Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Lord's supper, the Erlangen theologians are not so exclusive as Löhe, who is very zealous and energetic, but also prone to extremes, and was on the point, some time ago, of leaving the Bavarian national church altogether, and following the example of the Old Lutherans in Prussia.

But there is likewise in Erlangen a chair of Reformed theology. This was formerly occupied by the venerable Dr Kraft, from whom the new awakening of the religious life in Bavaria chiefly proceeded, as is thankfully and frankly acknowledged by the Lutherans themselves, at least by the candid portion of them. His successor was Professor Dr Ebrard, who commenced his course as an academic teacher in Erlangen as privat-docent, and afterwards laboured for some years in the university of Zürich. He is without question one of the most gifted, learned, and zealous among the younger theologians of Germany. In the short space of ten years, he has already produced a multitude of books upon the most important subjects; above all, a critical examination of the Gospel History, which is one of the best answers to Strauss and the whole of the destructive literature on the Life of Christ; also, a dogmatico-historical work on the Lord's supper, and a work on Christian dogmatics, viewed from the stand-point of the German Reformed Church. Very recently he has undertaken the continuation and completion of Olshausen's invaluable commentary on the New Testament, and has edited besides, since 1851, a general German Reformed Church Journal. In an authorship of such uncommon fecundity, there are unavoidably many over-hasty expressions, and many things that are immature. Still, Ebrard's productions can by no means be called superficial. They all give evidence on the contrary of solid study, and of a lively, restless, active mind, and are almost always instructive and interesting throughout.*

XI. KIEL.

Kiel, beautifully situated at the mouth of the Eider, on the Baltic Sea, the university of the Duchy of Holstein,which belongs indeed to the kingdom of Denmark, but is thoroughly German, founded in 1665, does not make any very remarkable figure in the theological world, but it possesses a theological faculty of extremely respectable and worthy men, consisting of Pelt, Lüdemann, Thompson, and Wieseler, who was not long ago translated thither from Göttingen, and who has acquired for himself enduring credit by

Dr Ebrard has recently been removed to Speyer, in the Bavarian Palatinate, to fill the office of general superintendent; and he has ceased for some time back to be editor of the " Reformirte Kirchenzeitung."

66

his two works on the Chronology of the Life of Christ and of the Apostolic Age, which are distinguished by profound learning and extreme acuteness. At Kiel also is still living the venerable Harms, one of the most loveable originals among the German clergy,-German to the backbone, a Lutheran of the purest water, truly pithy and vigorous, and withal as simple as a child. It is well known what an active part he took in the revival of faith and church life in Germany by his Ninetyfive Theses, published at the time of the Reformation jubilee, in 1817, for which service, taken alone, an honourable place in church history is due to him. His "Pastoral Theology," which is extremely able, but much too original and eccentric to be carried out in practice, had its origin in a course of lectures which he delivered in the university.

XII. ROSTOCK.

Rostock has been, since 1449, the seat of the university of the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg. After a long rationalistic slumber, orthodoxy has there recently received a new impulse, its form being preponderatingly Lutheran. Among the theological professors are to be mentioned Krabbe, originally a scholar of Neander, and author of several writings in Biblical dogmatics; Baumgarten, one of the pastors expelled from Holstein, a pupil of Hengstenberg, and who has commenced a commentary on the Old Testament, on the plan of Olshausen's on the New, and also author of a work which has just appeared on the Acts of the Apostles; and the younger Wiggers, who has written a very useful book of Ecclesiastical Statistics, and a History of Evangelical Protestant Missions. The most able of the Mecklenburg theologians is Dr Kliefoth, a member of the Supreme Consistory in Schwerin, a speculative genius of the Hegelian school, but withal a practical churchman, and decidedly orthodox, who labours with great zeal in the revival of church life in that country, where, however, Romanism has recently made considerable progress, especially among the nobility, by way of a natural reaction against the excesses of rationalism, and the wild libertinism of the years 1848 and 1849.

XIII. MARBURG-GIESSEN.

The university of Marburg, in the Electoral Principality of Hesse, was founded, as is well known, in 1527 by that zealous promoter of the Reformation, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, and soon after became famous for the ineffectual but interesting colloquy between the Lutheran and the Swiss Divines, on

the subject of the sacramentarian controversy, which took place there in 1529. This university was for a long period the seat of the German Reformed theology.* At the end of the last century it fell into rationalism, but of late it has begun again to awaken to a better tendency. The present theological faculty consists of Gildemeister, Henke, Scheffer, Ranke, and Heppe. Pity that the talented, learned, and pious Dr H. Thiersch, who taught there for several years, has laid down his professorship on account of his having embraced Irvingistic views-no other course, however, being open to him as an honourable man.

In Giessen, the university of the Grand Duchy of HesseDarmstadt, founded in 1607, the vulgar rationalism has still, unfortunately, a decided preponderance, to the great injury of the country. The most learned among the professors there is Credner, whose Historico-Critical Introduction to the New Testament is a work of merit in many respects.

