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is not arrayed against a Christian person as a rigid, killing power, but is written on the heart by the Holy Spirit. The Christian is to say with his Saviour: My meat is to do the will of my Father." Illuminism declared virtue to be the only thing firm, absolutely necessary, and the highest in life, but left it to the single individual to determine the nature of virtue; and the greater part rested satisfied with the undetermined word. 1 Claudius makes a minister, a disciple of Illuminism, to write thus :-" I have altogether thrown myself into morals and human happiness, but keep in abstracto, and take every thing à jour, but now so, then so, and every time differently, partly in order that the sameness may not weary them, and partly in order that the fixed form may not by and by gain any prerogatives founded upon ancestry, and thus, reason itself be stereotyped into superstition." The most heterogeneous tendencies assumed to themselves the name of virtue: the flat utilitarian sense, the languid sensualism (Steinbart, Bahrdt), the latitudinarian Humanism, the sentimental good heart, the etherealized generosity, the scorn and conceit of self-righteousness (Seume, and others), yea, even Robespierre's Terrorism. The virtue of Illuminism was a thing infinitely abstract, elastic, and subjective.

It has been regarded as a good sign, that it was in the age of Frederick that the first great poet of the Germans celebrated the Messiah in an epic. This, one may admit, without concealing from oneself the fact that this epic is a failure. It is a historical subject only which has

1 Concerning Rousseau, Schlosser, ii. S. 480, says: Rousseau made the matter easy to himself by connecting, by a rhetorical artifice, the Christian idea of virtue with that word which we, when it occurs with the ancients, are accustomed to translate thus, although the French vertu denotes something quite different from the same Latin word, and from the Greek word which we translate by "virtue."

been prepared for the poetical form by tradition,—such as the mythical time of the Trojan war, the fabulous land of the Niebelungen, the legendary world of the Crusades, which is appropriate to the epic. Upon materials thus softened by the poetical spirit of the people, the poet may impress figures in which the spirit of the present age is to be found again. But what does Holy Writ, this miraculous world of truth, leave for the poet to shape? Klopstock gives us poetical paraphrases of evangelical words, inexhaustible lyrical effusions, puts in motion the world of good and bad angels, etc. But these paraphrases only excite hunger and thirst for the simple text; the stream of Sentimentalism, which carries everything, is infinitely tiresome, and the poetical auxiliary figures so artificial, that they have no power to fascinate any one. If, in general, we consider the piety of Klopstock, and of those men of congenial minds, such as Bodmer, Haller, Gellert, Cramer, and others, we must, indeed, acknowledge, that it has still its roots in the soil of the Church's faith; but we must, at the same time, confess, that it is not the specific Christian, but the general religious element, which comes most out in it. And this piety exists in them as one disposition by the side of others,—by the side of patriotism, friendship, practical wisdom, without being properly reconciled with, and penetrated by, each other. One might be disposed to call them the poets of Supernaturalism, in which the faith of the Church is likewise, in a similar manner, mixed up with Illuminism, Criticism, etc.; and Haller and Klopstock have indeed had great influence upon the development of Reinhard, the most important of the Supernaturalists. In the character of Klopstock there appears considerable self-possession. "His presence," says Goethe, "had something of that of a diplomatist. Such a man undertakes the difficult task

of at once upholding his own dignity, and that of one higher, to whom he has to give an account. And thus Klopstock also seemed to conduct himself as a man of consequence, and as the representative of higher things,-of religion, morality, liberty." This feature, which is apparently secondary, leads us deeper. It is just the peculiarity of the whole period which we are reviewing, that when men have religion, it is they who just have religion, but religion has not the men. Life is a garden for use. If the roses of love, the everlasting flowers of friendship, the oranges of religion are thriving in it, so much the better and more beautiful; but they are, after all, ornamental plants only. Hence the self-sufficiency of the men who have these in addition. If thus the individual felt himself en

titled to have or let religion alone, he might also venture to determine, by his own power, what his religion should consist of. In the poetical worlds of Schiller and Goethe, religion has scarcely a side-place. We have, on a former occasion, pointed out the vital richness of Herder; but this richness wants inner unity: the magical garden of Herder is a labyrinth. If anywhere, this appears in his religious views. All schools of theology find sympathy and support with Herder; that is generally known; but it is not known to all that Herder's idea of God is pantheistic. 1 Jean Paul's religion was a chaotic fermenting of the mind, out of which now Deism, then Christianity, then a new religion seems to come forth. The prevailing religious view was a Sentimental Deism. God is the

