"largest liberty." Once escaped from government domination, they have run wild over the regions of " the absolute." The individual, who, in practical life, is obedient, obsequious and timid, in speculation is bold as a lion. In politics he is on forbidden ground; in antiquities, he has free range; the divine right of kings may not be questioned; divine inspiration may be denied and scouted; the vice-gerent of God must be honored; God himself may be resolved into an abstraction. In short, in proportion to the absence of freedom in some spheres of action, is the reckless abuse of it in others.

Third. The influence of Leibnitz, Kant, and their followers has contributed to give to the race of German scholars a thoroughly subjective character. In whatever respects the different schools of theologians and philosophers may differ, all, or nearly all, agree in dwelling upon truth in its subjective relations. Neither mind or matter is considered practically, in its bearings on man's happiness and well being. A history is not a detail of actual life, but the evolution of a principle, or the creation of a tendency, or the development of a myth, with only a germ of objective truth. A miracle, stripped of its adventitious costume, is a great event in the struggle of some heroic spirit, or a sudden bound which humanity makes in its everlasting progress. Facts, objective truth, are of little account, unless they can be adduced as links in a theory, or be shown to have roots in the mind. The German cannot rest upon them as ultimate grounds. All history is uncertain, all experience is vacillating, unless the alleged phenomena can be made to accord or symbolize with what is fitting and natural in the view of the investigator. This intense subjectiveness makes German literature and theol-ogy one-sided and so far unphilosophical. German writers have never had an adequate understanding and perception of the treasures of thought which exist in the English language. The very works, which of all others, were needed in German education, have been unknown or depreciated. The great masters of thought in the English language have been set down as practical, shallow, empirical. The illustrious names that will shine forever in our firmament, Baxter, Howe, Bates, Butler, Edwards, are hardly worth enumerating in a German catalogue, or are placed on a level with some fifth-rate, paltry, Teutonic writer.1 No one has read the history of the various branches of theology in German writers, without being struck with the meagreness of the English list. Such men as Neander mourned over the want of the practical in the German character and theology, yet his favorite English authors were

One of the greatest living German theologians had never heard of Edwards on the Will!

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those who most resembled the German. It is to be feared that he did not use his great name and influence in effecting that revolution which German literature and modes of thinking so urgently need. Much of the ill effects of De Wette's views might have been prevented, if he had made himself at home in the practical, wholesome, objective and yet profound writers in English literature.

Fourth. The dead orthodoxy which prevailed in the German churches so extensively in the latter part of the eighteenth and in the beginning of the nineteenth century, was fitted to damp all generous aspiration, to destroy all influences favorable to a vital, orthodox piety. Nothing could have been more artfully adapted to disgust ingenuous young men with creeds and confessions. The professed defenders of biblical truth betrayed a frigid indifference. The church service was gone through with as an empty formality, in some instances as a prelude to a theatrical performance. Rationalism, bad as it was, was preferable to this twice-dead orthodoxy. It had learning, zeal, honesty, which orthodoxy often had not. At the door of this cold, stiff Lutheranism, is to be laid much of the evil of the rationalism of later times, and of the vulgar infidelity of the present day. The staid, precise, passionless formalists of the eighteenth century failed of course to commend vital Christianity to the people. The various forms of rationalism to which they gave birth, were powerless of good, where they were not positively pernicious. The consequences are, the socialism, the low democracy, the godless Hegelianism, the infinite confusion of Germany as it now is. Which was most in fault, the sapless orthodoxy, or the icy rationalism, it would be hard to decide. At all events, the various phases which rationalism has assumed, and the various partial reäctions from it, have revealed the sad effects of the dead forms which oppressed the country of the Reformation fifty years ago. No party has wholly escaped from its contaminating touch. Individuals of evangelical views and of eminent piety have not been able to keep themselves wholly clear from the contagion.

De Wette, while exposed, in common with his countrymen, to these general influences, was subjected to peculiar dangers. He was educated at the great intellectual centres, where the luminaries of German literature shed their brightest light. But Weimar and Jena and Heidelberg, at the beginning of this century, had little of the spirit of Luther and Melanchthon. The gods that they worshipped were earth-born. Weimar showed how easy it may be to unite the highest intellectual pleasures with the lowest moral aims. Even Herder, with all his excellences and his world-wide knowledge, was not, in some respects, a teacher such as the highly endowed and susceptible De Wette needed. And what

could be expected at Jena from the easy indifference of Griesbach and the impious naturalism of Paulus? De Wette's expulsion from Berlin, on grounds apparently so slight, was not fitted to conciliate his feelings towards the reigning orthodoxy of the Prussian court, or abate the rationalistic tendencies of his mind. Injustice so palpable could not but leave an unfavorable impress on his character. A continued residence at Berlin, in the midst of the favorable influences by which he was there surrounded, might have given a more conservative character to his biblical investigations. In Switzerland, though he came to regard it as a permanent and pleasant home, he must have had, in a measure, the feelings of an exile; he was looked up to as a master by admiring pupils; he was far away from the genial and modifying influences of his equals in age and knowledge, and his superiors in correctness of views. In Berlin, he might have reached earlier those practical and objective conceptions of divine truth which seemed to shine out in his last days. But we are anticipating our narrative.

