old than in any other, he stripped for the undertaking. While a mere
youth he gained, by his tricky management, a professor's chair. He
blasphemed to his auditors by day, while at night he surrendered himself
to the corruptions of the gambling-room, the beer-cellar and the house
of prostitution. The slave of passion and of doubt, he was, of all his
contemporaries, the most loud-spoken against the claims of God's truth,
and adherence to the canons of the church. His mind was quick, active,
and penetrating. Seizing the pen, he invaded the sanctity of every
doctrine that stood in the way of his corrupt theories. He took up the
Bible with sacrilegious purpose, and made it the plaything of his
vicious heart. He sneered at what was revered by the church and the good
men of past ages, with the kind of levity that should greet the recital
of the stories of _Sinbad the Sailor_ and the _Wonderful Lamp_.

He published many works, the aim of all being to infuse into the masses
a contempt of the received Scriptures. He issued a travesty of the New
Testament under the title of _The New Testament_, or _The Newest
Instructions from God through Jesus and his Apostles_. He did just what
he pleased with the miracles and words of Christ. He would convert
dialogue into parable, and make any passage, however grave in import,
minister to his unsanctified purpose. He banished such expressions as
'kingdom of God,' 'holiness,' 'sanctification,' 'Saviour,' 'Redeemer,'
'way of salvation,' 'Holy Ghost,' 'name of Jesus,' and all other terms
that could leave the impression of inspiration and divine presence.

But corrupt as the church was, it was not ready for this fearful leap;
therefore Bahrdt received a torrent of abuse. Banished and hunted by
opposition, he gained many adherents from the force of the very arrows
discharged against him. He had fallen from the height of faith which he
occupied when he went to Giessen, a fact which he refers to in his
autobiography: "I came to Giessen," says he, "as yet very orthodox. My
belief in the divinity of the Scriptures, in the direct mission of
Jesus, in his miraculous history, in the Trinity, in the gifts of
grace, in natural corruption, in justification of the sinner by laying
hold of the merits of Christ, and especially in the whole theory of
satisfaction, seemed to be immovable. It was only the manner in which
three persons were to be in one God, which had engaged my reason. I had
only explained to myse