History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion Part 15

We have now seen the state of the German mind in reference to theology at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the three new influences which were introduced into it in the interval between 1720 and 1760. The dogmatic tendency became transformed by the Wolffian philosophy; the pietistic retired from a public movement into the privacy of life; while the minds of men were awakened to inquiry by the suggestions of the English deists, or the restless and hopeful tone of the French mind. It was a moment of transition; the streaks of twilight before the dawn. Yet the signs of a change were so slight, that few could as yet discern the coming of a crisis, none predict its form.

We may now proceed to give the history of the theological movement which sprang up, commonly called Rationalism. It admits of natural division into three parts. The first, a period destructive in its tendency, extending to a little later than the end of the century, exhibits the gradual growth of the system, and its spread over every department of theology. The second, reconstructive in character, the re-establishment of harmony between faith and reason, extends till the publication of Strauss's celebrated work on the Life of Christ in 1835; the third, containing the divergent tendencies which have created permanent schools, reaches to the present time.(672) In all alike the harmony of faith and reason was sought: but in the first it was attained by sacrificing faith to reason; in the second and third, by seeking for their unity, or by separating their spheres. A distinguished name stands at the commencement of each period, representing the mind whose speculations were most influential in giving form to the movements.

Semler inaugurated the destructive movement; Schleiermacher, the constructive; and Strauss precipitated the final forms which theological parties have a.s.sumed. In the present lecture we shall treat only of the first two of these movements.

The first of these periods, extending; from about 1750 to 1810,(673) contains two sub-periods. Till about 1790(674) we find the growth of rationalism. In the last decade of the century we shall meet with its full development; but at the same time the growth of new causes will be perceived, which prepared the way for a total alteration after the commencement of the present century.

The sub-period extending to 1790 is one of transition, in which we can trace three broadly marked tendencies in religion; one within the church, two outside of it. Such cla.s.ses indeed slide away into each other; nature is more complex than man; but the use of them may be excused as facilitating instruction.

The movement within the church verged from a literary and dogmatic orthodoxy, which existed chiefly at the Saxon university of Leipsic, through the purely literary tendency, of which Michaelis may be taken as a type in the newly formed university of Gottingen, to the freethinking method typified by Semler, orthodox in doctrine, but in criticism adopting free views of inspiration, which mingled itself with the old pietism of the university of Halle.(675)

The two movements outside the church were, a literary one, indicated by Lessing, which found its chief utterance in the periodical literature, then in its infancy;(676) and a thoroughly deist one, connected with the court of Berlin, embodied in the educational inst.i.tutions of Basedow.(677)

The movement which we have just named as existing within the church, differed from the older dogmatic one, in being a tendency toward an historical and critical study of the scriptures, instead of a philosophical study of doctrines. It embraced those whose teaching was not at variance with Christianity, and also those who manifested incipient scepticism. Two names, Ernesti(678) at Leipsic, and Michaelis(679) at Gottingen, represent the first cla.s.s; the former applying criticism chiefly to the New Testament, the latter to the Old. The endeavour of both, especially of Ernesti, was to revive the grammatical and literary mode of interpreting scripture, as opposed to the dogmatic previously in use. Their spirit was not sceptical, but was that of men who felt the sceptical opinions round them; ethical and cold, like that of the Arminians of the preceding century.

Their system developed into rationalism in the hands of two of their pupils. Eichhorn was the pupil of Michaelis, Semler of Ernesti. The name of Eichhorn will recur later; Semler(680) must be considered now.

Semler was one of those minds which fall short of the highest order of originality, but by their erudition and appreciation of the wants of their time inst.i.tute a movement by giving form to the current feeling of their day. Nurtured in pietism, he always retained signs of personal excellence; and his Christian earnestness is said not to have been destroyed by his speculations. His autobiography furnishes us with the means for the full comprehension of his character, and shows him to have been keenly alive to the difficulties which the English literature had suggested. His labours related to criticism, to exegesis, and to doctrine. As a critic he did not restrict himself to the examination of texts, but investigated the canonicity of the books of Scripture.(681) It is probable that the criticism commenced by R. Simon and Spinoza furnished hints for his views.

