fact the favorite of his father and of the whole family. He was now placed in the best of the many classical schools of Saxony, at Pforta. Here he soon became a general favorite, not only because of his extraordinary physical beauty, but also because of the moral nobleness of his nature, and of his solid and rapid acquirements in knowledge. He became so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Latin literature that he felt more at home in the language of Cicero than in his mother-tongue. In later years he bitterly regretted this neglect of his vernacular, and attributed to his too exclusive absorption in the classics the insuperable heaviness of his German style. Even till the end of life he wrote and spoke Latin as readily and elegantly as German. His one-sided classical training, however, was not without great advantage. It laid a broad foundation for a wise and harmonious life. The golden utterances of the Greek poets and philosophers were throughout life as familiar to him as proverbs.

It may well be supposed that when the nineteen-year-old Nitzsch returned from his four years' immersion in the classic atmosphere of Pforta, in order to begin his University course at Wittenberg, the theology of the day would have but little attraction for him. In fact, he became for a time unsettled as to whether his life calling lay not rather in the direction of philosophy. The writings of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling were now absorbing the thoughts of all, and shaking the foundations of hereditary beliefs. Nitzsch plainly saw that the old, stiff supernaturalism of the past could not stand before the storm of new thought. He felt that the confessional orthodoxy of his father, and the growing rationalism of the Church in general, could no longer go hand in hand. But his momentary hesitation before the storms that seemed to be brewing on all sides of the theological horizon was soon overcome and dispelled under the influence of a few faithful Christian teachers at Wittenberg. The pious Heubner, and, at a later period, Tzschirner, succeeded in awakening in him a zest for dogmatics, patristics, and Church history. But his real initiator into theology was his own father. This man was an earnest, independent thinker, who attempted to reconcile the new Kantian ethics with old, strict, Lutheranism. To this meditating stand-point many young men owed their first dawnings of satisfaction in

the "confused contest between palæology and neology." This was the theological position of the young Nitzsch until his twenty-second year. It was only on occasion of the criticism. of his examination sermon, by the celebrated Reinhard of Dresden, that he was made conscious of the untenableness and inner disharmony of this position.

Between the elder and the younger Nitzsch there was, however, an essential difference. The father was a vigorous abstract thinker; the son was not only this, but had also a deeply mystic turn which was foreign to his father. The father belonged to the rational tendency that went out from Lessing and Kant; the son moved in the higher spiritual realm, represented by Schiller and Goethe in poetry, the Schlegels, Tieck, and Novalis in criticism, Fichte, Schelling, and Fries in philosophy, and De Wette and Schleiermacher in religion. Especially the works of the latter powerfully revolutionized his inner life, and led him further than ever from the merely formal orthodoxy of his father. It is characteristic of the relations of the two that the father expressed himself as not only having the greatest delight in his son, but also as feeling toward him a sort of involuntary

reverence.

After three years of university study, Nitzsch prepared an elaborate Latin dissertation "On the Use and Abuse of the Apocryphal Gospels in Elucidating the Canonical Books," and was examined on the symbolical books and passed into the state of candidacy for the Church. Soon thereafter (June 16, 1810) he began his academic career as Privatdocent of theology at the University of Wittenberg. His Latin dissertation on the occasion "On the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs" brought him still further into public notice. His mystico-practical spirit was not content with serving the Church in so distant a relation as that of a mere teacher. Hence he applied for and obtained the position of fourth deacon at the University Church, and was ordained for the office by his father in 1811.

In this office he was soon to meet with severe trials, which contributed not a little to the inner maturity of his spiritual life. The military movements in 1813, when the star of Napoleon was on its rapid decline, brought great sufferings upon the town of Wittenberg. It was a strong military point, and was often taken and re-taken in the desperate struggle. Being held

at this time by the French, it was several times bombarded by the gathering hosts of rising Germany, and was finally taken by storm Jan. 13, 1814. Months previously the personnel of the university had left the place. One half of the population had also fled, while upon the remainder the terrors of war, famine, and pestilence abundantly fell. During these long months Heubner, and the young Nitzsch were the only pastors that remained to care for the suffering flock, and in a right evangelical manner they performed their task. Forty years subsequently, Nitzsch prepared a vivid picture of his experiences at the time. For many days murderous bombs and fire rockets rained upon the doomed town. Only in cellars was life safe. Churches were turned into magazines or citadels. Worship was possible only in a private lecture-room. But here the two pastors preached almost hourly, and administered the sacraments to crowding multitudes. More than once Nitzsch rescued with his own hand the paternal house and the beloved cathedral-church from the already kindled fire. And in visiting the hospitals where the deadliest forms of disease were raging, he was undaunted and unwearied. Almost every day he made a round in the narrow lanes and alleys, bearing bread and other necessaries under his priestly garb to the poor and wretched, and administering words of Christian consolation to Catholics and Protestants, to friend and foe. Thus his lively participation in the sufferings of his father-land found no inefficient factor in developing in the young theologian that richness of practical experience and broadness of sympathy which were admired in him throughout his eventful career.

