RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Pietism
tian life. For the furtherance of this type of Christianity he recommended household devotions, extempore prayer, and Bible readings, 10. Pro- as well as a stricter observance of Sunmotion day. He labored earnestly in behalf of Lay of Christian discipline and morals, Religion, not only assailing current offenses in public and private life, but also raising the standard of conscience and refining the moral sense. In his reaction against the prevailing laxity and licentiousness which the Lutheran clergy judged too leniently as things indifferent, Spener's stress on Christian and moral earnestness was no less wholesome than justifiable. He also emphasized the rights, and still more the obligations, of the laity in the Church; opposed the monopoly of the clergy; energetically revived the theory of the common spiritual priesthood of all believers; promoted the cooperation of the laity in ecclesiastical administration ; and procured both recognition and free scope for the spontaneous activity of laymen in the life of the Church, even though in the latter direction he merely gave expression to general ideas and wishes. He created no actual organizations, for neither was he the man, nor was the time yet ripe. Nevertheless, in an age of sharp denominational cleavage, Spener awoke the Protestant sense of fellowship between all communions that rested on the common basis of the Reformation. He helped pave the way toward friendly relationship between the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Germany, both fortifying unionists sentiment and preparing the means of union though rejecting any artificial and precipitate attempts at union. On the other hand, he was far more firmly convinced than most of the statesmen and clergy of his time that Roman Catholicism had deviated fundamentally from the Gospel of Christ, and that the " Roman peril " was veal. He gave repeated expression to the thought of missions among Jews and heathen, and emphasized the missionary duty of Protestant Christianity at a time when the Lutheran Church had almost no conception of any such duty; and it was Spener's Pietistic friends, pupils, and disciples who went out from Halle in 1705 to the work of the Evangelical mission among the heathen, they being the first in Germany to attempt that field.
In all these lines, indeed, Spener did not stand entirely alone among his contemporaries. He had his forerunners and colaborers. He was not the " Father of Pietism " in the sense that n. Coop- it emanated exclusively from him. He erating was met half-way, as it were, by a Forces, widely diffused sentiment in the Lutheran Church of Germany, and he was aided in many phases of the situation by the change which took place in the general spirit of the age. There were also cooperative influences proceeding from England, Holland, and Switzerland. For the Lutheran Church of Germany, however, Spener was the acknowledged and honorable protagonist; he was the most eminent advocate and the spiritual center of all those forces which so vigorously sought to reform the Lutheran Church in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Paul Grunberg.
II. Pietism at Halle: A new epoch in the development of Pietism was marked when, for a time, the University of Leipsic closed its doors to the movement, whereupon the theological faculty of the newly founded University of Halle i. Prestige was filled, under Spener's influence of Francke with men of his own type. From the and his In- first the dominant spirit was August stitutions. Hermann Francke (q.v.), who, though professor of Hebrew and Greek in the philosophical faculty until 1698, immediately began to lecture on exegesis. His colleagues were Joachim Justus Breithaupt, Johann Wilhelm Baier, Paul Anton, Johann Heinrich Michaelis, Joachim Lange (qq.v.), and Johann Daniel Hernschmied. The university was also profoundly affected by Francke 's establishment of the famous Halle orphan asylum and affiliated schools and institutions. Many students of theology here received not only support, but preparation for their studies; the publishing house facilitated the literary propagation of Halle's cause; the collegium orientale afforded opportunity for linguistic training; and in the infirmary attached to the orphan asylum the medical faculty found compensation for the lack of a university clinic. Since Francke was both the dominant power in the faculty and the director of the orphan asylum, the former organization soon became so closely bound up with the interests and aims of these various institutions that the Halle phase of Pietism derived its peculiar nature from this very combination. This state of affairs was undeniably advantageous in many ways to the faculty, which gained prestige from the growing recognition of Francke 's organizations, while the number of theological students at Halle rapidly increased; though, at the same time, these very factors caused a decided loss of independence and freedom of action in the faculty
In its command of an assured position, the Halle school of Pietism quickly assumed the aggressive, and deemed itself called to be the censor of divergent tendencies, views, and modes of life. This attitude rendered it still more difficult for its opponents to recognize its good intent, and contributed much to the degeneration of the controversies into personal animosities to the prejudice of 2. Unsuc- real explanation and mutual undercessful standing. This turn of events was the War on more unhappy since even without them Pietism, the mass of conflicting elements would have resulted in open rupture. In 1698 strife broke out between Francke and the clergy of Halle, followed by a series of clashes between the theological faculty and the law professor, Christian Thomasius (q.v.), who had enthusiastically espoused the cause of Francke at Leipsic, all these controversies, however, being eclipsed by the attitude of the theological faculty toward their colleague, the philosopher Christian Wolff, who was deposed from his office by King Frederick William I. (see Wolff, Christian, and the Wolffian Theology). Of still greater moment were the literary battles between Pietism and its opponents outside of Halle. The most significant of these was the Wittenberg theological professor Valentin Ernst Loscher (q.v.), with his Vollstdndiger Timotheus Verinus (Witten-
Pietism