The Methodist Quarterly Review
July, 1861
ART. IV.-SCHLEIERMACHER, DE WETTE, AND HARMS.
[FROM HAGENBACH'S HISTORY OF THE CHURCH IN THE XVIII
AND XIX CENTURIES.]
SCHLEIERMACHER was born in Breslau, Nov. 21, 1768, and acquired his earlier education,
secular as well as theological, at the Moravian Institutions of Niesky and Barby. And if
somewhat later he left the brotherhood and continued his studies at Halle upon a different
system, still, down to the end of life, he never ceased to acknowledge the beneficial
influence of his early Moravian training. "Piety,'.' says he, "was the maternal
womb in whose holy obscurity my young life was nourished and prepared for the world to
which it was still a stranger; in it my spirit breathed before it had found its sphere in
science and the experience of life." While chaplain in the hospital in Berlin
from 1796 to 1802, Schleiermacher fell into intimate relations with the brothers Schlegel
and other bold spirits of the Romantic school, and to this period, in which his Platonic
studies fall, belong hi two early works, "The Discourses concerning Religion,".
and the "Monologues." We begin with the latter be-cause they present us with a
better view of the interior life of the man than could be given by any merely outward
biography, and because they reveal him as he stood before his own conscious ness' and that
of his cotemporaries.
While Goethe regards self-scrutiny and self-observation as something morbid,
Schleiermacher asserts exactly the opposite, and seems to have Goethe in his mind when he
says: "Who-ever knows and sees only the outer manifestations of the spirit, instead
of the life which moves concealed within; whoever, instead of contemplating himself, does
nothing but gather together from far and near an. image of his outer life and its
vicissitudes, must ever remain a slave of time and necessity, and whatever he thinks and
devises must bear their stamp." From the Monologues of Schleiermacher a spirit
breathes upon us like to that of Fichte. To get possession of himself to bear eternal life
in himself even in this world, to become conscious of his Ego as something indestructible,
this was the goal toward which everything tended. "Begin now," said he,
"thine eternal life in perpetual self-inspection, grieve not for that which is
passing away, but be careful not to lose thyself, and weep if thou art borne away by the
stream of time with-out carrying heaven within thee. To be a man a single resolve is
sufficient; whoever makes it is a man forever; whoever ceases to be a man never was
one." Thus with proud satisfaction did the preacher recall the hour in which he had
found the consciousness of humanity, not by means of a system of philosophy, but through
the inner revelation of one luminous moment, by his own act; and he assures us that from
that hour he never lost himself. In distinct opposition to the abstract, generalizing
ethics which regards all men as mere mathematical quantities, as fragments of one and the
same mass, Schleiermacher declares in the Monologues that every man must develop humanity
in his own way. He freely confessed that the vocation of the artist, who moulds the outer
world into shapes of beauty and rejoices in the perfection of form, was something quite
foreign to him; and herein we again see him distinctly contrasted with Goethe. He regarded
it as his mission, his destiny, not to represent a permanent work without, but to labor
upon himself within. And this destiny, this mission, he expected to work out only in
communion with others. With him, how-ever, the true communion was that wherein each freely
allows the other to act according to his own peculiarities, and yet each completes the
other, so that altogether they may exhibit the true picture of humanity. A strong but
noble self-reliance, rising almost to prophecy in respect to his own future, finds
utterance in the following striking passage from the Monologues:
Unenfeebled will I bring my spirit down to life's closing period; never shall the
genial courage of life desert me; what gladdens me now shall gladden me ever; my
imagination shall continue lively, and my will unbroken, and nothing shall force from my
hand the magic key which opens the mysterious gates of the upper world, and the fire of
love within me shall never be extinguished. I will not look upon the dreaded weakness of
age; I pledge myself to supreme contempt of every toil which does not concern the true end
of my existence, and I vow to remain forever young.... The spirit which impels man forward
shall never fail me, and the longing which is never satisfied with what has been, but ever
goes forth to meet the new, shall still be mine. This is the glory I shall seek, namely,
to know that my aim is infinite, and yet never to pause in my course.... I shall never
think myself old until my work is done, and that work will not be done while I know and
will what I ought. To the end of life I am determined to grow stronger and livelier by
every act, and more vital through every self-improvement; I will wed youth to age, so that
the latter may be filled and thoroughly penetrated with inspiring warmth. . . .Through
self-study man raises himself to a position which despondency and weakness cannot
approach, for eternal youth and joy sprout from the consciousness of inward peace and its
action. So much has been accomplished and shall never be yielded; therefore when the light
of my eyes shall fade, and the gray hairs shall sprinkle my blond locks, my spirit shall
still smile. No event shall have power to disturb my heart; the pulse of my inner life
shall remain fresh while life itself endures.
