the church where he preached. Among the German preachers who have appealed to the mass of the people with singular skill and effectiveness, the name of Claus Harms is very prominent. Tholuck was one of the most conspicuous and impressive preachers before cultivated audiences. Those who have listened to his academical sermons at Halle will not forget the enthusiasm, the ringing emphasis, and the flashes of genius which were never missing from them. In France, the Catholic pulpit has included among its distinguished representatives such names as Lacordaire and Hyacinthe; while on the Protestant side are found Adolph Monod, Alexander Vinet, and, among the living, Bersier and Pressensé. When we think of the English pulpit we call to mind Spurgeon, Liddon, Kingsley, Farrar, Maclaren, and others not less worthy of mention. Among the Roman Catholics in England, Manning is justly eminent as a preacher; but it is the discourses of John Henry Newman which stand pre-eminent. For subtlety of thought and charm of expression they are wonderful indeed. We cannot resist the temptation to quote, almost at random, a single paragraph: "O that we could take that simple view of things, as to feel that the one thing which lies before us is to please God! What gain is it to please the world, to please the great, nay, even to please those whom we love, compared with this? What gain is it to be applauded, admired, courted, followed, compared with this one aim of not being disobedient to a heavenly vision? What can this world offer comparable with that insight into spiritual things, that keen faith, that heavenly peace, that high sanctity, that everlasting righteousness, that hope of glory which they have, who in sincerity love and follow our Lord Jesus Christ? Let us beg and pray Him, day by day, to reveal Himself to our souls more fully, to quicken our senses, to give us sight and hearing, taste and touch of the world to come; so to work within us that we may sincerely say, "Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and after that receive me with glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of thee. My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.'

We refrain from the mention of names in connection with the American pulpit. In certain elements of power, preaching in this country has been fully equal, to say the least, to the preaching in other Prot

estant lands.

The pulpit of to-day, it is needless to remark, has many competitors for popular attention. The force of custom in drawing men to church is far less operative now than formerly. Once, in New England certainly, it was not respectable to be absent from public worship. At an earlier day still, except when it was necessary, it was contrary to Public speeches, in many communities, are so frequent as to become almost a drug. The appetite for public speaking of all sorts is

dulled. Literature in very attractive forms, often with the accessories of art, is within the reach of all. Newspapers abound; and the reading of them is to millions an agreeable pastime. Add to these facts the strain and pressure of business, and the nervous expenditure in various other directions, and it will be easy to explain any diminished interest that exists in respect to preaching. There is no ground, however, for the fear that earnest preaching, adapted to the times, on the great themes of Christianity, will fail to command attention. There is a charm and potency in the living voice which can never disappear. The printed page is no substitute for it. We might as well expect that conversation will cease, because so much conversation can be read in novels and plays and in other books, as that assemblies of men will cease to gather to hear the preaching of the Gospel from men whose hearts and minds are kindled by it.

III.

- REMINISCENSES OF NEANDER.

NO. II.

BY PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., New York.

NEANDER'S MORAL CHARACTER.

As regards the character of Neander, it was universally esteemed and admired. True, he also had decided theological enemies. For the Orthodox of the more strict class he was in many points too lax and yielding; for the Rationalists too positive and firm; but all entertained for his personal character a sort of sacred veneration, and treated him accordingly with much more mildness and forbearance than is usual with such difference of views. His uncommon learning was not of itself sufficient to protect him from assault; what surrounded him as an impenetrable tower and made him invulnerable, was his moral purity and elevation, which at once struck even the most superficial observer, and in regard to which all room for doubt was cut off by his showing himself always immediately as he was, the very personification thus of the simplicity of the dove. Any attack upon his character, any impeachment of his motives, could have sprung only from stock-blind passion, would have awakened indignation throughout the whole theological camp of Germany, and so must have resulted almost inevitably in the moral discomfiture of the antagonist himself.

HIS THEOLOGY.

Neander was one of those truly great men with whom theory and practice, head and heart, are beautifully blended. Not without reason had he chosen for his motto: "Pectus est, quod theologum facit." Marheineke and the Hegelians contemptuously called him the pectoral theologian. He pursued theology, not as an exercise of the understanding merely, but also as a sacred occupation of the heart, which

he felt to be intimately connected with the highest and most solemn interests of man, his eternal welfare and worth. The living centre and heart's blood of the science was for him faith in Jesus Christ, as the highest revelation of a holy and merciful God, as the fountain of salvation and sanctifying grace for the world. Whatever he found that was really great, noble, good and true in history, he referred directly or indirectly to the fact of the incarnation, in which he humbly adored the central sun of all history and the innermost sanctuary of the moral universe. There were, no doubt, more orthodox theologians than Neander; for it is well known that, with all his regard for the symbolical books, he would never confine himself to their measure, and conscientiously refused to sign the Augsburg Confession; but among all there was not one, perhaps, in whom doctrine was to the same extent life and power, in whom theoretic conviction had so fully passed over into flesh and blood, in whom the love of Christ and of man glowed with so warm and bright a flame. In this unfeigned, life-breathing piety, which had its root in Christ's person and gospel, and formed the foundation of all his theology, lay the irresistible attraction of his lectures, for every piously disposed hearer, and the edifying character of all his writings.