He was one of the first to undervalue external evidence in the formation of the canon. The determination of the canon, i.e. of the list of books which are to be considered scripture, is a question of fact. What did the early church p.r.o.nounce to be such; and does internal evidence bear out the idea? Semler undervalued the historical evidence of the church's judgment, and replaced it, not by careful study of internal critical evidence, like later rationalism, but by an _a priori_ subjective decision, that only such books were to be received as conduced to a religious object. But it is in exegesis that he enunciated the principles which have left a permanent effect. He established what is called the historical method of interpretation.(682)

In the course of Christian history, three great methods for the interpretation of scripture have been used; the allegorical, the dogmatic, and the grammatical.(683) In the early church the tendency in the main was to the allegorical; in the middle-ages to the dogmatic; at the Renaissance and Reformation to the grammatical, which however in the seventeenth century was displaced by the allegorical(684) and dogmatic; and it was the work of Ernesti to restore it. Semler added the historic; by which is meant the method, which, after discovering the grammatical sense of the words, rests content exactly with the meaning which the circ.u.mstances of society could permit scripture to have at that age. It declines to search for mystical senses, or to use dogma as a clue to interpretation. This principle, so valuable in itself, yet, when abused, so fruitful in producing rationalism, was the discovery of Semler.

The application of this method of interpretation led him to the theory generally known by the name of "accommodation."(685) He felt a strong reaction against the forgetfulness shown by the old dogmatic orthodoxy, which had regarded the Bible as one book, instead of a collection or historic series of books, and had confounded together the Jewish and Christian dispensations, and taken no cognizance of the development of religious knowledge in scripture. Accordingly he desired to remove the deist difficulty by separating the eternal truth in scripture from what he considered to be local(686) that the Mosaic law of divorce was an adaptation to the particular needs of the age, seemed to establish the validity of the principle that revelation was an accommodation to be judged of by the historic circ.u.mstances of the age for which it was intended. The principle had been applied by English theologians:(687) but it needed a delicate insight to apply it safely. Semler introduced it indiscriminately into prophecy, miracle, and doctrine; and stated his views in a form which, though well meant, is certainly most repulsive. We may cite an instance in the case of his view of the demoniacal possessions of the New Testament.(688) Not denying them, Semler probably considered them to be nothing but the diseases of epilepsy and madness. But he did not ridicule the narrative as a deist would, nor explain the facts away as legends or myths, as is the plan of the later schools, nor account for them by the supposition that the apostles were left in ignorance about physical science, and inspired only in religious knowledge; but he regarded the narrative as an intentional accommodation on the part of the teachers to their hearers, and consequently stated his views in a form which is the more repulsive as seeming to impute dishonesty.(689) He went so far as to consider some of the doctrines of the New Testament to be an accommodation on the part of our Lord to the Jewish notions; and regarded Christ's work as the compromise between the Mosaic and philosophical parties in the Jewish church, which afterwards were represented in the Christian by St. Peter and St. Paul respectively.(690) Though he himself held the apostles' creed, and was shocked at some later developments of unbelief,(691) yet he seems to have considered practical morality to be at once the sole aim of Christianity, and the supreme rule of doctrine.(692) He founded no school; but his influence decidedly initiated the rationalist movement within the church; one peculiarity of which will be found to be, that it was professedly designed in defence of the church, not as an attack upon it.

The tendency which we have just studied was within the church. The two now about to be named were external to it. The one, earnest and scholarlike, formed chiefly on the model of English deism, is represented by Lessing.

The other, modelled after Rousseau, was practical rather than intellectual, and aimed at remodelling education as well as altering belief.