Schleiermacher kept his word. All who knew him in his later years will recall with
pleasure the impression made upon them by the appearance of this youthful old man. And
yet, whoever will be at the pains to compare this language of the Monologues with the
anther's later writings must be struck with the feet that the moral courage, the trust in
his own strength, the almost reckless moral boldness here expressed, is widely different
from the meekness of that feeling of dependence which finally became the root of
Schleiermacher’s theology. Schleiermacher felt this himself in after years, and in a
new edition of the Monologues explained that he had only given an ideal of his nature,
toward which he strove, and that the self-inspection was therefore made solely from the
ethical standpoint, while its religious element did not appear. He was anxious on account
of the onesided notion of his own personality, produced by the Monologues, practically to
counteract them, and by a series of religious soliloquies to supply what the little book
lacked, but he never did it This lack, however, may be considered as measurably supplied
by his Discourses on Religion, which (FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XIII.-26) appeared
in 1799, one year before the Monologues. These Discourses on Religion, addressed to the
educated among its despisers, were a highly important phenomenon, and exerted a
powerful influence upon their times. Not only such men as Werner, but also many younger
men, to whom whatever concerned religion had become a riddle, by these discourses found
themselves brought near to. the solution of the' riddle, found themselves relieved and
edified. To understand this here, as in the ease of the Monologues, we must place
ourselves back completely in the time of writing; for Schleiermacher himself remarks in
1821, in issuing the third edition, that the times had undergone a marked change, and that
the persons to whom the discourses were originally addressed were no longer to be found.
*["Rather," he remarks, "if one looks around him among the educated, do we
find it necessary to write discourses for bigots, and slaves of the letter, for the
ignorant uncharitable, persecuting devotees of superstition and credulity?" Thus
wrote Schleiermacher in 1821, twenty-two years after their first publication. Another
series of years has passed and how stands the matter now? We have the slaves of the
letter, and the despisers, and what not.]
It is needful again to recall the fact that through the Kantian philosophy, which still
counted its disciples among the educated, religion had been transformed into mere
morality, and that everything relating to religious exercise, to cultus; etc., had come to
be regarded as a mere indemnity for those classes of people who are not able to bring
themselves up to pure morality. Still the attendance of the educated classes upon divine
service was justified, not, however, upon the ground of necessity, but of example. This
contempt for religion, springing as it did mainly from an entire misunderstanding of its
nature, was boldly met by Schleiermacher in his Discourses. In opposition as well
to the view which makes religion merely a matter of knowledge, whether as the dead
material of traditional dogmas or as an interesting subject of philosophical discussion,
as also to that which reduces it to a mere moral discipline, he sought to elevate it again
to its true position, to restore it again to its original rights, by pointing out feeling
as its own peculiar sphere. But by feeling he understood, not that fleeting movement of
sensible experiences, which passes away as quickly as it arises, and which becomes the
deceitful play of the tune of the hour; not that fantastic susceptibility and emotionality
which he himself has so earnestly opposed; but he meant thereby the innermost germ of the
man, the central, focal point of his spiritual life, the source and the root of all our
thinking, striving, and acting, the most immediate and the most original portion of our
inner life. Religion cannot be taught and imparted from without, nor communicated by
dogmas or sentences; but must be begotten in the mind of the pious as an original
sentiment, as something learned by experience and lived, and must make itself known as an
all-ruling and all-appropriating power. The religious man is turned in upon himself,
devoting himself to the innermost deep; and everything outward, so far as it makes itself
known as distinct knowledge, or as action, is only secondary or derived. In these
fundamental views concerning the nature of religion Schleiermacher agrees with F. Jacobi,
who, as we know, strives to free divine things from the slavery of the dead idea, whether
of the theological or philosophical schools, and to press them down into the innermost
ground of the soul; not, indeed, that they may remain there as if buried in holy gloom
like a dead treasure, but rather that out of this depth they may come forth to the light
as pure, refined gold, as the in-destructible heritage of our nature, dependent on no
change of systems. If Jacobi conceived religion more in its universality, if he hesitated
to describe it in its historical distinctness, as essentially Christian, Schleiermacher on
the contrary showed that natural religion, so called, to which the educated classes of
that period were especially inclined, was a mere chimera, a naked abstraction of the
understanding, and that religion never works efficaciously upon man until it becomes
something definite and positive, Especially did he bring out what Jacobi had overlooked,
namely, the social element, and showed that from the earliest times, individuals who had
been peculiarly stirred by the religious life, had always worked upon society, and as
religions founders had gathered associations about them. Without even naming Christ,
except as one of the series of religions founders; without describing, even in general,
the Christian, among other historical religions, as the only true religion of humanity, he
still taught his own times how to get away from the loose generalities with which they had
so long been occupied, and to attain to something distinctively Christian. "These
Discourses," as a modern theologian has truly said, "are rather a defense of
religion in general than of Christianity in particular; they were uttered, so to speak, in
the outer court of theology, in the court of the Gentiles," and yet they already
clearly enough contain those peculiar, fundamental principles which Schleiermacher
afterward carried out in his (glaubenslehre) system of dogmatics.
