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only authority he recognized was the authority of experience. What he spoke and what he wrote had weight, because it seemed the living utterance of a true man. To many a soul inclined to formalism or to rationalism it was a veritable voice of God, rousing from irreligious slumber and prompting to a spiritual

life.

Many great preachers have left no permanent mark upon the thinking of the world. Schleiermacher's influence has been far greater since his death than during his life. He was the pioneer of all our recent theology. In spite of most serious and pernicious errors, he constituted a bridge from the German rationalism of the eighteenth century to the recent German evangelical faith. Before he appeared, it almost seemed that the fruits of the Protestant Reformation had been lost; partly because Luther did not supplement his scriptural doctrine of justification by faith with an equally scriptural doctrine of the church and its ordinances, and partly because he did not establish specifically Christian schools for the training of the ministry, Germany had nearly swung to the extremes of formalism and unbelief. Scarcely a remnant of faith in inspiration, or in any manifestation of the supernatural, was to be found in the universities. Semler interpreted the miracle of turning the water into wine. as purely subjective: the beauty of Jesus' discourse made the time pass so quickly at the marriage feast that the guests exclaimed: "What good wine we have had to-day!" No one believed in either the immaculate conception or the bodily resurrection of our Lord. Preachers were fast becoming hypocrites,

and preaching was becoming an inculcation of motiveless and perfunctory ethics. Schleiermacher wrought a revolution by turning attention anew to the majestic and sinless Christ, and to the effects of Christ's life and death in Christian experience. Man's need of Christ and Christ's supply of man's need-these fundamental truths of religion were proclaimed with such conviction and feeling as to make a new epoch in theology. The new faith had many shortcomings, and to them I shall call attention. Still it is true that for its salutary and lasting influence upon modern thought we must put the "Christliche Glaube," or System of Doctrine, of Friedrich Schleiermacher next to the "Institutes " of John Calvin.

To a certain extent his teaching was a reform of theology. It could not have been this if it had been an attack from without; it was this, because it was a growth from within. That growth sloughed off many harmful excrescences and restored Christian doctrine to something nearer its original simplicity. And yet through his whole life Schleiermacher rejected elements of truth so important as the personal preexistence and objective atonement of Jesus Christ, while God and immortality were conceived in so pantheistic a fashion that many calm critics have regarded him as an enemy to the Christian faith. To the student of philosophy and theology his positions are curiously interesting; to understand him is to understand the theology of our time. But he cannot be understood without a knowledge of his life and early surroundings; to these I therefore address myself, with the hope that they may help us to interpret his doctrine.

Schleiermacher was born on the twenty-first day of November, 1768, and he was sixty-five years of age when he died. He was the son of a poor army chaplain of the Reformed Church, at that time stationed at Breslau, in Silesia. As the regiment to which he was attached moved hither and thither, the father was for long periods absent from home, and the boy's early. training was given him for the most part by his intelligent and pious mother. She was a daughter of the Rev. Mr. Stubenrauch, chaplain in ordinary to the king. She recognized in her son an unusual precocity, but she was by no means blind to his faults, for when his facility in memorizing the Latin grammar at his first school made him conceited, she strove to subdue his pride by appealing to his religious nature and awakening his gratitude to God.

From his twelfth to his fourteenth year he attended a boarding-school at Pless, where an enthusiastic teacher inspired him with love for the classics and a desire for literary fame. Yet a strange skepticism took possession of him here. For a time he doubted the genuineness of all the ancient authors. He concealed these doubts, but he was troubled by them, and resolved some day to make personal investigation as to their truth. When his father spoke to him of the depravity to be found in most large schools, and proposed to send him to the educational establishment of the United Brethren at Niesky, in Upper Lusatia, young Schleiermacher welcomed the change, for the innocent piety of the young people at the Moravian school greatly attracted him. Here was a refuge from doubt and from temptation. With his sister he passed

two years in preparatory studies at Niesky, and two more years in the college at Barby.

These four years, from fifteen to nineteen, spent among the Moravians in the still air of delightful studies and in association with Christians more simple, missionary, and devout than any others then living, were the best part of his education. Here were a people to whom Christ was a reality, a living presence in the heart. Communion with him was the greatest joy, the only real joy, of their earthly existence. Scripture was as much Christ's word as if he had spoken it audibly into their ears. His cross was the center of all history, the source of all hope, the theme of all praise. They lived and labored that they might spread the knowledge of his salvation to the uttermost ends of the earth, and many a martyr from among their number had left his bones in Greenland, in Africa, and in the West Indian Isles. It is a great gift of God to be permitted to know one believer who lives in constant companionship with Christ; for, once seen, such a one can never be forgotten. Among the Moravians Schleiermacher saw many such. Their childlike piety made indelible impression upon him—indeed, may we not say, he made their piety his own?

In letters written about this time to his sister, he tells her that the pressure of external duties may be borne with a Christian spirit:

The heart may, nevertheless, feel the peace and the love of Jesus, as I can assert from my own experience, thanks to his mercy... Neither my love for winter nor my hatred to summer disturbs the cheerful state of my mind; but when I find that I do not love the Saviour enough, that I do not sufficiently honor him; when the daily intercourse with him does not go on uninter

rupted, then I am disturbed. But as often as we draw near to him, feeling ourselves sinners who can only be saved through his mercy, as often as we pray to him for a look of grace, we never go away from him empty. He never abandons us, however much we may deserve it; yet the more undisturbed our minds, the better, the more consistent, the more tranquil, the nearer to heaven-happiest would it be, were we there altogether. But his will be done; it is the best.

The Moravians had a meeting for strangers of other churches than their own, and to whom they ministered. These strangers were called the Diaspora-those who are scattered abroad. The parents of Schleiermacher probably had this kind of connection with the Brotherhood. With reference to one of these meetings the boy writes:

Yesterday I was for the second time, through the grace of the Saviour, permitted to be a looker-on. "I will receive you unto myself," was the text of yesterday; and as regards me also he will graciously fulfil this promise. He has risen from the dead to help all miserable sinners on earth, and therefore I also have a part in him. He alone is my stay-the God who died for me upon the cross. . . Ah! did but the love of Christ fill our hearts day and night, were we but always acceptable in his sight, were we but in constant uninterrupted communion with him, did we but cling to him so that not even for one moment we could be drawn away from him! . . I have been an apprentice in the community somewhat more than two years. This is not a very long time, yet in this short period how much have I experienced-much evil as regards myself, and much mercy as regards the Saviour! "I have merited wrath," say I on my side; “I have atoned for thee," cries the Lamb from the cross. . . When I look back upon my life of seventeen years, I recognize so many remarkable proofs of the kind and merciful guidance of the Lord, and of his watchfulness over all circumstances relating even to the meanest of his rational creatures, that I feel compelled to prostrate myself in the dust, and to say: "With what mercy and patience and love thou hast led me, O Lord!"

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