The investigation of the subject
was pursued in the midst of varied and pressing pastoral duties, with a
pleasure which no reader of the result of the labor can enjoy; for,
first, the author felt that Rationalism was soon to be the chief topic
of theological inquiry in the Anglo-Saxon lands; and, second, he
regarded the doubt, not less than the faith, of his fellow men as
entitled to far more respect and patient investigation than it had
usually received at the hands of orthodox inquirers.
The author would probably never have studied the genetic development of
Rationalism in Germany, and its varied forms in other countries, if he
had not been a personal witness to the ruin it had wrought in the land
of Luther, Spener, and Zinzendorf. In compliance with the instruction
of a trusted medical adviser, he sailed for Germany in the summer of
1856, as a final resort for relief from serious pulmonary disease. But,
through the mercy of God, he regained health so rapidly that he was
enabled to matriculate in the University of Halle in the following
autumn, and to be a daily attendant upon the lectures of such men as
Tholuck, Julius Mueller, Jacobi, and Roediger.
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