Still a very serious charge has been brought from various quarters against these
Discourses, and even by parties front whom, after knowing the relation between
Schleiermacher and Jacobi, we should not have expected it; we refer to the charge of
pantheism. [This charge comes especially from the side of Rationalism, particularly from
Rohr. Against this imputation compare Karsten's examination and estimate of Dr. Rohr's
article on Schleiermacher's Discourses on Religion. Rohr's article appeared in the
"Critical Library for Preachers." Rostock, 1835. lee also the polemical papers
of Hase.] And it is true the Discourses bear this stamp in their whole tone and
expression; there is no mistaking it. Neither a personal God, nor personal immortality, as
Rationalism would have them held, are here to be met with; on the contrary, passages
enough are to be found which remind us even less of Jacobi than of his opponent Schelling,
and of his philosophy; passages in which the all, the universe, the absolute, take
the place of a known and named God, and in which the being taken up into that one and
universal might appear to be the very goal of all our wishes. But we must here
again recall the time in which the Discourses were written, and the persons to whom they
were addressed. There existed, indeed, at that period faith in a personal God, but it was
a faith that worshiped in God a metaphysical being, separated from the world, who comes
into no communion with man, who, unconcerned about the world and human inhabitants, leads
a life of simple self-complacency, intending at most at some future time to judge the
world which he had been at the pains to create. Against this cold deistical belief, just
at that time constituting the religion of those claiming to be the educated classes, and
still lingering in the heads and hearts of many, Schleiermacher presented the living,
spiritual presence of a world-indwelling God, ever present with us, uniting and allying
himself with our nature, and making us happy by his abode in us. It cannot and must not be
denied, however, that our author in doing this approached the pantheistic modes of
expression, and even appropriated them further than was needful for his own purpose. At a
later period, however, he broke away from this pantheistical mode of thought, and
testified against it both in distinct explanations and in his whole Christian development.
Indeed, in opposition to the common sort of these "all-in-one men," as he called
them, who only hide their unbelief in higher truths, behind their pantheism; in opposition
to the Romantic poetasters who sport with religion, in shallow poetry, he had already
declared in the Discourses that when philosophers should become religious and seek God,
like Spinoza, and artists should become pious and love Christ, like Novalis, then and only
then should dawn upon humanity the resurrection of the two worlds of art and philosophy.
In respect to immortality, Schleiermacher indeed admitted that the usual method of
treating the subject did not accord with, and could not proceed from the true nature of
piety; that in many persons the belief in immortality appeared to be opposed to piety,
because their desire to be immortal has no other ground than a repugnance to that which is
the ultimate aim of religion, because they attach more importance to their future
existence in the sharply defined outlines of their own personality than to God and a godly
life. For such, he sup-poses were meant the words of our Lord: "Whosoever shall lose
his life for my sake shall find it," and the reverse. The. more they long for an
immortality of which they can form no conception; the more do they lose of that
immortality which they might have here. Whoever has learned to be more than himself knows
well that but little is lost in losing himself; only he who is even here united with God,
in whose soul, even here, a great and holy longing has arisen, only he has the right and
the capacity further to discourse concerning the hope which death gives us, and concerning
the infinity to which death shall infallibly elevate us.
By his' call to Halle, in 1802, as professor of theology and philosophy, and his
appointment in the newly established University at Berlin in 1810,* [The places be
occupied are the following: 1794, assistant preacher in Landsberg on the Warthe;
1796-1802, preacher et the Hospital in Berlin; 1802, Court preacher in Stolpe,
and in the same year University preacher and professor at Halle. In 1807 he went back to
Berlin, and, like Fichte, gave lectures before the general public. In 1809 he became
preacher at Trinity Church, Berlin; in 1810 professor at that place, and in 1811 a member
of the Academy. It is a very significant fact that in his case the clerical office was
ever united with that of professor, and the chair of the professor was divided between
theology and philosophy.] Schleiermacher became more fully devoted to theological science,
and in this more definite sphere of theological labor we shall meet with him further on.
If we have designated Schleiermacher as the man from whom a new epoch in theology is to
be dated, we did not mean to intimate that it was in the power of any one man, however
gifted, to change the direction of the times, and to fix upon them the exclusive stamp of
his own spirit, or that only one man was to be submitted to our inspection. Schleiermacher
himself would have been the first to refuse the position which some have assigned him in
history, for he confesses that he was only able to accomplish anything great in connection
with others. And in fact we shall find that even before Schleiermacher had distinctly
presented his theological mode of thought in its complete systematic development, another
spirit had appeared in the field. About this time we meet with a tendency which goes
beyond the so-called rationalism and supernaturalism, and seeks to effect a reconciliation
between the two. The reconciliation thus sought must be carefully distinguished from that
theory, or rather that mere expedient, which takes one half of rationalism and one half of
supernaturalism, and outwardly and mechanically uniting them, calls the product rational
supernaturalism.* [Schleiermacher makes himself quite merry at the expense of these
theologians: "For my part I am thoroughly uncomfortable when I hear the ra and irra
and supra whistling about me, for it always seems to me that this terminology
grows more and more confused. But that the concert may be complete, I propose, with
all respect, to add to the irrational and rational supernaturalism,
not only a supernaturalistic rationalism and irrationalism, hut also a naturalistic
and innaturalistic suprarationslism, and when these offspring of the earth (for they may
scarcely claim a loftier origin) shall stand forth fully armed, it is to he
hoped that the old passion for slaughtering one another will take possession of
them."]
