§ 180.1. The Protestant Assembly.—The first general German Protestant Assembly, composed of 400 clerical and lay notabilities, met at Eisenach in A.D. 1865, under the presidency of the jurist Bluntschli of Heidelberg and the chief court preacher Schwarz of Gotha. A peculiar lustre was given to the meeting by the presence of Rothe of Heidelberg. Of special importance was Schwarz’s address on “The Limits of Doctrinal Freedom in Protestantism,” which he sought not in the confession, not in the authority of the letter of Scripture, not even in certain so called fundamental articles, but in the one religious moral truth of Christianity, the gospel of love and the divine fatherhood as Christ taught it, expounded it in his life and sealed it by his death. In Berlin, Osnabrück, and Leipzig, the churches were refused for services according to the Protestantenverein. In A.D. 1868 fifteen heads of families in Heidelberg petitioned the ecclesiastical council to grant them the use of one of the city churches where a believing clergyman might conduct service in the old orthodox fashion. This request was refused by fifty votes against four. Baumgarten denounced this intolerance, and declared that unless repudiated by the union it would be a most serious stain upon its reputation. In A.D. 1877 he publicly withdrew from the society.
§ 180.2. The “Protestantenverein” Propaganda.—The views of the union were spread by popular lectures and articles in newspapers and magazines. The “Protestanten-Bibel,” edited by Schmidt and Holtzendorff in A.D. 1872, of which an English translation has been published, giving the results of New Testament criticism, “laid the axe at the root of the dogmatics and confessionalism,” and proved that “we are still Christians though our conception of Christianity diverges in many points from that of the second century, and we proclaim a Christianity without miracles and in accordance with the modern theory of the universe.” The success of such efforts to spread the broad theology has been greatly over-estimated. Enthusiastic partisans of the union claimed to have the whole evangelical world at their back, while Holtzendorff boasted that they had all thoughtful Germans with them.
§ 180.3. Sufferings Endured.—In many instances members of the society were disciplined, suspended and deposed. In October, A.D. 1880, Beesenmeyer of Mannheim, on his appointment to Osnabrück, was examined by the consistory. He confessed an economic but not an essential Trinity, the sinlessness and perfect godliness but not the divinity of Christ, the atoning power of Christ’s death but not the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction. He was pronounced unorthodox, and so unfit to hold office. Schroeder, a pastor in the consistory of Wiesbaden in A.D. 1871, on his refusing to use the Apostles’ Creed at baptism and confirmation, was deposed, but on appealing to the minister of worship, Dr. Falk, he was restored in the beginning of A.D. 1874. The Stettin consistory declined to ordain Dr. Hanne on account of his work “Der ideale u. d. geschichtl. Christus,” and an appeal to the superior court and another to the king were unsuccessful. Several members of the church protested against the call of Dr. Ziegler to Liegnitz in A.D. 1873, on account of his trial discourse and a previous lecture on the authority of the Bible, and the consistory refused to sustain the call. The Supreme Church Council, however, when appealed to, declared itself satisfied with Ziegler’s promise to take unconditionally the ordination vow, which requires acceptance of the fundamental doctrines of the gospel and not the peculiar theological system of the symbols.
§ 180.4. The conflicts in Berlin were specially sharp. In A.D. 1872 the aged pastor of the so called New Church, Dr. Sydow, delivered a lecture on the miraculous birth of Jesus, in which he declared that he was the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary. His colleague, Dr. Lisco, son of the well-known commentator, spoke of legendary elements in the Apostles’ Creed, and denied its authority. Lisco was reprimanded and cautioned by the consistory. Sydow was deposed. He appealed, together with twenty-six clergymen of the province of Brandenburg, and twelve Berlin pastors, to the Supreme Church Council. The Jena theologians also presented a largely signed petition to Dr. Falk against the procedure of the consistory, while the Weimar and Württemberg clergy sent a petition in favour of maintaining strict discipline. The superior court reversed the sentence, on the ground that the lecture was not given in the exercise of his office, and severely reprimanded Sydow for giving serious offence by its public delivery. At a Berlin provincial synod in A.D. 1877, an attack was made by pastor Rhode on creed subscription. Hossbach, preaching in a vacant church, declared that he repudiated the confessional doctrine of the divinity of Christ, regarded the life of Jesus in the gospels as a congeries of myths, etc. Some loudly protested and others as eagerly pressed for his settlement. The consistory accepted Rhode’s retractation and annulled Hossbach’s call. The Supreme Church Council supported the consistory, and issued a strict order to its president to suffer no departure from the confession. The congregation next chose Dr. Schramm, a pronounced adherent of the same party, who was also rejected. In A.D. 1879 Werner, biographer of Boniface, a more moderate disciple of the same school, holding a sort of Arian position, received the appointment. When, in A.D. 1880, the Supreme Church Council demanded of Werner a clear statement of his belief regarding Scripture, the divinity and resurrection of Christ, and the Apostles Creed, and on receiving his reply summoned him to a conference at Berlin, he resigned his office.
