[45] Wegscheider: _Institutiones Dogmaticae_. [46] Eichhorn: _Einleitung_. [47] Paulus: _Kritische Commentar ueber das Neue Testament_. [48] Kant. [49] Wegscheider: _Institutiones Dogmaticae_. [50] Eichhorn: _Die Hebraeischen Propheten_. [51] Von Ammon. Quoted from his _Magazine_ in Saintes' _Histoire du Rationalisme_. CHAPTER IX. RENOVATION INAUGURATED BY SCHLEIERMACHER. The commencement of the nineteenth century found the German people in a state of almost hopeless depression. They saw their territory laid waste by the victorious Napoleon, and their thrones occupied by rulers of Gallic or Italian preferences. They had striven very sluggishly to stem the current of national subjection and humiliation. The star of France being in the ascendant, the Rhine was no longer their friendly ally and western limit. No stage in the history of a people is more gloomy and calls more loudly for sympathy than when national prestige is gone, and dignities usurped by foreign conquerors. Though the apathy of despair is a theme more becoming the poet than the historian, we find a vivid description of the sadness and desolation produced by the French domination given by one who deeply felt the disgrace of his country. This writer says: "The Divine Nemesis now stretched forth her hand against devoted Germany, and chastened her rulers and her people for the sins and transgressions of many generations. Like those wild sons of the desert, whom in the seventh century, heaven let loose to punish the degenerate Christians of the East, the new Islamite hordes of revolutionary France were permitted by Divine Providence to spread through Germany, as through almost every country in Europe, terror and desolation.