One view of Novalis's work is that it maintains a traditional Christian outlook. The early biography of Novalis by his friend and employer Just describes Novalis as a person who kept the Pietist faith of his childhood until his death. Novalis's brother Karl writes that during his final illness, Novalis would read the works of the theologians Nicolaus Zinzendorf and Johann Kaspar Lavater, as well as the Bible. On the other hand, during the decades following Novalis's death, German intellectuals, such as the author Karl Hillebrand and the literary critic Hermann Theodor Hettner thought that Novalis was essentially a Catholic in his thinking. In the twentieth century, this view of Novalis has sometimes led to negative assessments of his work. "Hymns to the Night" has described as an attempt by Novalis to use religion to avoid the challenges of modernity, and "Christianity or Europe" has been described variously as desperate prayer, a reactionary manifesto or a theocratic dream.