A CORRELATION between pietism and nationalism in Germany has already been proposed in the suggestive work of Koppel S. Pinson.' Indirectly he made the Enlightenment, also, a contributing factor, because, when the rationalism of the Enlightenment diminished faith in the object of religion, all the fervor of religious piety engendered by pietism was transferred to the nation. Pinson failed, however, to observe that-sometimes, at any rate-the Enlightenment fostered nationalism even without the aid of pietism. Actually, the Enlightenment often went a step beyond pietism: the latter led to nationalism incidentally, without ever surrendering its main preoccupation with God; the Enlightenment, on the other hand, through its tendency to secularize all aspects of life, undermined the very position of religion and ultimately led to the enthronement of nationalism as a secularized religion. This paper calls attention to the sermons of a number of the representatives of the Enlightenmrent and one in particular, Christian Ludewig Hahnzog, who, unaffected by pietism, yet proclaimed an ardent patriotism. The explanation here proposed is that the weakening of dogmatic orthodoxy extended the scope of the sermon to include a wide range of social and political topics. The enthronement of reason as the ultimate authority in the thinking of man had far-reaching consequences for man's attitude toward orthodox theology. Along with the rise of rationalism in the eighteenth century a re-examination of credulously accepted truths took place which did not halt before the sanctity of religion itself. "The attempt of the strong intellect to examine the most sacred truths is always praiseworthy," declared patriotic Thomas Abbt (1738-66),2 the former studiosus theologiae, who himself, when engulfed by the wave of Wolffian rationalism at