part of God's work." In exemplification of this view, which he takes to be so closely related to that of Calvin, Liebner refers to the theories of Schleiermacher and Rothe, as well as to the speculations of Fichte and Hegel on the idea of sin.

From these plausible schemes, which draw their strength for thoughtful minds from the great interest of the Divine sovereignty, the only adequate deliverance is found, he thinks, in the theory which includes in the conception of the creation itself the idea of the incarnation, as the last necessary sense of the world. Grant this, and there is, no longer any reason or temptation to resolve sin into an anthropological necessity, the fault of man's nature, or to lay the burden of its origin on God. It falls on the freedom of the human will, where it is made to fall in the Bible. We recognize no necessity in its introduction into the sphere of man's life. "On the contrary, we see a necessity rather of a wholly different sort; namely this, that if humanity have not the character of goodness in its original constitution, as this comes from God, by no possible human act can it ever become really good; it must remain forever involved in the contradiction of wrongly balanced and adjusted powers with which it has been doomed to start. Even a true incarnation in this case, a sinless Christ, must be impossible. In other words, if sin be not something brought into humanity, as no proper part of it, it can never be brought out of it even by redemption itself. With this falls to the ground the whole puzzling system of Schleiermacher in regard to sin and redemption, in which neither sin is sin properly nor redemption properly redemption. And even Rothe's masterly and classical exposition, which goes beyond Schleiermacher's physical categories in its view of freedom and proper personality, has truth for us only as an uncommonly acute delineation of the actual development of man's sinful nature as it now stands, not as a speculative construction of its siuful development as it stood in the beginning."

It amounts to nothing here, according to Liebner, that Thomasius and others standing on the same general ground are ready to say: We are not in this fault, we do not make sin necessary. That is only to their private benefit; the case however regards the doctrine of the Church; which needs to be so set forth, that these theories of the original necessity or unavoidableness of sin may no longer be able to uphold themselves as logically indispensable. It must be counted ever a poor interest for church orthodoxy, which simply closes its eyes to the difficulties that surround it, and so quarrels with every effort that is made to meet and solve them on the part of others.

In this general way Prof. Liebner vindicates the view he takes of the necessary relation of Christ to the world. The subject is to be taken up in its soteriological relations fully and specially, he tells us, in the second part of his work, the appearance of which we anticipate with no small interest. Our business at present has been simply to bring it before our readers in the way of report, without pretending to pass upon it any judgment of

our own.

In the second part of his article in reply to Thomasius, our author takes up the charge of pantheism, and shows very satisfactorily as it seems to us that it is in this case, as employed against his book, a mere empty sound without any force whatever. There is much more room, he thinks, for urging this very difficulty on the general view of Thomasius himself. It needs at all events to be well considered and kept in mind, that the danger of pantheism can never be fairly avoided, by simply falling over into the arms of an abstract deism. And most especially must that be counted a poor and shallow conception here, by which the idea of Christ's central posture as the Son of Man, in and by whom only our entire humanity can become complete, is taken to imply the falling away in any measure of the grand original and eternal distinction that must ever hold between Himself and the persons of his people. But this point we are not called to take up at the present time.

J. W. N.

RECOLLECTIONS OF NEANDER.

AMONG the world renowned men, who during the summer of 1850 have been gathered in quick succession to the dead, stands conspicuous the German church father, Dr. AUGUSTUS NEANDer, after Schleiermacher the greatest theologian of the nineteenth century. True, he has occupied no ministerial post, like Robert Peel, has won no laurels of victory, like General Taylor, has adorned no throne, like Louis Philippe, and in the loud tumult of public worldly life his voice was not heard. But from his solitary study, Neander has exercised an influence quite as far reaching as that of any of his companions in time and death; an influence, whose action was only more deep and beneficent by being inward and spiritual, and the force of which will continue to be felt without interruption as long as theologians and

ministers of the gospel shall be trained for their heaven appointed work. Though political history knows nothing of the quiet, humble scholar in Berlin, his name shines but the more illustriously for this in the records of the kingdom of God, which outlasts all earthly governments and sets at defiance even the gates of hell. Though too no monument should be raised to him of brass or marble, a far fairer and more imperishable memorial is already secured to him in the grateful hearts of thous ands, who have been his hearers or readers, or who in coming time shall draw from his works a knowledge of the sorrows and joys, the conflicts and triumphs, the all pervading and transforming leaven-like nature of the church of Jesus Christ, as well as from his life the priceless doctrine-that all true spiritual and moral greatness roots itself in simplicity, humility and love.

The outward history of Neander may be told in few words; as his whole life was spent in the study and lecture room. Born at Göttingen on the 16th of January in the year 1789, educated in the gymnasium at Hamburg and the university at Halle, a convert in youth from Judaism to the christian faith, and thenceforward self-devoted with entire soul to the study of divinity, he made his appearance a. 1811 as private teacher at Heidelberg, and already in the 22nd year of his age, by his well known work on Julian the Apostate, settled his vocation to become the historian of the church. Soon after, a. 1812, he received a call as Professor of Theology to the newly founded university of Berlin; which through him, Schleiermacher, de Wette, Marheinecke, Tholuck, Hengstenberg, Fichte, Hegel, Böckh, Lachmann, Ritter, Ranke, and other no less celebrated names in all departments of learning, sprang forward with unexampled growth, and rose to be the metropolis of German science. Here he labored as a lecturer and writer, by doctrine and by example, on till his death on the 14th of July, 1850; only now and then breaking the uniformity of his existence, by a vacation trip, in company with his sister or with some student, for the benefit of his weak health and to consult rare books or manuscripts in the libraries at Vienna, Münich, Brunswick or elsewhere.