Lessing,(693) a name honoured in the history of literature, is little known in England, save by his exquisite comparison of art and poetry, called the Laoc.o.o.n.(694) He was one of those whose labours remain for the benefit of other ages, like that of the coral worms, which die, but leave their work. That a native German literature exists, is the work of Lessing as pioneer; that it is worth studying, is the result of his criticism and influence. Finding literature just arising, and the dispute still raging between the Saxon and Swiss schools, whether it should model itself after reason and form like the French literature, or after nature and the soul like the English, (28) he showed the true mode of uniting the two by turning attention to Greek models; and, in conjunction with Nicholai and the Jewish philosopher Mendelssohn, established a critical periodical, which became the agency for a literary reformation. But the point of interest, in relation to our present subject, is his influence on religion. Availing himself of the right which his position as librarian of Wolfenb.u.t.tel, a small town near Brunswick, gave him to publish ma.n.u.scripts found in the library, he edited, in 1774 and the four following years, several fragments of a larger work, which he professed to have found. They are usually called the Wolfenb.u.t.tel fragments. (29) Till recently their authorship remained a secret. They are now known to have been written by the learned Hamburg philosopher, Reimarus.(695) They treated very nearly the same subjects, and in much the same tone, but with consummate skill, as the English deists. Reimarus, as is now known, in the introduction(696) to the larger unprinted work from which they were extracted, gave his own intellectual history, his early doubts on the doctrines of the Trinity, and the destruction of the heathen; and also on the history of the Old and New Testaments; and ends, like the English deists, with resting in natural religion.

The first two(697) fragments, published by Lessing, touched only upon the question of tolerating deists, and on the custom of declaiming against human reason in the pulpits. The third referred to the impossibility that all men should be brought to believe revelation on rational evidence. The fourth and fifth attacked the Old Testament history, such as the pa.s.sage of the Red Sea. The sixth directed an a.s.sault against the New Testament; pointing out with unsparing severity the discrepancies in the accounts of the resurrection. The concluding one was on the object of Christianity, in which our blessed Lord's life and work were represented as a defeated political reform.

These views however were not professedly sanctioned by Lessing, for he added notes in refutation of them, and stated his object to be merely to stimulate free inquiry.(698) His wish was gratified in the tremendous effect which the publication produced. In the literary controversy which ensued, and which embittered his few remaining days,(699) he explained himself to be a doubter rather than a disbeliever; and defended himself by urging the distinctness of the religious element in scripture from the scientific; a.s.serting that, as Christianity existed before the New Testament, so it could exist after it. The Christian religion is not true, he said, merely because evangelists and apostles taught it; but they taught it because it is true. And in order to restore Christianity to its true place in the estimation of thinking men, he composed or edited a well-known work(700) on the Education of the World,(701) which became a fertile source of thought for the philosophy of history, and was designed to explain the function of the Jewish religion in reference to the Christian, and to the world. The theology of Lessing's coadjutors however, if not also that of Lessing himself, did not rise higher than that of the more serious among the English deists.(702)

The other tendency, more decidedly sceptical even than that of Lessing, gave definite form to the extreme sceptical opinions excited by French philosophy, which had been fermenting in German society, and had earlier expressed themselves. It is best represented by Edelmann,(703) and by the unhappy Bahrdt, who pa.s.sed gradually from Semler's school into this. Its religions tenets were simple naturalism, moral as distinct from positive religion; and it was connected with the attempt by Basedow,(704) patronised by Frederick, to establish educational inst.i.tutions on the model proposed in Rousseau's Emile. The name which it gave to the movement was, the Period of Enlightenment (Aufklarung-zeit),(705) which expressed the consciousness of illumination, and the yearning for deliverance which was finding its expression in France; and this name therefore has been usually adopted among foreign writers to describe this period of the history.

Such are the historical tendencies from about 1750 till about 1790-cold but learned orthodoxy; the commencement of critical rationalism, and open deism. About that time new influences came into operation, the effects of which are at once evident. Without taking account of the excitement caused by the political events of the French revolution, we may name two such new causes of movement-the literary influence of the court of Weimar, and the philosophy of Kant.