But the passing away of the war-cloud did not immediately place him into satisfactory relations. The churches and the city lay desolate, and almost in ruins. Pestilence still raged. The transferance of his Saxon father-city to the scepter of Prussia was a severe trial for his Saxon heart. Moreover, the beloved university never returned, so that his academic career was interfered with at its very outset. Limited to his subordinate pastorate, he devoted himself, in this "undesired leisure," to theological studies, and published in 1816, as the first-fruit of the same, a dogmatic historical disquisition on the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity. This paper presents its author as deeply involved in the theological movement excited by

Schelling, but yet as maintaining a quite independent position in the face of the philosophical theology of the day. Though giving full appreciation to the dogma of the Trinity, and entering freely into speculations upon it, he yet finds the anchor-point of Christianity not in speculative dogmas, but in the person of the sinless and therefore the anthropic Redeemer. The ground

thought of the dissertation is to show that the Christian "theogony" widely differs from the physical or logical theogony of the non-Christian systems, (with which it was then fashionable to place it in the same rank,) as being essentially ethical. Thus we see Nitzsch at the very outset of his career making his definite choice between the two currents which then began in the field of theology, namely, between the logical-speculative one of Hegel, and the dialectico-mystical one of Schleiermacher.

The year 1817 finally brought a settled condition of things to Wittenberg. Though the university was given to Halle, a theological faculty was still granted to the old mother-city of the Reformation. At the head of the newly-organized seminary stood the elder Nitzsch as director, and beside him Schleusner, Heubner, and the younger Nitzsch. These solid men entered now with fresh alacrity upon their learned work. This same year, the three hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, brought to Nitzsch the seal of his scientific calling, the theological doctorate, which the Berlin faculty conferred upon him during Schleiermacher's rectorate, doubtless on the ground of his dissertation on the Trinity. The new professorship of the young doctor was quite to his taste; it perfectly satisfied his tendency to unite scientific with practico-churchly interests, so characteristic of his whole life. His chief duty here, to lecture on Church history, gave him occasion for profound studies in the life of the Church of the past; he also expounded the orations of Demosthenes and of St. Chrysostom, and took part in conducting the exercises in homiletics and catechetics. And he still continued his active pastorate, and aided his father in the general superintendency.

The following year (June 24) brought the professor of oneand-thirty, who had thus far sat at his father's table, a fireside of his own. Emilie Schmieder, the daughter of a noted educator, became his life-companion, and lived with him in an unuFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXV.-37

sually happy wedlock for a half century—until the close of his life. His marriage, however, did not loosen his attachment to the parental house, and he declined flattering calls to Leipzig and to Greifswald in order not to forego his happy associations. His twofold office, however, began to make inroads on his health. An affection of the breast necessitated a visit to a watering-place in 1819, and finally induced him to ask for a lighter office. He obtained a pastorate at Kemberg, near Wittenberg, and there entered upon the cure of souls in his earnest and winning but rather retiring manner. While here, he was called to a professorship at Königsberg, but declined it. In the summer of 1821, however, when solicited to a theological professorship in connection with the office of university-preacher at the young University of Bonn, his former love for the academic life awoke so strongly that he overcame all obstacles, and betook himself to this new and distant field of labor.

There is no question but that this going to Bonn was one of the happiest steps of Nitzsch's whole life. It threw him out of the rather confined professional and confessional environment in which he had thus far moved, and transplanted him into the influence of very different Church-traditions and into close association with a circle of gifted minds, such as Lücke, Sack, Augusti, Bleek, Niebuhr, Ernst, Moritz, Arndt, Brandis, etc., which could not fail of a very fructifying influence upon his further development. But notwithstanding this great transition, from strict though somewhat rationistically affected Lutheranism to the presbyterially-constituted Reformed Church, from the old center of German Protestantism to a frontier post in constant conflict with a vital and imposing Catholicism, from strictly confessional habits to the freer and less churchly spirit of Pietism-Nitzsch remained, from the first to the last, true to himself, and simply received an impetus to a fuller and rounder development of tendencies that were already in him.

His new professorship called him principally to lecture on systematic theology, and thus necessitated him to a complete development of his theological ground-views. Schleiermacher's "Dogmatics," which appeared about this time, was manifestly his principal help in this work. Wherever he had occasion to express himself literarily we see him going back to this work