Chapter IV: The Counter-Reformation (10)

§ 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. Arndt[525] 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.