hed what he wished,
while his success was far beyond his expectation. He found that a large
portion of his countrymen were not willing to cast loose from the old
moorings of the Protestant teachings, and that, whatever the previous
indications were, there was yet a deep undercurrent of attachment to the
time-honored confessions of the church.

The movement employed by Lessing to find out what the people really
believed is one of the shrewdest literary tricks on record. Without
committing himself to what he issued, and watching carefully the effect
of the _Fragments_, he began to publish his own views with no little
assurance that he would prove successful. He learned that the Wolffian
philosophy was becoming effete, and so he raised the cry, loud and
clear, against its longer existence. He violently opposed the
obliteration of all dependence upon the historical proofs of
Christianity, and claimed that, in the matter of religion, the heart has
a work not less than the reason. His principle was: overthrow this
historical basis, and you endanger the whole edifice. He inflicted great
injury upon the inflated, pompous Popular Philosophy, for he exposed its
emptiness as but few were able to do. He opposed, with all the force of
his rare satirical and logical power, the attempt of the Rationalists to
substitute the intuitions of Reason for the dictates of the heart and
for the promptings of faith. "What else," he asks, "is this modern
theology when compared with orthodoxy, than filthy water with clear
water? With orthodoxy we had, thanks to God, pretty much settled;
between it and philosophy a barrier had been erected, behind which each
of these could walk in its own way without molesting the other. But what
is it that they are now doing? They pull down this barrier, and, under
the pretext of making us _rational Christians_, they make us most
_irrational philosophers_. In this we agree that our old religious
system is false, but I should not like to say with you [he is writing to
his brother] that it is a patch-work, got up by jugglers and
semi-philosophers. I do not know of anything in the world in which human
ingenuity had more shown and exercised itself than in it. A patch-work
by jugglers and semi-philosophers is that religious system which they
would put in the place of the old one, and, in doing so, would pretend
to more rational philosophy than the old one claims."

It was difficult to tell what Lessing believed. His p