The centres of intellectual activity in Germany now changed. We are so apt to forget that Germany, especially at the end of the last century, formed a set of independent princ.i.p.alities, which varied in taste, in belief, and in literary tone, that we fail to realise the individuality of the scenes of literary activity. At the end of the last century there was one spot which became the very focus of intellectual life. The court of Karl August at Weimar, insignificant in political importance, was great in the history of the human mind.(706) There were gathered there most of the mighty spirits of the golden ago of German literature,-Herder, Wieland, Goethe, Schiller, Jean Paul; a constellation of intellect unequalled since the court of Ferrara in the days of Alphonso.(707) The influence made itself felt in the adjacent university of Jena; and this little seminary became from that time for about twenty years,(708) until the foundation of Berlin, the first university in Germany. In it alone the philosophy of Kant became naturalized.(709) Some of the ablest men in Germany were its Professors; and about this time Jena and Weimar became the stronghold of free thought.

Except in the case of Herder,(710) the literary influence was not directly influential on theology. But it gave moral support to theological movement; though ultimately, by introducing a truer and more subjective appreciation of human nature, it was the means of generating the deep insight in the critical taste of thinking men which furnished the death-blow to rationalism. The same remark is true of the effects of the philosophy of Kant.(711) Its ultimate result was valuable in removing the eudaemonism common in ethics, and turning men's attention to the moral law within. But its immediate effects were to reinforce the appeal to reason, and to destroy revelation by leaving nothing to be revealed.

The nature of this system, so far as is necessary for our purpose, may be soon told. Kant, dissatisfied with the distrust in the human faculties induced by the scepticism of Hume, and the one-sided sensationalism of Condillac, carried a penetrating a.n.a.lysis into the human faculties;(712) attempting to perform with more exactness the work of Locke, to measure the human mind, which is the sounding-line, before fathoming the ocean of knowledge. Like Copernicus inverting astronomy, he reversed metaphysics, by referring cla.s.ses of ideas to inward causes which before had been referred to outer.

He detected, as he supposed, innate forms of thought(713) in the mental structure, which form the conditions under which knowledge is possible.

When he applied his system to give a philosophy of ethics and religion, he a.s.serted n.o.bly the law of duty written in the heart,(714) but identified it with religion. Religious ideas were regarded as true regulatively, not speculatively. Revelation was reunited with reason, by being resolved into the natural religion of the heart. Accordingly, the moral effect of this philosophy was to expel the French materialism and illuminism,(715) and to give depth to the moral perceptions: its religious effect was to strengthen the appeal to reason and the moral judgment as the test of religious truth; to render miraculous communication of moral instruction useless, if not absurd; and to reawaken the attempt, which had been laid aside since the Wolffian philosophy, of endeavouring to find a philosophy of religion.(716) From this time in German theology we shall find the existence of the twofold movement; the critical one, the lawful descendant of Semler, examining the historic revelation; and the philosophical one, the offshoot of the system of Kant, seeking for a philosophy of religion.

During the next twenty years, from 1790 to 1810, when so many influences were operating in common, it is not easy to measure the effect of the speculative philosophy upon particular minds with such exactness as to ascertain which ought properly to be cla.s.sed in the destructive tendency, and which gave signs of the reaction. We must however be careful to exclude those younger minds(717) that were already appearing on the field, to become the heroes of the subsequent history, whose tone was so decidedly affected by new influences as to belong to the age of reaction.

In this sub-period we may name three tendencies: (1) the continuation of the Exegesis inaugurated in the last epoch by Semler, until about the end of the century it found its utmost limit in Paulus,(718)-the result of the age of illumination; (2) a dogmatic tendency, more or less the growth of new influences introduced by the new philosophy, which attempted to reconcile reason with the supernatural, and may be represented in its nearest approach to orthodoxy, at the end of this period, by Bretschneider;(719) and (3) the awakening of a distinct expression of the appeal to the supernatural which had never quite died out in the church, in the Arminianism of Reinhardt in the north, and of Storr in the south.(720) The last needs no further investigation; but we shall consider briefly the other two.

