In religion as in everything else the father was a formalist, and such religious views as he held were those of the _Aufklaerung_, for which all forms of spiritual emotion were the folly of unreason.

Religion was a permanent and sustaining influence in the life of Goethe's mother, but her religion consisted simply in a cheerful acquiescence in the decrees of Providence.

Of the soul's trials and sorrows, as they are recorded in the annals of the religious life, her nature was incapable, and she was always perfectly at ease in Zion.

By his mother, therefore, the son could not be deeply moved to concern regarding his spiritual welfare, nor to make religion the all-engrossing subject of his thoughts and affections.

There was one friend of the family, indeed, the Fraeulein von Klettenberg (the _Schoene Seele_ of _Wilhelm Meister_), in whom Goethe saw the exemplar of the religious life in its more ecstatic manifestations, but her special influence on him belongs to a later date.