Internal History of German Protestantism

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

WHEN, in the beginning of last year, I undertook the editorship of the Church and School Magazine for Saxony (Sächoisches-Kirchenu. Schulblatt), it appeared to me that a comprehensive review of the course which the development of German Protestantism has taken since the middle of last century, would be the best method of effecting that which such a magazine is expected to effect, viz., the means of understanding the present condition of the Church. I have some reason to believe that the seven articles in which I carried out this idea have not remained without fruit within the immediate sphere of their destination. In now putting them together for the benefit of a wider circle, no violence is done to them, inasmuch as, from the first, they were written with the view of forming a united whole. This book is, nevertheless, not a mere reprint of those articles. I have corrected them throughout, have altered many things, and added elements by no means unimportant. Notwithstanding these things, however, the book in its tone and manner will still exhibit its origin. It is not written in the style of the Compendia.

This, however, I regard as its smallest defect. The time seems to be passed when our compendium style, with its abstract oracles, its epigrammatic and pointed periods, its exhibition of quotations and literary notices, was admired. Wherever it was feasible, the schools have been characterized in the very words of their representatives. Whatever the book may thereby have lost in its claims to historical art, it has gained in-objectivity. But that which many will not pardon, is the stand-point from which I judge. The fact, however, that in historical representations of the time reviewed by me, opinions are expressed, is countenanced by the example of Schlosser, on the territory of universal history; by that of Erdmann, on the territory of philosophy; by that of Tholuck, Neander, Hagenbach, and others, on the territory of theology. That which is granted to these stand-points, a theology also, I should think, may claim, which at least has historical right in its favour.

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