[Neander in the Lecture Room.]
NEANDER.
Germany has just lost one of her greatest Protestant theologians, Augustus Neander. He was born at Göttingen, Jan. 16, 1789, and died at Berlin, July 13, 1850, in his sixty-second year. He was of Jewish descent, as his strongly-marked features sufficiently evidence; but at the age of seventeen he embraced the Christian religion, to the defense of which his labors, and to the exemplification of which his life, were thenceforth devoted. Having studied theology at Halle, under Schleiermacher, he was appointed private lecturer at Heidelberg in 1811, and in the following year the first Professor of Theology at the Royal University of Berlin, which post he held to the time of his death, a period of thirty-eight years. Deservedly high as is his reputation abroad, it is still higher in his own country, where he was known not only as an author, but as a teacher, a preacher, and a man. The following is a list of his published works: The Emperor Julian and his Times, 1812; Bernard and his Times, 1813; Genetical Development of the Principal Gnostic Systems, 1818; Chrysostom and the Church in his Times, 1820 and 1832; Memorabilia from the History of Christianity and the Christian Life, 1822 and 1845-46; A Collection of Miscellanies, chiefly exegetical and historical, 1829; A Collection of Miscellanies, chiefly biographical, 1840; The Principle of the Reformation, or, Staupitz and Luther, 1840; History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church, 4th ed., 1847; The Life of Jesus Christ in its Historical Connection and Historical Development, 4th ed., 1845; General History of the Christian Religion and Church, 1842-47. Neander is best known to readers of English by the last two works, both of which have been made accessible to them by American scholars.
The Life of Christ was undertaken to counteract the impression made by STRAUSS’S “Life of Christ,” in which the attempt was made to apply the mythical theory to the entire structure of evangelical history. According to Strauss, the sum of the historical truth contained in the narratives of the evangelists is, that Jesus lived and taught in Judea, where he gathered disciples who believed that he was the Messiah. According to their preconceived notions, the life of the Messiah, and the period in which he lived, were to be illustrated by signs and wonders. Messianic legends existed ready-made, in the hopes and expectations of the people, only needing to be transferred to the person and character of Jesus. The appearance of this work produced a great sensation in Germany. It was believed by many that the book should be prohibited; and the Prussian government was inclined to this measure. Neander, however, advised that the book should rather be met by argument. His Life of Christ which was thus occasioned, wears, in consequence, a somewhat polemical aspect. It has taken the rank of a standard authority, both in German and in English, into which it has been admirably translated by Professors M’CLINTOCK and BLUMENTHAL.
The great work of Neander’s life, and of which his various writings in the departments of Ecclesiastical History, Biography, Patristics, and Dogmatics are subsidiary, is the General History of the Christian Religion and Church. The first part of this, containing the history of the first three centuries, was published in 1825, and, improved and enlarged, in 1842—43. The second part, which brings the history down to the close of the sixth century, appeared originally in 1828, and in a second edition in 1846—47. These two parts, comprising four volumes of the German edition, are well known to English readers through the excellent version of Professor TORREY. This is a history of the inner development of Christian doctrines and opinions rather than of the external progress of the Church, and in connection with GIESELER’S Text-Book, furnishes by far the best apparatus for the study of ecclesiastical history now extant.
A correspondent of the Boston Traveler, writing under date of Berlin, July 22, gives the following graphic sketch of the personal characteristics of Neander:
“NEANDER is no more! He who for thirty-eight years has defeated the attacks upon the church from the side of rationalism and philosophy—who, through all the controversies among theologians in Germany, has remained true to the faith of his adoption, the pure and holy religion of Jesus Christ—Neander, the philosopher, the scholar—better, the great and good man—has been taken from the world.