THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
1770 to 1809 virtue as the most serviceable thing was the theme of the sermons of J. Moller, B. von Gotland (d. 1805), C. Kullberg (d. 1808), and the neologian Bishop Lehnberg of Linkoping (d. 1808). P. Fredell was an advocate of Swedenborgianism in opposition to the Enlightenment. In Holland in the second quarter of the nineteenth century no names of prominence stand out, and where the French language was spoken the same state of affairs existed. F J. Durand left U Annie evangeliquc in seven volumes (2d ed., Bern, 17S0). Jean Frederic Oberlin (q.v.) stands out as a true witness to the Gospel in an evil time, earnest and popular in his application of Scripture and life, illustrating his thoughts with instructing fulness. Antoine Court and Paul Rabaut (qq.v.) should be mentioned here, and J. Roget (q.vO . In Holland the sermon was influenced by the English school, and the style changed slowly from the older detailed exposition of the text to the synthetic method. The road in this country was broken by E. Hollebeek of Leyden, and P Chevalier of Groningen followed in discourses that were ethical and rationalistic in tone, as were those of E. Kist (d. 1S22) in Dort. G. Bonnet of Utrecht (d. 1805) united the methods of the old and the new schools; the pic us Jakob Hinlopen (d. 1803) for half a century protested by his method against all scholasticism, while L. Egeling in Leyden (d. 1835) was fruitful in his ministry. At the end of the eighteenth century examples of bombastic rhetoric appear in the sermons of J. Bosch and J. van Loo, while the reading of sermons began to be practised after the English model by the middle of that century.
5. The Evangelical Pulpit of the Nineteenth Century: The revival of church life which took place at the beginning of the nineteenth century found its reflection in preaching, which received new blood and quickening and in turn stimulated the common life. Among the influences v\hich worked in this direction
1. Basal
Influences,
were the political conditions. The necessities of Germany during the Napoleonic period and its rebirth during the wars for freedom, resulting in a feeling of united life among the people, gave to the pulpit an aim and a definite direction. The two men most influential in this extended crisis were Schleiermacher and Draeseke, though they were supported by a host of preachers who with earnestness and courage and in noble spirit led the way. A further influence was the growing consciousness of a concrete Christianity in the piety of the times. While some preachers held to the old ways, the general trend was in the new direction, led by men like Draeseke and Theremin into a new form and to contents which attempted to realize a historical Christianity. Above all was the guidance of Schleiermacher, who made the person of Christ and the redemption central in his preaching. Immediately there developed a style of sermon suited to the movement of awakening, and the use of the Bible was no small part of the method employed, while a confessional interest was powerfully revived. As a whole the preaching of the first decades of the nineteenth century was essentially Christological. The general truths of reason are
no longer in control, the Gospel rules. Meanwhile the text has come to its own as the constitutive element, while the dogmatic and confessional are in the foreground ; the merely moral sermon has lost its reputation, the Evangelical takes its place.
Special importance attaches to Daniel Friedrich Schleiermacher (q.v.), who stands in the front rank of pulpit orators, as is attested by his ten volumes of sermons. His importance rests not alone in the fact that he influenced a generation of preachers and their sermons as did no other theologian of his century; but still more 2-jn3^^er" fundamental was his theological and homiletical starting-point in the immediateness of the emotions, to his steady retreat to the innermost Christian consciousness against the old supematuralism, and also against the ruling rationalism and Kantianism. For him, the living sense of community with God is the center of Christian piety, and the stimulation of this is the purpose of all Christian preaching. His idea was to speak ever as to brethren and develop their Christian consciousness. Hence the chief content of his sermons is a clear exposition of his own inner life for believing Christians. The ethical was not neglected, but its sources were found in the religious consciousness. Characteristic was the way in which sin was treated by him, emphasizing the necessity of the new birth ; he believed in a lifting above the situation where the flesh ruled rather than in a continuous conflict with a sinful inclination. In his earlier period he was closely tied to his text, which was generally short; as might be expected of so sturdy a thinker, the disposition of the thought was less formal than material. His preaching was wholly free from pathos, was classically tranquil in its thought development, closely logical in its articulation. Popular in the widest sense his sermons are not, adapted as they are for the cultured; but their clarity and logicalness make easy the understanding of them. He spoke often not simply as a Protestant preacher, but as a pious, experienced sage and moral philosopher. He did not write his sermons, but prepared them by most careful and painstaking meditation. The fact that one so learned in classical antiquity and in philosophy yet made Christ the central point and gave to ethical conceptions the cast of the New-Testament methods of viewing them was to many, tired of the old rationalistic preaching, not merely attractive but positively grateful. And long afterward the influence of his method wo* found among preachers who still regarded him as their model. New light has been cast in this direction by the publication by J. Bauer of Schleiermacher's Ungedruckle Predigten aus l$!0-£$
(Leipsic, 1909), and Bauer's Schleiermacher ah patriotischer Prediger (Giessen, 1908).
His services were supported by a number of preachers of significant homiletical power. As advocates of a faith based on a Biblical revelation may be mentioned Gottfried Menken, Johann Baptist Albertini, and Johann Christian Gottlob KrarTt (qq.v.), Theodore Lehmus of Ansbach (d. IS". A a victorious combatant of rationalism; Christian Adam Dann (q.v.), a preacher with suggestive themes and a diction juicy and forceful; Wilhelm