Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3a.pdf/555

NEA  expressed the obligations which he owed to his mother, by dwelling often on the early life of Augustine and other fathers of the church, whose mothers had enforced by precept and example the lessons of piety. Unmistakably Jewish in his features, young Neander had otherwise nothing to mark his descent from a Jewish dealer. He had neither aptitude nor liking for commerce, and from the first it was apparent that the spiritual earnestness of a prophet of the old covenant, instead of the greed of gain characteristic of the race in modern times, was to distinguish him through life. Till his fourteenth year educated in a private school, he was then sent to the Johanneum—the public grammar-school in Hamburg, of which the celebrated philologist, Dr. Gurlitt, was then rector. From this institution, with the reputation of the best scholar of his time, he passed to the gymnasium, delivering on the occasion of his admission a Latin oration on the expediency of abolishing the civil disabilities of the Jews. Here young Neander formed the acquaintance of several youths already bidding fair for distinction in literature, among whom were August Varnhagen von Ense, Wilhelm Neumann, and Adelbert von Chamisso. In such society young Neander expounded with that quiet enthusiasm which was peculiar to him the philosophy of Plato, of which he was then deeply enamoured; and in exchange for this he received from his friends an introduction to a wide range of reading, comprising the works of Schlegel, Tieck, Schelling, Fichte, Jakob Böhmen, and St. Martin. About this period he submitted to a clergyman, with a view to receiving the ordinance of baptism, a sort of profession of his faith, in the form of an essay which he entitled "Versuch die Christliche Religion in ihren Entwicklungsstadien dialectisch zu construiren." "Religion," according to this document, "is a longing for the infinite, and a reflex of the infinite in the human mind, from which it derives various forms, none of them being an adequate expression of the whole of religion, which can only be represented fully by the totality of the forms under which it has appeared historically." Better satisfied, perhaps, with the spiritual earnestness, the hunger and thirst after righteousness of its author, who was only in his sixteenth year, than with the creed of which this was the leading idea, pastor Bossau, of St. Catherine's church, Hamburg, admitted his young friend to the privileges of the christian church, baptizing him in a private manner in his own house. David Mendel's godfathers on this occasion were his old master Johann Gurlitt and his young friends Karl August Varnhagen and Wilhelm Neumann, from whom he took the names by which he is known to fame, Johann August Wilhelm Neander, the surname Neander being the Greek form of Neumann. Soon after his baptism Neander paid a visit to Hanover, where his uncle, Dr. R. Stieglitz, was a physician in great repute. He was now urged by his friends to commence the study of jurisprudence in Göttingen after Easter, 1806, but he would not be diverted from his purpose of devoting himself to sacred literature; and accordingly, with the reluctant consent of his relatives, he entered the university of Halle as a student of divinity. In July of this year he addressed a letter to his friend the Hamburg pastor, in which he said that he would not always remain a silent member of the christian church, but would strive by the grace of God to penetrate deeper into the genuine sense of the gospel than is possible for the profane intellect of men who have lost the use of the organs required for the perception of spiritual truths. In a similar strain he wrote to his friend Chamisso. "It is distressing," he said, "to see how often believers, who should perceive the identity of essence under different forms, split up into sects on account of merely formal differences." At Halle Neander greatly enjoyed the lectures of Schleiermacher, but his career in this quarter was cut short by the advance of Napoleon into Prussia. The battle of Jena closed the gates of the university for a time, and Neander, under the guidance of his friend Neumann, found his way to Göttingen, where he arrived in a destitute condition. A friend of the name of Noodt, however, offered him shelter, and supplied him with the means of prosecuting his studies at the university. He thus became a pupil of Gesenius in Hebrew, of Stäudlin in systematic divinity, and of Planck in church history. In the spring of 1809 he quitted the university and returned to Hamburg, where he supported himself by private tuition, occasionally officiating in the pulpits of the city churches. In the following year, however, learning from his friend Noodt that two of the lecturers at the university