damental principles and leading elements, the same system that is presented to us in the Nicene period, and that is brought out still more fully afterwards in the Catholicism of the middle ages. It is not the Protestantism of the sixteenth century, and much less the Puritanisın of the nineteenth. This then is the same result precisely that was reached in our articles on Early Christianity; only we have it here under a somewhat dif ferent view. The result may not be agreeable or pleasant. But what of that? The only question is, whether it is true.. If it be so, we are bound to take it as it is, and to make of it afterwards what we can. Why should we not be willing to know the truth? Have we any interest in ignoring it, in shutting our eyes to it, in obstinately embracing instead of it a shadow or a lie. No sophistry can ever make early Christianity to be the same thing with Protestantism. Episcopalianism here too, with all its pretension and self-conceit, has just as little real historical bottom to stand upon as the cause of the Reformation under a different form. No part of the interest can ever be successfully vindicated, as being a repristination simply of what Christianity was in the beginning, and it is only a waste of strength, and a betrayal indeed of the whole cause, to pretend to make good its assumptions and claims in any such violently false way. Sooner or later history must revenge itself for the wrong it is thus made to bear. Any true defence of Protestantism, as all the waking part of the world is coming to see more and more, must be conducted in altogether different style. The fact now stated must be admitted, and boldly looked in the face. Early Christianity was in its constitutional elements, not Protestantism, but Catholicism. Then there are but two general ways of vindicating the Reformation. We must either make all previous Christianity, back to the time of the Apostles, a Satanic apostacy and delusion, and say that the Church took a new start in the sixteenth century, as original as that of the day of Pentecost, and a good deal more safe and sure; which is to give up historical Christianity altogether, and so if we understand it the whole conception also of a supernatural holy and. apostolic church. Or else we must resort to the theory of historical development, by which the Catholic form of the churc shall be regarded as the natural and legitimate course of its history onward to the time of the Reformation, and the state of things since be taken as a more advanced stage of that same previous life, struggling forward to a still higher and far moreglorious consummation in time to come. these solutions, and to quarrel only with the facts that imperiTo reject both of

VOL. IV.NO. VI.

36

ously require either one or the other as the only escape from the argument in favor of the Church of Rome, may well be pronounced obscurantism of the first order.

We of course reject in full the unhistorical theory; and one object we have had in view always, has been to expose its most insane and most perfectly untenable character. It is at last but a decent name for infidelity. Religion built on any such foundation as this, rests only on the sand or wind. We are shut up then of course, so far as we have any faith in Protestantism, to the theory of historical development, as the only possible way of setting it in living union with the Divine fact of early Christianity. But this theory may be carried out in various ways, as we have shown on a former occasion. The methods of Newman, Rothe, Schaff, Thiersch, are not just the same. Neander too has in some respects his own scheme. The whole later German theology, in its better form, moves in the bosom of this theory, is constructed upon it, or at least takes it for granted, though often in a vague and indefinite way. If it be asked now, what precise construction we propose to apply to the subject, we have only to say that we have none to offer whatever. That has been no part of our plan. If we even had a theory in our thoughts that might be perfectly satisfactory to our own mind, we would not choose to bring it forward in the present connection; lest it might seem that the subject was identified in some way, with any such scheme of explanation.' What we have wished, is to present the subject in its own separate and naked form, not entangled with any theory; that it may speak for itself; that it may provoke thought; that it may lead to some earnest and honest contemplation of the truth for its own

'The "Obscurantism," with which we have to deal in this whole case, is ever ready to lay hold of the vague charge of theory and speculation, for the purpose of setting aside the force of facts, which it has no power to answer and no will to admit. It would fain have it that all turns here on some philosophical hobby of historical development, in the interest of which facts are forced to do service in a strained and violent way. We have however no such hobby to offer or defend. For development as such, in any shape, we care not a fig. We would prefer greatly indeed to have the riddle of church history satisfactorily solved, without recourse to any such help. Our trouble is altogether with facts. The theorization is all on the other side. All starts in a particular theory of Christianity, to which both the Bible and Church History are there required to bend throughout. Then follows a scheme of exegesis violent enough. Then again a method or plan of history, the most unnatural that can well be conceived, and as purely ideal as any construction of Hegel or Strauss. And this is to avoid speculation and "philosophy falsely so called!"

sake. The importance of the subject, the nature of the facts in question, is not changed by any theory that may be brought forward for their right adjustment with the cause of Protestantism. This or that solution may be found unsatisfactory; but still the facts remain just what they were before. There they are, challenging our most solemn regard; and it is much if we can only be brought to see that they are there, and to look them steadily in the face. We have had no theory to assert or uphold. We offer no speculation. Our concern has been simply to give a true picture of facts. The difficulty of the whole subject is of course clearly before our mind. We feel it deeply, and not without anxiety and alarm. But we are not bound to solve it, and have no more interest in doing so than others. We have not made the difficulty in any way. We are not responsible for it, and we have no mind or care at present to charge ourselves with the burden of its explanation. There it stands before the whole world. It is of age too, we may say, full formed and full grown; let it speak then for itself.

