VI. RATIONALISM IN HYMNODY
German hymnody suddenly fell from its exalted Pietistic rhapsodies into a crass materialism. Dr. Philip Schaff gives a vivid glimpse into the situation: “He (Klopstock) was followed by a swarm of hymnological tinkers and poetasters who had no sympathy with the theology and poetry of the grand old hymns of faith; weakened, diluted, mutilated, and watered them, and introduced these misimprovements into the churches.... Conversion and sanctification were changed into self-improvement, piety into virtue, heaven into the better world, Christ into Christianity, God into Providence, Providence into fate. The people were compelled to sing rhymed sermons on the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the delights of reunion, the dignity of man, the duty of self-improvement, the nurture of the body, and the care of animals and flowers.”
There is no poetical, much less religious, lyrical impulse in rationalism, and the church lyrics of this period have left little impress on the hymnody of the Christian Church. It was the classic period of German literature, but it had few Christian elements in it. Athens and Rome, not Jerusalem, were the centers of intellectual interest; and it might almost be said that it is a pagan literature.