The exegetical method which formed the first was that which is now usually called the old or common-sense rationalism.(721) This form of rationalism differed from the English deism and French naturalism, in not regarding the Bible as fabulous in character, and the device of priestcraft;(722) but only denied the supernatural. By them the apostles had been regarded as impostors; and scripture was not only not received as divine, but not even respected as an ordinary historical record; whereas rationalism was intended as a defence against this view. It denied only the revealed character of scripture, and treated it as an ordinary history; and, distinguishing broadly between the fact related and the judgment on the fact, sought to separate the two, and explained away the supernatural element, such as miracles, as being orientalisms in the narrative, adapted to an infant age, which an enlightened age must translate into the language of ordinary events.

Eichhorn at Gottingen(723) applied this view to the Old Testament. Deeming miracles impossible, he did not regard them as fraud, but admitted on the contrary that the agents or narrators honestly believed them. The supernatural was not imparted to deceive, but was the result of oriental modes of speech, such as hyperbole, parable, or ellipsis, in which the steps by which the process was performed were omitted. The smoke of Sinai was considered a thunderstorm; the shining of Moses's face a natural phenomenon.

The principles which Eichhorn applied to the Old Testament, Paulus of Jena extended to the New.(724) The miraculous cures were explained by an ellipsis in the omission of the natural remedies; the casting out of devils as the power of a wise man over the insane; the transfiguration as the confused recollection of sleeping men, who saw Jesus with two unknown friends, in the beautiful light of the morning among the mountains: nay, trespa.s.sing on still more holy ground, he dared impiously to explain away the resurrection of our blessed Lord by the hypothesis that his death was only apparent. These are a specimen of the mode of exegesis adopted in this school, which is usually specifically called Rationalism. In this mode Jesus appeared to be merely a wise and virtuous man; and his miracles were merely acts of skill or accident. Paulus presented this as the original Christianity. The theory did not last long, save in the mind of its author, who lived until a recent period, to see the entire change of critical belief. Attributing the supernatural to ignorance, it did not even propose, like the later schools, to explain the marvellousness of the phenomena, objectively by so plausible a theory as legends, nor subjectively by myths:(725) it was too clumsy, not to say irreverent, an explanation of the facts to satisfy a people of deep and poetical soul like the Germans.

While this is a specimen of the critical side of rationalism, its dogmatic side varied from natural ethics to a kind of Socinianism. But in all alike, as its name would imply, it not only a.s.serted that there is only one universal revelation, which takes place through observation of nature and man's reason; but that Christianity was not designed to teach any mysterious truths, but only to confirm the religious teaching of reason; and that no one ought to recognise as true that which cannot be proved to him rationally. The doctrine of a Trinity was necessarily disbelieved; the death of Christ regarded as an historic event, or a symbol that sacrifices were abolished. Holiness was reduced to morality. Extreme veneration for the Bible was called Bibliolatry.(726) Religion was represented as acting by natural motives: the ethical superseded the historic. The early theologians of this dogmatic branch of the school are now little known; but we may name Bretschneider(727) as the type of the least heretical portion of it at the close of this period, who believed Christianity to be a republication of natural religion, supernatural but reasonable: and, as the literary tendency of this school continued to exist in Rohr,(728) after the movement had become extinct in other minds, so Wegscheider,(729) until a recent period, was the solitary instance of the dogmatic position slightly modified.

This completes the history of the first of the three movements, the destructive action of rationalism. The most flourishing period of this form of it was about the beginning of the present century. We have seen it originating in the rational tone of Wolff's philosophy, and the well-meant but ill-judged exegesis which Semler exhibited under the pressure of sceptical difficulties. Stimulated by critical investigations, and by the strong wish which operated on our own theologians, to find the cause of everything, its adherents were led into a disbelief of the supernatural, and ended in explaining away the miraculous, and reducing Christianity to natural religion. The movement, it will be observed, was professedly not intended to be destructive of Christianity. Instead of being inimical, it originated with the clergy, and aimed at harmonizing Christianity with reason. But it contained its own death. The negative criticism is essentially temporary.

