ion to Pietism arose on all sides, equally among the
orthodox, the worldly, and the learned, and finally in the sound common
sense of the people. How the judgment of the thoughtful against it was
expressed in the first half of the eighteenth century shall here be
shown by a short example.

The worthy Semler, of whom more details will be given later, relates
among his youthful reminiscences the sorrowful fate of his brother
Ernst Johann, who returned in a distracted state to his parental home,
from the regenerate circle of Magister Brumhardt and of Professor
Buddeus at the University of Jena. The passage gives such a good
insight into the period of decaying Pietism, that it shall be given
here with a few abbreviations.

"My brother was so habitually upright that he even mistrusted his own
feelings. Easy though it was to many of the brotherhood to declare the
day and the hour of their being sealed to redemption, which warranted
their living in a state of pure, spiritual, heavenly joyfulness, and
raised them to the rank of God's children, yet little could my brother
forgive himself this spiritual falsehood; he could not coincide in what
was so lightly and so repeatedly spoken of by others. He therefore fell
into immoderate grief over the greatness of his sins, which were alone
his hindrance; he not only prayed, but he moaned half the night before
the Lord, but there was no change in his feelings. He seldom eat meat,
no white or wheaten bread; he considered himself quite unworthy even of
existence. Every night, when I had gone to sleep, he stole secretly out
of bed, crept into the small adjoining library, knelt or lay down on
the floor, and gradually lost, in his passionate emotions, all caution
as to speaking softly and gently. His moaning and lamenting awoke me. I
sought him out, and small confidence as I had in myself to produce any
great effect--being as yet little advanced in conversion,--yet I
repeated to him at intervals such beautiful lines and verses, both
Greek and Hebrew, that he often embraced me and sighed, Haying, 'Ah, if
this would but begin in me.' I answered sometimes hastily, that this
was perversion instead of conversion, and how impossible it was for
that way to be right and true, wherein one acted contrary to the
intentions of God, and made one's-self into an utterly useless,
helpless creature. 'Yes,' he said, 'that is what I am, and cannot
sufficiently acknowledge it.' I talked with my mother, who wep