Here was ample room for the fictions of the poets. How different is the case with the history of the Jews, who possessed written records and historians from Moses to Malachi. The Jewish history contained in the Pentateuch has every mark of credibility, and its miracles are referred to in the subsequent books of the Bible. It is, however, unnecessary to dwell longer upon this point, since the truth of the history in the Pentateuch follows naturally from its genuineness.

ART. VI.-RECENTLY PUBLISHED WRITINGS OF NEANDER.

1. Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche, von Dr. A. NEANDER. VL. Band. Aus der hinterlassenen papieren herausgegeben von K. F. T. SCHNEIDER. Pp. 805. Hamburg. 1852.

2. Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen von Dr. AUGUST NEANDER, herausgegeben von Professor J. L. JACOBI. 8vo. Berlin. 1851.

In the work first named at the head of this article, we have a precious proof of that entire devotion to the cause of Christ's kingdom which marked the latest hours of NEANDER's life, as it had before characterized so many laborious years. No part of his great Church History abounds more in material of interest and importance than this posthumous volume, which extends from the end of the thirteenth up to the middle of the fifteenth century. In suffering and weakness was this last work of the great man's life accomplished; disease had almost worn away his feeble frame, and his eyes no longer served him in that close scrutiny of the original sources which had always been, with him, a necessary preparation for treating any portion of the history of Christ's Church. Reduced to dependence upon amanuenses-not always the most skilful-the heroic scholar had need of toil and patience more than ever, and they were not wanting. Painfully, yet earnestly and faithfully-but not without constant inward consolations, and not without glimpses of the bright land of rest, where there is no dimness of vision, nor pain, nor weariness-did he pursue the task to which in his youth and hope, believing that GOD had called him, he had solemnly consecrated himself the task of setting forth the history of the Church of Christ as a speaking witness of the divine power of Christianity; as a school of Christian experience; as a voice, sounding through the ages, of edification, of instruction, and of warning, for all that will hear it.

The circumstances under which this last volume appears, afford sufficient excuse, if any be needed, for an occasional lack of that nice precision, that careful gathering up of the threads of the narrative in detail, and that masterly inweaving of them all into the web of his philosophical history, that so marked all those parts of the work to which Neander himself had given the finishing touch. It must not be inferred, however, that the volume is a mere collection of scattered and unfinished fragments. The manuscript, in the main, was left by the great master in a form not unworthy of him; and, thanks to the reverent industry and unceasing care of the editor, it appears now in a form at once authentic and readable. M. Schneider was one of Neander's most devoted and faithful students, and prepared, under his direction, the last editions of his monographs on Bernard, Chrysostom, and Tertullian. He has spared no labour nor even expense in editing the present work; and we may be sure that it is, as he has given it, as correct and complete as it could have been made by any hands except Neander's own. He tells us in his preface, that he prefers to be charged with having followed the text of the manuscripts too closely, and even too slavishly, rather than with changing the language of the author, at his own will and pleasHis close connexion with Neander gave him ample opportunity to learn his methods and habits of working, and this knowledge has been turned to good account in the arrangement of such parts of the work as had not been at all revised for the press by the author. Neander himself, in view of his failing health, and especially of his waning eyesight, often spoke of completing his Church History in a compendious, or at least abridged, form; but his love for this, his life's work, and a hope, cherished almost against hope, that his eyes might regain their strength, tempted him to labour on to the last upon his original plan.

ure.

The volume carries the history of the Church down from the time of Boniface VIII. to the beginning of the Council of Basle. The first division, which treats of the Church Constitution and of the Papacy, during the period named, was left by the author in a far more complete form than the second and later portion. It begins with that remarkable epoch in the history of the papacy which might almost take its name and designation from Boniface, whom even a papal annalist styles factiosus, et arrogans, ac omnium con

temtivus.

"Destitute of all spiritual character and of all moral worth, this Pope made the loftiest claims for the papacy, and therefore brought upon himself the greatest humiliations. We shall see how, in the order of Divine Providence, the humiliations which Boniface brought upon himself, and the consequences which flowed from them, gave rise to the subsequent strifes which shook and shattered

the theocratic ecclesiastical system of the middle ages. The chain of events can be readily traced, link by link, from this period down to the time of the General Councils."-P. 2.

The chief aim of Neander in treating the period of Church History between Boniface's time and the Council of Basle, is to illustrate the opposition between the monarchico-absolutistic and the aristocratico-reformatory tendencies-these being, according to his views, the two leading ideas developed in that time. The doings of the Council of Costnitz are pretty fully examined, fifty pages being allotted to their treatment.

