Hengstenberg, more popular than most of the others, and able, with its compact body of contributors, to bring overwhelming resources into the field. This journal has existed since 1827, and has waged an exterminating war against Rationalism in every shape. It has proved an unsparing assailant, light-armed and fearless, profound when necessary, and deeply spiritual, varied, full of impassioned ardour, and throwing itself with rare versatility into any question bearing on ecclesiastical or social, political or Christian life. In 1829, when it brought before the public the errors of Gesenius, as gathered from his public lectures at the University of Halle, and more particularly when it turned its polemics against the errors of Schleiermacher, then in the zenith of his influence, Neander and others, who had contributed to its pages and furthered its success, publicly withdrew from connection with it. Hengstenberg, with his ardent impatience, called for the ejection of the Rationalists by an act of authority; whereas Neander, with an eye sharpened by tracing the course of ages, and jealous of human authority, maintained that the false element of Rationalism, which was only a reaction against dead orthodoxy, would be separated with safety only by the fireproof of history. With regard to the standing-point of this church journal, it has been the advocate of the Union as an accomplished fact in Prussia. Though maintaining that the union of the two churches has entered deeply into ecclesiastical life, and asserting the non-necessity of confessional controversy, it is clear that the bias of the journal, though held back by such events as those of 1848, is preponderating more and more towards the distinctive points of Lutheranism. Based on the unaltered Confession of Augsburg, and manifestly desiring not to be encumbered by the Concordia Formula, the old banner of distinctive Lutheranism, it avows its desire of progress on the firm basis of the past. This able organ, the dread of Rationalism, and the resolute champion of scriptural truth, has, since external questions so much came up, been less employed than formerly in the department of theology. But in the believing spirit which pervades it, and in the ready concentration of talent on any given point, one always sees more clearly than anywhere else the pulsations of the church's life and the throbbing heart of German Christianity. The accounts given of the state of religion in Germany, and indeed in other Protestant countries, of the Canton de Vaud, of the German churches in America, of Protestantism in France, of missions to the Jews, are highly valuable, as well as accurate. And no less interesting are its reports of pastoral conferences and of the Kirchentag, and its strenuous advocacy of the Inner Mission. But we must mention, too, that it represents a tendency from which German Christianity has much to dread. The advocate of Erastianism and of the chief episcopate of the crown, it utters no voice for the freedom of the church, nor for the independent exercise of ecclesiastical affairs in loyalty to the church's one and only Head, representing that what churches true to their confession may do is no safe course, nor incumbent duty in the present state of Germany. Not only is this church journal painfully Erastian, but also attached to the interests and party of the court, and to the right divine of kings, to an extent which impresses impartial foreigners with the fear that the German church may have to pay the penalty of forfeiting the support and confidence of the people. The Kirchenzeitung

sketches an idea of a Christian state, which, though partly true, proceeds on outward forms, rites, and recognitions, rather than on the animating life. One painful feature of the journal is the kind, softened, and apologetic way in which it speaks of the errors of Rome. Scarcely a German Christian, indeed, can be found who speaks of Rome, as Luther did, as the Antichrist. As if to illustrate how extremes meet, the very journal which has waged for a quarter of a century an unsparing war against Rationalism, sees something good in the rationalistic system of Rome, and alleges that she is a sister church.

We can only further notice two remaining journals, those, however, of highest literary ability, and certainly of greatest theological name.

IV. DEUTSCHE ZEITSCHRIFT FUR CHRISTLICHE WISSENSCHAFT UND

CHRISTLICHES LEBEN.

A short time before Neander's death, and with the prestige of several of his papers, as well as with the support of Nitzsch, Julius Müller, and Tholuck, there appeared a new periodical, called the Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Christliche Wissenschaft und Christliches Leben. Placed under the management of Schneider, the accomplished pupil, and, as he himself mentions, the spiritual son of Neander, and receiving the contributions of those who have usually been enrolled as the élite of German theology, this journal at once assumed a high position. The hand of Nitzsch, whose merit lies in introducing the Christian life into systematic theology, is obvious in the very title of this journal. Tholuck, after conducting his Anzeiger for twenty years, and finding its longer existence difficult, discontinued it at the close of 1849, and transferred his lucubrations to the pages of this more recent organ. In assigning reasons for the disappearance of his Anzeiger, which always had too much of speculation, he mentions the increasing tendency to the practical work of the ministry, and a disinclination to engage in theoretical theology, the isolation of those who had made common cause, the violence of parties, and the political conflicts which the Revolution summoned forth; and he alleges that the stream of the predominantly practical must for a while flow on before his theoretic theology would again enter into its rights. Many will wish with us that that stream may flow on in increasing volume for ever. As to the standing-point of this journal, we may sufficiently define it when we remark that the contributors are all more or less attached to that peculiar development of theology to which Schleiermacher gave origin and form, and that the leading minds, though all of them to a large extent in advance of him, were his immediate pupils, and none of them beyond the charmed circle of his influence. The principle of the review and of the party is the internalization of the Christian faith. They cannot accept a symbolically fixed system of doctrine; and Dr Julius Müller, not concealing the dangers of this tendency taken by itself, acknowledges that it needs to be balanced by the strictly orthodox and churchly apologetic tendency, while the latter, if left alone, will hardly escape torpor, externalization, and dead orthodoxy. There is a pregnant truth in this remark. We should be afraid that what has been before may be again, and that the tendency of Harless, Rudelbach, and Hengstenberg, left to itself, and without its necessary complement, might

