Death again visited his household, taking this time the only remaining daughter of his first wife, and the only child of his second. In other respects, however, he grew more content as the years advanced; partly because the circle of sympathizing friends gradually increased, and partly because the state of things at the University materially improved. The advent of new colleagues like Rothe, Hundeshagen, Schenkel, and Schöberlein, was naturally a source of great satisfaction.
In 1842, he completed his principal work—'The Reformers before the Reformation.' It was his last great effort. An intention, long entertained, of writing a life of Luther, was never realized. He became too absorbed in the various theoretical and practical questions that successively agitated the political, theological, and ecclesiastical worlds, to find time or energy for extensive literary undertakings; not that he ceased writing, but that what he wrote bore predominant reference to questions of immediate interest, and appeared for the most part in the pages of the Studien und Kritiken. Two of the most notable of the essays written at this period are those on the 'Cultus des Genius' and 'Das Wesen des Christenthums.' The former was directed against Strauss, who, in his 'Vergängliches und Bleibendes im Christenthum,' having reduced Jesus Christ to the rank of a religious genius, maintained that the cultus of genius is the only form of public and common religion the educated of the present generation can celebrate. The immediate occasion of his 'Sendschreiben,' as he termed it, was an oration delivered by his friend Schwab in connection with the inauguration of a monument to Schiller, at Marburg. It has always been esteemed one of the freshest, completest, and most artistic products of his pen. Of the geniality of the tone in which he approached the subject, the following passage will be sufficient evidence:—
'Our age is an age of distracted spirits. Let us look at the greatest among them, that ideal of all who really are, or affect to be, at discord with themselves and God, the Poet-Lord! A spirit of defiance, of contempt for mankind, of doubt; a cold breath of hopelessness and destructiveness pervades his writings. Terror is his domain; the destruction and misery of mankind are his dwelling place; he knows little of those fundamental elements of piety, hope, humility, and self-sacrifice. And yet who dare deny that he is engaged in a struggle, painful and desperate it is true, after the highest; that he is filled with irrepressible longings after the noblest? Because human life seemed to him so vain and empty, therefore did he despise it; because he would fain have loved men so much more truly than he could, therefore did he hate them; and yet, when at certain moments the primal consciousness of the heavenly and divine welled up from the depths of his soul, what energy and vitality did it evince, and what a mighty influence did it wield!'
There is very much in this essay that deserves carefully weighing by all who are mixed up with the intellectual struggles of the present time; and we have noted numerous passages for quotation, but our space forbids. The second one, on the 'Essence of Christianity,' strikes us as a scarcely satisfactory answer to the question discussed, though one's estimate of it naturally depends on one's own point of view. His course of thought is as follows.
Christianity, although unchangeably one and the same, has been viewed in different ages in different ways; first as doctrine, then as law, then as a plan of redemption. If we wish to understand its inmost essence, and to account for its workings in their entire compass, we must regard it as a new life, grounded on a complex of divine deeds and manifesting itself in human works. This life necessarily had a creative centre; this centre must have been a living one; and as it is life of the highest kind, the centre must have been a person. The founder of Christianity was the person in whom was effected that which all religions have striven after, the perfect union of God and man. Such being his character, the relation in which he stands to the religion founded by him, is not the outward one which subsists where the religion is advanced as a doctrine, or a law, or an institution; no, he himself embodies in himself the religion he founded, and his religion is essentially faith and life in him. The essence, the distinguishing character of Christianity, must accordingly be defined to be the person of its founder. Many of the ideas unfolded in this essay have exercised a very great influence on, and are now the common property of Christendom. Schleiermacher was the first in modern times to assign to the person of Christ the central position in Christianity; but Ullmann purified Schleiermacher's teaching on this subject from its speculative accessories, and made it in the best sense popular. The wide-spread tendency among the preachers and religious thinkers of this country to bring the person Christ to the foreground is, unquestionably, largely traceable to this German source. What we should blame in it is the vagueness and sentimentalism by which it is often accompanied or marked. The treatise pleased neither the critical nor the ultra-orthodox. An attack made on it by Count Agenor de Gasparin, in the 'Archives du Christianisme' (1851), called forth a reply from Ullmann which, to our mind, is far more interesting and valuable than the work it was meant to defend. From that reply, which appeared in the Studien of 1852, we cannot forbear making the following quotation, partly for what seems to us its intrinsic suggestiveness, and partly because it is characteristic of its author's position. 'The subject in dispute between Count Gasparin and myself,' says Ullmann,
