The misery consequent on the great wars, and the powerful reaction against Gallicism throughout Germany, once more caused despised religion to be reverenced in the age of philosophy. Prussia deemed herself called upon, as the inheritor of the Reformation brought about by Luther, as the principal Protestant power of Germany, to assume a prominent position in the religious movement of the time. Frederick William III., a sovereign distinguished for piety, appears, immediately after the great wars, to have deemed the conciliation of the various sects of Christians within his kingdom feasible. He, nevertheless, merely succeeded in effecting a union between the Lutherans and Calvinists. He also bestowed a new liturgy upon this united church, which was censured as partial, as proceeding too directly from the cabinet without being sanctioned by the concurrence of the assembled clergy and of the people. Some Lutherans, who refused compliance, were treated with extreme severity and compelled to emigrate; the utility of a union which, two centuries earlier, would have saved Germany from ruin, was, however, generally acknowledged. It nevertheless was not productive of unity in the Protestant world. In the universities and among the clergy, two parties, the Rationalists and the Supernaturalists, stood opposed to one another. The former, the disciples of the old Neologians, still followed the philosophy of Kant, merely regarded Christianity as a code of moral philosophy, denominated Christ a wise teacher, and explained away his miracles by means of physics. The latter, the followers of the old orthodox Lutherans, sought to confirm the truths of the gospel also by philosophical means, and were denominated Supernaturalists, as believers in a mystery surpassing the reasoning powers of man. The celebrated Schleiermacher of Berlin mediated for some time between both parties. But it was in Prussia more particularly that both parties stood more rigidly opposed to one another and fell into the greatest extremes.