J. W. N.

NEANDER AS A CHURCH HISTORIAN.'

DR. AUGUSTUS NEANDER forms an epoch in the development of Protestant Church Historiography, as much as Flacius in the 16th century, Arnold at the close of the 17th, Mosheim and somewhat later Semler in the 18th; and was by general consent distinguished accordingly, even before his death (1850), with the honorary title, "Father of Modern Church History." We have from him, in the first place, a large work, unfortunately not finished, on the General History of the Christian Church, which extends from the death of the Apostles almost to the time of the Reformation; in the next place, a special work on the Apostolical Period, and one also on the Life of Christ (1837, 5th ed. 1849), which together serve as a foundation for the main work; then several valuable historical monographies, on Julian the Apostate (1812), St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1813, 2nd ed. 1849), the Gnostic Systems (1818), St. John Chrysostom (1821, 3rd ed. 1848), the Anti-Gnostic Tertullian (1825, 3rd ed. 1849); and finally some collections of smaller publications, historical for the most part in their contents, in which he describes single persons or revelations of the Christian life, from original sources indeed, but yet in more popular form for the practical religious use of a larger public-above all his "Denkwürdigkeiten aus der Geschichte des christlichen Lebens" (3 volumes, 1822, 3rd ed. 1845), a series of edifying life pictures from the first eight centuries of the Church.

Neander was fitted, as few have been, for the great vocation of a historian of the Church of Jesus Christ. By birth and early training an Israelite, and in truth a genuine Nathanael spirit, full of childlike simplicity and Messianic longings, in youth an enthusiastic disciple of the Grecian philosophy, particularly of Plato, who became for him, as he had been for Origen and other church fathers, a scientific schoolmaster to Christ-he had, when

Comp. my "Recollections of Neander" in the January number of thr Mercersburg Review for 1851, and " Neander's Jugendjahre" in the Kirehenfreund for 1851, p. 283 ff.

In 6 volumes, or 11 parts, from 1825 to 1852, the last of which comprising the period preparatory to the Reformation was published after his death, from manuscripts left in very fragmentary form, by Candidate Schneider. The first four volumes have appeared since 1842 in a second improved edition.

3 Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel, in two volumes 1932, 4th ed. 1847.

In the academical gymnasium at Hamburg already, Plato and Plutarch

he received holy baptism in the seventeenth year of his age, made the course inwardly, we may say, of the world's historical preparation for Christianity, the religious process of Judaism and Paganism in their direct current towards the Gospel, and had thus broken his path already to the only right standpoint of church history, where Jesus Christ is viewed as the end towards which humanity strives, the centre of all history and the key that alone can unlock its mysterious sense. Richly endowed in mind and soul, free from all domestic cares, an eunuch from his mother's womb and this too for the kingdom of heaven's sake (Matth. xix: 12), without sense for the external distractions and vanities of life, a stranger in the material world, which in his last years was withdrawn even from his outward eye-all qualified and disposed him to bury himself, during a long and unbroken academical career from 1811 to 1850, in the still contemplation of the spirit world, to explore the past, and to make himself at home among the mighty dead, whose thinking and working belonged to eternity. As regards theology, he was primarily a disciple of the gifted Schleiermacher, under whose electrifying influence he fell during his university studies at Halle, and by whose side he afterwards stood for many years as colleague in Berlin. He always thankfully acknowledged the great merits of this German Plato, who in a period of general apostacy from faith rescued so many young men from the iron embrace of Rationalism, and conducted them at least to the threshold of the most holy place; but he was led himself to take notwithstanding a more positive course, and set himself free accordingly from the pantheistic and deterministic elements which adhered to the

were his favorite study. The intimate friend of his youth, William Neumann, whose sirname he afterwards assumed in Greek form at his baptism, with expressive reference at the same time to his inward change, wrote of David Mendel, as Neander was originally called, a. 1806 (in Chamisso's Works VI, p. 241, f.): “Plato is his idol, and his constant watch-word; he pores over him day and night, and there are few probably who take him in so entirely or with such full reverence. It is wonderful, how he has become all this so wholly without foreign influence, by mere self-reflection and honest true study. Without knowing much of ihe Romantic Philosophy, he has constructed it for himself, and found the germs for doing so in Plato. On the world around him he has learned to look with sovereign contempt." See, for a fuller view of Neander's education, the "Kirchenfreund," as before, a. 1851, p. 286, ff.

Comp. especially Neander's article on The past half century in its relation to the present time, in the "Deutsch. Zeitschrift" established by Dr. Müller, Dr. Nitzsch and himself, 1st Vol. 1850, p. 7 ff., where he gives his view at large in relation to Schleiermacher.