Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, the son of a clergyman of the reformed church, was born at Breslau, November 21, 1768, and was educated at the Moravian schools at Niesky and Barby. Made sceptical by the newer criticism, he left the Moravian brotherhood and entered the University of Halle (1787), where he devoted himself with equal zeal to the study of theology and philosophy. After his ordination in 1794 he occupied various pulpits until 1803, when he was made a professor and university preacher at Halle. In 1806 he removed from Halle to Berlin, becoming the preacher of Trinity Church in 1809 and professor of theology at the newly founded University in 1810, positions which he filled with marked ability until his death, February 12, 1834. It was in Berlin that he came into friendly touch with the leaders of the Romantic school, Tieck, Friedrich Schlegel, and Novalis, but he did not allow himself to be carried away by their extravagances. He distinguished himself as a preacher, theologian, philosopher, and philologist, and, by his study of the sources of philosophy, added much to the knowledge of its history. Among the books published during his life-time are: _Addresses on Religion_, 1799; _Monologues_, 1800; _Principles of a Criticism of Previous Systems of Ethics_, 1803; translations of Plato's _Dialogues_, with introductions and notes, 1804-28; _The Christian Faith_, 1821-22. Complete Works, 1834-64. Schleiermacher's conception of religion is opposed to the rationalistic theology of the eighteenth century, as well as to the Kantian moral theology which has remained popular in Germany to this day. For him religion is not science or philosophy; it does not consist in theoretical dogmas or rationalistic proofs; neither theories about religion nor virtuous conduct nor acts of worship are religion itself; nor is religion based upon a rational moral faith, as Kant had taught. He bravely took the part of Fichte in the atheism-controversy, when the great leaders of German culture, Kant, Herder, and even Goethe, abandoned him to his fate. He rejected the shallow proofs of the _Aufklärung_, as well as the orthodox utilitarian view of God as the dispenser of rewards and punishments, and showed that the real foes of religion were the rational and practical persons who endeavored to suppress the yearning for the transcendent in man and to drive out all mystery in seeking to make everything clear to him. We cannot have conceptual knowledge of God, for conceptual thought is concerned with differences and opposites, whereas God is without such differences and oppositions: he is the absolute union or identity of thought and being. Religion is grounded in feeling, or divining intuition; in feeling, we come into direct relation with God; here the identity of thought and being is immediately experienced in self-consciousness, and this union is the divine element in us. Religion is the feeling of absolute dependence