Cramer

Another favourite religious poet of this time was Johann Andreas Cramer, who was a friend of both 321 Gellert and Klopstock. He was a man of high character and considerable ability, who was considered in his day to be the greatest pulpit orator in Germany; for many years he was court-preacher at Copenhagen when Count Bernstorff was in power, and he died as chancellor of the university of Kiel in 1788 at the age of sixty-five. As a poet he does not hold a very high place; his poems resemble those of Gellert, but have less sweetness and feeling, and are more definitely didactic; they are, however, characteristic as embodying one type of the religion of this period, a type strongly contrasting with that of Zinzendorf, somewhat frigid and Deistic rather than Christian in its aspect, yet retaining a sincere attachment to Christianity and accepting it as an authoritative revelation from God. Cramer's favourite themes are the wisdom and goodness of God in nature and providence; the immortality of the soul,--not heaven, for he does not picture the future life to himself, but brings forward very good arguments for a belief in its existence; and the inculcation of specific Christian duties, such as cheerfulness, purity, usefulness, &c., in poems which at least have the merit of very good sense and sound morality. From the latter we choose the following poem on