GERMAN THEOLOGY.*

SECOND NOTICE.

No one, not excepting even its author, ever thought of claiming for the Leben Jew any great merit on the score of its originality. The importance of the book lay rather in this, that it massed together, with extraordinary skill, all old objections, and hurled them against the citadel of orthodoxy. Be this as it may, it is impossible to exaggerate the effect which it produced. A perfect literature of polemical works followed its appearance. From all sections of theological opinion came forth champions to engage this new Goliath. Steudel, the great-grandson of Berigel, and one of the highest officers in the University of Tiibingen, was the first to attack his rash and insolent subordinate. The Evavelische Kirehen-Zeitung, the organ of the new orthodoxy of Berlin, was not far behind. Tholuck opened his fire in 1837, so did Neander and a host of others, till the whole of Germany rang with the contest. Of all this Strauss took no great account. He published, indeed, a series of contro- versial pamphlets. He made, in successive editions of the Leben .Ten, many admissions, but he did not materially change his views, and in one of his most recent works, the preface to his translation of the dialogues of Ulrich von Hutten, he thus answers the assertion which has often been made, that his work had been refuted : "Well, we won't quarrel about words. Granted that my Leben Jens has been refuted, it has been refuted only as a man's calculation is refuted who supposing that he owes ten thousand florins finds that he owes

only five hundred." • More important than any of the works which were directly in- tended as answers to Strauss were the learned labours of F. C. Baur. This remarkable man had been the preceptor of the author of the Leben Jesse, first at Blanbeuren, and then at Tubingen, and his

* Geshichte der Neat:ten 771eologie. Von Karl Schwas. Leipzig: nvointhaas.

writings bear to those of his pupil somewhat the same relation which the Roman history of Mommsen does to the work of Sir G. C. Lewis on the same subject. They are, in other words, as much construc- tive as destructive. Baur was the founder of the Tiibingen School, of which Hilgenfeld at Jena, and Zeller at Marburg, are the two most distinguished living representatives. Of course there are many things in which the various members of this school do not agree, and their conclusions are often startling, but they have brought to bear upon the writings of the New Testament an amount of zeal and learning which it would ill become any honest man to question, or any scholar to undervalue. Baur died in December, 1860, and four funeral orations pronounced in his honour by his theological coil es at Tiibingen, now lie before us. Not one of these men holdshis opinions, but all of them unite in expressions of the profoundest veneration, equally creditable to them and to the great deceased. Very noteworthy, but noteworthy for a different reason, were the writings of those who attempted to defend the citadel against Strauss, while abandoning many of the outworks. The School of Compromise, as we may call it, includes many of the most respectable theological names in Germany, such as those of Dorner, Nitzsch, and Ullmann, but we question whether it is likely to become more popular than it is at present. Hardly had the learned recovered from the astonishment produced by the Leben dem when they were startled by the writings of a new band of Heaven-storming insurgents. The series of periodical publications called the Hallische Jahrbiieher, the works of Feuerbach and of Bruno Bauer, showed that anarchy had commenced in the field of speculation, and that Forster had said, only too truly, over the grave of Hegel, "No after conqueror will ascend the vacant throne of Alexander." These works, however, hardly come within our province. They mark the violence of the rebound against despotism and hypocrisy. The tendencies to which they bear witness culminated in the follies of 1848, and Germany has, since that memorable year, both learned and forgotten much. Nothing can be more false than the notion which is industriously propagated by a certain class of writers, that one school after another in that country has destroyed its predecessor—that the whole result of thought has been simply to disintegrate. Mach has been said of late of the reaction in German theology, which is supposed to have arisen from the alarm produced by this destructive process. There is truth and falsehood in this talk of reaction. There has been a reaction, but it has been produced by a different cause.. From the death of Altenstein, in 1840, to the change of ministry which followed the assumption of the Regency by the present King of Prussia, the whole force of the Government in the most important state of Protestant Germany was thrown into the scale of obscuran- tism. Professors were instigated to betray their pupils, and pupils to denounce their teachers. This system bore its natural fruits.- A race of theologians arose who were thoroughly reactionary both in religion and polities, but the theologians lost all influence over the laity, many of whom, as we have already hinted, became converts to extreme opinions from disgust at the oppression and bigotry which they saw around them.