Behind this monotonous exterior however, lay hid the richest spiritual life; and it must be exceedingly interesting to follow its gradual development on to fall maturity, especially his conversion to Christianity and the different influences which led him to his peculiar theological standpoint. Among these would have to be named before all the study of Plato, which kindied in him also, as formerly in the Alexandrian Fathers and in St. Augustine, an "incredible fire" of enthusiasm for the ideal, and

served as a scientific school master unto Christ; or still more perhaps his early contact with Schleiermacher, who by his animated "Discourses on Religion," like a priest in the outer court of Nature, conducted so many of the noblest and most gifted youth of the time out of the dry heath of the then dominant Rationalism at least to the threshold of Revelation. To this German Plato, his teacher in Halle and his colleague for many years afterwards in Berlin, Neander too stood indebted, as he himself always cheerfully acknowledged, for manifold quickening impulses, as he continued also most reverentially attached to him through life; although he differed from him materially in weighty points, particularly on the doctrine of sin, and had no sympathy with the pantheistic elements of his system, being altogether much more positive and realistic in his religious convictions. Valuable materials for such an inward spiritual history are already furnished, in the correspondence with his university friend, the poet Chamisso, which was published some years since, and are to be found still more richly we may presume among his unpublished letters and papers. No doubt also some competant hand, having all these resources in reach, will soon be applied to the important task of providing a complete biography of the father of church history in its recent forin. We have for this neither inward nor outward call, and propose here simply, as our title imports, some recollections of Neander, as he came before us in his riper years, reserving for a future article some notice of his character as a theologian and more particulary as a church historian. We discharge thus not merely a service which others have asked at our hands, but a duty of gratitude also in our own mind towards a never to be forgotten instructor and friend.

In his outward appearance, to begin with what struck every one in an unusual degree, Neander was a perfect original, we might almost say one of the rarest natural curiosities. Even his clothing, a well worn coat of the ancient cut-we never knew him to wear a dress coat-jack-boots reaching above the knees, a white cravat carelessly tied, often on one side of the neck or behind it, an old fashioned hat set aslant on the back of his head, presented an oddity, which seemed to mock the elegant refinement of Berlin, and yet was greeted respectfully by every body, from the king to the lounger at the street corner. absolute freedom from all that belongs to the stuff of vanity, and his extraordinary indifference to all outward things, gave occasion to the most ludicrous anecdotes; as for instance, that he set off at times for the lecture room sans culotte and in his

His

night gown, but would be happily fetched back by his sister; or that, having once got with one foot into the gutter, he hoobled along the whole length of the street in this predicament, and as soon as he got home sent anxiously for a physician to cure him of his imaginary lameness! Se non è vero, è ben trovato. He was of a slender bodily frame, of middling size, with strongly marked Jewish though at the same time most benevolent and good natured features, the eyes deeply seated and full of spirit, overshadowed as with a roof by an unusually strong bushy pair of eye-brows. Thus he sat in his solitary study in the Markgrafen street, surrounded with the spirits of church fathers, schoolmen, mystics, and reformers, whose works lay on all sides in learned disorder, against the walls, on the floor, on tables and chairs, so that visitors could scarcely find a place on an old fashioned sopha for sitting down, while the way out into the dining room, and into the decently furnished parlor of the sister, led so to speak over pure corpses. Still more odd if possible was the appearance of the good man on the rostrum. As he could hardly have found the way by himself, and must have been put in danger by the moving crowd of vehicles and men, a student accompanied him every day to the university building as far as the reading room, where the professors and private teachers are ac customed to entertain themselves during recess. From this he proceeded alone into his lecture room, which was quite close at hand, shooting in sideways; seized first of all a couple of goose quills, which must be regularly laid upon the desk before hand, to keep his fingers employed, and then began his lecture; spinning forth from his mind one idea after another with the greatest earnestness and zeal, without any other help than that of some illegible notices and citations; standing, but constantly chang ing the position of his feet; bent forward; frequently sinking his head behind the desk to discharge a morbid flow of spittle, and then again suddenly throwing it on high, especially when roused to polemic violence; at times threatening even to overturn the rostrum. The whole scene was so strange and eccentric, that one who heard him for the first time could hardly contain himself for astonishment, and had no power at all to follow him with the pen. And yet still the earnestness, the dignity, the enthusiasm of the eccentric professor, the extraordinary learning and power of thought that appeared in his lectures, restrained all laughter, nay, his personal aspect itself had always even on the first acquaintance something in it that inspired reverence and at the same time called forth confidence and love. In a short time moreover one grew accustomed to his strange exterior,