Time has come for fading,
Like a glimmering ray,
Or a sense-evading
Strain that floats away.
May, though fainter, dimmer,
Only, clear and pure,
To the last the glimmer
And the strain endure.
The persons alluded to in the first verse are his son, who, as a physician, attended him in his illness, and to whom he was deeply attached, and a very old friend to whom the verses were addressed.—Translator.
Das Leben Jesu-Christi. Hamburg, 1837. Aug. Wilhelm Neander was born in 1789 at Göttingen, of Jewish parents, his real name being David Mendel. He was baptized in 1806, studied theology, and in 1813 was appointed to a professorship in Berlin, where he displayed a many-sided activity and exercised a beneficent influence. He died in 1850. The best-known of his writings is the Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel (History of the Propagation and Administration of the Christian Church by the Apostles), Hamburg, 1832-1833, of which a reprint appeared as late as 1890. Neander was a man not only of deep piety, but also of great solidity of character.
Strauss, in his Life of Jesus of 1864, passes the following judgment upon Neander's work: “A book such as in these circumstances Neander's Life of Jesus was bound to be calls forth our sympathy; the author himself acknowledges in his preface that it bears upon it only too clearly the marks of the time of crisis, division, pain, and distress in which it was produced.”
Of the innumerable “positive” Lives of Jesus which appeared about the end of the 'thirties we may mention that of Julius Hartmann (2 vols., 1837-1839). Among the later Lives of Jesus of the mediating theology may be mentioned that of Theodore Pressel of Tübingen, which was much read at the time of its appearance (1857, 592 pp.). It aims primarily at edification. We may also mention the Leben des Herrn Jesu Christi by Wil. Jak. Lichtenstein (Erlangen, 1856), which reflects the ideas of von Hofmann.
Anna Katharina Emmerich was born in 1774 at Flamske near Coesfeld. Her parents were peasants. In 1803 she took up her abode with the Augustinian nuns of the convent of Agnetenberg at Dülmen. After the dissolution of the convent, she lived in a single room in Dülmen itself. The “stigmata” showed themselves first in 1812. She died on the 9th of February 1824. Brentano had been in her neighbourhood since 1819. Das bittere Leiden unseres Herrn Jesu Christi (The Bitter Sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ) was issued by Brentano himself in 1834. The Life of Jesus was published on the basis of notes left by him—he died in 1842—in three volumes, 1858-1860, at Regensburg, under the sanction of the Bishop of Limberg.
First volume.—From the death of St. Joseph to the end of the first year after the Baptism of Jesus in Jordan. Communicated between May 1, 1821, and October 1, 1822.
Second volume.—From the beginning of the second year after the Baptism in Jordan to the close of the second Passover in Jerusalem. Communicated between October 1, 1822, and April 30, 1823.
Third volume.—From the close of the second Passover in Jerusalem to the Mission of the Holy Spirit. Communicated between October 21, 1823, and January 8, 1824, and from July 29, 1820, to May 1821.