answer very good and very important purposes. The sun has answered the purposes of a sun tolerably well, even since its dark spots were discovered. Weld's Grammar, with all its imperfections, will still, we think, do some good. It has met the approbation of thousands of committee-men and teachers, and the wants of many thousands of pupils. We learned not long since from a reliable source, that, since the stereotyped edition was completed last October, thirty thousand had been printed and sold; and that the sales were limited to this number, from the inability of the publishers to prepare more for the market. We trust that this demand will lead both the author and the publishers to feel, that an obligation rests on them to improve the work from time to time, so far as it is capable of amendment.

NEANDER AND STRAUSS.

THE American student will not remain long at Berlin, without seeking an introduction to Neander. Near the head of Charlotte Street, on the left, you find the entrance to his house; and if the hour of your call be the hour for reception of company, you find a ready access to his study. Out of the half-dozen or dozen in the room, you are at a loss to whom to make your address, till one of the number, in an old German Schlafrock, presents himself. You take him for the professor's servant, and immediately begin to speculate upon the physical extremities to which the working classes in Prussia must be reduced. You hand your letter. The waiting-man reads it, probably this is the way in Germany;- he then extends his hand, and gives you a welcome in English! You find you have made a slight mistake. This man in untidy dress, half-combed, black hair, with a sprinkling of gray ones, for he now lacks but one year of sixty,— is the veritable professor himself. If you measure a little over five feet, you are in stature just upon a level with him. His Jewish physiognomy excites no surprise, for he is by birth of the stock of Israel; and yet, despite of heavy eyebrows, timid eyes, and a sallow complexion, a decidedly benevolent expression lights up his countenance. One little peculiarity you will

be likely to remember, and that is the grasp, or rather absence of a grasp, of his hand. His arm you fancy to be an elongated, flaccid piece of cartilage. He seems to have no bones, no muscles. It is not strange then that he should have no manners. By this is not meant that he is unmannerly; but a negation of all manners, good, bad, and indifferent, is intended.

Neander shows more cordiality than could be expected from a recluse scholar, a student of antiquity; still he might like you full as well if you were done up in vellum, and labelled St. Chrysostom, or St. Bernard. Warm sympathies he has with the present, with living men, men who can converse, as well as with those who have written; but he looks at them far less in their personal and local, than in their philosophical, relations. No one can find fault with him for this, but it is connected with peculiarities of abstraction, which are strikingly singular. It is a current saying in Berlin, that, to this day, the professor cannot find his way alone to the University, although the distance from his house does not exceed the fourth of a mile. He never goes out, except accompanied by a sister, or some other guide. He is short-sighted, to be sure; but it is owing more to habits of severe and constant study, that he is so little observant of "the things that are seen." Indeed the sentence in the fac-simile under his engraved likeness is appropriate to his physical, as well as his spiritual, being : —"Now we see through a glass darkly."

In the lecture room, he always commences by taking up an old pen or quill, deposited expressly for the purpose upon the desk before him. This he twirls, twists, and snaps incessantly, till the lecture is finished. To this habit he is a perfect bondservant. Having only a brief before him, he would not be able to proceed at all, without this monitor.

Opening any one of the many books upon his study table or study floor, you need not be surprised if louis d'or slip out, the half-yearly fee of some student who has a receipt for this payment, of which the professor has no recollection, and very little care. He really is not competent to take care of money or of himself. Either is liable, at any time, to be lost between the lids of a folio.

But this man, whose "bodily presence is weak and speech contemptible," is confessedly at the head of ecclesiastical historians, whether living or dead. No one has ever united to a minute and

comprehensive acquaintance with patristic learning, so much of noble philosophy and spiritual Christianity. His last work, which appeared in 1837, is "The Life of Jesus Christ, in its Historical Connection and Historical Development." It has already passed through four editions. The last appeared in 1845, from which an excellent translation has recently been made by Messrs. M'Clintock and Blumenthal, professors in Dickenson College, N. J. It is this work which occasions our present article. Its form and bearing cannot be perfectly intelligible to any who are unacquainted with the circumstances.

