While it is indispensable to our full and lively appreciation of Neander that these little things be known of him, no one will be so foolish as to let such accidents and eccentricities of the outward life divert his attention from the grand and rarely equalled manhood which lay behind and beneath them. To give anything like a just estimate of this manhood would be no easy task, however. His native endowments, the attainments he had made in the learning pertaining to his department, and the part he was called to play in the regeneration of German science and German faith, were all remarkable. From the first glimpse we catch of him, when, at 17 years of age, he had given his head and heart to Plato, he strikes us as no ordinary character; and our wonder deepens at every step, till at last we behold him sinking exhausted amidst his labors, and all Christendom gathered in sorrow around his grave.
His native instincts, tastes and sympathies were all singularly pure and generous. His family attachments were strong. In the latest periods of his life, when she had long been dead, the name of his mother could not be mentioned by him without a visible gush of deep and tender emotion. The loss of his favorite sister, some years before his own departure, almost shattered him. For days he drooped and mourned amongst his books, and could do no work. Only the thought that God had taken her to Himself, and that He doeth all things well, finally availed to quiet him. So of all his friends; he never forgot and was never false to them. But his special care was bestowed upon the young men of the University, who had gathered about him, in the spirit of a most enthusiastic discipleship, out of all Germany, and indeed out of nearly all Christendom. To the last he continued to be a young man himself, as fresh, impulsive and eager, and with as entire a freedom from all appearance of assumption and authority, as though his pupils and he were merely peers. There was at once a warmth, a blandness and a child-like simplicity of manners, which made him the idol of every heart. And he carried the same amenity of temper into all the theological controversies of his life. He never stooped to ungracious personalities, and never seemed to be in pursuit of victory at the expense of truth and fairness. The result was that he was never assailed with personalities in return. Through all the bitterest contentions which raged around him, he was uniformly treated with respect and deference. Not that men were ignorant of his opinions, or thought him neutral, but because he was felt to be an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile. He committed himself to no clique, and allowed no clique to be committed to him.
In his personal habits he was temperate and frugal in the extreme; though not for the sake of accumulation. His income from his books and lectures must have been considerable; but he gave it nearly all away. Hundreds of indigent students could testify to his generosity, while amongst the poor of the city, there were many pensioners upon his bounty.
In regard to his intellectual gifts and powers, their peculiar cast has already been intimated. The dominant feature of his genius was its deeply subjective and spiritual character. The accidents of a subject never detained him for a moment from his search after the essential and the abiding. Outward circumstances were of little interest to him. And in this direction lay the main defect of his mind; it was too exclusively Platonic, subjective and spiritual. Had his profound Germanic intuitiveness of vision been tempered with a little more of our homely Anglo-Saxon common sense, the combination would have been well-nigh perfect.
What has just been said of his intellectual peculiarities will help us to understand also his religious life. It was preëminently an inward life; a fire in the very marrow of his being. As it was his own solitary and independent reflection which first turned his feet toward Nazareth and Calvary, so was it by deep and steady communion with his own heart that he advanced in sanctity. The natural and unchanging atmosphere of his life was that of faith and prayer. His religious experience was rooted in peculiarly deep and pungent views of sin. Not that he had gross outward offences to be ashamed of; but he felt the law of evil working within him, disturbing his peace; and he longed for the serenity of a child of God. Thus did he learn his need of Christ. His pupils relate with much interest how, on the evening of one of his birth-day festivals, when they were gathered at his house, he spoke to them of his own spiritual infirmities, and with trembling voice confessed himself a poor sinner seeking forgiveness through atoning blood. Theologically, he was comparatively indifferent in regard to minor points; but he clung with the tenacity of a martyr's faith to the great essentials of the Gospel. His religious life was therefore at once very fervent and very catholic. Loving Christ with all the ardor of a passion, he loved with a generous latitude of heart all those of every name in whom he discerned Christ's image. The motto adopted by him as best describing his own aim and method, was that of St. Augustine: "Pectus est quod facit theologum." It is the heart which makes the theologian. It was a Divine Form, for which he was ever seeking, while he walked about amongst men, as he walked up and down the centuries of our Christian faith, murmuring to himself: "It is the Lord."
As a writer of church history, his first great claim to gratitude is on account of the living pulse of faith and love which beats through all his pages. He traces the golden thread of Christian life through the darkest centuries. He does much to save the church of God from reproach, and God's own gracious promise from contempt, by showing how much there has been of Christian grace and truth under the worst forms and in the worst ages. He has thus made his History what he said it should be, "a speaking proof of the Divine power of Christianity, a school of Christian experience, and a voice of edification and warning sounding through all ages for all who are willing to believe." Of the original sources of history, particularly for the earlier centuries, his knowledge was profound, and his use of them masterly. How thorough and how fair he is, can be fully appreciated only by those who explore for themselves the fountains from which he drew his materials. His chief defect is in the matter of form. He had but little dramatic power. He gives us the inward life, but not the outward stir and shock of history. Nor is he remarkable for analytical sharpness in his delineation of the growth of Christian doctrine. It is in the sphere of experience and life that he succeeds the best. His own doctrinal views were not, at all points, quite up to our English and American standards of orthodoxy. But these points were of minor importance. All that is cardinal was precious to him. With peculiar fidelity did he cling to the Head, which is Christ, and was full of that faith which conquers the world and saves the soul.