Whilst in this practical bent of his theology he fell in with the pietistic school of Spener and Francke, which asserted just this side of religion, the rights of the heart, the necessity of a theologia regenitorum, over against a lifeless orthodoxy of the intellect-he was, on the other hand, far removed from pietistic narrowness and circumscription. His extended historical studies had served to enlarge his naturally liberal mind to the most comprehensive catholicity. He never lost his sound and simple sight for the main object, the life of Christ proceeding from a supernatural source, but he thought too highly of this to compress it into the narrow bounds of a human formula, some single tendency or school. He saw in it rather such an inexhaustible depth of sense, as could be in some degree adequately expressed only in an endless variety of gifts, powers, periods and nationalities. What a difference is there not, for example, between an Origen and a Tertullian, a Chrysostom and an Augustin, a Bernard and a Thomas Aquinas, a Luther and a Melancthon, a Calvin and a Fenelon ; or when we go back to the Apostolical Church itself, between a Peter and a John, a James and a Paul, a Martha and a Mary! And yet Neander knew how to trace out, and greet with joyous gratitude the same image of Christ variously reflected in all. He had little interest in the outward surroundings of church history, but he always moved in the deep, and brought out the internal, spiritual and eternal relations, and turned everywhere the pervading influence of the gospel working like a leaven upon every variety of temper and constitution.

The wideness of his heart was an essential element in his practical piety. Between it and his studies there existed a relation of reciprocal encouragement and support. Thus was Neander, in the noblest. sense, a friend of man, because Christ's friend, at home in all spheres of the invisible Church, the exact impression of evangelical catholicity, and an interpreter of the precious doctrine of the communion of saints, which transcends all limits of time and space, and comprehends all the children of God under the One head Jesus Christ.

Here, however, must be brought into view a trait, of which indeed his writings furnish only occasional traces, for the most part in prefaces, but which in his personal intercourse came to a very marked prominence. Neander's spirit, with all its love and gentleness, was yet capable also of very strong and decided aversion and indignation. This is by no means unpsychological. Hatred is only inverted love. The same force that draws towards it what is in harmony, repels from it with equal determination what is of a contrary nature. John, the disciple of love, who lay on Jesus' bosom, was at the same time" a son of thunder," and ready to pray down fire from heaven upon the enemies of his Master; yea, according to ancient story, he forsook a public bath suddenly, when he found it contained. Cerinthus, the Gnostic heretic. Both sides of his character are reflected in the fourth Gospel and in the Apocalypse; the former is full of love and tenderness, the latter resounds with thunder and lightning. A similar combination of mildness and harshness, attracting love and repulsive was characteristic of Neander. As an historian he could do justice to the most different tendencies, and took even heretics, as far as possible, into his protection; but when kindred manifestations came before him in our time and in the same University, he showed himself impatiently intolerant, at least in private conversation and around his hospitable board. He was often morbidly irritated and passionately excited about the pantheistic philosophy of Hegel on the one hand, and the stiff, angular orthodoxy of Hengstenberg on the other. Hegel had died in 1832, but his philosophy was then at the zenith of its power and influence in Prussia and represented by Marheineke in the theological faculty. Hengstenberg was his younger colleague, and the fearless champion of uncompromising orthodoxy in the chair and in his writings. Neander saw in these opposite tendencies two dangerous extremes which threatened to rob the youth of Germany of the treasure of evangelical freedom which he prized above all things. From the Hegelian philosophy he feared the despotism of the spirit; from the strict orthodoxy the despotism of the letter. He hated the one sided intellectualism and panlogism of the former, the narrow spirit and harsh judgments of the latter. There Christianity seemed to him to lose itself in the clouds of idealism, here to stiffen into dead forms. Besides, he held it altogether vain, to

seek the restoration by force of any past period of the Church as such, or to dream of infusing new life again into that which has been once for all judged and set aside by the course of history. Yet, after all, he had a sincere personal regard for Hengstenberg, who stood firm as a rock against the waves of Rationalism, and who fully reciprocated the esteem of Neander. He never indulged in personalities, and was always controlled by pure motives and love for the truth.

LEADING TRAITS OF CHARACTER.

Neander presented a rare combination of noble virtues refined by grace. The leading features of his character were simplicity, honesty, disinterestedness, humility, love. Of the plots and intrigues, the manifold duplicities and crafty calculations of worldly men, he had hardly a conception, even by hearsay; his noble Nathanael spirit lay clear and open before God and man, like the simplicity of the dove itself. He gave his confidence to everybody, and was thus frequently deceived. Great as his theoretic knowledge of men was, he erred very often in the application of it to particular actual cases; and this from sheer goodness of heart and childlike simplicity. To understand and admire in its true living force that great word of the Redeemer, "Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven," it was only necessary to become acquainted with Neander. He was in very truth a child in malice, and yet at the same time a giant in understanding. I never met among learned men with a spirit more childlike and amiable than that of Neander. And who does not admire Neander's noble and conscientious regard for truth, which appears in all his writings?

His generosity was without bounds. He had, indeed, for his own person, few wants; his clothing was of the plainest sort; his moderation in eating and drinking reminded one of the lives of the old asceties, and of St. Anthony, who felt ashamed of the need of earthly food. By reason of his impractical nature, moreover, and his total abstraction from the world, he was indeed wholly ignorant of the value of money, and had not his sister taken care of it, he would no doubt have brought himself to beggary over and over again by sheer benevolence. In this respect he showed not a trace of his Jewish descent, or rather, we would say, he had inherited the generosity and hospitality of Abraham, but none of the cunning and selfishness of Jacob. He was truly an Israelite without guile, like Nathanael.

The professors of German universities receive a part of their income from the lecture fees of students. To get a remission of the honorarium from Neander was the easiest thing in the world; and he was very often imposed on here by those who might easily have paid the small sum. The Society for Sick Students in Berlin owed its origin to him, and he devoted to it the whole profits of several of his writings as he gave, also, all that he got for another part of his