Some, with the venerable Daub [Born 1765, at Cassel; at one time professor at Hanan.]
of Heidelberg, in connection with the modern speculative philosophy, sought to lead the
way in a theological mode of thought which should lay bare the very foundations of
doctrine; others on the contrary sought, in the path of psychology, that path trodden by
Kant and Jacobi, and which Fries had traveled in a way peculiarly his own, to separate
that which in matters of religion pertains to the understanding, from that which falls
within the sphere of faith and presentiment, powers of the human soul which Kant has not
sufficiently regarded, and which have their rights as well as the understanding. They
aimed in this way to rescue the mysteries of faith from rude treatment, to point out the
insufficiency of human language, and to bring religious thinkers, behind what is
symbolically expressed, to have a presentiment of a higher something which cannot find
vent in words or in any sensible representation. In the place of a mode of investigation
merely logical and coldly calculating, one was proposed clearly conscious of its own
procedure, and marked by a kindliness and pious inspiration near akin to that with which
we view a beautiful work of art, and hence called the aesthetical. As a
representative of this tendency we name a man who was destined through the course of his
life greatly to elevate the intellectual life of our native city (Basle) and its
university, we mean of course De Wette. Growing up under the influence of German (Saxon)
rationalism, he received from it the critical tendency which delights in analyzing, and in
pulling to pieces. So earnest, indeed, was he with this criticism, that he could not
content himself with the half-way process of the Rationalists, who like Paulus sought by
skillful interpretations of the miracles to adapt the Bible to the culture of the times,
or, like Bohr and Wegscheider, weakened, its dogmatic contents to bring it into agreement
with their rationalistic mode of thanking. De Wette looked the Bible, which he so aptly
and faithfully translated, frankly in the face; he did not close his eyes upon the abyss
which now at last manifestly yawned between the ancient period of miracles and the modern
age of reflection. He left the miracles as he found them, but when he could not accept
them as miracles, then, according to the analogies presented in the history of other
religions, he admitted mythical elements in the sacred history and sought to secure these
against profanation by transferring them from the region of historic and prosaic reality
to that of poetry, a poetry which, as he understood it, so far from being synonomous with
falsehood, expressed and symbolized the very loftiest ideal truth. And while he
scrutinized the individual books of Scripture, or portions of them, as to their
genuineness, (in regard to the authors to whom they are ascribed, or the periods of time
to which they are assigned,) while he ventures many a bold and damaging blow against the
outer organism of the Bible, still for the interior organism of the divine idea of
redemption as it comes to light in Scripture, for the idea of religion, running through
the whole history of revelation, returning again and again under the most varied forms,
and perfecting itself in Christ, and for the power of that idea in the souls of men, he
showed a delicacy of susceptibility far greater than that of the great mass of
Rationalists, or even than the supernaturalists; who, while they anxiously clung to the
letter of the Bible, showed but little comprehension of its very kernel, of the con
trolling principle of its revelation. And it was Dc Wette who, even before
Schleiermacher's importance to theology had come to be generally acknowledged, pointed out
the necessity of regenerating the Church by means of a believing theology, transfused with
religions ideas, and inspired by holy feeling; and he well knew how to stimulate the young
and the ardent to work for it. With De Wette Christianity did not depend on a doctrine
embraced with the understanding; he declared, at a time when such utterances were regarded
as the evidence of a suspicious pietism and mysticism, that to yield up ourselves
believingly to the single personality standing before us in the sacred history is the one
thing essential, and that the living Christ must form the very center of all theology. De
Wette had the courage as well of a confessor of the truth as of an unbiased investigator
of it, and if the conscientious investigation, which he regarded as his solemn mission,
prevented him from reaching completed results as quickly as those who were bolder and less
exact, this fact must increase our respect for his opinion. If Schleiermacher, therefore,
in his philosophical modes of speech, followed in part the natural philosophy of
Schelling, De Wette followed another philosophical leader, namely, Fries, who, joining
himself to Kant and Jacobi, sought to unite the critical tendency of the former with the
faith and feeling in the theory of the latter. But Schleiermacher and De Wette agreed and
outstripped their age in this, namely, that they did not make religion chiefly a matter of
knowledge and of the understanding, but of spiritual feeling and religious faith, to which
they united presentiment, and vindicated its long neglected claim.
