For all Thy love imparts,
But that which Thou desirest,
Our humble, thankful hearts.
Matthias Claudius, 1782.
HYMNODY IN THE AGE OF RATIONALISM
In religion, as in other things, the pendulum often swings from one extreme to the other. Scarcely had the Pietistic movement run its course before the rationalistic tendencies which had thrown religious thought into confusion in France and England began to make their appearance in Germany. Rationalism was an attempt to subject all revealed religion to the test and judgment of the human reason. That which seemed to contradict reason was rejected as superstitious and untrue.
Strangely enough, the University of Halle, which had been the citadel of Pietism, became the stronghold of Rationalism in Germany. Christian Wolff and Johann Semler, noted philosophers of Halle, were leaders in the movement. It was not their purpose to establish a new religion of reason, but to “purge” Christianity of the things that seemed unreasonable. But the results of the movement were devastating. The miracles of the Bible that could not be explained by natural causes were rejected as “fables.” Christ was robbed of His glory as a divine Saviour and was regarded only as a teacher of morals. Religion became merely the knowledge of God and the pursuit of virtue. What remained of Christianity was a mere shadow: a hypothesis concerning God and immortality, and a teaching of external morality, the attainment of which was largely a matter of man’s own efforts.
Rationalism cast its blight over the hymnody of all Europe, but particularly in Germany. It was the golden age of German literature, but such geniuses as Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and Wieland were not filled with the Christian zeal of earlier poets, and they wrote no hymns. Most of the hymns that were produced were so tinged with the spirit of the “new theology” that they contained no elements of vitality to give them permanent value.
The Rationalists were not satisfied with criticizing the Bible; they also sought to “purge” the hymn-books. The old hymns of Luther, Heermann, Selnecker, and Gerhardt were so completely altered that a noted German hymnologist, Albert Knapp, was moved to observe ironically: “The old hymns were subjected to a kind of transmigration of soul by which their spirits, after having lost their own personality, entered into other bodies.”
Only a few writers, such as Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Balthasar Münter, Christian Gellert and Matthias Claudius, wrote hymns of any abiding worth.