The position of Rationalism during the last quarter of the eighteenth century was surrounded with circumstances of the most conflicting nature. Had it been advocated by a few more such ribald characters as Bahrdt its career would soon have been terminated from the mere want of respectability. But had it assumed a more serious phase and become the protege of such pious men as Semler was at heart, there would have been no limit to the damage it might inflict upon the cause of Protestantism. And there were indications favorable to either result. However, by some plan of fiendish malice, skepticism received all the support it could ask from the learned, the powerful, and the ambitious. Here and there around the horizon could be seen some rising literary star that, for the hour, excited universal attention. His labor was to impugn the contents of the Scriptures and insinuate against the moral purity of the writers themselves. Another candidate for theological glory appeared, and reproached the style of the inspired record. A third came vauntingly forward with his geographical discoveries and scientific data, and reared the accommodation-theory so many more stories higher than Semler had left it that it almost threatened to fall of its own weight. Strange that the poetic Muse should lend her inspiration to such unholy purposes; but in the poetry of that day there was but little of the Christian element, and he need not be greatly skilled in classic verse who concludes that the loftiest poetry of Rationalism was as thoroughly heathen as the dramas of Euripides or Plautus. Immediately before the appearance of the _Wolfenbuettel Fragments_ by Lessing, there was the significant lull before the storm. A single editorial in some religious periodical might decide the fate of Rationalism. In a few years more it might lie outside the lecture-halls and renowned churches as thoroughly discarded as a cast-off garment. Or it might rise to new power and bend all opposition before it. Every one seemed to be waiting to see what would come next. Would it be the hoarse thunder and the glare of lightning; or would the clouds be rent and the clear sky be seen through the widening rifts?