Here we close Sender's narrative. He himself became infected later by the prevailing spiritual tendency, and he strove, whilst still a youth, after regeneration, but the powerful tone of his mind enabled him to recover. The state of the times also helped to bring this about.
The year 1740 was fatal to Pietism. The new King of Prussia was as averse to the Pietists, as his father had been favourable to them. Almost at the same time they ceased to prevail in the Saxon courts. The time of enlightenment now began; the nation pursued another path; the "Stillen im lande" only existed as an isolated community. The association of brothers, of Count Zinzendorf, for a longer period developed a praiseworthy missionary activity in foreign countries, but they ceased to influence the stream of German life, which now began to flow on with a deeper and more powerful current.
Pietism had drawn together large numbers of individuals; it had raised them from the narrowness of mere family life, it had increased in the soul the longing after a deeper spiritual aim, it had introduced new forms of intercourse; here and there the strong distinctions of classes had been broken through, and it had called forth greater earnestness and more outward propriety in the whole nation, but it had not strengthened national union. He who gave himself up to it with zeal, was in great danger of withdrawing himself, with those who were like-minded, from the great stream of life, and of looking down from his solitude, like the shipwrecked man from his island, on the great waste of waters around him.
The new scientific development also produced, at first, only individual men of learning; then a free culture; after that a nation, which dared to struggle and to die, and finally to live, for its independence.
CHAPTER VI.
THE DAWNING OF LIGHT.
(1750.)
From the German cities, on the boundaries betwixt guild labour and free invention, did the art of printing come into the world--the greatest acquisition of the human race, after that of the alphabet. The mind of man could now be conveyed, bound up in wood and leather, upon a thousand roads at the same time, all over the earth; the powers of man in church and state, in science and handicraft, were unfolded, not only more powerfully, more variously, and more richly, but in a totally different manner from the quiet plodding of the past. A change was produced in nations in one century which formerly would have taken a thousand years. Every individual was bound together in one great intellectual unity with his contemporaries, and every nation with other civilized nations. For the first time a regular connection in the intellectual development of the human race was secured. The mind of the individual will continue to live upon earth perhaps many thousand years after he has ceased to breathe; but the soul of each individual nation gains a capacity of renovating itself which will, we hope, remove its decease, according to the old laws of nature, to an incalculable distance.
The black art had not been invented many years when a spring-tide arose in the soul. From the study of the Latin writers, the humanitarians proclaimed, with transport, how much there had been of the beautiful and the grand in the ancient world. Eagerly did they maintain the treasure of noble feelings, which had fallen on their souls from the distant past, against the coarse or corrupt life that they beheld around them. With the holy book in their hands, pious ecclesiastics contended for the words of Scripture, against the despotism of Rome and the false traditions of the Church. By thousands of books written by themselves, they raised the consciences of the people, for the greatest spiritual struggle that had ever taken place since the Star of Bethlehem had appeared to the human race; and again through thousands of books, after the first victory, they consecrated anew for their people all earthly relations, the duties and rights of men, of the family, and of the governing powers, as the first educators and teachers of the great multitude.
But it was not the pleasure derived from the ancient poets and statues, nor the mighty struggle which was carried on concerning the teaching of the Church, nor the theologians and the philologists of the sixteenth century, that were the greatest blessings bestowed by the new art; it is not they alone that have given richness to thought, and security to judgment, and made love and hatred greater. This was brought about in yet another way--through the medium of types and woodcuts; slowly, imperceptibly, to contemporaries, but to us wonderfully.