The activity of thought was already producing change. We have previously stated that even the Kantian philosophy itself, though at first stimulating the appeal to reason, fostered a deeper perception of duty, and thus prepared the way for a moral reawakening.(730)

We shall accordingly now proceed to state the causes which introduced new elements into the current of public thought; and then describe the gradual progress of the reactionary movement which ensued from them.

Four causes are usually a.s.signed. The first of them was the introduction of new systems of speculative philosophy.

It is not unusual, in those who have no taste for speculation, and who understand only the prosaic, though in some respects the truer, philosophy of Scotland, to despise the great systems of German speculation. Yet, if the series be measured as an example of the power of the human mind, whatever may be the opinion formed in respect to its correctness, it stands among the most interesting efforts of thought. Though the writers can be matched by isolated examples in former ages, perhaps no series of writers exists, hardly even the Greek, certainly not the Neo-Platonist nor the Cartesian, which, in far-reaching penetration, in minuteness of a.n.a.lysis, in brilliancy of imagination, in loftiness of genius, in poetry of expression, in grasp of intellect, in influence on every branch of thought or life, approximates to the series of ill.u.s.trious thinkers which commenced with Kant and ended with Hegel.(731) The two philosophers at this time whose teaching formed a new influence, were Fichte(732) and Jacobi.(733) Details in reference to their systems must be sought elsewhere.(734) It is only possible here to indicate their central thought, in order to notice their effects on theological inquiry.

We have seen that Kant had reconsidered the great problem, commenced by Descartes and Locke, concerning the ground of cert.i.tude, and the nature of knowledge; and had revolutionised philosophy, by attributing to the natural structure of the mind many of those ideas which had usually been supposed to be derived from experience. In his system he had left two elements, a formal and a material; the formal, or innate forms, through which the mind gains knowledge, and the material, presented from external sources. It was the former or ideal element which was examined by Fichte; the latter by Jacobi.

Fichte began to teach at Jena soon after 1790. Grasping firmly Descartes'

principle, "Cogito, ergo sum," he conceived that, as we can only know ourselves, there is no proof that the datum supposed to be external is anything but a form of our own consciousness; and thus he arrived at a subjective idealism not unlike that of bishop Berkeley.(735) Under his view G.o.d was only an idea or form of thought; a regulative principle of human belief, the moral order of which the mind was conscious in the universe; and, as atheism was suspected to follow as an inference from his views, he became the subject of persecution. But the instincts of the heart, as well as the arguments of the understanding, were too potent for him; and when he had thus as it were shut up man within the circle of his own finite self, he strove to find a logical pa.s.sage into a knowledge of the infinite by a principle a.n.a.logous to that of Spinoza; viz. by regarding both self and the outer world, the subjective and objective, to be identified in some absolute self-existence, of which they were respectively phases.(736)

This aim was only partially effected by Fichte, and was completed by his distinguished successor, Sch.e.l.ling.(737) Sch.e.l.ling saw that the subjective tendency had been pushed too far; and, relying on the spiritual sense through which men of all ages have conceived that they saw the infinite, the reality of which accordingly seems to be attested by a universal induction, he tried to grasp the idea of the self-existent One, who is the one absolute Reality, the one eternal Being, the eternal Source from which all other light is derived, and from which all things develope.

"Intellectual intuition" he thought to be the means by which we have this knowledge of the infinite, and are able to trace the development of it into its limitations in nature and in the mind. The method is a.n.a.logous to that of Spinoza, save that the infinite is studied dynamically instead of mechanically, as a movement not a substance, in time not in s.p.a.ce.