§ 180.5. The conflicts in Schleswig Holstein also caused considerable excitement. Pastor Kühl of Oldensworth had published an article at Easter, A.D. 1880, entitled, “The Lord is Risen indeed,” in which the resurrection was made purely spiritual. He was charged with violating his ordination vow, sectaries pointed to his paper as proof of their theory that the state church was the apocalyptic Babylon, and petitions from 115 ministers and 2,500 laymen were presented against him to the consistory of Kiel. The consistory exhorted Kühl to be more careful and his opponents to be more patient. In the same year, however, he published a paper in which he denied that the order of nature was set aside by miracles. He was now advised to give up writing and confine himself to his pastoral work. A pamphlet by Decker on “The Old Faith and the New,” was answered by Lühr, and his mode of dealing with the ordination vow was of such a kind as to lead pastor Paulsen to speak of it as a “chloroforming of his conscience.”
§ 181. Disputes about Forms of Worship.
During the eighteenth century the services of the evangelical church had become thoroughly corrupted and disordered under the influence of the “Illumination,” and were quite incapable of answering to the Christian needs and ecclesiastical tastes of the nineteenth century. Whenever there was a revival in favour of the faith of their fathers, a movement was made in the direction of improved forms of worship. The Rationalists and Friends of Light, however, prevented progress except in a few states. Even the official Eisenach Conference did no more than prepare the way and indicate how action might afterwards be taken.
§ 181.1. The Hymnbook.—Traces of the vandalism of the Illumination were to be seen in all the hymnbooks. The noble poet Ernst Moritz Arndt was the first to enter the lists as a restorer; and various attempts were made by Von Elsner, Von Raumer, Bunsen, Stier, Knapp, Daniel, Harms, etc., to make collections of sacred songs answerable to the revived Christian sentiment of the people. These came to be largely used, not in the public services, but in family worship, and prepared the way for official revisal of the books for church use. The Eisenach Conference of A.D. 1853 resolved to issue 150 classical hymns with the old melodies as an appendix to the old collection and a pattern for further work. Only with difficulty was the resolution passed to make A.D. 1750 the terminus ad quem in the choice of pieces. Wackernagel insisted on a strict adherence to the original text and retired from the committee when this was not agreed to. Only in a few states has the Eisenach collection been introduced; e.g. in Bavaria, where it has been incorporated in its new hymnbook.
§ 181.2. The Book of Chorales.—In A.D. 1814, Frederick William III. of Prussia sought to secure greater prominence to the liturgy in the church service. In A.D. 1817, Natorp of Münster expressed himself strongly as to the need of restoring the chorale to its former position, and he was followed by the jurist Thibaut, whose work on “The Purity of Tone” has been translated into English. The reform of the chorale was carried out most vigorously in Württemberg, but it was in Bavaria that the old chorale in its primitive simplicity was most widely introduced.
§ 181.3. The Liturgy.—Under the reign of the Illuminists the liturgy had suffered even more than the hymns. The Lutherans now went back to the old Reformation models, and liturgical services, with musical performances, became popular in Berlin. Conferences held at Dresden did much for liturgical reform, and the able works and collections of Schöberlein supplied abundant materials for the practical carrying out of the movement.