Out of such views and convictions, especially with a constantly increasing knowledge of languages, was very naturally developed that kind of study by which it was attempted to examine more accurately the oriental localities, nationalities, natural products, and phenomena, and in this manner to make present to one's-self that ancient time. Michaelis employed the whole strength of his talents and his knowledge on this side. Descriptions of travels became a powerful help in explaining the Holy Scriptures, and later travellers, furnished with numerous questions, were made, by the answers to them, to bear witness for the prophets and apostles.
But whilst they were on all sides busied to bring the Holy Scriptures to a natural intuition, and to render peculiar modes of thought and representation in them more universally comprehensible, that by this historico-critical aspect many an objection might be removed, many offensive things effaced, and many a shallow scoffing be made ineffective, there appeared in some men just the opposite disposition, since these chose the darkest, most mysterious writings as the subject of their meditations, and wished, if not to elucidate them, yet to confirm them through internal evidence, by means of conjectures, calculations, and other ingenious and strange combinations, and so far as they contained prophecies, to prove them by the results, and thus to justify a faith in what was next to be expected.
The venerable BENGEL had procured a decided reception for his labours on the Revelations of St. John, from the fact that he was known as an intelligent, upright, God-fearing, blameless man. Deep minds are compelled to live in the past as well as in the future. The ordinary movements of the world can be of no importance to them, if they do not, in the course of ages up to the present, revere prophecies which have been revealed, and in the immediate, as well as in the most remote futurity, predictions still veiled. Hence arises a connexion that is wanting in history, which seems to give us only an accidental wavering backwards and forwards in a necessarily limited circle. Doctor CRUSIUS** was one of those whom the prophetic part of Scripture suited more than any other, since it brings into action the two most opposite qualities of human nature, the affections, and the acuteness of the intellect. Many young men had devoted themselves to this doctrine, and already formed a respectable body, which attracted the more attention, as ERNESTI with his friends threatened, not to illuminate, but completely to disperse the obscurity in which these delighted. Hence arose controversies, hatred, persecution and much that was unpleasant. I attached myself to the lucid party, and sought to appropriate to myself their principles and advantages, although I ventured to forebode, that by this extremely praiseworthy, intelligent method of interpretation, the poetic contents of the writings must at last be lost along with the prophetical.