one of the most distinguished and influen- tial of the modern theologians of Germany, was born at Göttingen in the beginning of 1789 of Jewish parents. His father Emmanuel Mendel, is said to have been a com- mon Jewish pedlar; but little seems to be really known of his circumstances and character. His mother was a woman of tender and noble disposition; and from the maternal side, as in so many other cases, the virtues and talents of the son appear to have sprung. While still young, he removed with his mother to Hamburg; and in the grammar school, or Johanneum, of that city he received his classical education. There, as throughout life, the simplicity of his personal ap- pearance, and the oddity of his manners, attracted notice, but still more, under all outward peculiarities, his great in- dustry and mental power. His teacher, Gurlitt, took pride in his progress; and to the countenance and encouragement he thus received he owed much, which he always remem- bered with gratitude. From the Johanneum young Mendel passed to the gymnasium, where he attended for a year the prelections in philology, philosophy, and theology. The study of Plato appears especially to have engrossed him at this time. One of his young friends, Wilhelm Neumann, writes of him in 1806—"Plato is his idol—his constant watchword. He sits day and night over him; and there are few who have so thoroughly, and in such purity, imbibed his wisdom. It is wonderful how entirely he has done this without any foreign impulse, merely through his own reflec- tion and downright study."

Considerable interest attaches to his early companionship with the writer of this letter, and certain others, among whom were the afterwards well-known writer Varnhagen Von Ense and the poet Chamisso. This young band of students, strongly devoted to the romantic school of Tieck and Schlegel, had started a poetical periodical, in connection with which they formed themselves into a literary union, under the symbol of the Pole Star. The Star of the North, the region of enlightenment, was meant to signify their aspiring cultivation of the true and the beautiful. Varn- hagen and Neumann having come to Hamburg, were at- tracted by the kindred spirit of the young Jewish student, and enrolled him in the brotherhood. He adopted the common symbol, and in virtue of his new connection opened up a correspondence with Chamisso, which was fortunately preserved by the latter, and gives us the deepest insight which we possess into his views and character at this period. The letters are singularly interesting. They breathe throughout the most simple and glowing enthusiasm; while the picture of a pure and affectionate nature, and the struggling comprehensiveness of a great spirit, are im- pressed on every page of them.

These letters enable us to understand with some degree of clearness the great change which now took place in Neander's convictions. They reveal a course of spiritual training very much analogous to that which he has described in many cases, with such remarkable power, in his Church History. He reached the gospel through Platonism. In that philosophy which, he continued to think, addresses itself more directly than any other to the divine instincts in man, and which, he has expressly said, "contains so much that really or seemingly harmonizes with Christian truth," he found those points of contact with Christianity which always attracted him more closely to it as a source of spiritual life, and the satisfaction of all his inward necessities. The ideals which in Plato "ravished his intellectual vision," and were at first worshipped with that intense devotion which leaves no room for any other worship in the heart of the student, he found in the gospel transmuted into realities, fitted not only to dazzle his intellect, but to pacify his heart and quicken and ennoble his whole being. Plato was thus his schoolmaster to bring him to Christ. And while he never ceased his admiration of the philosopher, he yet always came to embrace more and more, in its depth and purity, the "truth as it is in Jesus." The influence of his teacher's idealism may be visibly traced in some of his conceptions of Christian doctrine; but the divine simplicity and practical power of the gospel asserted themselves always more strongly in him. He was baptized on the 25th February 1806, and on this occasion adopted, instead of his Jewish name of David Mendel, that, under which he was always afterwards known, of Augustus Neander (vox dura).

In the same year he went to Halle to study divinity. He had matriculated at the gymnasium in Hamburg as juris studious; but with his new views, and the earnest spirit which animated him, he could now only serve the church. At Halle, Schleiermacher was then lecturing in the first height of his fame as a teacher. Neander met in him the very impulse which he needed, while Schleiermacher found a pupil of thoroughly congenial feeling, and one destined to carry out his views in a higher and more effective Chris- tian form than he himself was capable of imparting to them. From this period we are to date Neander's devotion to church history. Catching the enthusiasm and higher appreciation of his teacher, he began to live in studious communion with the fathers, and to amass those stores of divine wisdom and lore which he drew so copiously from their writings. His repose at Halle, however, was soon disturbed. The French having taken possession of the town after the battle of Jena, the university was suspended, and the professors and students scattered abroad. Neander had the misfortune, along with some other students, to be robbed by the French soldiers; and, friendless and ill from the fatigue of the journey on foot, he at length found refuge in his native city. Here he continued his studies with ardour, made himself yet more master of Plato and Plutarch, and especially advanced in sacred learning under the venerable Planck. The impulse communicated by Schleiermacher was confirmed by Planck, and he seems now to have realized that the original investigation of Christian history was to form the great work of his life.

