SCHLEIERMACHER.* TW WO countrymen, says the fable, were walking in the fields when they saw a cloud approaching, huge and dark. Ah, cried John, there comes the hail; our crops will be ruined, a famine in three months, then a pestilence, then-Hail! interrupted Thomas, that cloud carries rain, the very thing we want, we shall make a fortune this summer. The dispute grew warm. Meanwhile the wind had carried the cloud almost out of sight. They had neither rain nor hail. So the appearance of some new system has been frequently observed to awaken expectations the most opposite. Such principles, exclaim some, are the evil portents of the age, fraught with mischief to religion, to morality, to the nation at large. Such principles, it is rejoined by others, are our happiest auguries for the future, they make an epoch in the progress of enlightenment. But the phenomenon in question, having made its way to the zenith, is presently seen drifting rapidly off towards the horizon. It accomplishes its transit without leaving behind it on the earth any result whatever, whether disastrous or benign. This process has been more than once exemplified in the case of our German neighbours. From time to time some speculation of unusual boldness, some perversion of singular ingenuity, raises its head above the rest, awakens general attention, and then subsides, without realizing either the hopes of one party or the fears of the other. Not unfrequently when such * Der Christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der Evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt, von Dr. FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER. Vierte unveränderte Ausgabe. 2 Bde. Berlin, bei Reimer. 1842. an appearance has begun to excite notice in England, it has nearly ceased to exist in its native country. The good people there who ran out to see the strange meteor have already returned to their repose, while we are clustering about some man loudly reading from his hand-bill all about 'the wonderful new comet!' Lest the practical good sense of our English readers should apprehend any such profitless consumption of their time, and so decline at once what might be possibly a post festum invitation, we must be permitted to remind them, at the outset, that the writer whose opinions we propose to examine has exerted an influence on German theology of great extent during his lifetime, conspicuous at the present day, and likely to endure in its results for a long period to come. Friedrich Schleiermacher was one of those comprehensive minds who assume an independent position between two extreme parties, and are consequently disowned by each, yet powerful in modifying both. His services are to be estimated not merely by what he himself accomplished, but scarcely less by the activity he infused into others. The result of his efforts does not lie within the definite compass of a certain measure of detail. He did not desire to form a school. His aim was, as he himself expressed it, 'to stimulate individuality.' Accordingly his influence is traceable, not so much in particular opinions, as in general modes of thought, and in the beneficial change he effected in the spirit and direction of inquiry. Neander, the pupil and colleague of Schleiermacher, announced the intelligence of his death in these words,—'We have now lost a man from whom will be dated henceforth a new era in the history of theology.' That ideal of the church which Neander has developed with such skill and learning was derived from Schleiermacher. Among the Germans he was the first to make so near an approach to the scriptural conception of the Church of Christ. Rationalist criticism has always been content with the endeavour to destroy. In the time of Schleiermacher a second reformation in the theological world was needed to construct. In this movement he took the lead. Orthodoxy had, for a long period previously, substi VOL. I. E tuted the letter for the spirit. Rationalism broke down in every direction the empty framework. It was the aim of Schleiermacher to revive the spirit of Christianity, while he retained that freedom of inquiry, and that independence in criticism, which the law of progress was thought imperatively to demand. The youth of Schleiermacher was passed in a stormy period. In politics, in literature, in religion, all was commotion. He emerged from the quiet seclusion of the Moravians, the Essenes of modern times, to take his place among these conflicting elements. What he found among the brethren of Herrnhut was inadequate to satisfy the demands of his understanding. But a somewhat of their spirit of love and of their pious mysticism he found ever afterwards indispensable to his heart. The requirements of his feeling constituted throughout his mental history a wholesome counterpoise to the rigorous demands of his dialectics. He displayed a keen power of analysis in separating those independent provinces, theology and philosophy, faith and speculation. At the same time he maintained their intrinsic harmony. A faithful pursuit of each must have for its issue agreement not discord. Schleiermacher was not the first to detect the error and the evil of the attempts which had been made to unite the two. But others, when they became aware of this incompatibility, had decided too hastily that one of them must be