Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/49

II] "History of the Christian Church," and will have admired, as every one must admire, the depth, the tenderness, the delicacy of Christian sentiment which pervades the whole of his vast work, and fulfils his own beautiful motto, "It is the heart which makes the theologian,"—Pectus theologum facit. Yet, without disparaging the value of such a mirror of Christian history in such a character, we cannot help feeling that it is often rather the theologian than the historian whose words we read; that it is often rather the thoughts, than the actual persons and deeds of men, that he is describing to us. They are the ghosts of Ossian, rather than the heroes of Homer; they are refined, they are spiritualized to that degree, that their personality almost vanishes; the stars of heaven shine through them; but we have no hold on their earthly frames; we can trace no human lineaments in their features as they pass before us. Let us endeavour to fill up this outline; however much of deeper interest it may have for the more philosophical mind, it will hardly lay hold on the memory or the affections of the more ordinary student, unless it is brought closer to our grasp. How differently we learn to estimate even Neander himself, according as we merely regard him as a thinker of holy thoughts, the writer of a good book, or as we see the venerable historian in his own proper person,—his black, shaggy, overhanging eyebrows and his strong Jewish physiognomy revealing the nation and religion to