nd believes revelation
because it finds it to coincide with the discoveries of free thought. But
there is a third tendency, which believes revelation without professing to
understand it; which rests on the revelation in scripture as an objective
verity, and believes the Bible on the ground of evidence, without
questioning its material.(850)

The first germ of this reaction in favour of rigid orthodoxy was
observable in the feeling aroused by the theses of Harms, in 1817, already
named, on occasion of the celebration of the tricentenary of the
Reformation; but it was quickened by the attempts, initiated by the
Prussian king, between the years 1821 and 1830, to unite the Lutheran and
Calvinistic branches of the Protestant church.(851)

The time seemed then to thoughtful men a fitting one, when doctrines were
either regarded as unimportant or superseded by the religious
consciousness, to unite these two churches under the bond of a common
nationality, and the practice of a common liturgy. But the old Lutheran
spirit, which still survived in the retirement of country parishes, was
aroused, and some pastors underwent deprivation and persecution rather
than submit to the union.(852) This new movement at first caught the
spirit of pietism, just as had been the case with that of Schleiermacher;
but gradually abandoned it for a dogmatic and churchlike aspect, as he for
a scientific expression. Its aim was to return to the Lutheranism of the
sixteenth century, and to rally round the confessions of faith of that
period. Hengstenberg(853) at Berlin, and Haevernick,(854) are the names
best known as representing this party at the period of which we speak.
Their efforts were directed to criticism rather than to doctrine, to
reconstruct the basis for Christianity in Judaism by defending the
authenticity and credibility of the ancient scriptures. In doctrine and
the canon, they reverted to the position of the Reformation. But the alarm
ensuing upon the work of Strauss, in 1835, invested this movement with a
more reactionary character; and the journal(855) which gave expression to
Hengstenberg's views, gradually assumed the character of an ecclesiastical
censorship, frequently marked by defiance and severity, like the tone of
Luther of old.

The panic caused by the revolutions of 1848 gave increased stimulus, by
adding a political reaction to the religious. The extreme rationalist
party had favoured the Revolution, and the school of Sc