It seemed a necessity of the age that all Christians should be dogmatists, and Protestant dogmatism soon became as deadly an influence in the field of exegesis as Roman Catholic tra dition had ever been. The successors of the great Reformers were like the schoolmen who succeeded the great Fathers of the early Church. They were subservient to authority and fettered by dogma; and in the 17th and 18th centuries very few exegetes appeared whose works are read to-day. The scholarship of the elder Light foot is valued. The practical comments of Rob ert Leighton on First Peter are still enjoyed. John Owen's Exercitations on the Epistle to the Hebrews is a monument of erudition and pious reflection; but, like Caryl on Job, it is too voluminous to hold attention in this modern age. Robert Hall said of Owen, "He always takes for granted what he ought to prove, while he is always proving what he ought to take for granted; and after a long digression, he con cludes very properly with, This is not our con cernment; and returns to enter upon something still farther from the point." Adam Clarke added, "To me he is one of the most unsatis factory of writers. His sense and meaning he drowns in a world of words. He cannot con dense his meaning, and never comes to the point, but by the most intolerable circumlocu tion" (Etheridge, (Life of Adam Clarke,' . 317-318). He may stand as probably the last ex pp ample the world will ever see of such intoler able prolixity. Arminius and Grotius intro duced the reaction from Calvinistic and Lutheran and Augustinian exegesis, which has been gathering force ever since and which has about come to its triumph in America. Coc ceius and Vitringa in their opposition to scholasticism and dogmatical bias furnished a series of commentaries with many excellent qualities, but reverting too far in the direction of the mystical or allegorical interpretation. Bengel's Gnomon is a model of brevity and learning in exegesis. Philip Schaff calls it "a marvel of multum in parvo? Henry, Scott and Adam Clarke wrote devotional commen taries which are still in use. Ernesti has been regarded as the founder of a new exegetical school, attempting to hold the via media be tween the allegorists and the dogmatists. His exegesis was predominantly grammatical. Sem ler, pietist and rationalist, introduced the his toric method of exegesis, and prepared the way for the unparalleled exegetical activity of the 19th century. The most dominant influence in the 19th century in the whole field of theol ogy was that of Schleiermacher. He was the founder of what has been called the psycho logical school of exegesis. He was both ration alistic and supernaturalistic in his interpretation of the Scriptures. He appealed to opposing classes and did much to bring all Germany back to a central emphasis upon the person and teach ing and influence of Christ. In Germany and, through Coleridge and Maurice, in England and America his spirit and methods have been fruit ful of much good in Biblical study. °Church h:stoty offers no parallel to him since the days of Origen" (Farrar, of Free Thought,' p. 244). He was the °Plato and Origen of Germany in the 19th Century" (Philip Schaff). He based his religion upon faith and feeling, and he made the Christian conscious ness and personal experience the guiding lights of his Scriptural interpretation. He claimed a Divine compulsion in his teaching and spoke and wrote with prophetic fervor and authority. He said, °Divinely swayed by an irresistible necessity within me, 1, feel myself compelled to speak. . . Nor is it done from any caprice or accident. Rather. . . . it is a divine call" ((Reden fiber die Religion,' I). His personal magnetism and pronounced genius, his eloquence and earnestness, the genuineness of his Christian experience, the remarkable breadth of his vision and thought, and the intensity of his spiritual zeal gave him a most extraordinary influence upon his own and succeeding generations. He vindicated the right of Christian experience to an equal hearing with the results of any purely scientific research. His spirit pervades the Christian world to-day and will maintain its permanent place in Christian thought. De Wette was the greatest exegete among the dis ciples of Schleiermacher. His work represents prodigious learning and °perfect loyalty in the search for truth" (Godet). He expresses him self clearly, but does not always come to a de sirably definite conclusion. Credner occupied practically the same standpoint.
The year 1835 marked a new era in all scientific Bible study (Pfleiderer, (Development of Theology,' p. 209). In that year Strauss published his of Jesus,' Baur, his work on the Epistles,' and Vatke, his (History of the Religion of the Old Testament? Each of these books may be regarded as epoch making.
