separated from them, he concludes with this touching prayer:

O thou God who art love, let me now not only submit myself to thine omnipotence and adapt myself to thine unsearchable wisdom, but also recognize thy fatherly love! Make even this heavy trial the means of new blessing in my calling! For me and for all mine may this common sorrow become a bond of closer affection, and through it may my whole family attain to a new reception of thy Spirit! Grant that even this time of mourning may bring a blessing to all who have gathered here! May we all ripen evermore to that wisdom which looks away from that which is vain and worthless, which in all that is earthly and transitory sees and loves only the eternal, and which in all thy decrees finds also thy peace and the eternal life into which by faith we enter through the gates of death. Amen.

The Christian spirit of this address and of its concluding prayer are as unmistakable as is the absence of that peculiar joy and hope which is the proper heritage of believers. He could not say with the apostle that for him "to die was gain," for to his wife he wrote, after an experience of his own bodily weakness:

I could not sit down to write to you, because I was obliged to think of my sermon, which did not, however, turn out very well, because I was somewhat inattentive then, and partly because of a very strange paroxysm which came over me in the vestry previous to my going into the pulpit, and which I must relate to you. All of a sudden, I do not know by what concatenation of thought, such a dread took hold of me that I should be overcome by fear on the approach of death, that it actually brought on a kind of physical depression which must have had a perceptible influence on my sermon. You know I have repeatedly mentioned to you that I did not feel quite sure that I should not fear death when it came, but the thought never before overwhelmed me in that manner.

He wished to die in full possession of his powers, and this God granted him. In the early part of February, 1834, he was seized with his last illness. His physician announced the approach of death. Wife and children gathered near his bedside. He was calm and gentle, serious but uncomplaining. And the following are some of his last words:

I am in a state between consciousness and unconsciousness, but inwardly I enjoy heavenly moments. I feel constrained to think the profoundest speculative thoughts, and they are to me identical with the deepest religious feelings. . . Here light a sacrificial flame. . . To the children I bequeath the saying from Saint John: "Love one another." . . I charge you to greet all my friends, and to tell them how sincerely I have loved them... I have never clung to the dead letter, and we have the atoning death of Jesus Christ, his body and his blood. Do you agree with me in this belief? . . Then let us take the communion!

Bread and wine were then brought in; an expression of heavenly rapture spread over his features; a strange luster shone in his eyes; a look of beaming love fell upon those present; and, after a few devout words of prayer, he began to administer the ordinance. He gave to each the bread, and last of all he himself partook of it. He gave to each the wine also, with Christ's words of institution: "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." Then he said: "On these words of the Scripture I rely; they are the foundation of my faith." He pronounced the benediction, and added: "In this love and communion we are, and ever will remain, united." He sank back upon his pillow, the look of love and rapture still upon his face, and,

while his children were still kneeling as they had received the elements of the Lord's Supper, his eyes closed, and Schleiermacher's earthly life was ended. Can we doubt that he who brought life and immortality out from obscurity into clear daylight by his gospel removed then the last scales from his eyes and admitted him into paradise?

Schleiermacher was a rationalist, in that he found his source of doctrine not in Scripture, but in man's nature; he was a supernaturalist, in that he regarded this nature of man as pervaded by the divine Spirit, and as being for that reason itself a revelation of God. As he strove with imperfect success to reconcile two seemingly opposite views of truth, it is not wonderful that subsequent German theology has divided into two schools, each of which emphasizes one side of his doctrine. Strauss and Baur, Biedermann, Lipsius, and Pfleiderer have been greatly influenced by Hegel, and have transformed Christian doctrine into a sort of idealistic philosophy. Ritschl, Harnack, Hermann, and Kaftan have followed Kant, and have given us a theology dominated by the principle of relativity. It must not be forgotten, however, that, apart from all these, there stands a third class of pious ministers and laymen, who are neither rationalists nor agnostics, but who perpetuate, because they have experienced, the simple gospel which Schleiermacher found among the Moravians, and which constituted, in spite of his philosophic aberrations, the inmost essence of his faith and the anchor of his soul..

In our day, with increasing knowledge of his writings, there is an increasing disposition to follow him,

and there are not wanting those who would have us go back to Schleiermacher for mediation between conflicting tendencies in modern thought. Much of our recent theology, indeed, is but a repetition of ideas which with him were original and independent. We may grant that his recognition of God's immanence has furnished the key to many problems and has been of inestimable benefit to theology. But his denial of God's transcendence and personality is an error so vast and pernicious as well-nigh to neutralize the effect of the truth he proclaims. Like King Procrustes, he cut short the truth in order to make it fit the bed of his pantheistic philosophy. Because he held unwaveringly to the reality of a divine life in the soul, God used him to deliver Germany from the rationalistic slough into which it had fallen and to point the way to a sounder faith. But in most respects he is a poor guide to follow. Charles Hodge has well said that Schleiermacher is like a ladder in a pit-a good thing for those who wish to get out, but a bad thing for those who wish to get in.

The Christocentric element in Schleiermacher, next to his advocacy of the immanence of God, is the most important element in the theologian, the preacher, and the man. He recognized that in man's sinfulness and impotence the revelation of God in Christ is the only means of redemption. As to Christ's person and work he fell into many and grievous errors, yet he never ceased to confess his absolute dependence upon him for salvation. He could never escape from the influence of Herrnhut. "The Moravian Brotherhood," says Dorner, " was his mother, though Greece

was his nurse. It shows us how powerful God can make even a fragment of his truth, when we see this man creating a new epoch in Germany, and bringing theology back to Christ and the Christian faith. He came forth from the dead church of Germany like Lazarus from the tomb; the grave-clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangled his steps; yet the spectacle of a man raised from the death of unbelief and sin, and full of the life of God, drew men's thoughts to Christ, the worker of the miracle. Christ guided him, though he did not fully know Christ. Of Schleiermacher more than of most reformers it may be said:

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew.