Gifts of Genius Part 12

Men that to and fro pa.s.s by him, Speak in softened tones of grief; Who may be the poor old beggar, That has found this sad relief?

But mild Nature, soft-eyed Nature, Knows the aged sleeper there, Obsequies of solemn splendor, Meet for king, will she prepare.

From the tree fall wreaths of blossoms, Floating down to crown his head, And a sceptre's golden l.u.s.tre Sunset on his staff hath shed.

For a canopy above him Rustling twigs a green arch throw, And he wears a royal purple In the evening's mantling glow.

RECOLLECTIONS OF NEANDER,

THE CHURCH HISTORIAN.

BY THE REV. ROSWELL D. HITCHc.o.c.k, D.D.

In the spring of 1848, during the progress of the European revolutions, which promised so much and performed so little, I spent several weeks in Berlin, the capital of Prussia, and saw much, both in public and in private, of "the father of modern church history," whose name I had long revered, and whose image now is one of the choicest treasures of memory.

Of all the Christian scholars I have ever known, he stands in my thoughts without a rival; a child in simplicity, a sage in learning, and in broad, catholic and fervent piety, a n.o.ble saint. In common with hundreds of my countrymen, I owe him a debt of grat.i.tude, of which this humble tribute to his memory will be but a faint acknowledgment.

Of Neander's outward history there is but little to be reported; his life was the retired and uneventful one of a peculiarly intense and abstracted student. It is hardly a figure of speech, but almost exactly the literal truth to say that he was born, and lived, and died, beneath the shadow of the Universities. He was not, indeed, quite so much of a recluse as his fellow-countryman Kant, the renowned Konigsberg philosopher, who, though he reached the age of eighty, and had a reputation which filled all Europe, was never more than thirty-two miles away from the spot where his mother rocked him in his cradle. But considering the ampler means at his command, and the greatly increased facilities for travelling, Neander's neglect of locomotion is nearly as much to be wondered at as Kant's; I doubt if he was ever beyond the boundaries of Germany.

He was born January 16th, 1789, in Gottingen, a city of some eleven thousand inhabitants in the kingdom of Hanover, the seat of a famous University, which, though now less prominent than formerly, has numbered amongst its professors such men as Blumenbach, Eichhorn, and Michaelis.

His parents were of Jewish blood and the Jewish religion, and he inherited from them, in a strong degree, both the peculiar physiognomy and the distinguishing faith of that despised but most remarkable race. Nor was he a Jew only outwardly; from the beginning he was marked as an Israelite indeed, a true Nathanael soul.

At an early period in his life, his father having suffered reverses and been reduced to poverty, he removed with his parents to Hamburg, a commercial city on the Elbe, and one of the four free munic.i.p.alities of Germany. In the Hamburg gymnasium, corresponding in rank with our American academies, though prescribing a wider range of studies, he received his first public instruction. It is related of him, that he used frequently to steal into one of the book-stores, and for hours together sit buried in some rare and erudite volume. And here the original bent of his genius was early developed; subtlety, profoundness, and intense subjectivity of thought were noticed as the distinguishing characteristics of his mind. In a letter from Neumann to Chamisso, bearing date February 11th, 1806, when, of course, he was only seventeen years old, it is said of him: "Plato is his idol, and his perpetual watchword. He pores over that author night and day; and there are probably few who receive him so completely into the sanctuary of the soul. It is surprising to see how all this has been accomplished without any influence from abroad. It proceeds simply from his own reflection and his innate love of study. He has learned to look with indifference upon the outward world." Such was the beginning of his ill.u.s.trious career. He was thoroughly a Platonist. And it happened to him, as to so many of the early fathers of the church before him; he was led from Plato to Christ. The honored walks of the Academy were exchanged for the manger and the cross; and so he pa.s.sed from Judaism to philosophy, and from philosophy to faith. "Pray and labor," writes he in one of his letters, "let that be the ba.s.s-note, or rather praying merely; for what else should a human, or even a superhuman do than pray?" This was the dawning of the light. Of his progress in the Christian experience, we have no means as yet of tracing the steps. We only know, in general, from what he started, and to what he came.

In the April of 1806, he joined the University at Halle, where he came under the influence of Schleiermacher, whose learned and thrilling voice was the first to sound the return of infidel Germany to the truth as it is in Jesus. Schleiermacher was then thirty-eight years old, in the first bloom and vigor of his faculties, and made, of necessity, a very profound and durable impression upon the young and ardent Hebrew Platonist, who was already, in obedience to his own impulses, seeking the way of life.

