THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
general attempt at the purification and development of the German tongue, as witness the establishment of a professorship of German oratory in Halle before 1730, and a search for a national literature which had its bearing upon the pulpit. This movement dealt also with the matter of the sermon. People were weary alike of the theological quarrels and of Pietistic verbosity. Interest was more and more philosophical, due in part to the influence of the foreign pulpit and the Enlightenment outside Germany, in part to the growing taste at home cultivated by the demonstrative, mathematicalphilosophical work of Leibnitz and Wolff. Preachers learned the value of conception, arrangement, solidity, definition, and demonstration. Natural religion as the essential content of the Christian, and morals as the essential of natural religion were emphasized. So Mosheim found a contrast not merely between Pietist and orthodox, but between philosophical and Biblical. The mediation between theology and philosophy was begun by Johann Gustav Reinbeck (d. 1741), who showed careful arrangement, solid application, a correct development of the conception, and union of Biblical and philosophical elements.
Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (q.v.), the German Tillotson or Saurin, revealed an elegant style, an apologetic tendency, a convincing force of proof, strong and sure as it was fine, flowing, and pleasing. In spite of a certain breadth of view, the basis is the Evangelical fundamental doctrines; 2. Mosheim ^he a;m js to bring to realization the working-out of the verity of Christian doctrine. To this end Mosheim uses historical illustrations, descriptions of the events of the times, all this with fine psychological solidity. His argumentation is thought through and the exposition is wrought out, revealing the divine active force of the Gospel, the divine origin of Christian ethics. The employment of the text is careful, the themes are practical, the discussion is broad and full. Peters {Der Bahnbrecher der modernen Predigt J. L. Mosheim in seinen homiletischen Anschauungen, 1910) is undoubtedly right in seeing in Mosheim's preaching and homiletics modern traits. While Mosheim was thus influencing the Lutheran pulpit, Tillotson of England (see below) was doing the same for the German Reformed Church through August Friedrich Wilhelm Sack (q.v.) of Berlin, the religious teacher of Friedrich Wilhelm III. and IV Johann Andreas Cramer (q.v.) was influential more upon the oratorical side, employing a fiery pathos, a wealth of rhetorical figures which sometimes seemed to overload the discourse, but a fullness of thought, clear arrangement, excellent choice of doctrinal and ethical circumstances. Related to him in style was Gottfried Less (q.v.), while Christoph Christian Sturm of Magdeburg and Hamburg (d. 17sii) infused a stronger rationalistic strain together with a poetic-esthetic coloring. Among those who followed the new trend of the times were Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem and Johann Joachim Spalding (qq.v.).
The period of ruling rationalism (1780-1810) had been prepared for by the constantly growing influence of the Enlightenment. There was a decided
and His School.
break in the preaching of this period from that of
orthodoxy and Pietism. The orthodox pulpit
maintained the integrity of what it
3. Entrance heid to be the confirmed verities of
°faUsm°n" faith- The EnliShtenment was concerned also with preaching " the pure faith of Christians," and naturally there was a connection with Evangelical church teaching. But the content of the rationalistic preaching stressed the doctrines of God, virtue, and immortality; ethics was distinctly in the foreground. This ethical strain was a reaction from the unfruitful and scholastic discourse of orthodoxism, and it led to a handling of the Christian virtues. This turn of work in the pulpit does not suffer when compared with the Pietistic pulpit, though it was in some respects shallower. It protested against the one-sided appeal to the emotions, it called to earnest action and practical activity. It is therefore not to be condemned out of hand, any more than the preaching of orthodoxism is to be considered a sort of bankruptcy. Of course the handling of Scripture in the pulpit of this type corresponded to the method in which the Enlightenment dealt with the Bible, which ruled the preaching of this time somewhat as it did that of orthodoxism and Pietism, though the thought world of the Bible retreated in favor of that of the philosophic-moralistic, while Biblical diction made way for the buoyant-poetic or ethical-learned. The chief weakness of the rationalistic pulpit lay in its content; its Christianity was diluted. Its commendation is that it advocated a fundamental and practical religion. Particulars to be noted are first the homiletic journals to which this period gave birth, such as the Journal fur Prediger at Halle (1770 sqq.), Beyer's Allegemeines Magazin fur Prediger (1789 sqq.), and Teller's Neues Magazin fur Prediger (1792 sqq.). In the front rank of the individual preachers of the times stand Wilhelm Abraham Teller and Georg Joachim Zollikofer (qq.v.). A commanding personality was that of August Hermann Niemeyer (q.v.). There were also such pedants as Kindervater, Soldan, Snell, and Schuderoff, who preached on the basis of Kantian learning in a manner unintelligible to their congregations. Numerous preachers of the following of Teller turned to dry didactics; so Stolz in Bremen, Loffler in Gotha, Ribbeck in Magdeburg, and the productive Klefecker in Hamburg. Others employed more of pathos; so Hanstein, and Ehrenburg in Berlin. After the French Revolution the history of the church and of the times furnished much material for sermons. This was the case with the Swiss Johann Kaspar Hafeli (d. 1811) of Dessau, Bremen, and Bernburg. In his early career an opponent of the Enlightenment, later he came strongly under the influence of Kant; yet his talented control of language and masterful style revealed the born orator. Stolz, named above, preached on Frederick II., the freedom of the press, Zinzendorf, and the like; the pious supernaturalist Rosenm idler in Leipsic, on the noteworthy events of the eighteenth century. When Tollner proposed to preach on the revelation of God in nature, Kbppen, the advocate of the Bible, protested. Such preachers abounded in city and hamlet. J. L. Ewald (d. 1822) issued sermons upon