George Cross · 9 of 40

A. A Sketch of Schleiermacher’s Life. · PUBLICATION OF THE “REDEN”

A reader of Schleiermacher’s letters written during these years would never suppose from the almost incidental references in his letters to his pastoral and pulpit work and his literary undertakings that he had come to be already a powerful force in the intellectual and religious life of Prussia and particularly Berlin. Yet such was the case. At the same time that he was cultivating those close personal friendships for which his nature craved and which he felt to be indispensable to any meaningful life for him, he was engaged in the preparation of literary works that were to have far-reaching consequences. In 1799 he published a book that was to usher in almost a revolution in the religious life of Prussia and to constitute a turning-point in the course of theological science. I refer to his Discourses on Religion to the Educated among Its Despisers. The “despisers” referred to are probably in the first instance the skeptical members of the club that met in the Herz parlors, but in a general way the whole school of rationalism. The argument of the book will be given in another connection in this present work. Here we may simply note that it was a defense of religion in general rather than of Christianity in particular, and claimed for religion a universal and necessary place in human experience, such as Kant claimed for the moral law. His words on this subject came to the reading public like a message from another world. Men felt in those dark days that a new prophet had arisen, and many of them awoke to a new interest in a reality which a specious moralism had concealed from them. Claus Harms, the great evangelist and missionary organizer, received from the Discourses the first impulse to his great movement. Neander, the great church historian, was brought by it out of Judaism to evangelical Christianity. It is considered to have played a part second to none in arousing the patriotism of Prussia for the struggle with Napoleon Bonaparte, because by it men apprehended the magnitude of the interests at stake. It is still being republished and translated, and modern scholars of note are still devoting time to the discussion of it. Oman says: “It may be questioned whether, after Kant’s Critique and Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, any book of the period has had such a lasting effect; there is certainly no question that it foreshadows the problems chiefly discussed among us today as is done by no other book of the time.”

The truth is that Schleiermacher had found no food for his soul in the rationalism into which he had passed on leaving the Moravians, and his Moravian faith was returning, though as yet it was tinged with romanticism. Romanticism with its canonization of the aesthetic sentiments is itself a poor substitute for rationalism, at least the higher rationalism. For the nobler types of the latter accord a dignity to the principles of morality and elevate human life above the play of mere feeling or passion. But after all mere ethics is not theology and mere morality is not religion. Man is a being possessed of something more than thought and will. He has emotions and these are often as safe a clue to character as mere will or mere intellect. Rationalism had neglected the claims of feeling, which religion cannot ignore. Romanticism was at least an assertion that feeling is a non-negligible factor in the estimate of human nature. It supplied to Schleiermacher a bridge by which he made the transition from a dry and insipid morality to a warm, religious experience, like that of his earlier years. The changes made in the second edition of the book, in 1806, showed that by this time he had come to a warm evangelical faith. But a greater influence than that of romanticism was at work within him. Before the book appeared there are evidences that his early experience among the Moravians was making itself felt. His religious spirit was awaking to new vigor and was reasserting its sway. His letters of 1789 seldom make mention of religious matters, but in a letter to his sister Lotte in August of that year he appears greatly interested and affected by her account of a recent visit to Herrnhut. He exclaims: “How often my mind reverts to Albertini and our common studies at Niesky!--the depths of his heart are still known to me.” He had found no solace for his mind in that rationalistic view of religion which subordinated it to morality. His later antipathy to so-called natural religion comes out strongly in a letter written a few weeks before the publication of his Discourses. Some one had recommended a work of Hülsen’s on religion. Schleiermacher objected, “But it is nature-religion, and I doubt, therefore, that it will produce much effect on me. My religion is so through and through heart-religion, that I have not room for any other.” This is indeed Schleiermacher’s secret. He had seen and felt too much of heart- religion to be permanently occupied with the dry platitudes of rationalism. He now yielded himself freely to the sway of his renewed Christian faith and endeavored to gain for it a rightful place in the world of thought. Not only so, but he felt it to be a part of his mission to free the church from bondage to a lifeless creed and the influence of religionless men. He felt this in the early part of his pastoral career, and even while undertaking extensive literary labors he found in preaching his loved vocation. He wrote to his sister, “Book-writing is a strange kind of activity, without life, without face-to-face encounter, without real use. Preaching is better.” We find him near the close of his voluntary exile at Stolpe saying of a new circle of friends there, “How sweetly do we all cleave with the same religious feeling to the loving and informing Christ! Never since I left the Herrnhut congregation have I so rejoiced in my Christian feelings and in my Christian faith, nor have I ever beheld its living power so spread around me”; and again a little later, to von Willich, speaking of “the sweetest mystery of Christ and the church, how this is built up through his love, how it glorifies and exalts him; and how, through it, the whole world is born anew and sanctified.” We feel that in these words it is a Moravian who speaks. But there is a difference. To their warm piety and deep religious feeling he united, on the one hand, a fearless and thorough pursuit of all that human learning could contribute to the solution of life’s problems and, on the other, a participation in human affairs, from which the Moravians, with their semi-monastic piety, shrank. Yes, he was a Moravian again, but truly of a higher order.

In addition to the Discourses he published, in 1800, his Monologues (a presentation of his philosophical views), considerable portions of his Plato, Two Impartial Judgments on Protestant Ecclesiastical Affairs, anonymously, and, in 1803, A Critical Inquiry into Existing Systems of Ethics, regarded by scholars as epoch-making. This last was composed while he was in wretched health and not expecting to live long. “This book,” he writes, “is my gravestone.” But though suffering much in mind and body he went on steadily with it, explaining his action by saying, “Just as a man ought to do nothing because of death, so also he ought to leave nothing undone because of death.” However, the prospect of professorial work at the University of Wurzberg or at Halle, and later in Berlin, revived his spirits and his health. It was impossible that a man of his ability should long remain comparatively hidden, and in 1804 the government appointed him extraordinary professor at Halle, and preacher at the university, with the promise of a future appointment at Berlin, should a new university be founded there. It is significant of his theological position at the time and of his independence of judgment that one of the conditions on which he accepted the new position was that the difference between the Lutheran and Reformed confessions should be over looked, “lest my hands as a member of the Reformed church should be bound.”