The old church formulas against the Prince of the
Power of the Air were still used, but the theological theory,
especially in the Protestant Church, began to grow milder. Four
years after Franklin's discovery Pastor Karl Koken, member of
the Consistory and official preacher to the City Council of
Hildesheim, was moved by a great hailstorm to preach and publish
a sermon on _The Revelation of God in Weather_. Of "the Prince of
the Power of the Air" he says nothing; the theory of diabolical
agency he throws overboard altogether; his whole attempt is to
save the older and more harmless theory, that the storm is the
voice of God. He insists that, since Christ told Nicodemus that
men "know not whence the wind cometh," it can not be of mere
natural origin, but is sent directly by God himself, as David
intimates in the Psalm, "out of His secret places." As to the
hailstorm, he lays great stress upon the plague of hail sent by
the Almighty upon Egypt, and clinches all by insisting that God
showed at Mount Sinai his purpose to startle the body before
impressing the conscience.
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