Premising that we must leave out of account an immense number of theologians, like Ewald, whom we cannot with propriety connect with any theological party, and "who fight for their own hand," .we may divide the theological world of Germany into four great Camps

1. The New Lutherans.

2. The Hyper-Lutherans. 3. The party of the Nene Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung. 4. The party of the Protestantische Kirchen-Zeitung.

The New Lutherans are led by Hengstenberg, and have for their organ the Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung. They date their rise from the religious excitement which was caused by the union of the re- formed and Lutheran churches in Prussia. At first they were coldly looked on by the Government, but as time went on the rulers at Berlin, acting under the influence of the principles of the Holy Alliance, saw that in this section were their natural auxiliaries. It increased in fatiour through the reign of Frederick William III., and. was muchpatronize,d by the late King. The ideas of the New Lutherans present a singular mixture of Evangelicalism and Tractarianism. There are pages in their journal which would be approved by the most enthusiastic ritualist in England, and others which would be acceptable in Exeter Hall. The Hyper-Lutherans answer as nearly as anything in Germany can do to our decided High Churchmen. They are led by Kahnis, a Professor in Leipzig, and by Vilmar, an ecclesiastic of that happy country, Electoral Hesse. To their ranks belongs Heinrich Leo, of Halle, who has gone, perhaps, as far as any of them in the direction of Rome. In Germany, however, this form of belief seems much more out of place than in England. Our Tractarians have an excel- lent historical right to exist, and if they were dislodged from their place in the establishment it would cease to be the old church of Andrewes and of Taylor. In North Germany the breach with Rome was far more complete, and the modern efforts to repair it have an air of absurdity. Hyper-Lutheran ritualism wants, too, all the infi- nite prettinesses of its English relative. The novels of Miss Yong,e and Mss Sewell are eagerly read amongst the upper classes of

Germany, in whose ranks this party, as well as the preceding one, has its chief lay supporters' but it will be a long time before it pro- duces anything as graceful. The party of the Neste Evanyelische Kireien-Zeitung is that which supports the Evangelical Alliance. It is composed of persons who, holding very diverse opinions, are yet agreed upon certain doctrines which they consider fundamental. To some extent, we doubt not, their mutual good understanding arises from ignorance. A man who is endowed with so much of the wisdom of the serpent as has fallen to the share of Dr. Tholuck may be well content to use such an asso- ciation for his own purposes, while laughing at the illusions of many with whom he sets; but we shrewdly suspect that few of the English members of that body would agree with the Biblical views of the witty and learned professor. No one, however, can avoid looking on the Evangelical Alliance as a well-meant attempt to heal dissensions, however °clearly he may see that for the present such an attempt is worse than hopeless.

The party most likely to have the upper hand in Germany for the next twenty years is that represented by the Protestautische Kirchen- Zeituy, a newspaper published in Berlin. Its chief supporters are Dr. Dittenberger, the court preacher at Weimar, Dr. Carl Schwarz, who fills a similar position at Gotha, Dr. Eltester, of Potsdam, Dr. Sydow, of Berlin, well known by a work which be published many years ago on the ecclesiastical troubles in Scotland, and Dr. Alexander Schweizer, who is one of the most eminent of Swiss theologians, and lives at Zurich. We should perhaps not be wrong in calling these men the disciples of Schleiermacher, but they have learned also from other masters. Their views are well represented by the masterly work of Carl Schwarz, which we have put at the head of this article, supplemented by the Prediyten ass der Gegenwart of the same author. This school accepts many of the historical and exegetical conclusions of Tubingen, but hopes to revive the action of the Church as an engine for the moral and intellectual improvement of mankind, while it rejects three-fourths of what all churches have been accustomed to inculcate. It strives to preserve the spirit of Christianity, but it sacrifices nearly the whole of the letter. The best politicians in Germany would, we imagine, range themselves, if not amongst its members, yet certainly amongst its allies. "We must build up, many of these would say, "a Church which we shall never enter."