The plan pursued by Neander in his former volumes was to treat, under each period of the history, first, of the external history of Christianity, its limits, extension, &c.; secondly, of the Church constitution, discipline, schisms, &c.; third, of Christian life and worship; and fourth, of Christian doctrine. But the third of these heads is wanting in the present volume; the lamented author devoted all the brief remainder of his allotted time to the subject of theology and doctrine, with which no less than five hundred pages are occupied. Here the line of thought follows the opposition between the corrupt middle-age system of the Church and the germs of new creations which characterize this period of history. The writers and thinkers who were the precursors of the Reformation attract his sympathies at once, and are brought out boldly upon his canvass. His long and elaborate account of WICLIF is imbued with strong admiration for the character of that valiant man, whose acuteness as a thinker, and boldness as a reformer, was only excelled by his devotion as a Christian. "Wiclif was distinguished," says Neander, "as well by his intellectual gifts, his independent mode of thinking, and his zeal for science, as by his devotion at once to the welfare of the Church and to the religious interests of the masses. In the thoroughly practical aim of his labours, we note a feature which strikingly characterized the English mind in that age as well as in the present. He combined with it another element far more common in England then than afterwards-an original speculative talent." One of Wiclif's earliest reformatory works (On the Ten Commandments) gives Neander occasion for an acute and discriminating comparison of the English Reformation with the German. He treats at large Wiclif's doctrine of the Lord's Supper, and of his heroic attacks upon the then established pretence of transubstantiation.

The tendencies to reformation in BOHEMIA are very fully treated, occupying not less than one-third of the entire volume. The subject was a thoroughly congenial one, and Neander depicts the heroic spirits who anticipated more than a century the spirit and doctrines of the

Reformation, with a cordial sympathy that gives life to his conception of their character and work, and warms his narrative style into a glowing eloquence. Among the predecessors of Huss, the names of MILICZ, CONRAD of Waldhausen, and MATTHIAS VON JANOW, stand preeminent. The character and services of the latter are now for the first time fully made known, at least in recent times; his principal work, de Regulis veteris et novi Testamenti, has heretofore lain unexamined in manuscript at Prague, or, at least, only published in small fragments. Neander gave this manuscript a thorough examination, and devotes no less than seventy pages to an exposition and review of it.

But the "sainted Huss," as Neander loved to call him, forms the central figure in this glorious group of "Reformers before the Reformation." Our author's admiration of Huss's talents, character, and work, seems to know no limits; and in giving the full history of his life and writings (taking nearly three hundred pages) which this volume affords, he has performed a labour of love. Huss's writings were probably more thoroughly studied by Neander than they have ever before been, and he gives us rich and copious extracts from them. Although this part of the volume failed to receive the finishing touch from the author's hand, and shows, here and there, signs of the unpropitious circumstances under which it was prepared, it is yet, without doubt, the best account of Huss's life and writings, and of their bearing upon the history of the Church, of which we are possessed.

The concluding section (pp. 728-790) is an incomplete essay upon the Mystics of the fourteenth century, the so-called "Friends of God." The origin of this form of Mysticism, Neander finds in the constant tendency of the German mind to seek for the elements of religious life and growth not merely in outward and ecclesiastical forms, but in the inner depths of the human heart in its relations to God; and also in the reaction of the theological mind against the scholastic doctrine which had separated itself almost entirely from religious feeling. The name "Friends of God" is not to be understood as the designation of a sect or party; it was applied to a class of writers and preachers, and to the people who followed them, in believing that love to God should be free from all individual selfseeking, in opposition to that "condition of bondage, in which man seeks after God for something else beside and beyond God himself." After this brief exposition, he gives an account, in rapid sketches, of the chief leaders of the movement, and of others more or less allied to them, viz., Nicholas of Basel; Master Eckart, the semi-pantheistic Dominican; John Ruysbrock, the doctor ecstaticus of Brabant, perFOURTH SERIES, VOL. V.-7

haps the most dreamy and visionary of the Mystics; and John Tauler, theologus sublimis et illuminatus, under whose preaching men are said to have fallen down senseless. It is worthy of remark that Neander, who has himself, from his spirit of contemplation and unselfish piety, been called "the Friend of God," spent his last days in the study of these Mystics, and that his wandering mind, in the gentle phantasies that floated before it in his last hours, was dwelling upon them.

We hope soon to be furnished with the final volumes of Professor Torrey's excellent translation of Neander's great work, including the posthumous portion of which we have given so brief and hurried an account.

The second work named in our rubric is a collection of scientific papers and addresses. Neander was a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences from 1839 to the time of his death. His papers, read at the various meetings of the Academy, were printed in its "Transactions;" but as those learned volumes are not generally accessible, it was thought advisable to reprint them for more extended circulation. The editor has also added to them a number of addresses and essays of similar character, elsewhere delivered. The first paper in the volume is an essay on The Relations of Theology to Rational Science." The second paper treats on the "Life and Character of Eustathius, Archbishop of Thessalonica," well known as a commentator on Homer, but not at all known in his character as moralist and reformer, in which respect this essay sets him in a new light. Then follows an essay on the "Historical Importance of the Ninth Book in the 2d neid of Plotinus." Neander depicts the great Neo-Platonic philosopher as the representative of the Hellenic mind, struggling against Oriental and Christian influences. In the fourth paper we have the "Classification of the Virtues, by Thomas Aquinas." Neander thinks that in his services for the development of moral philosophy, the Angelic Doctor stands second only to Aristotle; both in this essay and in his Church History he labours to impress upon his readers the preeminent value of Aquinas's contributions to ethical science. The comparison, in the essay, between Aquinas's division of the Virtues and that made by the ancient philosophers, is very instructive. Indeed, this paper, and the ninth in this volume,-" On the Relation of the Grecian Ethics to the Christian,"-may be regarded as valuable contributions to the History of Ethics, a branch of knowledge which sadly needs to be treated anew in a thoroughly scientific spirit. This latter essay draws a series of parallels between the principles of Christian