Eichhorn has reduced the rationalistic treat ment of the Scriptures to a scientific system. Strauss was the first to put this rationalism into concrete and popular form. Baur was the
founder of the Tubingen or Tendency school, which probably represented in Germany the greatest theological movement of the century. Baur endeavored to bring all his exegesis to the bar of historical investigation. He examined all traditional exegesis critically and subjected the New Testament books to a more thorough going analysis than they had ever known. He emphasized the theological standpoint of each writer, and he thought he detected an irrecon cilable antagonism between the Pauline and the Petrine wings of the Christian Church. He stimulated Bible study to an astonishing degree. His personal power was manifest in the re markable group of disciples he gathered about him. Among these we may mention Zeller, Schwegler, Hilgenfeld, Holsten, Pfleiderer and Volkmar. The entire movement inaugurated by Baur has been characterized by comprehensive and accurate scholarship, the value of which has been somewhat impaired by the critical presup positions upon which it was based. Strauss came over into this school in the second edi tion of his of Jesus? Ritschl began his career in it, but later swung clear of it and became the founder of a distinct school of thought, to which Harnack, Julicher, Kaftan, Hermann and Von Soden adhere.
Ritschl claimed to repudiate all metaphysical presuppositions and to found his system on the religious consciousness alone. He believed that the primitive faith sprang from the person and word of Jesus, with no philosophical alloy in the beginning. He held that experience limits the domain of knowledge. The Scriptures are sufficient in themselves to reveal the spiritual and moral worth of the kingdom of God, whose end is realized in love. Dogmatics and ethics unite in the higher synthesis of the revelation of the New Testament. Frank was the most determined opponent of Ritschlianism in Germany. He pointed out the lack of a true and deep conception of sin in this system of thought, and its consequently inadequate notion of atonement and conversion; and he claimed that, instead of rejecting metaphysics, the.whole system was based on a highly developed but false and contradictory metaphysics of its own.
Vatke in 1835 outlined the revolution which has since taken place in the conception of Old Testament history. His book, however, was overloaded with philosophical terminology and met with no general appreciation and soon seemed to be forgotten. Reuss lectured along the same lines at Strassburg, and two of his pupils, Graf and Wellhausen, published the new hypothesis of the development of Old Testa ment ritual and literature. It was Vatke's theory brought to life again, and it has exer cised increasing influence upon the exegesis of all the Old Testament books for the last half century. The prophets have come into new prominence as a result of this study. They are recognized as the founders of the Hebrew religion. The Law in its present form was of later growth in the Jewish Church. The Penta teuch has been resolved into a number of docu ments. Deuteronomy is believed to belong to the times of Josiah. Isaiah and other prophetic books are shown to be of multiple authorship. The Psalms come last in the Hebrew sacred literature. Stade, Budde, Smend, Schultz and others have represented this school of thought.
Germany has been the great baffle-ground of the Higher Criticism through the last cen tury; and the exegetes have enrolled themselves among the critical and the traditional, the more radical and the more conservative camps. Ne ander the champion of spirituality, Hengsten berg the bulwark of orthodoxy, Delitzsch the pre-eminent scholar, did valiant service for what they deemed the traditional truth. Just before his death Delitzsch seemed disposed to go over into the critical ranks. Dillmann and Gunkel have adopted the newer views. The indispen sable commentary in the New Testament field has been that of H. A. W. Meyer. Characterized by grammatical rigor and literary freedom, and brought up to date by frequent revisions, it has maintained itself as a standard authority for two generations. The principal contributor to the later editions has been Bernard -Weiss, the present prince of all laborers in the exegetical field. Having completed more than 50 years of University service he stands to-day without a peer in his record of worthy achievement as a textual critic and commentator. He is .incom parable for minute and searching investigation, exactness and solidity of scholarship. His as sociates in the Meyer Commentary series have been Wendt, Heinrici, Sieffert, Schtnidt, Duster dieck and Beyschlag. Lipsius, Weizsacker, Schmiedel and Holtzmann have represented the more advanced school of commentators. Bleek did most admirable work in the earlier part of the century- and Luthardt and Hofmann have been conservative leaders in the latter days.