The roll of these great thinkers, whose speculations were suggested by the formal side of Kant's philosophy, is not yet full. But the two which have been named wrote and affected thought, the one before, the other soon after, the commencement of the present century. Hegel followed in the same track, but influenced thought at a later period.(738) He too aimed at solving the same problem as Sch.e.l.ling: he too sought to transcend the conditions of object and subject which limit thought; but it was by a.s.suming a representative or mediate faculty that transcends consciousness, and not, as Sch.e.l.ling, an intuitional or presentative.(739)

Such were the philosophers who aimed at solving the problem of knowledge and being from the intellectual side. Jacobi on the other hand attempted it from the emotional. Perceiving the necessity of finding some justification for the material element which Kant had a.s.sumed in his philosophy, he sought it in faith, in intuition, in the direct inward revelation of truth to the human mind. He thought that, as sensation gives us an immediate knowledge of the world, so there is an inward sense by which we have a direct and immediate revelation of supernatural truth. It is this inward revelation which gives us access to the material of truth.

His position was a.n.a.logous to that of Sch.e.l.ling, but he a.s.serted the element of feeling as well as intuition.

These philosophies, of Fichte, Sch.e.l.ling, and Jacobi, formed one cla.s.s of influences, which were operating about the beginning of the century, and were the means of redeeming alike German literature and theology. Their first effect was to produce examination of the primary principles of belief, to excite inquiry; and, though at first only reinforcing the idea of morality, they ultimately drew men out of themselves into aspirations after the infinite spirit, and developed the sense of dependence, of humility, of unselfishness, of spirituality. They produced indeed evil effects in pantheism and ideology;(740) but the results were partial, the good was general. The problem, What is truth?-was through their means remitted to men for reconsideration; and the answers to it elicited, from the one school,-It is that which I can know:-from the other,-It is that which I can intuitively feel:-threw men upon those unalterable and infallible instincts which G.o.d has set in the human breast as the everlasting landmarks of truth, the study of which lifts men ultimately out of error.

These systems had even a still more direct effect on the public mind. They were the means of creating a literature, which insinuated itself into public thought, and familiarised society with spiritual apprehensions long obliterated. The school of literature commonly called the Romantic,(741) commencing with such writers as Schlegel and Novalis, fanciful as it may in some respects seem to be, created the same change in the belief and tastes of the German mind as the contemporary school of Lake Poets in England. The German literature bore the marks either of the old scholasticism, or of the materialism introduced from France, or of the cla.s.sic culture introduced by Lessing and his coadjutors. The element now revived was the mediaeval element of chivalry, the high and lofty courage, the delicate aesthetic taste, which had marked the middle ages.

Herder,(742) to whom Germany owes much, disgusted with the stoical and a.n.a.lytic spirit of the Kantian philosophy, had already attempted, and not in vain, to throw the mind back to an appreciation of old history, and especially had manifested an enthusiastic admiration of Hebrew literature; but now, as if by one general movement, the public taste was turned to an appreciation of the freshness of feeling, and fine elements of character, which existed in the Christianity of the middle ages.(743)

This literary movement prepared the way for and accompanied another, which, though occurring a little later, may be reckoned as the third influence which caused a religious reaction. Indeed it is the one to which the Germans attribute the chief effect. It is found in the outburst of national patriotism which took place in the liberation wars of 1813;(744) the spontaneous chivalry which made the heart of Germany beat as the heart of one man, to endeavour to hurl back Napoleon beyond the limits of the common fatherland. In that moment of deep public suffering, the poetry and piety of the human heart brought back the idea of G.o.d, and a spirit of moral earnestness. The national patriotism,(745) which still lives in the poetry of the time, expelled selfishness: sorrow impressed men with a sense of the vanity of material things, and made their hearts yearn after the immaterial, the spiritual, the immortal: the sense of terror threw them upon the G.o.d of battles. It was the age of Marathon and Salamis revived; and the effect was not less wonderful.(746)

A fourth influence remains to be noticed, which was in its nature more strictly theological, and limited to the church. When after the return of peace the tercentenary of the Reformation was celebrated in 1817, an obscure theologian at Kiel, named Harms,(747) published a set of theses as supplements to the celebrated theses of Luther, which, by the excitement and controversy unexpectedly occasioned by them, turned attention anew to the study of the reformational and biblical theology, and created a revival of the spiritual element which was too much forgotten.

Such were the four influences-the philosophical, the literary, the political, the spiritual,-which entered into German life, and produced or increased the reaction that took place in German theology in the period which we are about to sketch.

