The University
has fully recovered from the influence of De Wette, and the professors
now stand in the front rank of evangelical thinkers. The _Mission House_
has been a highly useful agency. Though not a half-century old, it has
already trained four hundred missionaries, nearly three hundred of whom
are still living and actively engaged in evangelizing the dark places of
the earth. The people are unwilling to permit any minister to occupy one
of their pulpits whom they have reason to suspect of skeptical opinions.
The infidel Rumpf was excluded in 1858 from the list of candidates for
the ministry, and all his subsequent efforts for restoration have failed
in the chief council. A similar occurrence took place in Berne in 1847,
upon the calling of Zeller to the theological professorship.
We now turn to a less evangelical part of Switzerland. Zuerich is one of
the acknowledged centres of European Rationalism. Its spiritual decline
has been rapid during the last twenty-five years. In 1839, Strauss, the
author of the _Life of Jesus_, was invited by the chief council to take
a theological chair in the seminary.
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