the native German. Scholars used the tongue in which mothers taught their children to pray.
The ethical writings of Kant and Fichte led men toward moral earnestness. The easy-going and superficial eudemonism of the eighteenth century was set aside and a deeper appeal was made to duty and conscience. The Illumination had looked for happiness on earth, Pietism expected it only in heaven. The ethical philosophers set duty first. Thus was strengthened the conception of religion which Uhlhorn states: "Religion is not a mere devout dream, not a thing which exists for its own sake, a pursuit for special hours and days; but it is an inner spirit, a thinking and acting which pervades all conduct, quickening and controlling."
The growth of common schools and cheap newspapers had manifold and important effects. The standard of living was raised, higher aspirations and social discontent were awakened. Miseries and needs were brought to the attention of the educated and wealthy, social conscience and consciousness grew apace, and benevolent impulse created societies for relief.
The church and religious life.—Rationalism had produced in the pulpit an ethical essay which often descended to puerilities and seldom rose to fervor. The need of redemption was not felt and education was equivalent to salvation. Inferior preachers filled sermons with technical advice about horticulture, stock raising and rotation of crops. Supernaturalism was as depressing as rationalism. It dwelt on the transcendence of God, regarded him as an absentee landlord, removed him far from men, identified faith with creed, lost the vital bond between faith and love. Pietism was another part of the bequest of the last century to ours. The memory of the famous benevolent institutions of Spener and Francke long survived them. Here and there a group of earnest people, especially in southern Germany, kept the traditions of pietistic zeal. But Pietism was too individualistic and unsocial to produce any general system of coöperation in evangelistic or benevolent work. Business, art, politics, were excluded as "secular" from the religious ideal. Pietists