Now before we examine the modern theology in its connection generally, we must do what
we have perhaps already too long delayed, that is, cast a glance at the development, so
far, of European history, or at least of the political history of Germany. It must be but
a glance, for its thorough treatment does not belong here.
All the revolutions which we have hitherto seen passing in the sphere of the intellect,
whether in philosophy, theology, literature, or education, stand in striking connection
with the great events of the political world. The French Revolution, proceeding from a
principle wholly different from that of the German Reformation of the sixteenth century,
had, not only in France, but also in Germany, left behind it the traces of that destroying
spirit which had trampled in the dust whatever was heavenly, and communicated itself in a
great measure to public opinion. The Napoleonic period immediately succeeding had indeed
thrown up a dam against the dissolving and destroying element, but of what sort? An iron
dam of force. The ideas of the Revolution, so far as they stood related to morality and
religion or to their substance, remained the same, but their further development or their
check depended on the caprice of the conqueror. Religion after as before appeared as bit
and bridle for the people, only that the bridle which had been wantonly cast away was now
again buckled on. It is well known that Napoleon, notwithstanding the greatness of his
practical understanding, with which, as with eyes of lightning, he looked through the
relations of life, yet had so little appreciation of the might and magic of ideas that he
berated the German theologians as unpractical heads, and yet he could not free himself
from a secret fear of the power of these ideas. Indeed, there remained for the poor
Germans during the period of oppression, nothing but to flee to the realm of ideas, and to
strengthen themselves inwardly, while outward disfavor prevented activity. Nothing was
left them but to temper their character by means of these ideas, while the sword rested in
its scabbard. Thus was it with Fichte, as well as with many others. This German patience
has been despised and mocked at, but it should rather be regarded as an heirloom of
Luther, who, boldly as he met the day of decision, knew how to be still before God and his
judgments. The day of decision came. The time of battle came in the years 1813-1815, the
period of deliverance. In the memorable winter of 1812 God marked for the proud oppressor
his limit, and said, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further, and here shall thy
proud waves be stayed." The German people, the youth of the land, took courage, and
with their eyes directed to God, that he would not forsake them, the iron die was cast.
The battle for many thus became a religious, a holy struggle; a battle between the
time-honored German faith, German morality and discipline on the one side, and foreign
licentiousness on the other. So at least the men regarded it who then called the German
people to arms. Thus it was viewed by an Arndt, a Max Schenkendoff, a Foque, a Theodore
Korner. Then sung Moritz Arndt:
Who is a man? He who can pray,
And trust the Lord most high;
When earth is wrecked he trembles not,
His trust can never die.
Who is a man? He who believes,
For truth and freedom burning;
This fortress strong no human throng
Has power of overturning.
God can alone protect his own,
And give them peace end conquest.
This was the watchword and' battle-cry both of the manhood and the youth of Germany in
that critical period. In respect of doctrines and modes of thought, the religious
excitement was, as from the pressure of circumstances it could not fail to be, very
indefinite. Time enough had been consumed with unfruitful definitions of doctrine, now the
great want was that faith should reveal itself in acts; and as each one in a physical
struggle reaches for the weapon which is near at hand, so each one now seized the
intellectual weapon which he best knew how to use. This was indeed fortunate for a period
of early enthusiasm. A quiet examination of the religious and moral motives of each
individual, an analysis of the elements in a moment of time, was not to be thought of; for
this seasons of agitation are not appropriate. Such analysis and investigation could only
come when the fermentation had ceased, and the elements had become quiescent. And thus the
gain to religion was not at once apparent; indeed, this was not at first inquired for, but
rather, as was reasonably to be expected, the political advantage, which the nobler
spirits hoped would become the firm foundation of a moral and religious life. With the
sense of German power, of German courage, and German unity, were bound up expectations
which were not realized after the peace, either in the way looked for, or so soon as had
been hoped by many who had called the people to the conflict. When the outward foe had
been conquered-conquered, indeed, a second time, by the united hosts of Europe, the battle
immediately became a domestic one. The relations of prince and people, of single states to
collective Germany, were at once elevated into life questions, for whose solution men did
not feel compelled to wait on tedious diplomatic negotiations. The young generation, full
of active life and devoted to liberty, demanded, not without violence, the realization of
their ideal, and thus drew upon themselves the suspicion of demagogism. It thus happened
that the religious interest which at first had stirred the hearts of the people, was
compelled to fall back and take its place in the rear of the political; and if it is true
that the majority of European princes * [With the exception of the King of England, the
Pope, and the Sultan.] in the first feeling of gratitude for victory over their enemy, at
the suggestion of Russia, in 1814, formed the "Holy Alliance," with the
distinctly expressed design of establishing Christianity, above all differences of creed,
as the supreme law for the life of the nations;[See Hase’s Church History. Goethe
says of the Holy Alliance, "Nothing greater, nothing better for humanity has ever
been devised"] still there were not wanting those who looked upon this same holy
alliance with eyes of distrust, and detected behind The Christian phrases which so many of
the great were now using a concealed purpose, by means of piety, to lead the people back
to their old servitude. The political liberalism of the day derided the good-natured
enthusiasm which gave attention to these pious utterances, and was only too much inclined
to confound the newly awakened religious life, and the reviving pietism, with the
Catholicising Jesuitical tendencies, which, like worms in the vernal sun, had manifestly
begun to stir.
