THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
matic sermon— the ten little sermons of 1718 which were intended as exhortations for the young king, which were so marked by terseness yet grace of diction that they were regarded as patterns. Massillon is distinguished for high ethical earnestness, remarkable frankness, and a sympathetic tone, and the totality of excellent qualities found in his work gained for him the title of " the Racine of the pulpit." Fenelon (q.v.) is sharply distinguished from the brilliant Bossuet by the fact that his discourses owe their strength to the element of pray erf ulness, meditation on the divine, instructive spirituality, and use of Christian experience. With Massillon closed the classic period of the French pulpit. The Jesuit Segaud (d. 1748), Paulle, and especially the missioner J. Bridaine (d. 1767) are representatives of the post-classical period.
3. Transformation of the Protestant Pulpit, 1700-1810. The next period shows the battle of Pietism and ecclesiastical orthodoxy, of supernaturalism and the Enlightenment (q.v.). With Spener began a pulpit service which had a practical aim of upbuilding upon the basis of faith
1. Pietism, and a consecrated life. The means was a faithful and diligent exposition of Scripture. Mechanical confessions of salvation in Christ alone became experienced salvation, external ecclesiasticism became a living attachment to the true body of Christ. The form of the sermon became simpler, the structure more distinct, the expression plainer. The development was gradual, the movements in theology having their influence as the relations of Pietism and orthodoxy changed, and as the new philosophy and the Enlightenment and supernaturalism contributed to the unfoldings of the period.
Philipp Jakob Spener (see Pietism, I.) gave in his Pia desideria, chap, vi., and in his Theologische Bedenken, vols, iii.-iv., worthful hints for the reform of the sermon. The discourse was to have as its aim the renewing of man by faith and the production of the fruits thereof in life. Yet Spener Spener accompiished m0re through his per-
Followers sonanty than by the too learned and dry method of his preaching. Spener sought with painstaking endeavor to exhaust the dogmatic and ethical content of the text by an exact and extended exegesis. His discourses were often lacking in unity, the cause being a sort of prelude to the sermon used in order to attain comprehensiveness. Yet by his clear reference to Scripture, his simple and practical-fruitful application, and by the employment of ethical themes and a strongly ethical trend of the dogmatic material he drew crowds to his church and became the introducer of a strong stimulus for the Lutheran Church and its pulpit. His principal collections are those upon the Gospels for the year 1G88, Evmigelische Lebenspflichten (1693), Evangelischer Glaubenstrost (1694), sixty-six sermons on the article dealing with regeneration (1695), and a considerable number of volumes on various subjects and occasions. The Halle school of preaching soon gained great celebrity and preeminence. Its characteristic was a greater simplicity in form, while the application was a matter of more concern than the development of
3. Various Schools.
doctrine. August Hermann Francke (q.v.), who left several volumes of discourses, showed a simpler structure than Spener, followed the course of the text rather than a theme, though his handling of the material was somewhat mechanical, and the treatment verbose. In content his sermons were practical, and what he produced was individual in character, free in its method, and essentially quick in substance. Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen (q.v.) employed, as did Spener, a prelude, and his theme and division are inartistic. Joachim Justus Breithaupt (q.v.) was less influential as a preacher than as an instructor and furtherer of the new tendency in learning. Joachim Lange (q.v.) was more a teacher of homiletic theology than a preacher. Gottfried Arnold (q.v.) took high rank by his pulpit work. The Gotha superintendent, Georg Nitsch (d. 1729), was a man of great freshness of spirit, exact knowledge of Scripture, possessed of humor, able to appeal to the popular ear, keen in his denunciation of sin, and sturdy in his appeals for the realization of the Christian virtues in life.
The later Halle school failed in that it too frequently spoke over the heads of the congregation in its effort for the didactic and the intellectual; it stressed emotion, producing warmth rather than light. The great teacher and exegete of this school was Johann Jakob Rambach (q.v.), a man of fine grain and irenic spirit, whose Prcecepta Homiletica aimed at a simpler, more lucid and natural, practical yet texttrue development of theme and exposition in the year's round of sermons. He united intelligible clarity with Christian heartiness and warmth, a poetic and lively imagination with a strong depth of thought. He used a short introduction, simple arrangement based on the text, logical order, a clear and living development on the basis of the best of North German Pietism. Nevertheless he exhibited that schematic stiffness in the arrangement of his sermons which was a heritage from the seventeenth century, as well as a wearying uniformity, which grew out of pietistic leanings, in the practical application of his sermons to converted and unconverted (new matter is to be found concerning him in M. Schian's J. J Rambach als Prediger und Prcdigtheoretiker, in Beitrdge zur hessiscltcn Kirchengeschichtc, vol. iv., Darmstadt, 1909). Among his imitators are Johann Philipp Fresenius (q.v.), Johann F Starck (d. 1756), author of a Hausgebetsbuch (new ed. by Heim, 1845), and Abbot Steinmetz of Bergen (d. 1762). Wiirttemberg produced a series of preachers who developed a fresh, healthy, and many-sided method which has lasted till the present. The characteristics of this school are a firm, realistic, in part mystic Bible faith, with a broad conception of the organism of revelation, real churchmanship, a free and scientific development, and unconstrained construction of the doctrinal basis, especially on the eschatological side. The forerunners were Heinrich Haberlin, named above, Johann Andreas and Johann Friedrich Hochstetter (both d. 1720), Johann Reinhard Hedinger (q.v.), and the best preacher of them all, Georg Konrad Rieger (q.v.). Johann Albrecht Bengel (q.v.) is less famous as a preacher than as an exegete, though his sermons show a classical repose