RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Preaching
and connected, and the aim was to produce religion, not theology.
A third group show either Pietistic or Scripturalistic influences. They are pronouncedly antirationalistic, and reveal the sharp ecclesiastical tendency. They are preachers of repentance, or salvation, or awakening, or conscience, 8. Pietistic kut neVer, in the pulpit, theologians. Antiration- They haye uttie to do ^^ exegesis
P etching an(^ °^er tneu" own witness. They ' seldom speak as the mouth of the congregation, though they are the more successful as Evangelists. They regard little the arrangement of the discourse, at any rate the formal carrying-out of a plan and the formulation of subject and divisions. A peculiar position in this group was gained by Johann Tobias Beck (q.v.), who was Scripturalistic. Other men of Wilrttemberg to be named are Sixt Karl Kapff and Johann Christoph Blumhardt (qq.v.). The latter was mighty as a preacher, and often opened wide the treasure of knowledge and experience hidden in the Scriptures. His sermons rang true, and he was smooth yet popular in his diction. Here should be named a German Swiss who belonged to the speculative division of the school of Bengel and Oetinger, the original and spirited David Spleiss of Schaffhausen (d. 1854), who traced the inner unity of nature and Scripture. In his earnestness he used mouth, hand, and foot in the pulpit in order to give expression to the press of thought, was impressive, fiery, clear, suggestive, yet always popular. His discourses were uncommonly full and connected. From the Prussian rural church came August Tholuck (q.v.), whose Pietistic coloring was toned down by his academic activity. His idea of the sermon was that it should not be a demonstration of man's intelligence but a testimony of the divine Spirit. His discourses owe their force especially to the masterful psychological development of a deep and binding apologetics, sharpening the conscience. The noble, cultured, and impressive diction is inspired with the warmest feeling and the deepest earnestness, while the exposition is lightened with the play of a lively but sanctified imagination. He was free in the matter of form, in the method of handling his text, even in the choice of a text, not restricting himself to Scripture but using, e.g., passages from the Augsburg Confession. Purely a Pietist was Gustav Knak (d. 1878), especially successful in his appeal to the heart and emotions of the congregation, and possibly the most sensitive and appealing of all the preachers of the nineteenth century.
A fourth group is composed of those who first set forth Christian verity in an external garb drawn not so much from the Bible as from the individuality of the preacher; they also show a desire to rub off many corners and edges of Biblical pronouncements, thus to present Christian doctrine in a milder form and one more in accord with the characteristics of the times. Preachers of this type of academical theologians are especially numerous, and particularly those who belong to the mediating theology. It is not strange that among many of these the thoughtful working-out of the verities of faith seemed more IX.— 12
9. Individualism Dominant.
important than immediate influence upon heart and conscience, and one might even assign Tholuck to this group, though in him the pietistic-Biblical element preponderated. This last was not the case with Karl Immanuel Nitzsch (q.v.), whose sermons, like Schleiermacher's, showed a complete blending of the religious and the ethical; he also laid little stress upon form and diction. The deep inner harmony of his being, grounded in a fully ripened completion of his philosophical, theological, and practical ecclesiastical views, the imperturbable peace, and the conciliatory character of his mind were mirrored forth in his preaching. Julius Muller (q.v.) showed in his preaching an argumentative exposition of Scripture and a learned and dialectic development which required sympathy of energy in the hearer or reader. The sermons of Richard Rothe (q.v.) were such as could spring only from his own singularly deep and cultured nature; what he uttered was wholly his own, in speech and in flow of thought entirely individual. Externally his sermons present a finished oratorical and artistic form. Karl Theodor Albert Liebner and Friedrich August Eduard Ehrenfeuchter (qq.v.) belong to this group, as do Albrecht Wolters, remarkable for poetically beautiful and thoughtfully fine testimony, and Willibald Beyschlag (qq.v.), a brilliant preacher of fine sensibilities, who employed a mild apologetics to the reconciliation of Christianity and modern culture. He was a witness for Evangelical Christianity with great freedom of spirit and constraint of conscience, a noted exegete, uniting the thought of the text with individual comprehension and elaboration. Here also must be placed Julius Mullensiefen (q.v.), though his sermons reproduce more faithfully than those just mentioned the Biblical coloring ; he is also much more popular, deeper mentally, and richer in feeling than many of them.
The fifth group includes within its numbers preachers with wide differences; they share with the preceding independence in the form of thought and of construction, and they speak not in the language of the Bible but in that of the times. The general attitude is that of Carl Schwarz : 10. Modern- u ^Q^ onjv jg ^e present born again
through the spirit of Christianity, but Christianity itself is born again through the present." It is not the old rationalism which comes out in this group, however; all in which that form of thought failed, religion, in which lie the depths of the soul's life, is that which these preachers would supply on the basis of the incarnation of Christ, real and effective, and no less on the basis of the entire and complete humanizing of Christianity. Of this group Carl Schwarz (q.v.), cited above, is the leader and chief representative. His idea was to make use of whatever had been critically established by Lessing, Herder, Schleiermacher, and Hegel, and to make it available to the congregation. He translated Christianity, formally as well as essentially, into German in sermons which were religiousethical. Christ was not pushed into the background, though the presentation of him was of a sort other than that of the Biblically based church doctrine. His sermons might be described as highly idealistic, rhetorically forceful, warmly religious,
istic Group.
Preaching: