origin. Which of our modern would-be masters are we to take as our guide? We are called to witness among them a hot contest for superiority. While they are eagerly endeavouring to destroy each other's theories, we may well be excused from accepting any of them as prophets from whom the true light is to come, and for preserving our fidelity to Him who is "the Light" and "the Life of the world." All these opposers are, no doubt, rendering a certain service to the cause of Christ. They clear away, by no means designedly, various excrescences that have gathered around the sacred Book and its holy religion; and by the more thorough investigation which their opposition compels, they indirectly cause the truth to be placed on a broader and firmer basis.

Storms purify the atmosphere; and whatever may be the individual risk, a general gain is obtained. For inspired truth and spiritual Christianity we have no fear. Our apprehension has reference to those who may be unawares entangled in the meshes of error. Untaught youth, in particular, needs to be warned of the danger; but at the same time they must be fully assured that their danger lies in their want of instruction and knowledge, and not in the vain theories in relation to which the warning is given. The fascinations of Pantheism are easily dissipated when it is stripped of the poetry and graces of style in which it is not unfrequently presented, and when its violation of all the principles of our moral nature, by its destruction of the distinction between right and wrong, is exposed. As much may also be said of the empiricism of Comte, that hard, repulsive materialism which at best is merely an effort to evade the difficult problems of our nature by ignoring their existence, and fixing our attention only on what is palpable to our senses. Our self-consciousness, and our multiplied aspirations after higher conditions of existence, recoil from such a theory as involving voluntary self-degradation in its acceptance.

The most patent evils of these erratic systems of thought arise from the painful uncertainty into which some minds are brought by them: the utter confusion of theory and clash of aims which these behold threaten to make them despair of being able to assure themselves of anything. Persons of one order of mind are in peril of sinking into sheer scepticism; not a few have come to ask, "What is truth?" with a scornfulness betokening their deep, internal disquietude, and their doubt whether any satisfactory answer to their inquiry can be given. On the other hand, more sentimental minds are led to reflect on what are termed "the ages of faith," when by the "authority of the Church" men were relieved of the difficulty of deciding on these great questions for themselves; and in their conscious weakness they pine for a similar relief from the tortures of uncertainty in which they are held. The assump tions and the historic associations of Rome seem to promise them all they are seeking after. She undertakes to prescribe the particulars and the limits of their faith, and for a trifling financial consideration engages to adjust all their spiritual affairs for time and eternity. One class aims to find relief in the negation of truth, and the other in the negation of self. Both methods are alike vain and delusive. There is truth, and it may be found; and it is impossible for us to transfer our responsibilities to another, who may either flippantly or blasphemously pretend to

regulate our relations to the Judge of all, and to put into our hands a priestly passport to heaven.

Much less time than is consumed in this period of bondage to doubt, if employed in the prayerful study of Holy Scripture, would lead not a few souls to the rest they desire. In the assurance of its Divine origin, and in the trustful acceptance of Him who is the "Teacher sent from God." and the "one Mediator between God and men," they would find the reconciliation and peace which alone can meet their case. It is God only who can make a revelation of Himself, and of the way of peace and safety to man. In "His light we see light." To the sacred Word we point anxious inquirers of all kinds. If they are really such, "the Guide infallible" will conduct them into the temple filled with light, where the soul will find its Saviour, and, in fellowship with Him, the resolution of its doubts and the establishment of its faith.

M. G.

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF HENGSTENBERG. THE following account of the life and writings of Hengstenberg is abridged from a Memoir by the Rev. W. B. Pope, which has just appeared in Clark's "Foreign Theological Library," in connection with the translation of Hengstenberg's last work, the "History of the Kingdom of God under the Old Testament." It is, we believe, the only sketch of the character and labours of this distinguished divine accessible to English readers; and no one is better fitted than Mr. Pope, by long and minute acquaintance with the theological literature of Germany, to describe the career, and estimate the services of one who has played an important part in the religious history of his country during the last generation. The student will be glad to have a glimpse of the personal life of an author whom he has learned to hold in honour, as well as a clear and satisfactory account of his various writings. The general reader also, if a lover of good men, and one interested in the kingdom of God and the many aspects of its progress, will look with pleasure on this picture of a strong and steadfast servant of Christ, who has left behind him work that will not die, and a memory that deserves to be cherished. In this timely contribution to Church history, Mr. Pope has once more done service both to the Christian public at large, and to those who are in a special manner accustomed to look to him for guidance in the great field of religious truth.

ERNST WILHELM Hengstenberg was one of a noble band of men who came in with the present century, and are about this time reaching the term of human life, and passing away rapidly. He was born at Fröndenberg, in Westphalia, where his ancestors for several generations, indeed from the fourteenth century downwards, had figured largely, and made themselves memorable in the local annals. A line of political Hengstenbergs are found leading the movements of a feudal aristocracy; and these are matched by an equal line of ecclesiastical Hengstenbergs, in unbroken succession, from Canonicus Hengstenberg, who gave his heart and soul to the Reformation, down to the present day. The father of our subject, a man of considerable endowments and large attainments, occupied

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several pastoral charges, and showed some zeal and energy, especially in the department of education. A good mother lived long enough to watch over him up to maturity; and this was a special blessing to a youth who began life under the conditions of a diffident nature and an unsound constitution.

Until seven years of age the lad was not permitted even to read,—a restraint, however, for which he made swift amends when he fairly began. Almost entirely confined to the room by lameness, he contracted the habit of steady, poring diligence in study. From that time to the end of his life, he was among his books daily, from five or six o'clock in the morning until eight in the evening, with the exception of about three hours' intermission. He was accustomed to attribute much of his success to the troubles which inured him to a sedentary life so early, and to the necessity which this imposed of exceeding strictness in exercise and diet. "I have scarcely," he said to his brother on his death-bed, "during life known for a single day the feeling of perfect health, and have done what I have done simply through having been obliged to keep my body under stern discipline."

At the University of Bonn, Hengstenberg pursued his studies with diligence, chiefly in a philosophical and philological direction; and, though not as yet brought under the influence of personal religion, and with only an indefinite idea of consecration to the service of the Gospel, he was impelled by a strong instinct to give the first-fruits of his intellectual vigour to the sacred languages. It would not perhaps be wrong to say that he was already under the guidance of the good Providence which directs the early energies of men who have a great work to do. Hengstenberg's sphere of labour was to be pre-eminently the Old Testament; and before his twentieth year lie had laid the broad and deep foundations of an eminence in Hebrew, and its kindred dialects, which not even the most learned of his numberless enemies ever despised or disparaged.

One effect of his remarkable success as an oriental editor was the high opinion of Sylvester de Sacy, who recommended him to the Basle Missionary College as every way competent to give instruction in the Eastern languages. Accordingly he removed to Bisle, where the Spirit awaited him who leads the sincere student into all truth. Hengstenberg spoke of this period nearly half a century afterwards, when opening his heart to the readers of the "Kirchenzeitung," as the time of his conversion and of the beginning of his Christianity. "I had been engaged at Bonn," he says, "in seeking goodly pearls, but I had not yet found the pearl of great price." It appears, however, that his theological principles were somewhat in advance of his religious life; for when his tutor, the wellknown Professor Brandis, put into his hands Schleiermacher's new book, the "Glaubenslehre," a system of Christian doctrine, he read it with profound interest, but soon returned it with the remark: "I shall not remain what I am; if, indeed, I did so, I should never be a theologian; but to that man I shall never betake myself." This shows two things: first, that the youth was discontented with himself and with his own character; and, secondly, that he was able, beyond most of his contemporaries, to sound the depths or the shallows of Schleiermacher's theology.

Considering that he was a mere youth at the time, and had not been very carefully trained in systematic theology when younger, this was a remarkable exhibition of precocity. Schleiermacher was then rising to the height of fame and influence. The book which young Hengstenberg thus threw from him was fascinating almost the whole world of German Protestantism, and literally inaugurating a new era of religious thought. Its influence was destined to divide the old from the new, and not only to stem, but to arrest and turn back the tide of Rationalism. Had the youth been previously entangled in the snares of the Illuminists, it is probable that he might, like many others, have hailed Schleiermacher as his saviour. But, fortified by a strong and determinate bias towards pietism in sentiment and orthodoxy in creed, he saw only the negative and unreal elements in the new theology of dependence. He perceived plainly, or rather felt, that Schleiermacher's god was not the Triune God in personal manifestations to the human race; that his Christ was an ideal being, who accomplished only an ideal atonement; that in his hands the entire face of theology was changed, and man had become in a wonderful manner the centre of religious truth. He perceived how the subjective spirit of the new Christianity trifled with the objective facts, and was disposed to subordinate the firm external word to the internal consciousness of feeling. It may be gathered that he left Bonn with a rooted conviction of the truth of the Bible as a record of God's dealings with the human race, and with a full preparation of heart for the reception of those personal influences which the associations of Bâsle would soon bring to bear upon him.

In the Missionary Institution of that place he remained only a short time, but long enough to find what he called "the pearl of great price." Hengstenberg was not a man given to much self-revelation; and it was at a season of unwonted freedom of spirit, when the approach of the end released his tongue from restraint, that he spoke of this period of his conversion. The details of his call and personal consecration are not at our command; nor do we need them. His whole life bore testimony, clear, consistent, and unvarying, to the reality of his devotion to the Person of Christ,-a devotion which he entered upon at Bâsle. He became what in Germany was called a Pietist,-what in England would be called an earnest Christian. To this pietistic, fervent, experimental type of religion, the soul of which is the personal relation of the believer to his Lord, he was faithful to the end, notwithstanding some appearances to the contrary. It classed him with bodies of men from whom, as to their doctrine and religious observances, he recoiled with something like aversion. It allied him, for instance, in spirit with Neander, and Tholuck, and Stier, from whom, as evangelical disciples of Schleiermacher, he kept at a doctrinal distance.

In 1828 he became Professor of Theology in the University of Berlin, and took the rank and position which he held to the end. Thus we find him, at an age when most of our students are looking out upon life, and pondering their vocation, in the dignity of a teacher of the most difficult science in one of the most important universities of Europe. No sooner was he settled in this post than he became settled in another respect. He married a lady of high birth and connections, who thus contributed materially towards securing his access to high society, and extending his

influence among those who would otherwise have been inaccessible. It may be said here that this wife was a most faithful sharer of his joys and sorrows for thirty-two years. His home was in all respects happy, save indeed that Providence disturbed its peace by a succession of bereavements. Though he was left all but childless in later life, his children while spared to him were a source of the purest satisfaction. The fidelity with which he watched over the sons of his own generation entrusted to him was rewarded by the goodness of his own. His family was from the beginning well ordered. In due time his house became one, and not the least favoured, among the many centres in Berlin to which the cultivated in Church and State were attracted. His open hospitality will long be remembered; and still longer his more unostentatious but more influential private receptions of the students, for whom a certain portion of the day was always reserved. In this last respect Professor Hengstenberg was only complying with a familiar and kindly usage in the German universities. How perpetually do we fall in with grateful reminiscences placed on record by students under such men as Olshausen, Stier, Schmid, and especially Tholuck, who did so much by their private and unreserved influence towards reinforcing and confirming the public influence of their chairs!

When Hengstenberg began his public career in Berlin, the aspect of theology, and of religion generally, was very gloomy. Evangelical Germany, divided amidst contradictory opinions, was little able to resist the common foe of rationalism. The theological schools which began to be fashioned under the influence of Schleiermacher, and which afterwards split into two camps, that of the orthodox and that of the rationalists, had nothing strong and definite enough wherewith to encounter the practised adversary, skilled in the tactics of nearly a century. An internal, and subjective, and ideal religious system was not palpable enough for rough aggression, or even defensive warfare; at any rate, it had not yet put forth its strength, and its Neanders and Tholucks were men of might who had not yet found their hands. The orthodox Lutheran confessional divines, who have since done so much to restore systematic theology in Germany, were only beginning to form a consolidated party; and as yet the wonderful Lutheran divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries slumbered on the shelves. Meanwhile the rationalists, whether more or less unfriendly to supernaturalism, had the fatal prerogative of the highest learning and the highest places. The old and vulgar rationalism of Röhr and Bretschneider was in the ascendant in some seats of learning. In Halle, eight hundred young divines, the pride and hope of Germany, sat at the feet of Wegscheider and Gesenius, gathering up and surely remembering every word and every argument against traditionalism or the faith, catching the subtile influence of every innuendo and every sally of wit, and receiving into soil only too fruitful the plentiful seed of a no less plentiful harvest. The time seemed very unpropitious. Some hope there was in the pure and earnest godliness which Pietism nurtured in southern Germany, and which found its way, through the influence of individuals, into all the centres of the north. But Pietism was hated most cordially by the leading statesmen of the day, and by the leading professors also. The digni