We must therefore leave Neander and Berlin for a time, and transport ourselves to Tübingen. In order fully to appreciate the historical and polemic position of the work before us, it would be necessary to take a survey of the origin and progress of Rationalism in Germany, from the period of Semler to the present Infidelity. This, whether philosophical or exegetical, as seen respectively in the "Wolfenbüttel Fragments" of Lessing, and the Commentaries of Paulus and his disciples, should come under review. But our space, if any space would, will not admit of that. It is, however, necessary to go back to the year 1835, and to the University just named. Then and there was matured a work which produced the deepest sensation throughout the literary world of Germany. It was the "Life of Jesus" by David Frederick Strauss. This man, having finished his preliminary studies elsewhere, proceeded to Berlin, in order to acquaint himself with the reigning philosophy of that capital. Hegel had just died, but his pupil Schleiermacher was in the prime of strength, laboring to harmonize Christianity and Pantheism. Strauss became his pupil. If any one is at a loss to know what the result of such an effort on the part of Schleiermacher, or rather of Hegel's philosophy in general, may be, he will find it thus summed up by Eschenmayer: "It is nothing else than a system of logic which strives to find expression in Christian truths. Hegel has a God without holiness, a Christ without spontaneous love, a Holy Ghost without a sanctifying power, a gospel without faith, a fall without sin, a sinful nature without demerit, an atonement without the forgiveness of sin, a death without an oblation, a community without divine worship, a freedom without imputation, justice without judgment, grace without redemption, religious doctrines without revelation, this world without the next, an immortality without

individual existence, a Christian religion without Christianity, in a word, a religion without religion."

Of this system, Strauss became a disciple; and not only so, he avows himself an advocate of its extreme pantheistic views. With regard to immortality, miracles and morality, he believes as every consistent pantheist must believe. As for the first, he maintains, that "a life beyond the grave is the last enemy which speculative criticism has to oppose, and if possible, to vanquish." In respect to miracles, he maintains, that "there is no right conception of what history is, apart from a conviction that the chain of endless causation can never be broken, and that a miracle is an impossibility." How flexible his system of morals must be, we gather, in part, from the manner in which he attempts to harmonize a disbelief in the historical credibility of the New Testament with the propriety of holding an office as a Christian teacher. One sentence will furnish a clew: "Wherefore it is discourteous to impute a lie to a minister, who preaches on the resurrection of Christ, and who while he does not think this a reality as an individual sensible fact, yet holds for true the spectacle of the living process of the spirit which lies therein!"

In his opinions he has shown a fickleness, answering to the elasticity of his conscience. In the third volume of his "Controversial Writings," he appears as a convert to animal magnetism; and, in evident conflict with his previously published theory, thinks that the miracles of the New Testament may be accounted. for from that quarter, and may hence have an historical reality. In the third edition of his Life of Jesus, he says: "I am not indeed, convinced that John's gospel is authentic; but I am equally no longer convinced that it is not so." But in the fourth edition, he revokes the whole, and says: "In reviewing the volumes for a new edition, I found changes at which I was myself astonished, and by which I had clearly done myself injustice. In all these places the former matter has been restored; and my duty in this new edition has chiefly consisted in this, namely, in whetting out of my good sword the notches which I myself, rather than my assailants, had hacked on its edge." At present, he does not concern himself so intimately as in former years, with the theological world. He has devoted himself to natural science, and perhaps to music; for he some time since married a public singer, and commenced the composition of an

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opera. Recently, owing to a family discord, the ex-professor and the "sängerinn" are reported to have parted company.

The prime lie of Strauss, as of every pantheist, or infidel, in respect to the Scriptures, is the assumed impossibility of miracles. A firm conviction of such impossibility he lays down, in the Introduction to the Life of Jesus, as indispensably pre-requisite, on the part of one who would examine the gospels impartially! The distinctive form which the infidelity of the work assumes is the mythical theory. And what is a myth? Bretschneider replies: "With Strauss it denotes a process rather than an idea. It means the way or manner in which unreal elements were thrown around the slender form of reality, in the rise and progress of Christianity."

This theory is not original with him. For substance, it may be found in Porphyry and Celsus, in Spinoza and Woolston. The merit of Strauss, and a "bad eminence" it is, — consists in defining clearly what he understands by myth; distinguishing it from fable, falsehood, and everything else, and applying the theory rigorously to the whole evangelical history.

It would seem, however, that this choir-leader of the more recent infidelity has performed an important service to the truth. He has dealt heavy blows at the old Rationalism. With that he is nearly as much dissatisfied, as with the orthodox system. He not only admits, but proves, that the writers of the gospels actually believed miracles to have been wrought by Christ, and intended to be so understood. His great labor is, while destroying their credibility, to shew how they came by the impression.

The appearance of this work in Germany, as every one knows, produced a general sensation. In the course of three years three editions were called for, and the fourth not long after. Ten years since it was translated into French, as also into Dutch; although, in Holland, not allowed to appear.

But other circumstances contributed more than the contents of the book to its notoriety. Soon after its publication, the author was removed from his office at the University. After much controversy respecting him at Zurich, Switzerland, he was at length, in 1839, invited to the chair of dogmatic theology and ecclesiastical history in the University of that place. A commotion arose at once. The obnoxious professor was compelled to retire. This, however, did not prevent a revolution; for the outraged