Such Germans as Vosz, Paulus, and Krug stood at the head of this party; on the other
side, however, were many of the gentler spirits who looked for a political regeneration to
proceed from a spiritual, and sunk themselves in the religions view of the middle age:
they built upon a romantically decorated idea of the German empire, and even sought
through this profounder, though duskier religious enthusiasm, through the power of
mysticism, to work with holy earnestness upon the political sentiment. Even the outward
appearance, in dress and in the growth of the hair, was to 'remind men again of the
character of the middle age, of the old German times; and the godly German youth, through
the energy and favor of their souls, were to triumph as well over shallow liberalism as
over heart-less' diplomacy it is well known that this spirit, so well agreeing with the
romantic, was originally dominant among the students of the universities; and it is
obvious that this tendency, where guiding principles are lacking, must degenerate into a
dangerous fanaticism, and of this fanaticism the unhappy Sand afterward became a mournful
victim.
In the midst of these religious and political disturbances, in 1817 came the festival
of the commemoration of the Reformation, whose disclosures most strikingly showed how
different were the standpoints from which this world-historical event was regarded. The
friends of fatherland saw in it the justice of demanding for the State what Luther had
demanded for the Church. Luther and Hutten became symbols of energetic German manhood; and
the Reformation, of decisive resistance to spiritual oppression and violence. From this
standpoint, penetrated, indeed, with religious elements, the festival at the Wartburg was
celebrated, to which the youth from every German district flocked in great numbers, where
great recollections were awakened, high resolutions formed, precious oaths sworn; but at
the same time youthful imprudences were perpetrated, which afterward brought the innocent
into painful complications.* ["Wherefore should I," says Arndt, "bring back
the recollections of an evil period now past" Both were wrong, those who raised the
excitement and those who commanded quiet; but from the latter greater wisdom and patience
might have been expected. This famous chase after demagogues had many bad results. In the
first place, the disease, which had been only on the skin, struck down into the nobler
parts, with many into the very heart and follies, or innocent youthful ebullitions, became
evil fancies, with some indeed criminal plots; hut, secondly, the worst was its slow
secondary operation.]
It was not the political side alone, much as the times might emphasize it, that was to
be comprehended at the festival of the Reformation; but the Church was required from her
own stand point to know what there was in the Reformation which she was called upon to
honor. But even here opinions were far apart. While one celebrated the Reformation only as
the forerunner of a free mode of thought, in the sense of Rationalism,* [Thus, Wegscheider
dedicated his dogmatics to the manes of Luther.] as the feeble beginning of that which in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had attained its completeness in illumination and
science, this was opposed by others with the demand to return to the old doctrines of
Luther, from which men had, alas! too widely separated themselves in these last times.
Forward, with Luther or without him, but still forward, cried the one party; backward to
Luther and to the faith of the fathers, cried the other. Among the latter appeared a man
who claims our special attention. Proceeding from the lower classes of the people, he was
able by means of a powerful personality, and a bold picturesque fancy in public discourse,
to work upon the people, and to fill them with enthusiasm for the ancient faith. This
Claus Harms was the archdeacon at Kiel, [See his autobiography, Kiel, 1851, Baumgarten, a
memorial of Claus Harms, Brunswick, 1855; and Pelt in Hertzog's Real Encyclopedia.] the
son ofa miller, born in 1778, in South Ditmasch, in Holstein, who until his twelfth year,
besides a thorough catechetical training at home, had only enjoyed the advantage of a
village school, and had been taught the elements of Greek and Latin by the Rationalist
preacher of the place. Until his nineteenth year he assisted his father, and after his
father’s death, his mother, in the labors of the mill. At that age, driven by an
irrepressible thirst for knowledge, he entered the normal school at Meldorf, and afterward
the Kiel University. He made rapid progress, [He first earnestly studied Kant's
philosophy, but afterward received deep religious from the reading of Schleiermacher's
Discourses, and started m a path which soon carried him beyond Schleiermacher in strict
churchliness and positive orthodoxy.] passes his examination well, and after spending a
year as private tutor, and ten years as a country pastor, he was called to the position of
archdeacon at Kiel and preacher of the Church of St. Nicholas in that place. Harms in his
manner of preaching had already departed from the beaten track. It had been for seventy or
eighty years esteemed essential to good pulpit eloquence to preach in argumentative,
symmetrical, forward-moving speech, and to avoid as unfitting everything picturesque,
nervous, and striking; it had been especially laid down that a definite theme should be
pursued, according to a plan well and thoroughly thought out, in the strict logical order
and connection of its parts, of which method Zollikoffer, Reinhard, and Reinhard again,
had successively been models; but Harms struck out another and opposite course. He flung
behind him the shackles of the schools; he threw himself directly, with all life and
feeling, into his text, and spoke from it in the language of the people, and from the
feeling of the hour. Like Luther, he watched the popular mouth, and from it caught the art
of talking with the people. Hence his fondness for proverbs and verses of hymns familiar
to the people, to which he hung his discourse, not even despising the rhyme and jingle of
the words. And he employed the ,whole broad creation as a great art gallery of religious
symbols and life relationships. He delivered nature sermons from nature-texts, though not
in the sense of the earlier sentimental preachers, who could say so many fine things about
the rising and the setting sun, about the flowers of spring, and the starry heavens, while
they pushed Christ and the apostles, and the whole Gospel aside. On the contrary, to him
all nature was but a prop for Christianity, simply the outer revealing of what must be
