mpartial
inquirers. They set themselves to understand the Scriptural lands and
languages, while their progress in recent Biblical literature gained for
them the respect of many who, though less learned, were more
evangelical. The masses have always paid homage to learning, and in this
case, it was the attainments of the Illuminists which gave them a
standing denied to the friends of the Bible.

The times were all astir with the evidences of mental progression. There
was now a resurrection of European activity. Look whither you will,
there was nowhere either the spirit of sleep or of sloth. The science of
government, the beauties of aesthetic culture, the discoveries of the
material world, and the long-sealed mysteries of philology, were each
the centre of a host of admirers and votaries. As in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries Europe arose from the torpidity of the Middle Ages,
so did the eighteenth century witness a new revival from the darkness
and sluggishness of Continental Protestantism. There appeared to be a
universal repudiation of old methods, and a new civilization was now the
aim of every class of literary adventurers. Semler had struck the
key-note of human pride. He had so flattered his race by saying that the
Bible was not so sacred as to be exempt from criticism, that his
contemporaries would not willingly let his words fall to the ground. The
temptation was too strong to be resisted, and soon the Scriptures became
a carcass around which the vultures of Germany gathered to satisfy the
cravings of their wanton hunger. We do not say that the destructionists
desired to injure the faith of the people, or to cast odium upon the
pages that Luther and Melanchthon had unfolded to the German heart. But
believing as they did that the popular respect for the Bible was sheer
Bibliolatry, and that therefore the dignity of reason was compromised,
they bestirred themselves to show every weak point in the faith of the
church. They hastened to expose the defects of the Scriptures with as
much frankness as they would brand a sentence in Cicero or Seneca to be
the interpolation of an impostor.

In no nation has theology, as a science, absorbed more literary talent
and labor than in Germany. In America and Great Britain the theologian
is the patron of his own department of thought. But in Germany, poets,
romancists, and scientific men write almost as many works connected with
religious questions as on topics within the