a future age might pull down, and reconstruct in adaptation to new principles of taste. If we may credit some of our sophists, it descended from heaven like some of the deified stones of antiquity, in a shapelessness which the superstition of a ruder age only could have consented to worship; and it has been reserved to them to give it symmetry and soul, so as to render it worthy of the homage of a more enlightened race. Christianity has not fallen so low as to be thankful for such services. The transcendentalist bestows upon

it his lip-homage, but it is given as to a sovereign whose power has been secured for the most part by usurpation. For ages men have lived under the influence of its sublime fictions, and thought them real. Reason is now to deliver them from the thraldom of its fascinations, and disclosing the object of their veneration in its true qualities, to show them how simple is the fare which men have mistaken for angels' food. Our philosopher invites us to his Canaan, but has first dried up the milk and honey which flowed there. Nor will any man be attracted towards the promised land of these speculators by the bright light resting upon it. They provide not a little against attack by taking care not to be understood. The force of the enemy advances with the more formidable appearance from coming upon you in a fog. When the Duke of Anjou was besieging a castle on the coast of Italy, a potent necromancer promised to make the ayre so thicke, that they within shal thynke that there is a great bridge on the see;-and whan they within the castell se this bridge, they will be so afrayde, that they shall yelde them to your mercy.' German metaphysics can perform its feats of this kind upon occasion. Favoured as they are by obscurity, these heroes fight like the soldiers of Vespasian, who were indebted for the victory in a night engagement with the Vitellians to the long shadows which the rising moon threw before them. It has been a common policy with powerful nations, when entertaining designs on the liberty of a neighbour, to pretend that the weaker state stands in need of their assistance, and then to exact subserviency as the price of protection. This has been too much the

course pursued by the philosophy of the schools towards the religion of the Scriptures. Sound philosophy and sound theology are one, and the best means of protecting Christianity against the mischiefs of a false philosophy is to demonstrate its just relation to the true.

SCHLEIERMACHER.*

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

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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 impar tiality 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