§ 174.6. The Christian element was present in the noble patriotic songs of E. M. Arndt[525] and Max. von Schenkendorf much more distinctly than in the romantic school. Enthusiasm in the struggle for freedom awakened faith in the living God. Uhland’s lovely lyrics, with their enthusiasm for the present interests of the Fatherland, entitle him to rank among patriotic poets, and their brilliant and profound rendering of the old German legends places him in the romantic school, which, however, in clearness and depth he leaves far behind. Without being a distinctively Christian poet, his warm sympathy with the life of the German people gives him a genuine interest in the Christian religion. The same may be said of Rückert’s highly finished poems, which transplanted the fragrant flowers of oriental sensuousness and contemplativeness into the garden of German poetry. A more decided Christian consecration of poetic genius is seen in the noble and beautiful lyrics of Emanuel Geibel, died 1884, the greatest and most Christian of the secular poets of the present. Of those ordinarily ranked as sacred poets may be named Knapp, Döring, Spitta, Garve, Vict. Strauss, etc., who for the most part contributed their sacred songs to Knapp’s “_Christoterpe_” (1833-1853). A later publication of equal merit, called the “_Neue Christoterpe_,” has been edited since 1880 by Kögel, Baur, and Frommel. But with all the Christian depth and spirituality, freshness and warmth, which we meet with in the productions of these Christian poets, none of them has been able to rise to the noble simplicity, power, popular force, and fitting them for church use, objectivity which are present in the old evangelical church hymns. In this respect they all bear too conspicuously the signature of their age, with its subjective tone and the noise and turmoil of present conflicts. Of all modern poets, Rückert alone approaches in his advent hymn the measure and spirit of the old church song.--In the department of novels and romance there has been shown an almost invariable hostility toward Christianity, religion being either entirely avoided or held up to contempt by having as its representatives, simpletons, hypocrites, or knaves.