Part 21

§ 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.