We placed the limits of this second period from about 1810 till the literary revolution caused by alarm at Strauss's work in 1835.(748) It was in 1810, in the depth of Prussian humiliation, when Halle had pa.s.sed into one of the kingdoms dependent on France, that the university of Berlin was founded. Schleiermacher, Neander, and De Wette, were its teachers. The first was the soul of its theological teaching; and through his agency it became the great source of a religious reaction. It is around these names that our studies most centre. The signs indeed of some other movements are traceable. The deistic rationalism is not dead, but it is dying: it is a thing of the past: a return to strict dogmatic orthodoxy is also visible in the Lutheran clergy rather than in the university; but it is as yet in its infancy: and a new form of gnosticism is observable in the philosophy of Hegel, but the full development of it belongs to the next period. The field is now occupied by the partial reaction to orthodoxy, which aimed at a reconciliation of science and piety, of criticism and faith.(749) Schleiermacher, with is follower Neander, will typify the philosophical and more orthodox side of it; perhaps De Wette, and at the end of the period Ewald, the critical.

Schleiermacher(750) was by education and sympathy eminently fitted to attempt the harmony of science and faith, to which he devoted his life.

Gifted with an acute and penetrating intellect, capable of grappling with the highest problems of philosophy and the minutest details of criticism, he could sympathise with the intellectual movement of the old rationalism; while his fine moral sensibility, the depth and pa.s.sionateness of his sympathy, the exquisite delicacy of his taste and brilliancy of imagination, were in perfect harmony with the literary and aesthetic revival which was commencing. German to the very soul, he possessed an enthusiastic sympathy with the great literary movements of his age, philosophical, cla.s.sical, or romantic. The diligent student and translator of Plato,(751) his soul was enchanted with the mixture at once of genius, poetry, feeling, and dialectic, which marks that prince of thinkers, and he was prepared by it for understanding the speculations of his time. The dialectical process through which Plato's mind had pa.s.sed (30) represents not improbably, in some degree, the history of Schleiermacher's own mental development as traceable in his works. The conviction derived from Plato's early dialogues, that the mind, in travelling outward to study the objective, could not prove the highest realities, but must have faith in its own faculties, prepared him for imbibing the philosophy of Jacobi. The looking inward to the deep utterances of the soul, the interpretation of the objective world by means of the internal, prepared him for Fichte. The mystical attempt to understand the ideas themselves, to use the archetype for creating an ontology from the objective side, observable in Plato's latest works, found its parallel in Sch.e.l.ling. Schleiermacher had large sympathies with these three processes, but mainly with the first; which was to be expected from his purpose. Aiming at gaining spiritual cert.i.tude rather than speculating for intellectual gratification, Jacobi's philosophy appeared to combine the excellences of the other two systems, the subjective character of the one, and the intuitional of the other; with the additional advantage of seeming to give expression to the instincts of the heart, as well as the intuitions of the mind. Beyond all these qualities, Schleiermacher inherited from his Moravian education the spirit of pietism, which, almost extinguished by the recent activity of mind, had retired to the quiet sphere where a Stilling(752) or an Oberlin(753) communed with G.o.d and laboured for man.

Possessing therefore the two great elements which had been united in the Reformation,-endowed on the one hand with the largest sympathy with every department of the intellectual movement, and the mastery of its ripest erudition, and at the same time with a soul kindled with a hearty love for Christianity,-he was fitted to become the Coryphaeus of a new reformation, to attempt again a final reconciliation of knowledge and faith. Whether we view him in his own natural gifts and susceptibilities; in the aim of his life; in his mixture of reason and love, of philosophy and criticism, of enthusiasm and wisdom, of orthodoxy and heresy; or regard the transitory character of his work, the permanence of his influence; church history offers no parallel to him since the days of Origen.(754)

His early education was received in the university of Halle; an inst.i.tution which had long been the home of pietism, and has continued with but few intervals(755) to evince much of the same Christian spirit.