Rationalists of all descriptions, adherents of Baur’s school, as well as disciples of Hegel and Schleiermacher of the left wing, kept far off from every evangelical union. But the common negation of the tendencies characterizing the evangelical confederations and the common endeavour after a free, democratic, non-confessional organization of the German Protestant church, awakened in them a sense of the need of combination and co-operation. While in North Germany this feeling was powerfully expressed from A.D. 1854, in the able literary organ the “_Protest. Kirchenzeitung_,” in South Germany, with Heidelberg as a centre and Dean Zittel as chief agitator, local “_Protestantenvereine_” were formed, which combined in a united organization in the Assembly of Frankfort, A.D. 1863. After long debates the northern and southern societies were joined in one. In June, A.D. 1865, the first general Protestant assembly was held at Eisenach, and the nature, motive, and end of the associations were defined. To these assemblies convened from year to year members of the society crowded from all parts of Germany in order to encourage one another to persevere in spreading their views by word and pen, and to take steps towards the founding of branch associations for disseminating among the people a Christianity which renounces the miraculous and sets aside the doctrines of the church.
§ 180.1. =The Protestant Assembly.=--The first general German Protestant Assembly, composed of 400 clerical and lay notabilities, met at Eisenach in A.D. 1865, under the presidency of the jurist Bluntschli of Heidelberg and the chief court preacher Schwarz of Gotha. A peculiar lustre was given to the meeting by the presence of Rothe of Heidelberg. Of special importance was Schwarz’s address on “The Limits of Doctrinal Freedom in Protestantism,” which he sought not in the confession, not in the authority of the letter of Scripture, not even in certain so called fundamental articles, but in the one religious moral truth of Christianity, the gospel of love and the divine fatherhood as Christ taught it, expounded it in his life and sealed it by his death. In Berlin, Osnabrück, and Leipzig, the churches were refused for services according to the _Protestantenverein_. In A.D. 1868 fifteen heads of families in Heidelberg petitioned the ecclesiastical council to grant them the use of one of the city churches where a believing clergyman might conduct service in the old orthodox fashion. This request was refused by fifty votes against four. Baumgarten denounced this intolerance, and declared that unless repudiated by the union it would be a most serious stain upon its reputation. In A.D. 1877 he publicly withdrew from the society.