land the church in that condition from which a one-sided subjective tendency, like that of the pietism of Spener, would only be a natural, a necessary, and, we may add, a right reaction. What an evangelical foreigner laments in this tendency, is not its highly subjective evolation of the spiritual life-for in that respect it has much akin to the spiritual development of the Puritans-but its erratic latitudinarian tendency. The two tendencies are necessary, if orthodoxy and life are to run in two separate channels; but so far from thinking with Julius Müller that these two tendencies, in the shape of two parties, must run parallel and balance one another in the same church, we are very confident that they may run parallel and balance one another in the same individual mind. But there may be a bigotry for latitudinarianism as well as for outward orthodoxy, and in no party is this more inconsistent than in those who attach themselves, as this journal does, to a tendency predominantly subjective. Who can read, for instance, that dangerous paper of Tholuck on Inspiration, which appeared in this journal in April and May 1850, without feeling that there may be a zeal as great for objective error as for objective truth, and a bigotry too in defending error when no duty calls for the expression of it? But with all these defects, to which we take just exception, it must not be concealed that if this unnecessary defence of doubtful questions were abandoned, the men of this tendency in some respects possess more than any what draws us to them,-a warm attachment to central truth, a strong inner spiritual impulse, a love to the essential questions of Protestantism, a recognition of all varieties of gifts, and a full appreciation both of the material and of the formal principle of Protestantism.

V. THEOLOGISCHE STUDIEN UND KRITIKEN.

One other journal, in some respects the greatest, is the Theologische Studien und Kritiken, which has just completed the twenty-fifth year of its existence, and in which have appeared many of the ablest papers which, during that time, have exercised the minds of German divines. Its conductors are Ullman, Umbreit, Gieseler, Lücke, and Nitzsch, authors familiar as household words to the theological public, and critics who have travelled the wide field of theological learning, and encamped upon its heights. This journal, defective enough in many of its doctrinal views, and positively erroneous and dangerous in not a few, has this peculiar distinction belonging to it, that it aims to set forth the personal Redeemer as the central point of all theology and of all religion. Though by no means at the mark which we would wish, there is a love to Christ spread over it, a perception of spiritual religion, a return from mere externalization to the centre which is Christ, a delineation of religion as a life and not a dogma, which we gladly recognise. It cannot be denied that it allows a haze to lie over doctrine, and that it does not define religion as fed by definite truth so much as reposing in the dark chamber of feelings. Following very much in the line of Schleiermacher, though in advance of him, and too much infected with that reflection which pervades his school, it possesses most of the excellencies and most of the defects already mentioned in the previous paragraph regarding the Deutsche Zeitschrift, but is considerably more mystical. The study of Ullmann's life has lain largely among the spiritual mystics

of the middle ages, as his work, "The Reformers before the Reformation," shows; and much of this spirit, which besides is the tone of his own mind, is reflected in this journal. The element of union to Christ and of Christ in us, which occupies so large a place in this peculiar theology, is a precious complement to the more objective way of viewing doctrines common to other theological schools. It has little of Christ FOR US, but much of Christ IN US. It is like all the Schleiermacher school, partly erroneous, partly defective, in those doctrines bearing on the objective part of the Redeemer's work and of our acceptance; but on the life within, and on that union whereby Christ abides in us and we in him, it lays an emphasis from which other schools should not disdain to learn.

We can only now add an outline of the contents of the Studien und Kritiken for 1852, in as condensed a form as possible. In future Numbers we hope to sketch the contents of the other journals as they come to hand.

