It was about the year 1686, that Philip Jacob Spener founded what soon came to be called contemptuously Pietism, in an effort to unite brethren in a life of practical piety. A Lutheran, he had no wish to renounce or supplant Lutheranism, but contented himself with getting kindred spirits to read and pray together, to renounce worldly vanities, and to live a pious, charitable life. The rapidity with which the people caught at his system shows the readiness of their hearts for something more satisfying than dogmatic theology. The same spirit of the times is shown in the phenomenon of "the praying children," which appeared in connection with the Pietists in 1707. Children from four years old and upwards suddenly began assembling in the open fields, singing and praying, especially for the recovery of the churches that had been seized by the Catholics. From field to field the contagion spread, in spite of prohibition and even of blows, till it extended over the whole country, and was checked only by the providing of churches for their meetings. Then it soon died out. At Halle the Pietists were permitted to control the new university, and by the year 1727 more than six thousand theologians had received from them their theological education. Their system was violently opposed by the Orthodox, for they taught that regeneration was not effected by baptism, as Luther and Calvin held with the Mother Church, but was an awakening or conversion, which was conditioned in subsequent life by the Word of God; that only living faith attained justification, and that it must be active in preserving it, a sure guarantee existing only in a faith which gave evidence of being alive in a pious life and active Christianity. Later Pietism became more formal and declined, but it had already "poured a mighty religious stream into the national life, and sustained it by zealous preaching, pastoral care, devotional meetings, and an almost exuberant devotional literature."[1] Moreover, Pietism widely and increasingly modified the teaching of the whole Lutheran Church, as Methodism had done that of the Anglican Church, and as Moravianism, in less degree, that of the Reformed or Calvinist Church.
A spirit nearly akin to that of the Pietists became conspicuous in the Roman Catholic Church, at the incoming of the
- ↑ Kürtz, ii. 250.