1 Erdmann, Die Entwickelung der Deutschen Speculation seit Kant, i. S. 315, says: It is clear that Herder here shows himself as a pantheist; it is, however, a Pantheism which is not, as he himself believes that of Spinoza, but rather shows an analogy with the Italian Philosophy of Nature-with Vanini, Campanella, Giordano Bruno.

highest Being above the stars which, in a manner, not known it is true, combines with fate to settle the destiny of human life. Forbearing with the faults of men, just as it becomes the laws of Humanism, the highest Being looks only to, and most richly rewards, the virtues of men. But inasmuch as that fate, the tendency of which is pre-eminently hostile, denies to virtue its reward in this world, the settlement of this disproportion between virtue and happiness will take place in a better world. The future world has been adorned with its brightest colours by the religion of Sentimentalism. One needs only to read in our cemeteries the tombstones of that period, in order to obtain some idea of what they there expected. He who is the resurrection and the life is not spoken of, but the reward of the noble ones, dried tears, and, above all, meeting again. The ideal of a country minister, a disciple of Illuminism, Voss has drawn in his Louise: good nature and kindly feelings, along with substantial meals; sentimental contemplation of nature, along with the proper agricultural use of nature; enthusiasm for Homer, Plato, and Christ, along with indefatigable onslaughts upon the darkness-loving generation of superstition. In this picture, Voss has given a faithful representation of himself. He possessed the character of a peasant of Lower Saxony, with all the strength, moral purity, and good nature, but also with all the coarseness, stubbornness, and self-righteousness of this class of men. Voss could not say what he would without expressing himself against some one as to what he would not. He was always in controversy, now with Heyne, then with Creuzer, now with Stolberg, then with the Romantics, etc. Most characteristic is that which Perthes writes of a visit to Voss:-" At first, Voss spoke with the patriarchal simplicity which appears in his Louise, of God's beautiful

nature, of olden times, and simple men; but when Fouqué's name was mentioned, suddenly a spirit of hatred entered into the old man, so that I became terrified. "This Fouqué also," so he cried, "those villains of priests and aristocratic sycophants have seduced, and will make him a Roman Catholic, just as they have done Stolberg. After dinner, Voss went with me alone into the garden. In rapid succession he spoke of a number of men, and called them, one after another, sneaks, malicious, deceivers, rascals. I rose and fled. Believe me that, notwithstanding all the appearance of family-life and spirit, notwithstanding all joy in flowers, there prevails in this house a hatred which has deeply moved and agitated me.”

This period of literature, however, is not deficient in witnesses of a living faith in God through Jesus Christ, although they do not meet us on the high road of life. First, there is Hamann, the Magus of the north. A consuming restlessness pervades his life. Unbounded desire of study drove him from book to book, from one department of study to another, without his finding satisfaction. It is almost incredible what departments of knowledge he has wandered through. After years of irregular study, he threw himself, adventurer-like, into the floods of life, until, in London, the Word of God found him. The thirst for salvation with which he read the Scriptures, made him find, as their centre, the salvation of the sinner through Jesus Christ. He had now found the firm foundation; but the wildly-burning fire of his mind was not extinguished. And this volcanic man was tied to friends who did not comprehend him, to a female servant whom he called his wife! He was for a long time a clerk in an office, then a custom-house officer; and yet all these circumstances could not extinguish his fire, they only drove it inwards; and it appears that he warmed himself by