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( No . VHL ) StR , Heidelberg , Few names are better known in the Gymnasia of Germany than Dinter ' s ^ His School-Bible soon came into general use , and it has maintained its ground , not indeed without opposition , but till lately without a rival . It was prepared by Dinter with a view to the use of schoolmasters in particular . He has distinguished , with certain marks , those parts of the Bible
which should , and those which should not be read , in schools , according to his judgment ; and lias illustrated all with a special regard to what will be useful to teachers , and salutary and instructive to children . If , however , he thought himself sufficiently fortified against the attacks of church orthodoxy , by drawing his illustrations from history and criticism , and invoking the authority and example of Ernesti and his followers in defence of his manner of exposition , he was soon undeceived ; the charge of Rationalism was
presently reiterated against him in periodicals and pamphlets , accompanied with deep lamentations , that an instrument was now placed in the hands of teachers , through which a deadly poison could not fail to be infused into young minds . On the other side , the book was approved and defended with great resolution in the more popular reviews and journals ; and its sale soon reached to several thousand copies . At the opening of the campaign , Dinter had proposed to his opponents to produce another School-Bible , and leave it to the teachers to choose between them . This has been done at
length in the Evangelical School-Bible ; but it has not been judged necessary to prepare it solely or particularly for the use of teachers . It is also remarked in Kohr's Preacher ' s Journal , that there is a mistake , or a misnomer , in the title-page of the Evangelical Bible . The authors have stated in the preface , that their illustrations are in agreement with the creeds which have
been already established in their church-evangelical confessions of faith . The Reviewer says that the title should , therefore , be , not the Evangelical , but the Symbolical Bible , which imports neither more nor less than that the exposition is in conformity to a pre-established sense and rule , namely , to the particular views of the authors of the symbolical books .
In a country like Protestant Germany , where , both in and out of the schools and pulpits , inquiry refuses to be fettered by authority , and every man , who thinks at ail on religious questions , exercises his own power of thought , holding himself accountable only to the judgment of God , it was to be expected that many opinions , and shades of opinion , would arise on the subject of divine revelations and inspirations . Lessing's free speculations opened the door to the public discussion of these important questions . He began by suggesting , that Christianity would exist even if the Scriptures were not extant . Walch entered into the discussion in his ' Inquiry
respecting the Use of the Holy Scriptures in the First Four Centuries . ' * Lessmg , in his * ' Education of the Human Race , " and Krug , in " Letters on the Per-Tectibility of Revealed Religion , " proposed their opinion , that a more perfect reli g ion will exist upon earth , to which Christianity will give place , or rather , in which it will merge . This will be the religion of pure reason . On the other side appeared Meyer's Prize Essay on the question , How far have the doctrines and precepts of the New Testament a local and temporary ordination , and how far are they of universal and perpetual validity ? Fichte , in 1793 , published «« An Attempt to establish a Critical Test of all
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C 174 ^
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LETTERS FROM GERMANY .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1831, page 174, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2595/page/30/
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