over these and the orthodox Greeks to her own communion. There was great joy over the conversion of the Bulgarians to Romanism in A.D. 1860. Taking advantage of a national movement for the restoration of a patriarchate independent of Constantinople (§ 207, 3), some French Jesuits succeeded in persuading a small number of malcontents to agree to a union with Rome. In 1861 the pope consecrated an old Bulgarian priest, Jos. Sokolski, archbishop of the united Bulgarian church. Very soon, however, he and almost all his followers returned to their allegiance to the Greek Orthodox church. Leo XIII. in his encyclical of A.D. 1880, by giving conspicuous honour to Cyril and Methodius, and uttering kind sentiments about the Christian church in the East, and conferring high rank on dignitaries of the Eastern church, seeks to smooth the way for a union of the two great churches.

§ 175.5. Greek Orthodox Union Schemes.―In A.D. 1867 the Archbishop of Canterbury addressed a letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople and the whole Eastern church, to open the way to a common understanding and union of the churches, sending a modern Greek translation of the Book of Common Prayer, and asking their assistance at the consecration of an Anglican church at Constantinople. The patriarch Gregorius [Gregory] granted this request, and answered the letter in a friendly manner, passing over the Anglican’s warnings against superstitious additions to the doctrine, e.g. mariolatry, but characterizing all the contrary doctrines of the Thirty-nine Articles as “very modern.” At the same time vigorous measures were being taken with a similar object by members of the Russian and of the Anglican churches. In 1870 Professor Overbeck of Halle undertook to act as intermediary in these negotiations. He had in 1865 published, in answer to the papal encyclical with syllabus of December 8th, 1864 (§ 185, 2), a tract with the motto Ex oriente lux, in which he placed the claims of the Orthodox eastern church before the Roman Catholic as well as Protestant. On the opening of the Vatican Council in 1869 he advocated in a pamphlet the breaking up of the papal church and the formation of Catholic national churches. In North America Professor Bjerring, of the Catholic seminary for priests at Baltimore, took the same position. In March, 1871, he went to St. Petersburg, was there ordained as an Orthodox priest, and on his return to New York instituted a Sunday service in the English language according to the Greek rite. Of any further advance in this direction of union nothing is known.

§ 175.6. Old Catholic Union Schemes.―Döllinger (§ 191, 5) in A.D. 1871 was hopeful of a union not only with the Greek, but also with the Anglican church, and similar hopes were entertained in England and Russia, and distinguished representatives of both communions took part in the Old Catholic congresses (§ 190, 1). On the invitation of Döllinger, as president of the committee commissioned by the Freiburg Congress of A.D. 1874 to treat about union with the Anglican church, forty friends of union from Germany, England, Denmark, France, Russia, Greece, and America met in conference at Bonn. After a lively debate the cleft between East and West was bridged over by a compromise treating the filioque as an unnecessary addition to the Nicene symbol, and asserting that, however desirable a mutual understanding on doctrinal questions might be, existing differences in constitution, discipline, and worship presented no bar to union. The Catholics presented the Anglicans with fourteen theses essential to union, in which the anti-Protestant doctrines were for the most part toned down, but transubstantiation distinctly asserted. Subsequent conferences never got beyond these preliminaries. It was, however, agreed that, in case of necessity, Anglicans and Old Catholics might dispense the supper to one another.

§ 175.7. Conversions.―The most famous converts of the century were Hurter, the biographer of Innocent III., the Countess Ida von Hahn-Hahn, writer of religious romances, Gfroerer [Gfrörer], the church historian, the radical Hegelian Daumer, the historian of ante-tridentine theology Hugo Lämmer, and Dr. Ed. Preuss, who had written against the immaculate conception and for criminal conduct had to flee the country. In A.D. 1844 Carl Haas, a Protestant pastor, went over to the Romish church, but the two new dogmas of Pius IX. led him to study the works of Luther. He now returned to the Lutheran church, vindicating his procedure in a treatise entitled, “To Rome, and from Rome back again to Wittenberg, 1881.” Also the Mecklenburg Lutheran pastor, Dr. A. Hager, who, after his conversion, had undertaken the editorship of an ultramontane newspaper in Breslau in 1873, was obliged in a few years to resign the appointment. His return to the evangelical church was being talked about, when he suddenly died in 1883, after having received the last sacrament in the Catholic church. The climax of abuse of Luther and the Lutheran church was reached by the Hanoverian Evers, who had gone over in 1880; in all his scandalous and vituperative writings he describes himself on the title page as “formerly Lutheran pastor.” His mud-throwing, however, was carried so far, that even the ultramontane Köln. Volkszeitung was constrained to advise him to write more decently.

