The Reformed Church in Germany long followed Calvin in exclusively using the Psalms of David, but finally felt the impulse of the Lutheran hymnody. Tersteegen, mentioned above, leaned to this branch of the German church, although not officially connected with it. Joachim Neander (1650-1680), a Reformed minister at Bremen, wrote some extremely valuable and popular hymns of praise and was called the Psalmist of the New Covenant. Among his best are “Sieh, hier bin ich, Ehren-Koenig” (“Behold me here in grief draw near”), “Lobe den Herren, den maechtigen Koenig der Ehren” (“Praise to the Lord! He is King over all the creation”), “Unser Herrscher, unser Koenig” (“Sovereign Ruler, King victorious”), still sung in every pious home in Germany. V. TRANSITION TO RATIONALISTIC HYMNS The transitional personality between this Pietistic and the succeeding Rationalistic era, was Christian F. Gellert (1715-1769), a professor in Leipzig University. He was a man of sincere piety; he was a teacher, not only in the classroom, but in all his literary efforts. He wrote moral _Tales and Fables_, _Moral Poems_, _Didactic Poems_, as well as _Sacred Odes and Hymns_. There were fifty-four of these, all in the same didactic style. They lacked the rugged strength of Luther, the poetical element of Gerhardt, and the mystic insight of Tersteegen; but this very matter-of-factness made his writings immensely popular. Of all his hymns, but one survives in our modern hymnals, his Easter hymn, “Jesus lebt, mit ihm auch ich” (“Jesus lives, no longer now”). VI. RATIONALISM IN HYMNODY German hymnody suddenly fell from its exalted Pietistic rhapsodies into a crass materialism. Dr. Philip Schaff gives a vivid glimpse into the situation: “He (Klopstock) was followed by a swarm of hymnological tinkers and poetasters who had no sympathy with the theology and poetry of the grand old hymns of faith; weakened, diluted, mutilated, and watered them, and introduced these misimprovements into the churches.... Conversion and sanctification were changed into self-improvement, piety into virtue, heaven into the better world, Christ into Christianity, God into Providence, Providence into fate. The people were compelled to sing rhymed sermons on the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the delights of reunion, the dignity of man, the duty of self-improvement, the nurture of the body, and the care of animals and flowers.” There is no poetical, much less religious, lyrical impulse in rationalism, and the church lyrics of this period have left little impress on the hymnody of the Christian Church. It was the classic period of German literature, but it had few Christian elements in it. Athens and Rome, not Jerusalem, were the centers of intellectual interest; and it might almost be said that it is a pagan literature. VII. HYMNS OF RENEWED RELIGIOUS LIFE