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Rosenmuller, Johann Georg

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Rosenmuller, Ernst Friedrich Karl

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the father of the preceding, a prominent theologian, preacher, and writer of Germany in the close of the last and the beginning of the present century, was born of humble parentage Dec. 18, 1736. Unusual talents secured for him assistance by which he was enabled to procure an education at Nuremberg and the University of Altorf. He subsequently spent several years as tutor in different families and schools, and became popular as a preacher, so that a number of prominent churches were successively placed under his charge. In 1775 he became professor of theology at Erlangen, in which position he secured a name, and in 1783 at the pedagogium at Giessen. In 1785 he entered on a theological professorship at Leipsic, and in that office, joined with the pastorate of St. Thomas's Church and the superintendency, he spent the last thirty years of his life. It is not strange that he should have become tinged with rationalism from association with the element then in control of the Leipsic University; but he has retained the name of a pious rationalist. His influence was highly beneficial to the progress of the theology and ecclesiastical life of Protestantism. Many of his sermons were printed, and earned for him the reputation of an exemplary popular preacher; and devotional manuals from his pen have not yet lost their hold upon the Christian public. His literary activity was surprising, nearly 100 different writings having been given by him to the world, among them works on exegesis, hermeneutics, and practical theology; e.g. Scholia in N.T. (6th ed. Lips. 1815-31, 6 vols.): — Hist. Interp. Libr. Sacrorum in Eccles. Christ. (ibid. 1795-1814, etc., 5 vols.). His practical activity was equally respectable. He founded and improved schools, labored to secure a modernized hymnology, sought to eliminate objectionable features from the administration of the Lord's supper, etc. After having been rewarded with all the titles and honorary positions usually conferred on a senior of the theological faculty, he died, March 14, 1815. See Dolz, Dr. J.G. Rosenmü ller's Leben und Wirken (ibid. 1816).