He had been in Halle about six months, when the city was captured by the French under Bernadotte. The University was immediately suspended by Napoleon, and the students ordered to disperse. Neander fled, with one of his friends, to Gottingen, the place of his birth, where, joining the University, he came under the instruction of Gesenius, afterward the great Hebrew lexicographer, then but twenty years of age, and just commencing his distinguished career. The manner of their introduction to each other is a curious bit of literary history worth preserving. Gesenius was returning to Gottingen from his native place, Nordhausen, which was then in flames, having been set fire to by the French. The soldiers of the broken Prussian army were hurrying to their homes. In the general flight and confusion, Gesenius saw two young men on their way from Halle to Gottingen, one of whom had broken down, unable to go any further, and was entirely out of money. He procured a carriage for the unknown young student and conveyed him to Gottingen. That young student was Neander; and this little adventure led to a friendship which lasted for life, the gulf which subsequently yawned between them, in respect to matters of faith, abating nothing of their mutual respect and kindliness. "At first it was painful to me," said Neander, writing from Gottingen, "to be thrown into this place of icy coldness for the heart. But now I find it was well, and thank G.o.d for it. In no other way could I have made such progress. From every human mediator, and even every agreeable a.s.sociation, must one be torn away, in order that he may place his sole reliance on the only Mediator."

In 1809 he returned to Hamburg to become a pastor. But the city had a small fund to support one of its theologians as a lecturer at Heidelberg.

This was wisely appropriated to Neander, who promised more as a scholar than as a preacher. Accordingly, in 1811, we find him established at Heidelberg as a teacher in the University, he having previously, on his public profession of Christianity, a.s.sumed the name of _Neander_ deriving it from the Greek, [Greek: nheos haner], "a new man," to signify the entire change which had come over him. The family name was Mendel. The year following he was appointed Professor Extraordinary, which, in plain English, means a professor without a regular salary from government, and shortly issued his work on "The Emperor Julian and his Time," the first of those monographs which awakened the admiration of his learned countrymen, and paved the way for the great undertaking of his life, "A General History of the Christian Religion and Church."

In 1813, when but twenty-four years of age, he was called to a professorship in the then recently established University of Berlin, and signalized his removal thither by a work on "St. Bernard and his Age."

Five years later, he published a work on Gnosticism, and in 1821, his "Life of Chrysostom;" besides some treatises of minor note, which we need not pause to enumerate. At length, in 1825, when of course he was thirty-six years old, the first volume of his General History of the Church appeared. And to say that this work put him directly at the very head of Christendom as the expounder of its inward life, is saying only what we all know to be true. After that, he turned aside occasionally in obedience to other calls of duty, at one time to write a history of the Apostolic Age, and at another the Life of Christ, but always returning to his General History, as the one great task appointed him of G.o.d to do. As I parted with him in the spring of 1848, my heart drawn out toward him with an admiring tenderness and reverence, such as I had never experienced toward any other living scholar, I could not forbear a.s.suring him, that many prayers would go up for him in America as well as in Europe, that he might be spared to complete his work. "I hope it," he replied, "but that must be as G.o.d wills." But this wish of his heart was denied him. He died in Berlin on Sunday, July 14th, 1850, in the midst of his unfinished labors. He had published what brings us down to the year 1294, and was then at work upon the centuries which lie between that and the Reformation. The posthumous volume, edited by Schneider, still falls short, by nearly a hundred years, of that important epoch. Had he been spared to proceed thus far, we had been the better reconciled to his dying; although his countrymen were anxious to have him turn his peculiar powers upon the Reformation itself, and the world-wide movements which have grown out of it. But this was not to be. He died, leaving no one to take his mantle; died, too, somewhat prematurely, for he was only sixty-one years old.

Of his personal appearance, which was altogether unique, descriptions have frequently been given. He was small of stature, his height not exceeding five feet and four or five inches. He had studied so hard, exercised so little, eaten so sparingly and suffered so much from imperfect health, that his muscles seemed entirely relaxed and flabby. His hand, when he gave it in salutation or in parting, was like that of a sick child. But his hair remained as black as a raven. His brows were s.h.a.ggy and overhanging, and his black eyes, when ever and anon the drooping lids were lifted away from them, shot forth a very deep and searching light. As one sat over against him, watching his words, he might easily imagine himself gazing through those glowing orbs back into the ages. His study, up two flights of stairs, overlooking one of the public squares of the city, was a place to be remembered. Its furniture was a plain round table, a standing-desk, an old sofa and two or three chairs. High up on the walls between the book-shelves and the ceiling, nearly all round the room, hung engraved portraits of distinguished men; and he showed his n.o.ble catholicity of spirit, in having the great men of his native land all there, without regard to their peculiar schools and sentiments. His library contained about 4,000 volumes. They filled the room; table, chairs and sofa were loaded with them; they lay in stacks upon the floor; and, in some cases, were piled, two or three tiers deep, into the shelves against the walls. To anybody else the library would have been a chaos; but he could lay his hand at once upon any book he wished for. It was in this room, thus crammed with books, that he used to entertain the little parties he invited to sup with him. The repast was always frugal; the conversation, on his part, such as might have gone into print. A man-servant brought in the refreshments on a tray; or, sometimes, one of his pupils officiated. His only sister, who kept house for him during the greater part of his life, never made her appearance at these exclusively masculine entertainments. He himself rarely paid any attention to the progress of the meal, but seemed to be as much a visitor as any of his guests. The little he needed was soon dispatched, and his thoughts were again afloat, sounding along from theme to theme.

