Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/316

Rh N E A N E A and it lias been somewhat happily said of his representa tions of the Puritans, that he &quot; blanches them into a sweet and almond whiteness.&quot; He died in April 1743. Neal s History of the Puritans, accompanied with a life of the author, was edited by Toulmin in six volumes, 1793. This edition has been frequently reprinted, and an edition in two volumes, revised and enlarged by John 0. Choules, appeared at New York in 1848. NEALE, JOHN MASON (1818-1866), ecclesiastical historian and hymnologist, was born in London, January 24, 1818, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He became incumbent of Crawley, Sussex, in 1842, and in 1846 warden of Sackville College, East Grimstead, an appointment which he held till his death, August 6, 1866. Neale was strongly High Church in his sympathies, and in 1855 founded a sisterhood named St Margaret s. The most important of his publications is his History of the Eastern Church (1850-51). He occupies a high place as a hymnologist, but principally as a translator of ancient and modern hymns, his best-known transla tions being probably &quot;Brief life is here our portion,&quot; &quot;To thee, dear, dear country,&quot; and &quot;Jerusalem the golden,&quot; which are in cluded in the poem of Bernard of Cluny, De Contemptu Mundi, translated by him in full. He also published Essays on Liturgiology, 1863 ; and among his other works are Mcdiieval Preachers, 1857, and History of the so-called Jansenist Church of Holland, 1858. NEANDER, AUGUST (1789-1850), one of the most distinguished and influential of the modern theologians of Germany, was born, of Jewish parents, at Gottingen on January 17, 1789. His father, Emmanuel Mendel, is said to have been a common Jewish pedlar ; but little seems to be really known of his circumstances and character. His mother was a woman of tender and noble disposition ; and from the maternal side, as in so many other cases, the virtues and talents of the son appear to have sprung. While still very young, he removed with his mother to Hamburg ; and in the grammar school, or Johanneum, of that city he received his classical education. There, as throughout life, the simplicity of his personal appearance and the oddity of his manners attracted notice, but still more, under all outward peculiarities, his great industry and mental power. From the Johanneum young Mendel passed to the gymnasium, where he attended for a year the pre lections in philology, philosophy, and theology. The study of Plato appears especially to have engrossed him at this time. One of his young friends, Wilhelm Neumann, writes of him in 1806 &quot;Plato is his idol his constant watch word. He sits day and night over him ; and there are few who have so thoroughly, and in such purity, imbibed his wisdom. It is wonderful how r entirely he has done this without any foreign impulse, merely through his own reflexion and downright study.&quot; Considerable interest attaches to his early companionship with the writer of this letter, and certain others, among whom were the afterwards well-known writer Varnhagen von Ense and the poet Chamisso. His letters to Chamisso are singularly in teresting. They breathe throughout the most simple and glowing enthusiasm, while the picture of a pure and affec tionate nature, and the struggling comprehensiveness of a great spirit, are impressed on every page of them. These letters enable us to understand with some degree of clear ness the great change which now took place in Neander s convictions. They reveal a course of spiritual training very much analogous to that which he has described in many cases in his Church History. He reached the gospel through Platonism. The influence of his teacher s idealism may be visibly traced in some of his conceptions of Christian doctrine. He was baptized on the 25th February 1806, when he adopted, instead of his Jewish name of David Mendel, that under which he was always afterwards known. In the same year he went to Halle to study divinity. At Halle Schleiermacher was then lecturing in the first height of his fame as a teacher. Neander met in him the very impulse which be needed, while Schleiermacher found a pupil of thoroughly congenial feeling, and one destined to carry out his views in a higher and more effective Christian form than he himself was capable of imparting to them. But before the year had closed the events of the Franco-Prussian war compelled his removal to the less congenial Gottingen. There, however, he continued his studies with ardour, made himself yet more master of Plato and Plutarch, and especially advanced in sacred learning under the venerable Planck. The impulse com municated by Schleiermacher was confirmed by Planck, and he seems now to have realized that the original in vestigation of Christian history was to form the great work of his life. Having finished his university course, he returned to Hamburg, and passed his examination for the Christian ministry with great distinction. He was not fitted, how ever, for the pulpit, and seems to have preached but seldom. After an interval of about eighteen months he definitively betook himself to an academic career, &quot; habi litating&quot; in Heidelberg, where two vacancies had occurred in the theological faculty of the university, from the re moval of Marheineke and De Wette to Berlin. He entered upon his work here as a theological teacher in 1811; and in the year following an extraordinary professorship re warded his learning and industry. In the same year (1812) he first appeared as an author by the publication of his monograph On the Emperor Julian. The fresh insight into the history of the church, and the vivid and striking power of delineation evinced by this work, vague and sketchy, perhaps, as it now seems in the light of his maturer productions, at once drew attention to its author, and marked him as a rising theologian. Accord ingly, even before he had terminated the first year of his academical labours at Heidelberg, he was called to Berlin as the associate of De Wette and Schleiermacher an illustrious band, whose labours have left an ineffaceable impress upon German theology. In Berlin Neander s life was only varied by the succes sive publications which appeared in such fertility from his pen. In the year following his appointment he published a second monograph On St Bernard and his Age, and then in 1818 his work on Gnosticism (Genetische Entwickeluny der vornehmsten gnostischen Systeme). A still more extended and elaborate monograph than either of the preceding followed, On Chrysostom, and again, in 1825, another on Tertullian (Antignostikus}. He had in the meantime, how ever, begun his great work, to which these several efforts were only preparatory studies. The first volume of his General History of the Christian Religion and Church, embracing the history of the first three centuries, made its appearance in 1826. The others followed at intervals, the fifth, which appeared in 1845, bringing down the narrative to the pontificate of Boniface VIII. A posthu mous volume, edited by Schneider in 1852, carried it on to the period of the council of Basel. Besides this great work he published in 1832 his History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles, and in 1837 his Life of Jesus Christ, in its Historical Connexion and Development, called forth by the famous Life of Strauss. In addition to all these labours, he gave to the public many miscellaneous sketches from the history of the church and of theological opinion ; as, for example, his Memorabilia from the History of Christian Life (1822), his volume under the title of the Unity and Variety of the Christian Life, his papers on Plotinus, Thomas Aquinas, Theobald Thamer, Pascal, Newman, Blanco White, Arnold, &c., and other oc casional pieces (Kleine GelegenJieitsschriften, 1829), mainly of a practical, exegetical, and historical character. Since his death a succession of volumes, representing his various