V. TRANSITION TO RATIONALISTIC HYMNS
The transitional personality between this Pietistic and the succeeding Rationalistic era, was Christian F. Gellert (1715-1769), a professor in Leipzig University. He was a man of sincere piety; he was a teacher, not only in the classroom, but in all his literary efforts. He wrote moral Tales and Fables, Moral Poems, Didactic Poems, as well as Sacred Odes and Hymns. There were fifty-four of these, all in the same didactic style. They lacked the rugged strength of Luther, the poetical element of Gerhardt, and the mystic insight of Tersteegen; but this very matter-of-factness made his writings immensely popular. Of all his hymns, but one survives in our modern hymnals, his Easter hymn, “Jesus lebt, mit ihm auch ich” (“Jesus lives, no longer now”).