The opening paper, with the title Zeitbetrachtung, from the pen of Ullman, gives us his reflections on the times, with particular reference to principles at work before and since the explosion of 1848. He shows that without religion as the life-root, there can be no political regeneration, and that neither of the two things on which the age lays stress-law and institution on the one side, culture and civilization on the other have force to heal society; not law, for it can only repress evil and give a rule for what is good; not culture, for it only refines the natural man, employing his powers, not in the service of self-denying love to God and man, but in the service of self-love. A new principle must be implanted to touch life in its inmost centre and over its entire extent; and that power we find in Christianity alone. He delineates with great beauty that it is the part of every man to offer himself as an instrument to introduce these new-creative powers into all the relations of life, and that this task, imposed on every condition, age, and sex, falls in an eminent degree to theology, which must set forth Christ as the centre of the moral world. He calls attention to the fact, that the church now particularly needs minds morally steeled, fearless, and indefatigable-in a word, characters. He mentions, among the good effects resulting from the Revolution, that many have broken with revolutions, that it has taught sobriety to theology, that its great sermon has been "mit unsrer macht ist nichts gethan," and that now no one thinks of the rehabilitation of the flesh or of the

worship of Genius. Among the advantages won for theology, he mentions that the over estimation of the institutional as against the personal has been corrected, and that the Revolution has thrown them back upon the importance of the latter. He gives with great effect an admonition against intermingling the religious element with political theories and interests, adding, that during the Revolution the positively Christian and the churchly theology was regarded as inimical to freedom; and at that trying hour, when left alone with none to stand by her, she learned to turn away her eye from all that is human to the everlasting Lord of the church. Again, to a larger extent than for a long period, men's hearts are made susceptible to the gospel; but, he adds, they will receive it only from the hands of a theology which

preserves itself free from secular aims, and from men who, for devotedness and integrity, have their types in a Luther and a Spener, while they will shut their hearts from a theology which makes flesh its arm.— The next paper, with the title Die Aufgabe der Biblischen Theologie, was originally an inaugural address delivered by Dr Daniel Schenkel in becoming Ordinary Professor of Theology at Heidelberg. Dividing his subject into two parts, he gives a cursory survey of what biblical theology has already performed, and then inquires what theological science in its present state has to hope and to expect from it. He sets forth that biblical theology could find its origin only on the ground of Protestantism, which had restored the authority of Scripture to its rights, and that in this respect there was not the smallest essential difference between Luther, Zuingle, and Calvin. He shows that from the gold veins of Scripture, a wholly new view of divine and human things was opened to the Reformers; that the confessional writings of Protestantism, the first dogmatical labours of its champions, Melancthon's loci, Zuingle's fidei ratio, Calvin's Institutes, are in the proper sense of the word biblical theology; and that if Protestantism had continued to advance on these original paths, many a painful experience would have been spared. But with the Formula Concordia on the Lutheran side, and the Helvetic Confession on the side of the Reformed, the Bible, he alleges, always ceased more and more to be the substantial life-principle of Protestantism; the dogmatical divines lapsed into a scholastic method, and while adducing whole batteries of proof. texts, did not draw dogmas fresh from Scripture. The pietism o Spener gave the first impulse to the conviction that a return to the biblical foundation was necessary. The attempts to supply a biblica theology made by Zachariä, Kaiser, De Wette, Vatke, Cölln, were indeed failures, but awoke a consciousness that the biblical foundation had been forsaken. The account of what biblical theology has already performed, is then wound up in the announcement that it has taught men a humble return to Scripture as bearing its principle in itself. After noticing the works of Lutz and Beck, and quoting Rothe's remark that the fundamental ideas of different schools are worn out, and that the discovery of new ones is necessary, he names his own idea, which is, that Christ is the principle of Scripture. Why, he asks, are our schoolnotions worn out? Why does no breath of life proceed any more from our dogmatic compends to our times? Why have all the restorative experiments of our orthodox scholasticism hitherto been put to shame? Why are we so strong in destroying, and so weak in building up? The answer is given in the above remarks:-We have forsaken the sources of life which flow in inexhaustible riches from the living, PERSONAL HEAD OF HUMANITY, Jesus Christ, and our systems, as if the apostle had foreseen them in prophetic vision, are "clouds without water." His second principle is, that Scripture is a connected organism in constant increase, consisting of living members. He thinks that the main problem of biblical theology in the nearest future, is to set forth this position with all its consequences, that its solution will be a great service to theological science, and that it will throw light on the position of the Old Testament to the New, on the types of the Jewish ceremonial law, and on the relation of the prophetical element to the legal. But the application which he makes of this principle in un