§ 175.8. The Mortara affair of A.D. 1858 attracted special attention. The eight-year old son of the Jew Mortara of Bologna was violently taken from his parents to Rome because his Christian nurse said that two years before, during a dangerous illness, she had baptized him. The church answered the entreaties of the parents and the universal outcry by saying that the sacrament had an indelible character, and that the pope could not change the law. Again in A.D. 1864, the ten-year old Jewish boy, Joseph Coën, apprentice weaver in Rome, was decoyed by a priest to his cloister and there persuaded to receive baptism. In vain his mother, the Jewish community, and even the French ambassador, urged his restoration; and when, in A.D. 1870, the temporal power of the pope was overthrown, the lad, now sixteen years old, had himself become such a fanatical Catholic that he refused to have anything to do with his mother as an unbeliever.

§ 175.9. In the Tyrol in A.D. 1830 there were numerous conversions from Catholicism to Protestantism (§ 198, 1). A Catholic priest in Baden, Henhöfer of Mühlhausen, influenced by the writings of Sailer and Boos, went over to the Lutheran church in A.D. 1823, and continued down to his death in A.D. 1862 a vigorous opponent of the prevailing rationalism. Count Leopold von Seldnitzsky, formerly Prince-Bishop of Breslau, felt obliged in 1840, in consequence of the conscientious objections he had to perform his official duties toward church and state during the ecclesiastico-political controversies of 1830 (§ 193, 1), to resign his appointments. He was subsequently led in A.D. 1863, through reading the Scriptures and Luther’s works, after a sore struggle, to join the evangelical Church. He devoted all his means to the founding of Protestant educational institutions at Berlin and Breslau. He died in A.D. 1871, in his eighty-fourth year. The proclamation by the Vatican of the dogma of infallibility drove many pious and earnest Catholics out of the Romish communion. Of these Carl von Richthofen, Canon of Breslau, engages our special interest. Son of a pious Lutheran mother, and trained up under Gossner’s mild spiritual direction (§ 187, 2), his gentle and deeply religious nature had attached itself to the Roman Catholic church of his father only under the illusion that the Romish doctrine of justification was not wholly irreconcilable with the evangelical doctrine. He at first submitted to but soon renounced the Vatican decree; was excommunicated by Archbishop Förster, voluntarily resigned his emoluments; joined the Old Catholics in A.D. 1873, and the separated Old Lutherans in A.D. 1875. In the following year he died a painful death from the explosion of a petroleum lamp.―Upon the whole Rome has made most converts in America and England; and she has suffered losses more or less severe in France, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Bohemia.

§ 175.10. The Luther Centenary, A.D. 1883.―The celebration of Luther’s birth was carried out with great enthusiasm throughout all Germany, more than a thousand tracts on Luther and the Reformation were published, statues were erected, special services were held in all Lutheran churches, high schools, and universities, and brilliant demonstrations were made at Jena, Worms, Wittenberg, and Eisleben. There were founded at Kiel a Luther-house, at Worms and at the Wartburg Luther libraries, in Leipzig and Berlin Luther churches. At Eisleben a bronze statue of the reformer was solemnly unveiled representing his tearing the papal bull with his right hand and pressing the Bible to his heart with his left. Another noble monument was raised by the munificence of the emperor by the issuing during this year of the first volume of pastor Knaake’s critical edition of Luther’s works. A “German Luther Institute” aims at assisting children of the poorer clergy and teachers, and a “Reformation History Society” has undertaken the task of issuing popular tracts on the persons, events and principles of that and the succeeding period based upon original documents. Protestants of all lands, with the exception of the English high-church party, contributed liberally; the Americans had a copy of the great Luther statue of the Worms monument (§ 178, 1) made and erected in Washington. Even in Italy the liberal press eulogised Luther, while the ultramontanes loaded his memory with unmeasured calumny and reproach. The threatened counter-demonstrations of German ultramontanes fell quite flat and harmless. The Zwingli Centenary of January 1st, A.D. 1884, was celebrated with enthusiasm throughout the Reformed church, especially in Switzerland. On the other hand, the celebration of the five-hundredth anniversary of Wiclif’s death on December 31st, 1884, created comparatively little interest.