'May be reduced to three points, the relation first between the outer and inner rule; secondly, between dogma and love; thirdly, between the person and the work of the Saviour. As to the first point, he appeals solely to the outer rule. Now an outer rule is one that comes to us from without, with the claim to be the norm of our spiritual life. The completest embodiment of the idea of the outer rule is Catholicism. But the Count will say, "The true outer rule is the Bible, not the Church." But how does he decide which of these outer rules is the true one? Each is a form of the same thing; each claims to be the only true form. In discriminating between them, appeal must clearly be made to an inner rule of some kind or other. Do I then mean to deny that the Scriptures are an outer rule? Certainly not! If I am asked, In what sense, then, is the Bible an outer rule?—is it in a sense that excludes all reference to an inner rule, to something higher, deeper, broader than the written word? I reply, No! In such a sense the Bible does not itself claim to be an outer rule. That in it which is outward issued forth from what was originally inward, and has the tendency, and is designed to become inward again. In thus becoming inward, it is not intended to operate as an outward rule, but to bear witness to itself in our inner life, and secure our free assent. Inward and outward thus act and react on each other. If the Scripture be a rule, it is fair to ask whence it came to us? It did not fall from heaven; it was not written immediately by the hand of God; it did not exist prior to Christianity. Christianity, on the contrary, existed first, and the Scripture was the organ through which it presented itself to, and propagated itself among men. That which existed before Scripture was the complex of saving facts, whose centre is Christ and the Christian life. The function of the Scripture, therefore, was to be the medium of making known the person and work of Christ, where the living message could not reach. For this reason its position and worth are not unconditional. Christ it is who conditions Scripture and gives it its worth. It is not the Scripture that gives authority to Christ, but Christ to Scripture. The proper object of faith is Christ, not the Scripture; the latter is merely the guide and educator unto Christ.'
The point of view indicated in the above extract is one that needs taking to heart and developing by the Christian thinkers of this country; rightly carried out, it would aid them materially in meeting the difficulties raised by the critics or opponents of the Bible. The exposition of the nature and function of mysticism in this same reply is admirable.
In two things, Ullmann had always differed from the majority of German theologians, and resembled the majority of English theologians. He endeavoured to write so as to be intelligible and acceptable to educated laymen, and aimed at exerting direct practical influence. Science, including theology, is too frequently pursued and expounded in Germany in the genuine dry-as-dust style; and theological authors in particular have been in the habit of completely ignoring the fact that they lived to serve the Church, and ought therefore to have an eye to its practical needs in all their enquiries. Hence the astonishing ignorance of theology that prevails in all but distinctively professional circles. A better feeling on this point has been growing up during the last ten years; but any change of practice has been rather forced on the theologians than spontaneously adopted—forced on them by the consideration that the laity of their Church were being utterly robbed of faith by the popular anti-Christian expositions of philosophy, criticism, and natural science that abounded. We in this country have erred for the most part in an opposite direction. Our eye to popularity and practical effect has had a squint in it. But though our theological investigations have lacked depth, they have, at all events, been far more widely appreciated. And that our fault is the less serious of the two is clear from the fact which is possibly unknown to most—that sound German theological works like those published by the Messrs. Clark, of Edinburgh, have had, with few exceptions, a larger circulation in the English than in their original dress. Still, it were well if both writers and readers in this country were a little more eager to sound the deeper depths of the science even at the risk of creating and meeting with difficulties.
The desire felt by Ullmann to exert a direct influence in Church matters grew with his years. He longed to see the ideas he had expounded becoming realities, and thought he could and ought personally to put hand to the work. There was much, too, in the circumstances of the ten years that preceded 1853 to draw his mind in the direction in which it naturally tended. Germany was everywhere in a state of ferment; especially in the domain of ecclesiastical affairs, were new and difficult problems constantly presenting themselves. He was also repeatedly called upon by the authorities of various German States to supply them with Gutachten on difficulties that had arisen; and the opinions he gave carried great weight, because of the sound judgment, thorough conscientiousness, and reverential liberality which characterised them.
One movement in particular greatly strengthened the inclination to which we are referring: we mean the secession from the Roman Catholic Church of Germany that took place under Ronge. He was not, however, carried away by it, as were many of his contemporaries, who hailed it as the harbinger of a new era in the history of the Christian Church. Its insignificance was clear to him from the very first. In a letter to his friend Schwab, he says sarcastically:—'The reformers of the nineteenth century have already passed through Heidelberg and Mannheim, doing a notable amount of eating and drinking and halloeing by the way.' An essay on the subject, published originally in the Studien for 1845, and afterwards as a pamphlet, contains much that bears forcibly on efforts that are now being made among ourselves to form churches or religious communities without either historical or doctrinal basis.