wrought in us, if the Divine Spirit shall there create a spring, and the Sun of
righteousness shall call into being a new creation. Herein he followed the example of Him
whose parables appropriated the sower and the various kinds of soil, the fig-tree, the
lilies of the field and the fowls of the air, and of whom it is said: "He spake as
one having authority and not as the scribes." Indeed, Harms's preaching was attended
with great power; of this his winter and summer postils give sufficient evidence, and many
stories are told, bordering on the miraculous, of the effect of his preaching and
impressive prayers. [On a certain occasion, during a long drought, according
to a custom in Holstein, he prayed for rain. None of those present expected at the time of
starting for church that the rain would come so soon, and all, even Harms himself, were
greatly surprised when the large drops suddenly smote the high old church windows. Deeply
moved and pale, for a few seconds he was silent, appearing to listen, and then with a
voice suppressed, but continually swelling out more and more, he cried out: "Hearken,
by beloved Church! The Lord has heard you, the Lord passes over you, and his feet drip
with blessings." See Rheinwald’s Repertorium.] It is at least certain that while
many of the churches of that day were empty, that of Harms was crowded; many from among
the educated classes, who had ceased to attend divine service, became his hearers, and
strangers in great numbers attended his ministry. Many among them may have been drawn
merely by the originality of the preacher; but others no doubt found the spiritual food
for which they had long endured sad hunger. Some even compared him with Luther, so that,
encouraged by such opinions, harms may have felt himself called to step forth as a
Reformer. He at least thought that the best way for him to commemorate the Reformation was
to place by the side of the ninety-five theses which Luther nailed to the door of the
Castle Church in Wittenberg ninety-five others which he regarded as fitting for the times,
and which attacked Rationalism with sturdy words. He spoke of a popery of reason, from
which the Church of the nineteenth century must be delivered, as was the Church of the
sixteenth from Romish tyranny. He laid bare many ecclesiastical defects, with which he had
become acquainted, first in Holstein, but afterward in collective Germany, and in the
Protestant Church generally. He demanded a return to the old Lutheran faith, to the old
pious customs of the fathers. We have no reason to suspect that he was led to adopt this
course by vanity, or by a desire to make for himself the name of a second Luther; we doubt
not that zeal for the safety of the Church, which he believed to be in great danger from
Rationalism, was the prompting motive; still we are required by candor to confess that the
manner in which his zeal found vent was better calculated to rouse the feelings than to
make matters clear to the understanding. Upon many it could only make the impression that
Harms condemned the use as well as the abuse of reason in matters of religion, that he was
disposed entirely to forget the history of three centuries and violently to compress the
spirit of the nineteenth century into the forms of the sixteenth. The theses made at all
events, a great stir; they produced joy among the strictly orthodox, who had long kept
silence and sighed under the rule of Rationalism, but irritation among the friends of
Illuminism. The reproach of popery was thrown back upon the author, modesty was commended
to him, and he was reminded, not very gently, of his humble origin,* [He might carry
his sacks to mill as he used to do.] which, it was said, did not especially qualify him to
pronounce judgment upon questions which men more learned than himself had not been able to
clear up. Many called him a blockhead, a Jesuit, even a hypocrite, and allowed themselves
to offer him the grossest personal insults. Many who had awarded him a high position as a
preacher, were offended and deserted him; others, on the contrary, were attracted to him,
and cheered him on in the way in which he had begun. The agitation was greatest in
Holstein, and even in Kiel. There the strife between the parties reached even to the
relations of social and family life. So far did things proceed, that not only social
circles were dissolved on account of these theses, but even marriage engagements were
broken. [The children in the streets, playing upon his name, (Harm in
German meaning grief;) sung the song:
Soon the pens of the learned were set in motion for and against the theses. The most
remarkable thing was that the learned Ammon, chief court preacher at Dresden, hitherto
regarded rather as a defender of Rationalism, now came forward as the friend of these
theses, and greeted in them the dawn of a new and better era. This was too much for
Schleiermacher's patience. He regarded Harms, as he himself assures us, as a
well-disposed, ingenious, and truly Christian man, inspired by a noble zeal; he rejoiced
in his wide-spread and beneficial activity, but the publication of the theses he regarded
as a blunder, or rather as a mere piece of arrogance. He knew the condition of the
Protestant Church and theology too well to be persuaded that any fundamental advantage
could 'result from the bold utterances of mere authority. Schleiermacher was by no means
the friend of bald, vulgar Rationalism, (if he was, he aided in overturning it;) and he
who was so far in advance of Harms in scientific culture could not conceal from himself
that the wants, religious and ecclesiastical, of the nineteenth century were different
from those of a former period. And he could only be the more offended when such men as
Ammon, who were farther separated from the old orthodoxy than himself, gave their
unconditional assent to the Harmsian theses. The affair brought keen definitions and
discussions, and did not end without bitterness. One result of this thesis battle was that
a livelier interest arose in matters of Church life, and the strife between the
Rationalistic faith and that of the Bible, which since the time of Reinhard had been
mostly an affair of the theological schools, now became a question about which, in the
interests of their own salvation, the Churches, the heads of families, and individuals,
began to trouble themselves. It now became less a proof of weak mindedness than it had
been for ten or twenty years past, for a man to be more concerned about Christian affairs
than about the news of the day. Conversation began to turn more than formerly upon
religion.