II. Protestantism in General.526

§ 176. Rationalism and Pietism.

At the beginning of the century rationalism was generally prevalent, but philosophy and literature soon weakened its foundations, and the war of independence moved the hearts of the people toward the faith of their fathers. Pietism entered the lists against rationalism, and the Halle controversy of A.D. 1830 marked the crisis of the struggle. The rationalists were compelled to make appeal to the people by popular agitators. During A.D. 1840 they managed to found several “free churches,” which, however, had for the most part but a short and unprosperous existence. They were more successful in A.D. 1860 with the Protestantenverein as the instrument of their propaganda (§ 180).

§ 176.1. The old Rationalism was attacked by the disciples of Hegel and Schelling, and in A.D. 1834 Röhr of Weimar found Hase of Jena as keen an opponent as any pietist or orthodox controversialist. That recognised leader of the old rationalists had coolly attempted to substitute a new and rational form of doctrine, worship, and constitution for the antiquated formularies of the Reformation, and drew down upon himself the rebuke even of those who sympathized with him in his doctrinal views.―In A.D. 1817 Claus Harms of Kiel, on the occasion of the Reformation centenary, opened an attack upon those who had fallen away from the faith of their fathers, by the publication of ninety-five new theses, recalling attention to Luther’s almost forgotten doctrines. In A.D. 1827 Aug. Hahn in an academical discussion at Leipzig maintained that the rationalists should be expelled from the church, and Hengstenberg started his Evangelische Kirchenzeitung. The jurist Von Gerlach in A.D. 1830 charged Gesenius and Wegscheider of Halle with open contempt of Christian truth, and called for State interference. In all parts of Germany, amid the opposition of scientific theologians and the scorn of philosophers, pietism made way against rationalism, so that even men of culture regarded it as a reproach to be reckoned among the rationalists. Unbelief, however, was widespread among the masses. When Sintenis, preacher in Magdeburg in A.D. 1840, declared the worship of Christ superstitious, and was reprimanded by the consistory, his neighbours, the pastors Uhlich and König, founded the society of the “Friends of Light,” whose assembly at Köthen then was attended by thousands of clergymen and laymen. In one of these assemblies in A.D. 1844, Wislicenus of Halle, by starting the question, Whether the Scriptures or the reason is to be regarded as the standard of faith? shattered the illusion that rationalism still occupied the platform of the church and Scripture. The left wing of the school of Schleiermacher took offence at the severe measures demanded by Hengstenberg and his party, and in 1846 issued in Berlin a manifesto with eighty-eight signatures against the paper pope of antiquated Reformation confessions and the inquisitorial proceedings of the Kirchenzeitung party, as inimical to all liberty of faith and conscience, wishing only to maintain firm hold of the truth that Jesus Christ is yesterday, to-day, and for ever the one and only ground of salvation. The Friends of Light, combining with the German Catholics and the Young Hegelians, founded Free churches at Halle, Königsberg, and many other places. Their services and sermons void of religion, in which the Bible, the living Christ, and latterly even the personal God, had no place, but only the naked worship of humanity, had temporary vitality imparted them by the revolutionary movements of A.D. 1848. This gave the State an excuse, long wished for, to interfere, and soon scarcely a trace of their churches was to be found.

§ 176.2. Pietism had not been wholly driven out of the evangelical church during the period of ecclesiastical impoverishment, but, purified from many eccentric excesses, and seeking refuge and support for the most part by attaching itself to the community of the Moravian Brethren, it had, even in Württemberg, established itself independently and in an essentially theosophical-chiliastic spirit. There too a kind of spiritualism was introduced by the physician and poet Justin Kerner of Weinsberg, and the philosopher Eschenmayer of Tübingen, with spirit revelations from above and below. Amid the religious movements of the beginning of the century Pietism gained a decided advantage. It took the form of a protest against the rationalism prevailing among the clergy. The earnest and devout sought spiritual nourishment at conventicles and so-called Stunden addressed by laymen, mostly of the working class, well acquainted with Scripture and works in practical divinity. Persecuted by the irreligious mob, the rationalist clergy, and sometimes by the authorities, they by-and-by secured representatives among the younger clergy and in the university chairs, and carried on vigorous missions at home and abroad. This pietism was distinctly evangelical and Protestant. It did not oppose but endeavoured simply to restore the orthodoxy of the church confession. Yet it had many of the characteristics of the earlier pietism: over-estimation of the invisible to the disparagement of the visible church, of sanctification over justification, a tendency to chiliasm, etc.―Of no less importance in awakening the religious life throughout Germany, and especially in Switzerland, was the missionary activity of Madame de Krüdener of Riga. This lady, after many years of a gay life, forsook the world, and began in A.D. 1814 her travels through Europe, preaching repentance, proclaiming the gospel message in the prisons, the foolishness of the cross to the wise of this world, and to kings and princes the majesty of Christ as King of kings. Wherever she went she made careless sinners tremble, and drew around her crowds of the anxious and spiritually burdened of every sort and station. Honoured by some as a saint, prophetess, and wonder-worker, ridiculed by others as a fool, persecuted as a dangerous fanatic or deceiver, driven from one country to another, she died in the Crimea in A.D. 1824.527