false, and sided therefore with the religionist or with the free-thinker exclusively. Schleiermacher, while devoting himself to theology, could look with complacency on the efforts of the philosopher at his side. He stands, like a second Boethius, between the heathen philosophy of the Rationalist and the Neologian, and the Gothic zealotry of the extreme orthodox. Too philosophical for the pietists, he was too credulous for the philosophers. That comprehensiveness and impartiality which united in one person the contradictory tendencies of the age, was not likely to have place among all his disciples. Very many, after a period of subjection to his influence, passed onward to more sceptical or more orthodox opinions. When his hand was removed, the equilibrium was destroyed, and the scale, which had been more heavily laden from the first, would immediately preponderate. Averse to extremes, he was not among those who dread diversity of opinion, and can find nothing to hope in the collision of honourable controversy. He rejoiced when he had imparted an impulse; it was not his desire to prescribe a course. His lectures, his sermons, and his writings, influenced numbers of every grade of opinion. While, in many quarters, they infused into the old supranaturalism a youthful vigour, they were not without a beneficial influence, even upon the extreme sceptical party. His theology may be said to have given the first impulse to that improved spirit of theological inquiry which has become conspicuous in Germany of late years. He made manifest, as no German had hitherto done, the distinction between essentials and non-essentials in religion. We should not draw the line precisely where he has drawn it, but he rendered eminent service to his countrymen, in directing so many able minds among them to that union of a reverent temper with an impartial research, on which are based their most valuable contributions to theological science. An acquaintance with his system is indispensable, in the case of any one who would trace the origin, or apprehend the character of German theology in its more praiseworthy efforts. Like the Libripens of the old Roman law, Schleiermacher has been the personage without whose presence no compact could be concluded. His influence is invariably to be presupposed in the acquisition or the transfer of that precious commodity, theological opinion, during the greater part of the last half century. The present representatives of a liberal orthodoxy were, with scarcely an exception, his scholars. Among these are found the distinguished names of Julius Müller, Tholuck, Nitzsch, Bleek, Lücke, Dorner, and Twesten. The last named has succeeded Schleiermacher in the chair of divinity at Berlin, and advocates a theology identical in its main positions with that of his predecessor. Schleiermacher was born at Breslau, in the year 1768. His earlier education was received in the Moravian school, at Niesky. He pursued his theological studies at Halle. Entering college, the subject of considerable religious conviction, his faith was unsettled by the study, first of Spinoza, and afterwards of Fichte. It is remarkable that nearly every distinguished sceptic since the days of Spinoza has dated his departure from Christianity from the perusal of his writings. The philosopher of Amsterdam attracts the perplexed inquirer by his semblance of exactitude, and obtains credit accordingly. By this implicit surrender of faith to the first comer, it would seem that each new deserter to the quarters of infidelity has believed in the German popular superstition, that the first dream dreamt in a new house must be true. From 1796 to 1802, Schleiermacher occupied the post of chaplain to the hospital at Berlin, and in 1803 became professor of theology and university preacher at Halle. On the occupation of that place by the French, three years subsequently, he repaired to Berlin, where in 1810 he was appointed theological professor in ordinary. Here he continued until his death in 1834. In addition to his theological lectures he was accustomed to deliver courses on philosophy, embracing all its branches, excepting that of natural science. The name of Schleiermacher is well known to many classical students as the translator of Plato, and the author of much valuable criticism on the Dialogues. His labours in this department were directed with considerable success to separate the spurious from the genuine writings, and towards the introduction of a more adequate principle of classification.* He wrote also monographies on Anaximander, Diogenes of Apollinaria, and Socrates. But it is with his services as a theologian that we have here to do. His first work in this * His principal fault is too great a reliance upon his own estimate of the internal evidence, furnished by the Dialogues themselves. If one of them is thought to fall much beneath a certain standard of excellence, or to advocate opinions inconsistent with those supposed to be Plato's, it is rejected. See, as an example, the remarks on the criticisms of Schleiermacher and Ast on the Ion, in the Prolegomena of Nitzsch (quoted in Bekker's Plato, vol. ii. p. 423), and, in general, the very just observations of Mr. Lewes, on this school of criticism, in his Biographical History of Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 40. |