upernatural
revelation, there is the confidence of human reason, the trust in the
will of man, the enthusiasm for the simple, the natural, the
intelligible and practical, the hatred of what was scholastic and, above
all, the repudiation of authority.

All these elements led, toward the end of the period, to the effort at
the construction of a really rational theology. Leibnitz and Lessing
both worked at that problem. However, not until after the labours of
Kant was it possible to utilise the results of the rationalist movement
for the reconstruction of theology. If evidence for this statement were
wanting, it could be abundantly given from the work of Herder. He was
younger than Kant, yet the latter seems to have exerted but slight
influence upon him. He earnestly desired to reinterpret Christianity in
the new light of his time, yet perhaps no part of his work is so futile.

Pietism

Allusion has been made to pietism. We have no need to set forth its own
achievements. We must recur to it merely as one of the influences which
made the transition from the century of rationalism to bear, in Germany,
an aspect different from that which it bore in any other land. Pietism
had at first much in common with rationalism. It shared with the latter
its opposition to the whole administration of religion established by
the State, its antagonism to the social distinctions which prevailed,
its individualism, its emphasis upon the practical. It was part of a
general religious reaction against ecclesiasticism, as were also
Jansenism in France, and Methodism in England, and the Whitefieldian
revival in America. But, through the character of Spener, and through
the peculiarity of German social relations, it gained an influence over
the educated classes, such as Methodism never had in England, nor, on
the whole, the Great Awakening in America. In virtue of this, German
pietism was able, among influential persons, to present victorious
opposition to the merely secular tendencies of the rationalistic
movement. In no small measure it breathed into that movement a religious
quality which in other lands was utterly lacking. It gave to it an
ethical seriousness from which in other places it had too often set
itself free.

In England there had followed upon the age of the great religious
conflict one of astounding ebb of spiritual interest. Men turned with
all energy to the political and economic interests of a wholly modern
civilisation.