the author's character under a new aspect;-we mean the comprehensive and accurate knowledge it exhibits of men and their relations. It shows that he was no mere recluse scholar, buried in the past, with no eyes nor ears for the living world around him. It is indeed a problem, how a man who so seldom went beyond his study and his lecture room, whose own relations to society were so few, and his associations almost exclusively among the learned, could have gained so much acquaintance with human nature, and with the various forms and phases of Christian experience. The solution is to be found in the fact, that Neander had a heart as well as intellect; a heart gifted by nature with the largest human sympathies, and from early life penetrated by the spirit of Christian benevolence. Man his brother, man whom God had created and for whom Christ had died, was to him an object of unspeakable interest, and nothing was unimportant which affected his character and prospects. Hence, from the little that he mingled with men he learned much of man; and he applies the inspired instructions with a discrimination and point, which show that no generic differences in human character had escaped him. It is a matter of no little interest, to know what views of man were received from this study by a mind like Neander's. It is plain that he cherished no high-wrought notions of the natural goodness and perfectibility of the race. Yet he did not turn from the weak and erring being with philosophic contempt, or

His was

thank God that he was not as other men are. the earnest, penetrating scrutiny of a Christian philanthropist, seeking to know his brother's wants in order that Christian love might supply them. Though he was no believer in inherent human goodness, he was a firm believer in the efficacy of the great remedy for man's moral diseases. Hence the clearer perception of his ruined and lost state, only awoke more strongly the love which yearned to bring relief. The spirit of Neander's life and writings furnish sufficient proof, if proof were still wanting, that the clear recognition of man's entire moral perversion is the basis for all true love of humanity. His practical wisdom, as well as the tenderness of his heart, are beautifully exhibited in his treatment of the yet immature believer. The germ of divine life, planted in a human heart, is an object which engages all his interest. The causes which may obstruct its free development, as found in the various forms of self-deception, in the power of early prejudice, and not less in the over-hasty zeal or unchristian harshness of brethren, are touched with admirable skill. If his lessons of rigid selfscrutiny, trying as by fire every thought and motive of our own hearts, and of a fraternal charity, quick to discern and acknowledge and tenderly to cherish the faintest signs of grace in others, were carried into practice by every disciple of Christ, who can doubt the speedy increase of spiritual life, of unity, and of moral power in the church!

Another not less interesting point is the simply scriptural character of his theology, of the exhibition here given of the essential doctrines of the Gospel. Christ, the Crucified and the Risen, as the one foundation of the church, the living root from whom proceeds all spiritual life and growth; man as a sinful and lost being, depending for regeneration and sanctification on the influences of the Holy Spirit; the utter insufficiency of human works as the ground of salvation; a holy life as the necessary fruit of holy love; these, no man since Paul has more eloquently enforced than Neander. In developing Paul's theology, deep religious experience supplied to him that light, for the lack of which so many have misunderstood and perverted the meaning of the great Apostle. The natural man, and the spiritual man, designate with him radical distinctions of character. The tendencies of the natural man, however beautiful his social and even religious virtues to human view, are yet, as springing from self and ending in self, radically wrong; the tendencies of the spiritual man, as springing from God and ending in God, are radically right. But the spiritual man, and the perfect man, are not with him interchangeable terms. The Christian life is an unceasing conflict with inward depravity; that we persevere in this conflict to the end, the only reliable proof that we belong to Christ. The Christian's standard of character is perfection, is Christ; his ever increasing sense of unlikeness to this faultless model, the strongest evidence that he is

becoming more and more assimilated to it. This sense of unlikeness, while it humbles and stimulates, does not disquiet the believer; for his confidence and his affections are placed on a nobler object than self, were it in a state of absolute perfection. The incarnate Word, the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person, once humbled in humanity, now reigning in divine glory, is the centre of all his aspirations and hopes, the life of his life, his all in all. An affecting proof of Neander's personal consciousness of these truths, was given on the evening of his last year's birth-day. His pupils having, as is customary in German universities on such occasions, honored their beloved teacher with a torch-light procession and a eulogistic address, he replied by a pathetic confession of human weakness, and spoke of himself as a sinner needing forgiveness through the blood of Christ. The whole course of his inward and outward religious life corresponded fully to this expression. "As to be a Christian," says Strauss, "nothing but a Christian saved by grace, was all his desire in his inward experience, so in his calling he desired only to be a servant of Christ." The love of Christ to his people, as developed in the past history of the church, was his most interesting subject of contemplation. In his hands, Church History became not a mere record of the mistakes of the human spirit, but primarily, a record of the miracles of the love of Jesus. And often, says his friend, his voice trembled and his whole heart gushed forth,

when narrating individual experiences of grace, exemplifying the love of Christ. What a beautiful illustration of his own favorite maxim, "It is the heart that makes the Theologian!". The modesty of his Theology is not less marked than its scriptural character. Our knowledge of God and divine things, though all-sufficient for our present need, in his view is necessarily fragmentary and imperfect; "to be cast aside when we are raised to the full vision of the life above, as the conceptions of childhood are cast aside by the mature man." How habitually this conviction was present to his mind, is pleasingly illustrated by the circumstance, that when called on for an autograph to accompany his engraved portrait, he wrote for the purpose the words: "Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face."

The closing scenes in the life of this eminent servant of Christ, seem like the reflection of that conflict which he so admirably depicts in the heart of Paul, between the longing to depart and be with Christ, and the desire still to live that he may labor for the salvation of his brethren. To labor for Christ was, as with Paul, his life on earth. Apart from this work, life had no value, no significance. While he lived he must labor; and even after the hand of death had touched his long diseased body, he still strove to compel its services in his appointed calling in God's kingdom. This calling was one which enlisted all the energies and affections of his soul. To be the instructor of youth in the Holy Scriptures, and the