the State, its antagonism to the social distinctions which prevailed,
its individualism, its emphasis upon the practical. It was part of a
general religious reaction against ecclesiasticism, as were also
Jansenism in France, and Methodism in England, and the Whitefieldian
revival in America. But, through the character of Spener, and through
the peculiarity of German social relations, it gained an influence over
the educated classes, such as Methodism never had in England, nor, on
the whole, the Great Awakening in America. In virtue of this, German
pietism was able, among influential persons, to present victorious
opposition to the merely secular tendencies of the rationalistic
movement. In no small measure it breathed into that movement a religious
quality which in other lands was utterly lacking. It gave to it an
ethical seriousness from which in other places it had too often set
itself free.

In England there had followed upon the age of the great religious
conflict one of astounding ebb of spiritual interest. Men turned with
all energy to the political and economic interests of a wholly modern
civilisation. They retained, after a short period of friction, a smug
and latitudinarian orthodoxy, which Methodism did little to change. In
France not only was the Huguenot Church annihilated, but the Jansenist
movement was savagely suppressed. The tyranny of the Bourbon State and
the corruption of the Gallican Church which was so deeply identified
with it caused the rationalist movement to bear the trait of a
passionate opposition to religion. In the time of Pascal, Jansenism had
a moment when it bade fair to be to France what pietism was to Germany.
Later, in the anguish and isolation of the conflict the movement lost
its poise and intellectual quality. In Germany, even after the temporary
alliance of pietism and rationalism against the Church had been
transcended, and the length and breadth of their mutual antagonism had