His last days, as described by his friends and pupils, were in marked keeping with his whole career. On Monday, the 8th of July, at 11 o'clock, he lectured at the University. But he had been for some time back much feebler than usual, the weather was sultry and debilitating, and his system was out of tune. His voice failed him two or three times in the course of the lecture, and it was only by a desperate struggle that he got to the end; his strength barely sufficing to bring him home. The impression upon his class was such, that one of the students, turning to his neighbor, said: "This is the last lecture of our Neander." Immediately after dinner, which he scarcely tasted, his reader came. He dictated on his Church History three hours in succession, repressing by force of will the rising groans, his debility all the while increasing. At 5 o'clock the symptoms of a dangerous illness appeared; but he would not abandon his work. His sister, who came to expostulate with him and warn him against further effort, was sent impatiently away. "Let me alone," he said; "every laborer, I hope, may work if he wishes; wilt thou not grant me this?" At seven he was compelled to pause. His reader gone, his first thought was to call back his much loved sister, and say to her: "Be not anxious, dear Jenny, it is passing away; I know my constitution." But his physicians were agreed in the opinion that the very worst was to be feared. They succeeded, however, in subduing the symptoms of the disease, which was a violent cholera, and began to hope. The next morning, having hardly got breath from this first furious attack, he inquired with touching sadness, "shall I not be able to lecture to-day?" When answered in the negative, he distinctly demanded that the suspension should be only for that one day. In the afternoon of Tuesday, he called out vehemently for his reader, desired him to go on with Ritter's Palestine, with which he had been occupied, and impatiently blamed the anxiety of his friends who had dismissed his assistant too hastily. He then, according to his daily custom, had another of his pupils read to him the newspaper. He followed the reading with lively attention, making his remarks now of agreement and now of dissent, till at length he fell asleep, and so ended the day's work. Later in the afternoon, while racked with pain, it occurred to him that his sister might think of foregoing sleep on his account, which he begged her not to do. Wednesday he had the newspaper read to him, and made his comments, as usual. Thursday night brought with it a convulsive hiccough. Friday, his spirit was clear, peaceful and full of love. But Friday night extinguished the last hopes of his friends. The pains he endured were excruciating. With an indescribably affecting and deeply tender voice, before which no eye remained tearless, he exclaimed, "Would to God I could sleep." Saturday he was clamorous for the servant to bring him his clothes, that he might dress and go about his work. His sister came: "Think, dear August, what thou hast said to me when I have rebelled against the directions of the physician, 'It comes from God, therefore must we acquiesce in it.'" "That is true," answered quickly the softened voice, "it all comes from God, and we must thank him for it." During the day he asked to be taken into the study. The sweet sunlight, streaming on his nearly blinded eyes, refreshed and gladdened him. After this, a bath of wine and strengthening herbs was administered, which seemed to do him good. Finding himself amongst his books again, he rose upon the cushions which supported him, and, to the astonishment of all, began a lecture upon the New Testament, and announced for the coming term a course of lectures upon the Gospel of John. At half-past nine, having inquired the hour, he fell asleep. When he awoke, it was Sunday. There came back a gush of bodily strength, the last leaping of the light before it flickered in the socket. Taking up the thread of his history where he had dropped it two days before, he began to dictate for some one to write. The passage was about the mystics of the 14th and 15th centuries. The concluding sentence was: "So it was in general; the further development is to follow." Then turning to his sister, he said: "I am tired; let us make ready to go home;" as though they were somewhere on a long and wearisome journey. And then rallying his last energies in one parting word of tenderness to her who was bending over him with a breaking heart, he murmured, "Good night," and died.
Thus he died with his harness on, not aware, probably, that he was so near his end; else he might have uttered some dying testimony, which would have passed into the literature of the church to be the comfort of other saints in their mortal agony. But, on his own account, no such dying testimony was required. For thirty-seven years he had stood his ground gallantly in Berlin, witnessing for Christ in the face of a learned skepticism, and he could well afford to pass directly, without an interlude, from the toils and conflicts of earth to the joys and triumphs of the redeemed in heaven.
His labors had been prodigious. He usually lectured not less than fifteen times a week, published twenty-five volumes, and left behind him several other volumes nearly ready for the press. His health was never firm. A rheumatic disease lurked in his system from the time of his illness at Göttingen. Three years before he died, this disease settled in his eyes, and made him nearly blind. But against all impediments, he struggled on, fighting the good fight of faith, patient and resolute, till suddenly his course was finished, and he took his crown.