If we examine the territorial distribution of religious opinion in Protestant Germany we arrive at some curious results. The bulk of the intellectual middle-class—the officials, the lawyers, physicians, and so forth—in all parts of the country, belong to some section or other of liberal opinion in matters of theology, but the shades are so numerous that it would be impossible to particularize. With the clergy it is otherwise. In the large commercial towns, Hamburg, Bremen, &c., they are generally more or less obscurantist, be- cause those opinions have many adherents in communities where a dissolute youth is often atoned for by a sour old age. In Thuringia they are for the most part liberal. In the grand duchy of Weimar only about twelve out of some three hundred clergymen are other- wise. In Gotha the influence of the Perthes family keeps up a sort of pietistic opposition, but without much result. In Saxony the Government has done all it could to encourage the reactionary party in religion which is identified in Germany with anti-liberal politics ; but in Prussia similar efforts have had more success. The Saxon is a very sober and steady animal, with a great dislike to being driven too hard. In Berlin most of the pulpits are in the possession of re- actionaries. In Holstein and Mecklenburg the pietist party is very powerful.

The universities are very unlike each other in their theological teaching. Some, like Rostock and Erlangen, are entirely in the hands of the ultra-conservatives. Leipzig is nearly in the same condition. Tubingen has forgotten Baur, and her principal theologians belong to the party of compromise. Jena, on the other hand, is decidedly liberal. Heidelberg boasts the great names of Rothe and Hitzig- the former the most brilliant if not the most judicious of living German theologians, the other one of the greatest authorities upon the writings of the Old Testament. Halle is given up to the inge- nious eclecticism of Tholuck and the philosophical mysticism of Julius Muller.'

During the years in which the politico-religious reaction triumphed in Germany the liberal theology of that country made for itself three new conquests—in Holland, in France, and in Switzerland. The centre of the movement in the first of these countries is the Univer- sity of Leyden, and its head is Professor Scholten. His followers have succeeded to the position formerly held by the i'ationalistic school of Groningen, and will ere long be, if, indeed, they are not already, the most numerous section of the Protestant Church of Hol- land. The history of the last thirty years in that country is almost a sealed book to Englishmen; but it is curious in more ways than one. More especially is the divergence of Dutch Calvinism from the old type a phenomenon well worth a closer study than it has yet obtained. Those to whom the subject is altogether new are referred to an article by M. Revile in the Revue des dear illinuks, and to a pam- phlet by M. Chantepie de la Sanssaye. The head-quarters of the liberal Protestant party in France are in Strasburg and its two most remarkable representatives are Professor Reuss and M. Colani. Pro- fessor Reuss is chiefly distinguished as the author of two great works—one in German and the other in French. The first of these is an introduction to the New Testament, and the second treats of the theology of the apostolic age. M. Colani is famous as a preacher. Closely connected with the school of Strasburg are the younger Coquerel, at Paris; M. Reville, at Rotterdam; and M. Scherer, at Versailles.

In Switzerland the liberal theologians have for their principal organ the Zeilstimmen am der Reformirten Kirche der Schweiz, which is pub- lished at Winterthur, and is edited by Lang, a pupil of Baur's, who settled at St. Gall, after having been obliged to leave Germany in consequence of the troubles of 1848. • We understand that Dr. Schwarz will, in the course of this summer, publish a new edition of his very excellent book, and that

it will include an account of Dr. Dollinnr and the more remarkable Roman Catholic theologians of modern Germany, as well as of the Materialist School of Moleschott. Neither of these forms of opinions are alluded to in the volume before us, of which we would have attempted an analysis, if we had not hoped so soon to see it in an enlarged form. The second edition was published six years ago, before the recent changes in the political situation once more un- loosed the mind of Germany. The third will appear under happier auspices. The German Universities have already done much, but. they have not, we think, yet done all that- Providence has in stove for them, in building up. Would that they had the gift of feria which is so plentifully distributed on the west of the Rhine. "Si

la France savait et si PAllemagne inconsiderable ! May not Englishmen be i permitted to hope 'that for them s reserved no share in the good work?