XIV. THE SWISS UNIVERSITIES.

To the German universities, taken in a wider sense, belongs also the German-Russian university of Dorpat, where formerly laboured the excellent and talented Lutheran theologian Sartorius, now member of the consistory of Königsberg; likewise the German-French university of Strasburg, in Alsace; and still more the universities of German Switzerland, at Basle, Zurich, and Berne. The last three are all connected with the Reformed Confession, but they are most intimately interwoven with the whole new evangelic theology of Germany, as in fact many of the Swiss students study at the German universities, or at least finish their studies there; and teachers are called both from Germany into Switzerland, and from Switzerland into Germany, without any confessional changes being thereby introduced. Among the present theologians of German Switzerland, Dr Hagenbach in Basle, and Dr Lange in Zurich, are the most important and the best known; both of them men of evangelical faith, rich mental gifts, and extremely amiable character. Hagenbach is an excellent church historian of the Schleiermacher-Neander school, but, at the same time, in many points reminding us of Herder and Hase; and he is distinguished in a high degree by liberal views, a candid judgment, a clear, mild, and animated style. Besides a somewhat large work on Protestantism, and a Manual of Dogmatic History, which has been translated into English, he has written an extremely useful Introduction to Theology, and has for several years been editor of a church journal for Reformed Switzer* That is, the Melancthonian, as distinguished from the strictly Lutheran theology. VOL. III.-NO. XI. 3 c

ness.

land. From Lange we have received an extensive work on the life of Christ, and a multitude of essays, dogmatical, historical, exegetical, and practical. He is a poetical theologian and a theological poet, full of sparkling thoughts, original views, thoughtful speculations, and a poetic fancy which spreads over the productions of his pen a delightful and stimulating freshThis faculty, however, not unfrequently interferes with the logical strictness of his thoughts, and loses itself in the region of the clouds. And yet there is a pleasure in following so loveable a genius even in his eager aërial journeys into "the land of glory;" and hope at least rejoices in the presentiment of a future marriage of theology and poesy, of science and art, when God shall be seen face to face, amidst the ravishing anthems of the triumphant church in the new heavens and the transfigured earth,-where truth and beauty, righteousness and peace, holiness and happiness, shall embrace and kiss each other for evermore.*

ART. III.—The True Barrier against Ritualism and Rationalism.

IN that hideous portraiture of heathenism which Paul gives in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, we find not only a graphic sketch of its vices in detail, but also of those radical sins and errors which underlie and produce this monster growth. It will be observed, that he attributes to heathenism those foul iniquities and worse than brutal abominations, the very mention of which shocks all sense of morality or decency. But all those pollutions are uniformly represented as flowing from a single cause, viz., renouncing, ignoring, or perverting the truth concerning God. Thus verse 21, et seq., "Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful. And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts," &c. So verse 25, et seq., "Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections," &c. Now, wherein did this rejection of God and the truth concerning him precisely lie? It did not lie in abjuring all belief in a Supreme Divinity, or the

[ocr errors]

* Professor Lange has recently been removed to Bonn, to supply the place of Dr Rothe.

obligation to render to such Divinity due homage. It did not lie in rejecting the whole truth concerning God. This would have been too monstrous to impose even upon their own sinblinded souls. It was entirely another process. They “changed the truth of God into a lie." They did not reject or ignore it altogether. This were impossible to rational beings made in the image of God, howsoever that image may be marred by sin. They retained so much as this, that there is a superior order of being, to which men owe homage and worship, and on whose favour or wrath depends their happiness or misery. Is not this vital, fundamental truth? Surely. Among the school of modern pantheistic, and we know not what other progressives, it would entitle its holder to Christian fellowship. Yet they so held this truth as to change it into a lie. They denied other associated truths, no less vital, which were essential to any right reception of this. They ignored or denied the unity, supremacy, independence, holiness, truth, spirituality, infinitude, and perfection of the Godhead. They recognised and worshipped God's creatures and works as true divinities. They "changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." So they "worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator." Thus holding the great truth that there is a Divinity which we ought to worship, they changed it into a lie, by rejecting connected truth, and superinducing upon it abominable errors. Now, this is the radical and characteristic feature of all forms of apostacy from God, Pagan, Mahometan, infidel, of rationalistic, ritualistic, superstitious, and other forms of degenerate and apostate Christianity. All kinds of false religion rest not on the utter denial of all truth, but on half truths turned into lies by the admixture of positive or negative

errors.

Since man is so constituted that he cannot rest long without some semblance of religion, so the great mass of the heathen world, and indeed of all the world who reject or know not the gospel, make up their religious system of certain truths which, by perversion, are turned into lies. Let us look at this momentous fact, in the principal forms in which it exists, in its causes, and in some of its practical consequences. All religious error, the world over, whether mixed with the truths of natural religion or of Christianity, and be each error greater or less, runs in one of two directions, either toward superstition or scepticism; therefore, when mixed with and falsifying Christian truth, in the line of ritualism or rationalism. Now, there is in each of these grand currents which bear along fallen humanity an element of truth, al

« AnteriorContinuar »