title: java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError Exception when creating Application Context in Spring
body: <p>I am practicing with Spring, and am getting a java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError exception when I try to instantiate the context. The Exception appears below, with my code following it. I have simplified my experiment from before.</p>
  
  <p>The Exception</p>
  
  <pre><code>Oct 17, 2012 5:54:22 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext prepareRefresh
  INFO: Refreshing org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext@570c16b7: startup date [Wed Oct 17 17:54:22 CDT 2012]; root of context hierarchy
  Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
  at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.createBeanFactory(AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.java:195)
  at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.refreshBeanFactory(AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.java:128)
  at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.obtainFreshBeanFactory(AbstractApplicationContext.java:535)
  at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:449)
  at org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.&lt;init&gt;(ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.java:139)
  at org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.&lt;init&gt;(ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.java:83)
  at helloworld.HelloWorldTest.main(HelloWorldTest.java:13)
  Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
  at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.&lt;clinit&gt;(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:105)
  ... 7 more
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My configuration XML</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
  &lt;beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:c="http://www.springframework.org/schema/c"
  xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.1.xsd"&gt;
  
  &lt;bean id="messageContainer" class="helloworld.MessageContainer"&gt;
      &lt;property name="message" value="Hello World"&gt;
      &lt;/property&gt;
  &lt;/bean&gt;
  
  &lt;bean id="messageOutputService" class="helloworld.MessageOutputService"&gt;
  &lt;/bean&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p></p>
  
  <p>My test class.</p>
  
  <pre><code>package helloworld;
  
  import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
  import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;
  
  public class HelloWorldTest {
  
  /**
   * @param args
   */
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
      ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("HelloWorldTest-context.xml");
  
      MessageContainer message = context.getBean(MessageContainer.class);
  
      MessageOutputService service = context.getBean(MessageOutputService.class);
  
      service.outputMessageToConsole(message);
  
  }
  
  }
  </code></pre>