§ 176.3. The Königsberg Religious Movement, A.D. 1835-1842.―The pious theosophist, J. H. Schönherr of Königsberg, starting from the two primitive substances, fire and water, developed a system of theosophy in which he solved the riddles of the theogony and cosmogony, of sin and redemption, and harmonized revelation with the results of natural science. At first influenced by these views, but from A.D. 1819 expressly dissenting from them, J. W. Ebel, pastor in the same city, gathered round him a group of earnest Christian men and women, Counts Kanitz and Finkenstein and their wives, Von Tippelskirch, afterwards preacher to the embassy at Rome, the theological professor H. Olshausen, the pastor Dr. Diestel, and the medical doctor Sachs. After some years Olshausen and Tippelskirch withdrew, and dissensions arose which gave opportunity to the ecclesiastical authorities to order an investigation. Ebel was charged with founding a sect in which impure practices were encouraged. He was suspended in A.D. 1835, and at the instigation of the consistory a criminal process was entered upon against him. Dr. Sachs, who had been expelled from the society, was the chief and almost only witness, but vague rumours were rife about mystic rites and midnight orgies. Ebel and Diestel were deposed in A.D. 1839, and pronounced incapable of holding any public office; and as a sect founder Ebel was sentenced to imprisonment in the common jail. On appeal to the court of Berlin, the deposition was confirmed, but all the rest of the sentence was quashed, and the parties were pronounced capable of holding any public offices except those of a spiritual kind. Two reasons were alleged for deposition:

That Ebel, though not from the pulpit or in the public instruction of the young, yet in private religious teaching, had inculcated his theosophical views.

That both of them as married men had given expression to opinions injurious to the purity of married life.

In general they were charged with spreading a doctrine which was in conflict with the principles of Christianity, and making such use of sexual relations as was fitted to awaken evil thoughts in the minds of hearers. Ebel was pronounced guiltless of sectarianism.―Kanitz wrote a book in defence, which represents Ebel and Diestel as martyrs to their pure Christian piety in an age hostile to every pietistic movement; whereas Von Wegnern, followed by Hepworth Dixon, in a romancing and frivolous style, lightly give currency to evil surmisings without offering any solid basis of proof. The whole affair still waits for a patient and unprejudiced investigation.528

§ 176.4. The Bender Controversy.―At the Luther centenary festival of A.D. 1883, Prof. Bender of Bonn declared that in the confessional writings of the Reformation evangelical truth had been obscured by Romish scholasticism, introduced by subtle jurists and sophistical theologians. This called forth vigorous opposition, in which two of his colleagues, 38 theological students, 59 members of the Rhenish synod, took part. General-Superintendent Baur, also, in a new year’s address, inveighed against Bender’s statements. On the other hand, 170 students of Bonn, 32 of these theological students, gave a grand ovation to the “brave vindicator of academic freedom.” The Rhenish and Westphalian synods bewailed the offence given by Bender’s address, and protested against its hard and unfounded attacks upon the confessional writings. At the Westphalian synod, Prof. Mangold said that the faculty was as much offended at the address as the church had been, but that its author, when he found how his words had created such feeling, sought in every way to repress the agitation, and had intended only to pass a scientific judgment on ecclesiastical and theological developments.

§ 177. Evangelical Union and Lutheran Separation.