He never married, and, at the time I speak of, was almost alone in the world. Neither father, nor mother, nor any other near relative remained to him, save his sister, Johanna, whose care of him had need to be almost maternal. Well-nigh every day in the year these two might be seen walking out together to take the air. They went always arm in arm, a beautiful embodiment of the tenderest affection. Hardly the king himself attracted more attention in the street. Scarcely a person he met failed to raise his hat and salute the venerable scholar with the heartiest good will. As he was both short-sighted and suffering from diseased vision, he had to depend upon his sister to know who bowed to him; and it was amusing to see his returning salutation bestowed, in almost every instance, a little too late. Many anecdotes were afloat in Berlin, and indeed all over Germany, going to ill.u.s.trate his habits of abstraction and absent-mindedness, some of which no doubt were true, and all of which were likely enough to have been so.

An exact description of his manners in the lecture-room would, by any one who never saw him, be thought a caricature. He entered the room with his eyes upon the floor, as if feeling his way; a student stood ready to take his hat and overcoat and hang them up in their places; while he went directly to his stand--a high pine desk; threw his left elbow upon it; dropped his head so low that his eyes could not be seen; tilted the desk over on its front legs, so that you expected every moment to see it pitching forward into the lecture-room, with the lecturer after it; and, seizing a quill, always provided for the purpose, began at once to speak, and to twist and twirl and tear in pieces the quill. Sometimes, in the heat of his discourse, he would suddenly jerk up his head, whirl entirely round with his face to the wall and his back to the audience, and then as suddenly whirl back again, his words all the while pouring along in a perfect torrent of involved and fervent thought. Add to this a constant writhing and swinging of his legs, with a frequent slight spitting, produced by a chronic weakness of the salivary glands, and you have a picture of the outward man known in Berlin as John William Augustus Neander; to be known in history as one of the most learned, revered and beloved teachers of our century.

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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sumption 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 a.s.sailed 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 acc.u.mulation. 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 circ.u.mstances 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 preeminently 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 sanct.i.ty. 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 G.o.d.

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 pa.s.sion, he loved with a generous lat.i.tude 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 grat.i.tude 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 G.o.d from reproach, and G.o.d'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 a.n.a.lytical 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sing away; I know my const.i.tution." 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 a.s.sistant 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 G.o.d I could sleep." Sat.u.r.day 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 G.o.d, therefore must we acquiesce in it.'" "That is true," answered quickly the softened voice, "it all comes from G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 Gottingen. 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.

POEMS.

BY JULIA WARD HOWE.

I.

THE BEE'S SONG

Do not tie my wings, Says the honey-bee; Do not bind my wings, Leave them glad and free.

If I fly abroad, If I keep afar, Humming all the day, Where wild blossoms are, 'Tis to bring you sweets, Rich as summer joy, Clear--as gold and gla.s.s; The divinest toy That the G.o.d's have left, Is the pretty hive, Where a maiden reigns, And the busy thrive.

If you bar my way, Your delight is gone, No more honey-gems; From the heather borne; No more tiny thefts, From your neighbor's rose, Who were glad to guess Where its sweetness goes.

Let the man of arts Ply his plane and gla.s.s; Let the vapors rise, Let the liquor pa.s.s; Let the dusky slave Till the southern fields; Not the task of both Such a treasure yields; Honey, Pan ordained, Food for G.o.ds and men, Only in my way Shall you store again.

Leave me to my will While the bright days glow, While the sleepy flowers Quicken as I go.

When the pretty ones Look to me no more, Dead, beneath your feet, Crushed and dabbled o'er; In my narrow cell I will fold my wing; Sink in dark and chill, A forgotten thing.

Can you read the song Of the suppliant bee?

'Tis a poet's soul, Asking liberty.

II.

LIMITATIONS OF BENEVOLENCE.

"The beggar boy is none of mine,"