his theological instructions; but in a conversation
two days before his death he betrayed the same skeptical views that had
distinguished his life. His method of skeptical-historical criticism was
the poison which, having been once introduced into the literature and
pulpits of the church, produced wide-spread and long-seated disease.

Semler was not the founder of a school, for he advanced no elaborate
system and possessed no organizing power. Great as were the results of
his labors, no one was more surprised at them than himself. Two or three
immediate disciples, who had heard him lecture, were enamored of his
theories, but as they were men of moderate capacity their activity
produced no permanent effect upon the public mind. It was in another
respect that he was mighty. Some of his contemporaries who taught in
other universities seized upon his tenets and began to propagate them
vigorously. They made great capital out of them for themselves. Semler
invaded and overthrew what was left of the popular faith in inspiration
after the labors of Wolf, but here he stopped. His adherents and
imitators commenced with his abnegation of inspiration, and made it the
preparatory step for their attempted annihilation of revelation itself.
Soon the theological press teemed with blasphemous publications against
the Scriptures; and men of all the schools of learning gave themselves
to the work of instruction. Goettingen, Jena, Helmstedt, and
Frankfort-on-the-Oder were no longer schools of prophets, but of
Rationalists and Illuminists.

Griesbach pursued his skeptical investigations for the establishment of
natural religion and others aided him in his undertaking. But the men
of this class were not the principal agents of the complete ruin of the
religious vitality of the people. We turn to Edelmann and Bahrdt, two of
the most decided enemies of Christianity who have appeared in these
later centuries.

The former was the better man, but his career brought discredit on
private virtue and public morality. In the early part of his life he was
blameless, but he subsequently betrayed all the personal weakness which
his skepticism tended to engender. We get a fair portrait of him from
the pen of one of his countrymen, Kahnis: "What Edelmann wished was
nothing new," writes this author; "after the manner of all adherents of
Illuminism, he wished to reduce all positive religions to natural
religion. The positive heathenish religions stand, to