From A.D. 1817 Prussia favoured and furthered the scheme for union between the two evangelical churches, and over this question a split arose in the camp of pietism. On the one hand were the confessionalists, determined to maintain what was distinctive in their symbols, and on the other, those who would sacrifice almost anything for union. For the most part both churches cordially seconded the efforts of the royal head of the church; only in Silesia did a Lutheran minority refuse to give way, which still maintains a separate existence.

§ 177.1. The Evangelical Union.―Circumstances favoured this movement. Both in the Lutheran and in the Reformed church comparatively little stress was laid upon distinctive confessional doctrines, and pietism and rationalism, for different reasons, had taught the relative unimportance of dogma. And so a general accord was given to the king’s proposal, at the Reformation centenary of A.D. 1817, to fortify the Protestant church by means of a Union of Lutherans and Calvinists. The new Book of Common Order of A.D. 1822, in the preparation of which the pious king, Frederick William III., had himself taken part, was indeed condemned by many as too high-church, even Catholicizing in its tendency. A revised edition in A.D. 1829, giving a wider choice of formularies, was legally authorized, and the union became an accomplished fact. There now existed in Prussia an evangelical national church with a common government and liturgy, embracing within it three different sections: a Lutheran, and a Reformed, which held to their distinctive doctrines, though not regarding these as a cause of separation, and a real union party, which completely abandoned the points of difference. But more and more the union became identified with doctrinal indifferentism and slighting of all church symbols, and those in whom the church feeling still prevailed were driven into opposition to the union (§ 193). The example of Prussia in sacking the union of the two churches was followed by Nassau, Baden, Rhenish Bavaria, Anhalt, and to some extent in Hesse (§§ 194, 196).

§ 177.2. The Lutheran Separation.―Though the union denied that there was any passing over from one church to another, it practically declared the distinctive doctrines to be unessential, and so assumed the standpoint of the Reformed church. Steffens (§ 174, 3), the friend of Scheibel of Breslau, who had been deprived of his professorship in A.D. 1832 for his determined opposition to the union, and died in exile in 1843 (§ 195, 2), headed a reaction in favour of old Lutheranism. Several suspended clergymen in Silesia held a synod at Breslau in A.D. 1835, to organize a Lutheran party, but the civil authorities bore so heavily upon them that most of them emigrated to America and Australia. Guericke of Halle, secretly ordained pastor, ministered in his own house to a small company of Lutheran separatists, was deprived of his professorship in A.D. 1835, and only restored in A.D. 1840, after he had apologised for his conduct. From A.D. 1838, the laws were modified by Frederick William IV., imprisoned clergymen were liberated in A.D. 1840, and a Lutheran church of Prussia independent of the national church was constituted by a general synod at Breslau in A.D. 1841, which received recognition by royal favour in A.D. 1845. The affairs are administered by a supreme council resident in Breslau, presided over by the distinguished jurist Huschke. Other separations were prevented by timely concessions on the part of the national church. The separatists claim 50,000 members, with fifty pastors and seven superintendents.

§ 177.3. The Separation within the Separation.―Differences arose among the separate Lutherans, especially over the question of the visible church. The majority, headed by Huschke, defined the visible church as an organism of various offices and orders embracing even unbelievers, which is to be sifted by the divine judgment. To it belongs the office of church government, which is a jus divinum, and only in respect of outward form a jus humanum. The opposition understood visibility of the preaching of the word and dispensation of sacraments, and held that unbelievers belonged as little to the visible as to the invisible church. The distribution of orders and offices is a merely human arrangement without divine appointment, individual members are quite independent of one another, the church recognises no other government than that of the unfettered preaching of the word, and each pastor rules in his own congregation. Diedrich of Jabel and seven other pastors complained of the papistical assumptions of the supreme council, and at a general synod in A.D. 1860 refused to recognise the authority of that council, or of a majority of synods, and in A.D. 1861, along with their congregations, they formally seceded and constituted the so called Immanuel Synod.

§ 178. Evangelical Confederation.

The union had only added a third denomination to the two previously existing, and was the means of even further dissension and separation. Thus the interests of Protestantism were endangered in presence of the unbelief within her own borders and the machinations of the ultramontane Catholics without. An attempt was therefore made in A.D. 1840 to combine the scattered Protestant forces, by means of confederation, for common work and conflict with common foes.

