they
believed and fought; go you and do likewise." This new race sprang from
the Romantic School, led by Tieck, Schlegel, and others; but while it
possessed that enthusiastic admiration of the past which these men
indulged, their literary offspring exhibited a more earnest Christian
faith. It was in that day of distress that Uhland first poured forth his
notes of awakening; that Koerner sounded the bugle-call of freedom; that
Rueckert molded sonnets stronger than bullets; and Kerner sighed for a
world where there is no war, and no rumors of war.

Thus, when liberation came, no one class could claim to be the sole
agent of its accomplishment. But it is certain that if the religious
spirit of the people had not been appealed to and aroused, all literary
and aesthetic efforts would have been in vain. It was the religious
consciousness of the masses east of the Rhine which, being thoroughly
awakened, drew the sword, and gained the victory of Waterloo. If we view
that great crisis in European history in any light whatever, we cannot
resist the conviction that its importance in the sphere of religion was
equally great with its political magnitude.

The King of Prussia, Frederic William III., began the work of
ecclesiastical reconstruction. There were three questions of great
delicacy, but of prime importance, which he attempted to solve; the
constitution of the Protestant church; the improvement of liturgical
forms; and the union of the two Protestant confessions. Whatever course
the king might adopt could not fail to make many enemies. But he
belonged to a line of princes who had been aiming at the unity of the
church for more than two centuries, and who, with the single exception
of Frederic II., had endeavored to preserve popular faith in the
Scriptures. Preparations were being made for the three hundredth
anniversary jubilee of the Reformation. The land being now redeemed, it
was hoped that the occasion would inspire all hearts with confidence in
the future of both state and church. The king deemed it a most favorable
opportunity to bring the two branches of the Protestant church together,
not by one coming over to the territory of the other, but by mutual
compromise, by the rejection of the terms Lutheran and Reformed, and by
the assumption of a new denominational name.

There was really no reason why the two confessions should not be united,
for it was very plain that the adherents of both were not rigid in their
at