was merely
aesthetical, and only so far as the Bible was an agent of popular
elevation, did he seem to consider it valuable. He did not dispute the
facts of Scripture history because of the various accounts given of them
by the inspired writers. Variety of testimony was no ground for the
total overthrow of the thing testified. He retained the history of the
resurrection in spite of the different versions of it. "Who," he asks,
"has ever ventured to draw the same inference in profane history? If
Livy, Polybius, Dionysius, and Tacitus relate the very same event, it
may be the very same battle, the very same siege, each one differing so
much in the details that those of the one completely give the lie to
those of the other, has any one, for that reason, ever denied the event
itself in which they agree?"

We may examine the entire circle of Lessing's literary productions, and
we shall see, scattered here and there through them, sentiments which,
taken singly, would have a very beneficial effect upon the popular faith
in inspiration and the historical testimony of the Scriptures. But,
unhappily, these were overshadowed by others of a conflicting nature,
and though he did not array himself as a champion of Rationalism, he
proved himself one of the strongest promoters of its reign. He
considered his age torpid and sluggish. It was his desire to awaken it.
And he did succeed in giving to the chaotic times in which he lived that
literary direction which we now look back upon as the starting-point of
recent German literature. The chief evil that he inflicted was due to
the position in which he placed himself as the combatant of the avowed
friends of inspiration. He was honest in his love of truth, but he loved
the search for it more than the attainment. The key to his whole life
may be found in his own words: "If God should hold in his right hand all
truth, and in his left the ever-active impulse and love of search after
truth, although accompanied with the condition that I should ever err,
and should say, 'Choose!' I would choose the left with humility, and
say, 'Give, Father! Pure truth belongs to thee alone!'"

The revolution which Lessing wrought in literature was only equaled by
that achieved by Kant in the domain of philosophy.

It has been one of the historical features of German theology that it
has ever affiliated with philosophy. The mathematical method of Wolf has
been a severe blow to orthodoxy, and it was but parti