Having finished his university course, he returned to Hamburg, and passed his examination for the Christian ministry with great distinction. He was not fitted, however, for the pulpit, and never seems to have commenced preaching. He betook himself to an academic career, and the study of Christian history, in Heidelberg, where two vacancies had occurred in the theological faculty of the university, from the removal of Mahreineke and De Wette to Berlin. He entered upon his work here as a theological teacher in 1811, commencing with a Latin dissertation on a subject which never ceased to attract him (De fidei gnoseosque idea secundum Clementum Alex.) and in the year following an extraordinary professorship rewarded his learning and industry. In the same year (1812) he first appeared as an author by the publication of his monograph on the Emperor Julian. The fresh insight into the history of the church, and the vivid and striking power of delineation evinced by this work,—vague and sketchy, perhaps, as it now seems in the light of his mature productions,—at once drew attention to its author, and marked him as a rising theologian of the first rank. Accordingly, even before he had terminated the first year of his academical labours at Heidelberg, he was called to Berlin as the associate of De Wette and Schleiermacher—an illustrious band, whose labours have left an ineffaceable impress upon German theology.

In Berlin, Neander settled at once to those laborious habits of study and of earnest faithfulness in the discharge of his professorial duty which distinguished all his future career. His life was only varied by the successive publications which appeared in such fertility from his pen. In the year following his appointment he published a second monograph on St Bernard and his Age; then in 1818 his work on Gnosticism. A still more extended and elaborate monograph than either of the preceding followed on Chrysostom; and again, in 1826, another on Tertullian. He had in the meantime, however, begun his great work, to which these several efforts were only preparatory studies. The first part of his General History of the Christian Religion and Church made its appearance in 1825, embracing the history of the first three centuries. The remaining parts have appeared at successive intervals,—the last volume since his death, bringing down the narrative to the eve of the Reformation. Besides this great work, he published in 1832 his History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles; and in 1837 his Life of Jesus Christ, in its Historical Connection and Development, called forth by the famous Life of Strauss. In addition to all these labours, he gave to the public many miscellaneous sketches from the history of the church and of theological opinion; as, for example, his Memorabilia from the History of the Christian Life, his volume under the title of the Unity and Variety of the Christian Life, and his papers on Plotinus, Thomas Aquinas, Theobald Thamer, Pascal, Newman, Blanco White, and Arnold, &c. Several brief works of a mixed exegetical and historical character have also come from his pen; and since his death a succession of volumes, representing his various courses of lectures, have been promised, of which two, containing his Lectures on Dogmengeschichte, admirable in spirit and execution, appeared last year (1857).

The life of Neander, as may be gathered from this mere enumeration, was one of unwearied work in his study and in his lecture-room. He lectured usually three times a day, his lectures embracing almost every branch of theology, exegesis, dogmatics, and ethics, as well as church history. He cherished the most warm and affectionate interest in his students, his ungrudging self-denial and benefactions in their behalf forming one of the most kindly traditions which surround his name. It is difficult to conceive a more child-like and yet more aspiring nature; at once so simple and so subtle—so lovely in affectionateness, and yet so grand and comprehensive in capacity and views. He died in 1850, worn out, and nearly blind, with incessant study. Germany mourned him as one of the greatest of her sons.

Our space will not permit us to enter into any full appreciation of Neander's theological and historical labours. This could only be done by showing at length his relation to the previous theology of Germany, and especially his connection with Schleiermacher, and the manner in which, while adopting, he modified and carried out the principles of this great thinker. With a mind less restlessly speculative, less versatile, discriminating, and logical, he possessed, in higher union than Schleiermacher, depth of spiritual insight and purity of moral perception with profound philosophical capacity. Characteristically meditative, while Schleiermacher was characteristically dialectical, he rested with a more secure footing on the great central truths of Christianity, and recognised more thoroughly their essential reasonableness and harmony. Strongly alive to the claims of criticism, he no less strongly asserted the rights of Christian feeling. "Without it," he emphatically says, "there can be no theology; it can only thrive in the calmness of a soul consecrated to God." And exactly in the same spirit, and proceeding from the same strong recognition of the absolute necessity of this Christian element in all theology, was his favourite motto,—"Pectus est quod theologum facit."

His Church History remains the greatest monument of his genius; and, upon the whole, the greatest work that has yet attempted to embrace so wide a field. Defective in graphic personal details and in a clear exhibition of the political relations of the church, somewhat heavy in style, with a certain vagueness and want of pictorial life throughout, it is yet unrivalled in its union of vast learning and profound philosophic penetration; its varied comprehensiveness and abundant store of materials; its insight into the living connection of historical events, but especially into the still more living and subtle nexus which binds together the growth and development of human opinion;—in its display of such qualities, with the most simple-hearted Christian piety, the most lively appreciative interest in the ever-varying fortunes of the church, the finest discernment of all the manifold phases of the Christian life, the most genuine liberality, and the most catholic sympathy.

(J.T.-II.)