The founder of the sect, if sect it can be called, is a certain Prof. Christophe Hoffman of Würtemberg, who, after studying at the University of Tübingen about thirty-five years ago, became a minister of the Lutheran Church and the principal of the College of Crischona, not far from Basle, in Switzerland. Here he became known as entertaining certain theological opinions which soon acquired some notoriety, as they consisted mainly of a criticism on the action of the Church with reference to the rationalistic opinions then becoming prevalent in Germany, and which found their culminating expression in the writings of the late Dr. Strauss. Mr. Hoffman, who was an ardent opponent of the modern and sceptical tendency of German thought, attributed its growing influence to the feeble opposition offered to it by the Church, and maintained that its impotency to arrest the evil arose from the inconsistent practice of its members with the moral teaching which they professed. Under the influence of this conviction he abandoned his charge at Crischona, and with his brothers-in-law founded a college at “Salon,” not far from Stuttgart, and commenced an agitation in favour of church reform, both in written publications and by his personal influence. He was shortly after elected to the Diet at Frankfort, where he presented a petition signed by 12,000 persons in favour of reform of the Lutheran Church. His Biblical studies at this time, especially of the book of Revelations, led him to the conclusion that the period of the second advent of the Messiah was approaching, but that Christ could only be received by a Church which had attempted to embody his moral teaching in daily life; in fact, that he could only recognize those as his own at his second coming who had succeeded in practically applying the ethical code which he had taught when he came first; and he reproached the Church with failing to inaugurate a social reconstruction which should render possible a Christ life in the true acceptation of the term. A doctrine based on Scripture, and directed against the ecclesiastical system to which he belonged, naturally brought him into direct collision with it; and as an interpretation of the New Testament which strikes at the root of all compromise between profession and practice must ever be an inconvenient doctrine to churches which are based upon such compromise, Mr. Hoffman was summarily expelled, carrying with him, however, a large body of followers.