Wilhelm Martin Leberecht De Wette was born at Ulla near Weimar, Jan. 12, 1780. He was the eldest son of the clergyman of that place, Johann Augustin De Wette and of Margaretha Dorothea Christiane Schneider. He passed his childhood in his native village, and the impressions there made upon him may have laid the foundation for his pure, childlike feelings, for his susceptibility to the beauties of nature and for the decided inclination for the culture of gardens and flowers, which animated and refreshed him through life. Of his school days at Buttstädt, his friend, Peucer of Weimar, thus writes: "He dwelt with an old, worthy artisan, Wilke, living on the hill socalled. I resided with my parents at the pot-market. We sat together in the school (the rector was the clergyman in Lehnstädt, who died some years ago, the assistant was Schneider), and carried on our studies in common for the most part; hence in the evening, I often visited my friend at the aged Wilke's and labored with him. I remember how we busied ourselves with our books and hefts at a sidetable, while Wilke was toiling in the same room, near an evening lamp which commonly stood in a glass globe filled with water that it might throw a clearer light on the place where the stitch was to be made. In June, 1796, we left Buttstädt and were examined in Weimar by the director, Böttiger, and took the two lowest places in Prima, I the last but one, De Wette the last. So we made our way, always together, through the whole Prima till 1799, when De Wette went to Jena, and I to Göttingen. In those three years at Weimar, an acquaintance and close intimacy were formed with the like minded friends,

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Hase, now in Paris, Zinserling, who died as a professor at Warsaw, and Schmidt, government counsellor at Weimar."

Weimar at this time was in its most flourishing state. It was illuminated by stars of the first magnitude in the German literary heavens, Herder, Göethe, Wieland and Schiller. Among De Wette's teachers was Böttiger, afterwards the Dresden archæologist. He also heard and saw Herder as ephorus of the gymnasium, and also in the pulpit, and received from this great man ineffaceable impressions. In 1844, De Wette thus wrote: "I have yet a vivid recollection how with youthful reverence I looked up to Herder's form, alike venerable and pleasant, listened to his well-sounding voice and pathetic words, when he opened the public examination of the gymnasium; how I heard with a beating heart his decision on the theme that had been handed in; how, in the examination of the alumni at his house, I translated before him, tremblingly, out of Horace, and how, when encouraged by the warm interest which he took in what had been read and translated, and by the manner in which by his observations and questions he penetrated into the spirit of the favorite poet, I forgot my fear and myself. Every one of his words spoken there yet cleaves to my soul. I see him still standing in the pulpit with his hands crossing each other, and hear him expounding in a manner peculiar to himself, monotonous, yet grave, pleasant, impressive, the Lord's Prayer, which he so explained that, at one and the same time, he profoundly unfolded and clearly exhibited its sense." The influence of Herder on De Wette was rather of an exciting and preparatory than of a permanent nature, for before De Wette had begun his career as a theologian and author, Herder had closed his eyes.

De Wette pursued his theological studies at the University of Jena. Among the theological teachers were Gabler, Paulus and Griesbach, the great critic and New Testament editor. De Wette, in his "Theodore," probably refers to Griesbach as "an old, very learned and clearthinking man, who in his exegesis laid before his hearers a multitude of opinions and views, and gave the reasons pro and con, without himself definitely deciding for the one or another." To this mild, venerable, undecided teacher, De Wette was specially indebted. The free method and acuteness of Dr. Paulus also made a strong impression upon him. He now shared with Paulus and Eichhorn in their fundamental rationalistic view in regard to miracles. But still there was an important difference. They believed that miracles were common occurrences and to be explained as ordinary events. But De Wette, in opposition to this naturalistic view, regarded miracles as myths, as the offspring

of a poetie spirit, but having at the foundation an objective reality. He was thus led to employ himself not only with the criticism of the text, but with the facts narrated and with the authorship of the different portions of the Bible. The Roman Catholic, Richard Simon, who flourished in the latter half of the seventeenth century, attacked in his "Literal History of the Old Testament," the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, agreeing with the Jewish philosopher, Spinoza. Among the German theologians of the eighteenth century who carried out these skeptical views of Simon, the name of Semler was conspicuous. While professing the highest regard for science and true criticism, Sember was far from being free from arbitrary judgments and subjective opinion. Many persons were soon afloat on a wild sea of what was named biblical criticism. Under these influences, which furnish an explanation of much in his character and writings, De Wette commenced his career as an author. In his first treatise he sought to show that Deuteronomy was not written by Moses but by a later author. This was merely preparatory to a greater and more comprehensive work on the Pentateuch in general. The hopes of the youthful author were suddenly cast down by the news that a treatise on the subject and of similar contents was about to appear from the pen of Vater of Halle. This was a severe trial to a young man, without pecuniary means, and who had just been married.3 At this junc ture Griesbach showed himself a true friend. He advised De Wette to reëdit and enlarge his work. He accordingly included the books of Chronicles in his researches. The first volume of his "Contributions to an Introduction to the Old Testament" was published at Halle in 1806. Griesbach introduced his young friend to the world in a characteristic preface of a semi-apologetic character, in which he avoided committing himself to the views propounded by De Wette. The second volume followed in 1807, under the title, "Criticism of the Israelitish History." According to the author's view, there exists in the history a poetry, and this poetry of history is often more wonderful and poetic than poetry itself. The entire history of the Pentateuch was transformed into a magnificent theocratic epos of the Israelites,

1

See the curious developments in Semler's autobiography.

This was his inaugural dissertation, Jena, 1805, reprinted in his Opuscula, Berlin, 1833.

3 De Wette was married at Jena, in April, 1805, to Eberhardine Boye, of Baireuth. She died in less than a year. In 1809, he was again married to the widow Henriette Beck of Heidelberg, who died in Oct., 1825. There were two children of this marriage, a son, an eminent physician in Basil, and a daughter, who also resides in Basil. De Wette was married the third time, in 1833, to the widow Sophie Von Mai, of Berne, who survives him. His domestic relations were of the happiest kind.