If the mind of Schleiermacher everywhere influenced the most important ecclesiastical
events, it was that same mind a]so which, in his twofold position of learned theologian
and preacher, wrought so instructively and edifyingly and decisively upon the religious
conviction. His Dogmatic, (Glaubenslehre,) first printed in 1821, was designed as a
dogmatic for the evangelical, that is, the united Church, and was meant to meet alike the
religious and scientific demands of the period. We cannot into a detailed exhibition and
estimate of it, but must be content with its fundamental features. What most of all
distinguishes the Dogmatic of Schleiermacher from the earlier treatises of the kind, is
that his book is indeed a dogmatic, an exposition of that which ought to be, and is
believed; not the product of a philosophical school. Schleiermacher himself, in the
noblest sense philosophically cultivated, and as an author distinguished in the sphere of
philosophy, still set himself in earnest opposition to all attempts to mingle philosophy
with theology.* [Speculation and faith are often viewed as standing in relations of
hostility to each other; but it was the peculiarity of this man to unite them most
cordially, without prejudice to the freedom and depth of the one or to the simplicity of
the other.] With him theology does not stand or fall with any philosophical system
whatever; it stands and falls, according to him, only with religion and the Church. Where
there is no religion there is no theology; and where there is no experience in divine
things such things cannot be understood, no matter how rich and extensive the
philosophical knowledge. Religion, indeed, is not in the first place a matter of
knowledge, but of innermost self-consciousness, of the feeling, our feeling of dependence
on God. Upon this feeling of dependence Schleiermacher founds his whole theology. Not what
God is in himself, but what he is in his relation to. this pious feeling of ours, that is
the problem which a dogmatic (Glaubenslehre) has to solve. Inasmuch, however, as this
pious feeling is only developed in communion, a Christian dogmatic must also represent
this common Christian feeling as it lives in the Church. The Christian Church, according
to Schleiermacher, however, is Rot a crude mass of people of every variety of opinion,
accidentally brought together; but a religious organism, that body of which Christ is the
head. Christ the Redeemer, not merely an ideal though-image, but the real historical
Christ, as he once lived personally in history, and as he now lives a spiritual
personality, and continues to work in the Church, is, according to him, the very center of
Christian theology. He knows nothing of a doctrine of Jesus which can he conceived of and
represented merely as doctrine, apart from his person; but only by coming into
life-communion with the Redeemer can we become partakers of Christianity according to its
true nature. He proclaimed everywhere, in the pulpit and in his writings, with the
greatest earnestness, that with Christ begins an entirely new era, both in the history of
the world and in the life of the individual; that with him the sinless One, the sole
dominion of nature, the dominion of sin, first ceases, and the kingdom of grace, the
sovereign rule of the Divine Spirit, commences and spreads, and that thus out of Christ
and without him there is no salvation; and in this way he brought theology back to the
faith from which it had departed. This with him was the great aim. The man who in
everything was elevated above the letter, and who from his very nature was compelled to
conceive profoundly and spiritually of whatever he touched, could not desire to establish
a timid, slavish faith in the letter. While, therefore, with his distinct faith in Christ,
from which he would not abate an iota, he might appear on the one side to many as a
mystic, as a philosophizing Moravian, who with his dialectics could make even nonsense
appear plausible; on 'the other side, he did not fail to give offense by the free-thinking
style in which he expressed himself respecting particular doctrines, as well as individual
books of Holy Scripture, and their relation to the whole; for with him the essence of
Christianity depended on none of these, but only on the free grace of God in Christ.
(FOURTH SERIES, Vol. XIII.-27)
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