of Heidelberg were about to be transferred to Berlin, and encouraged by his friends, particularly by his old master Gurlitt, to offer himself for one of the chairs thus left vacant, he removed to Heidelberg, and there commenced that career of public instruction in ecclesiastical history the issues of which were to be so momentous and so glorious. To Heidelberg, as was necessary both for the management of his affairs and for the care of his health, his mother and sister soon followed him. In 1811 appeared his Latin treatise on and (faith and knowledge), which was followed by his "Julian the Apostate." This latter work drew so much attention that its author at the age of twenty-three was called to a chair of theology in the metropolitan university. Neander commenced his labours in Berlin at a time when Germany was in a ferment of insurrection against the tyranny of Napoleon. For thirty-eight years he continued through all changes, political and moral, to exercise an influence as a public teacher such as has rarely been wielded in modern times. Students flocked to him from all quarters—France, Denmark, Britain, and America; and of all who were attracted to his lectures by his fame as a teacher, none went away without a deep veneration for the man. Truly, as a stranger, Neander passed through things temporal, knowing as much of them only as was forced upon his attention by the anxious, devoted affection of his sister Hannchen. With only a moderate income he had much to spare for the necessitous, and when his bounty was sometimes abused it did not teach him to be wary. The simplicity of his manner of life was but a reflex of the utter simplicity of his mind. At six o'clock in the morning, attended by the ever watchful Hannchen, he rose to prepare for his lectures, which lasted usually from eleven till two. After dinner he then walked for exercise in company with his sister. In the afternoon any of his students who wished to converse with him were admitted, and he had a ready ear for all their difficulties. The evenings were devoted to study and composition. Such was the domestic life of Neander. His public career had the same aspect of simplicity, even to the monotonous way in which he read his lectures. With a simple hearty love of the truth he laboured incessantly, and the confidence which he had in its ultimate triumph was the reward of a love so pure and fervent. He was one of the originators of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, edited by Hengsterberg, the aim of which was to counteract the prevalent rationalism of the earlier part of the century. In 1830 this journal, to which Neander was still a contributor, demanded the expulsion of Gesenius and Wegscheider from the university of Halle, and it was the signal for Neander to withdraw from the connection. It was, he said, an intolerable interference with the freedom of intellect. In 1835 again, when, as was frequently the case, he was consulted by the minister of state with regard to the sale of an obnoxious book, he declared that error must be refuted, not proscribed. On this occasion it was Strauss's Life of Jesus which was in question, and to that work Neander published a reply. Neander died of cholera, July 14th, 1850. Of the vast erudition, the keen intelligence, and the apostolical piety which characterize the published works of Neander, the English reader is enabled to form an opinion from the numerous translations printed in this country. The following is a list of them:—A dissertation entitled "De fidei gnoseosque idea, et ea qua ad se invicem et ad philosophiam referatur ratione, secundum mentem Clementis Alexandrini," Heidelbergæ, 1811; "Über den Kaiser Julian und sein Zeitalter," Heidelberg, 1812; "Der Heilige Bernhard und sein Zeitalter," Berlin, 1813, second edition, 1848; "Die genetische Entwicklung der vornehmsten gnostischen Systeme," Berlin, 1818; "Der heilige Chrysostomus und die Kirche, besonders des Orients in dessen, Zeitalter," two volumes, Berlin, 1822, third edition, 1843; "Denkwürdigkeiten aus der Geschichte des Christenthumes und des Christlichen Lebens," three volumes, Berlin, 1822, second edition, 1815-27, third edition, 1845 (this work has been translated into French); "Antignostikus—Geist des Tertullianus und Einleitung in dessen Schriften," Berlin, 1825, second edition, 1849; "Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche," five volumes, or rather ten tomes, Hamburg, 1825, seq., second edition, 1842; "Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel," Hamburg, 1832, fourth edition, 1842; "Das Leben Jesu inseinem geschichtlichen Zusammenhange," Hamburg, 1837 and 1845; "Kleine Gelegenheitsschriften," Berlin, 1829; third edition, 1848.—F. B—y.  NEANDER,, a distinguished humanist and schoolmaster of the Reformation period, was born at Sorau in 1525 