f the old Pietistic fervor. The songs
of the church were no longer images of beauty, but ghastly, repulsive
skeletons. The professor's chair was but little better than a heathen
tripod. The pulpit became the rostrum where the shepherdless masses were
entertained with vague essays on such general terms as righteousness,
human dignity, light, progress, truth, and right. The peasantry received
frequent and labored instructions on the raising of cattle, bees, and
fruit. The poets of the day were publicly recited in the temples where
the Reformers had preached. Wieland, Herder, Schiller, and Goethe became
more familiar to the popular congregations than Moses, David, Paul, or
even Christ. By this time we might reasonably expect the harvest from
Semler's favorite theories. There was no school as yet by which he
worked upon the public mind, but the greater portion of theologians
caught up scrap-thoughts from his opinions and now dealt them out in
magnified proportions to the masses who, like their Athenian
predecessors, were ever anxious to learn what was new. That so many
influences as we have seen in force should completely subdue orthodoxy
is not wonderful, when we consider first the minds that originated them,
and then the dull and frigid condition of the church.

But, as the fruit of these influences, there was no common system of
theology adopted by the Rationalists. The reason is obvious. Rationalism
was not an organism, and therefore it could have no acknowledged creed.
Its adherents were powerful and numerous scouting-parties, whose aim was
to harass the flanks of the enemy, and who were at liberty, when
occasion required, to divide, subdivide, take any road, or attack at any
point likely to contribute to the common victory. One writer came before
the public, and threw doubt on some portions of the Scriptures. He was
followed by another who, while conceding the orthodox view of those very
passages, would discard other parts, even whole books, as plainly
incredible. A third discussed the character and mission of Christ, and
imputed a certain class of motives to him. A fourth attributed to him
totally different, if not contradictory, impulses. There is no one book,
therefore, in which we find an undisputed Rationalistic system, for the
work that may represent one circle will give but a meagre and false view
of another. Besides, what the most of the Rationalists might agree upon
at one stage of the development of their ske