§ 178.1. The Gustavus Adolphus Society.―In A.D. 1832, on the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of the saviour of German Protestantism, on the motion of Superintendent Grossman of Leipzig, a society was formed for the help of needy Protestant churches, especially in Catholic districts. At first almost confined to Saxony, it soon spread over Germany, till only Bavaria down to A.D. 1849, and Austria down to A.D. 1860, were excluded by civil enactment from its operations. The masses were attracted by the simplicity of its basis, which was simply opposition to Catholicism, and the demagogical Friends of Light soon found supremacy in its councils. Because of opposition to the expulsion of Rupp, in A.D. 1846, as an apostate from the principle of protestantism, great numbers with church leanings seceded, and attempted to form a rival union in A.D. 1847. After recovering from the convulsions of A.D. 1848, under the wise guidance of Zimmermann of Darmstadt, the society regained a solid position. In A.D. 1883 it had 1,779 branches, besides 392 women’s and 11 students’ unions, and a revenue for the year of about £43,000.―The same feeling led to the erection of the Luther Monument at Worms. This work of genius, designed by Rietschel, and completed after his death in A.D. 1857 by his pupils, and inaugurated on 25th June, A.D. 1868, represents all the chief episodes in the Reformation history. It was erected at a cost of more than £20,000, raised by voluntary contributions, and the scheme proved so popular that there was a surplus of £2,000, which was devoted to the founding of bursaries for theological students.

§ 178.2. The Eisenach Conference.―The other German states borrowed the idea of confederation from Prussia and Württemberg. It took practical shape in the meetings of deputies at Eisenach, begun in A.D. 1852, and was held for a time yearly, and afterwards every second year, to consult together on matters of worship, discipline and constitution. Beyond ventilating such questions the conference yielded no result.

§ 178.3. The Evangelical Alliance.―An attempt was made in England, on the motion of Dr. Chalmers (§ 202, 7), at a yet more comprehensive confederation of all Protestant churches of all lands against the encroachments of popery and puseyism (§ 202, 2). After several preliminary meetings the first session of the Evangelical Alliance was held in London in August, A.D. 1846. Its object was the fraternizing of all evangelical Christians on the basis of agreement upon the fundamental truths of salvation, the vindication and spread of this common faith, and contention for liberty of conscience and religious toleration. Nine articles were laid down as terms of membership: Belief in the inspiration of Scripture, in the Trinity, in the divinity of Christ, in original sin, in justification by faith alone, in the obligatoriness of the two sacraments, in the resurrection of the body, in the last judgment, and in the eternal blessedness of the righteous and the eternal condemnation of the ungodly. It could thus include Baptists, but not Quakers. In A.D. 1855 it held its ninth meeting at the great Paris Industrial Exhibition as a sort of church exhibition, the representatives of different churches reporting on the condition of their several denominations. The tenth meeting, of A.D. 1857, was held in Berlin. The council of the Alliance, presided over by Sir Culling Eardley, presented an address to King Frederick William IV., in which it was said that they aimed a blow not only against the sadduceanism, but also against the pharisaism of the German evangelical church. The confessional Lutherans, who had opposed the Alliance, regarded this latter reference as directed against them. The king, however, received the deputation most graciously, while declaring that he entertained the brightest hopes for the future of the church, and urged cordial brotherly love among Christians. Though many distinguished confessionalists were members of the Alliance none of them put in an appearance. The members of the “Protestantenverein” (§ 180) would not take part because the articles were too orthodox. On the other hand, numerous representatives of pietism, unionism, Melanchthonianism, as well as Baptists, Methodists, and Moravians, crowded in from all parts, and were supported by the leading liberals in church and state. While there was endless talk about the oneness and differences of the children of God, about the universal priesthood, about the superiority of the present meeting over the œcumenical councils of the ancient church, about the want of spiritual life in the churches, even where the theology of the confessions was professed, etc., with denunciations of half-Catholic Lutheranism and its sacramentarianism and officialism, and many a true and admirable statement of what the church’s needs are, Merle d’Aubigné introduced discord by the hearty welcome which he accorded his friend Bunsen, which was intensified by the passionate manner in which Krummacher reported upon it. The gracious royal reception of the members of the Alliance, at which Krummacher gave expression to his excited feelings in the words, “Your Majesty, we would all fall not at your feet, but on your neck!” was described by his brother, Dr. F. W. Krummacher, as a sensible prelude to the solemn scenes of the last judgment. Sir Culling Eardley declared, “There is no more the North Sea.” Lord Shaftesbury said in London that with the Berlin Assembly a new era had begun in the world’s history; and others who had returned from it extolled it as a second Pentecost.