nt and changes of Christianity, and exhibited theology as an
historical process, and as a momentum in the gradual development of the
human mind, not logically, and with very deficient understanding of
ancient times, but yet according to the laws of science. He veiled from
himself the opposition between his faith and his researches in science,
by making a rigid distinction, like the Pietists, betwixt religion and
theology--betwixt the eternal cravings of human nature, which were
satisfied by the old revered forms of revealed faith, and the eternal
impulse of the mind to understand every earthly phenomenon. He has been
called the Father of Rationalism; in truth he was only an enlightened
Pietist, one of those who seem called to prepare, by the union of
opposite conceptions, a new life. He was born in Saalfeld, the son of
an ecclesiastic, a scholar at Halle of the learned Baumgarten; then for
a year the _redacteur_ of the newspaper at Coburg, and for a year
professor of history and poetry at the Nuremberg University of Altorf.
He was called back by Baumgarten to Halle, where he, for nearly forty
years, combated the old Pietists victoriously, and died one of the most
worthy heads of the great University. The following is the account
which he himself gives of his love and wooing; it cannot be given here
without some small alteration in the language, for Semler has--what is
characteristic of him--little in his style of the broad, sure method of
his philosophical contemporaries, but much of the indistinct mode of
speech of the Pietists. He does not use figurative language nor
primitive phrases, but he loves, like them, a certain mysterious
circumlocution and remote allusions, that sometimes make the meaning
almost incomprehensible and require slow reading. Yet it is necessary
to remember one thing, that the following narrative may not disappoint
expectation: he who here narrates was in fact a man of worth and
refined feeling, who rightly enjoyed the full esteem and veneration of
those who lived with him.

Semler has gone through the separation from the family of Baumgarten,
has returned as Master of Arts from Halle to his father's house at
Saalfeld, and has there renewed his acquaintance with a young lady
friend. He relates thus:--

"My residence in Saalfeld did not last long, but was not quite
satisfactory to me. I saw, it is true, that worthy friend very often,
and we enjoyed ourselves together as much as with our virtuous