ARTICLE VI.

RICHARD ROTHE'S YEARS OF AUTHORSHIP.1

BY REV. SAMUEL OSGOOD, D.D., NEW YORK CITY.

WE gave, in a previous Article, an account of Rothe's four years of ministry in Rome, with a short sketch of his previous life and education, such as would prepare our readers to interpret intelligently his conspicuous career as a thinker and author. At the end of September 1828, we found him, on his return from Rome, at Wittenberg, once more among kindred and friends, ready for new service at this familiar post, where he had labored more than two years (1820-1822) as a seminarist, and he was now to serve in that same seminary as professor for nine years (1828-1837). From Wittenberg he went to Heidelberg, where he remained in the university twelve years (1837-1849), and which he left for a time to be professor at Bonn (1849-1854), but to which he returned, much to his satisfaction, after five years absence, for the remainder of his life (1854-1867). To many readers, and especially to a limited circle of scholars, the particulars of these nearly forty years of academic life, with his personal friendships and discussions, his private correspondence and his theological and ecclesiastical miscellanies, have undoubtedly great interest, and all the minute detail of Nippold's careful and elaborate work will be most welcome to them. But our business is now with Rothe as a thinker; and we care to give now only such facts as may bear upon the development and import of his characteristic thought.

1 Richard Rothe, Doctor und Professor der Theologie und Grossh. Bad. Geh. Kirchenrath zu Heidelberg. Ein Christliches Lebensbild auf Grund der Briefe Rothe's entworfen von Friedrich Nippold. Zweite Band. Mit Namen und Sachregister über beide Bände. pp. xvi. 677. Wittenberg: Verlag von Hermann Koelling. 1874.

It is evident that his literary life moved in a most eventful period of modern history. From 1828 onward for forty years we trace now a new and remarkable transformation not only of scientific, political, and theological opinions, but of the very constitution of government and society. What was coming when he returned from Rome to Wittenberg he did not know nor presume to say; but he evidently had within his experience and conviction the seeds of thought that were virtually prophecies of things to come. After those four years of life in Rome, with that constant spectacle of a false theology, carried out into a false social and political as well as ecclesiastical order, he could not be content to spin fine theories of philosophy or religion; and the two great masters of the dominant thinking, who were then near the end of their career Hegel, with his absolute reason, and Schleiermacher, with his ideal Christ,—- must have appeared to him dreamers of fond dreams, after the break of day had come and the bell had rung for work, or the signal had been given for the battle. There was the old despotism, a substantial and aggressive fact, and the new thought ought to be quite as substantial and aggressive. He felt probably the great issue between the old times and the new, more than he was able to say; and he undoubtedly had a presentiment of the new protest against Romish absolutism, which had tried to speak itself out in the revolutionary movements of the eighteenth century, and had been repressed by the empire of Napoleon, and also by the dread of all liberal opinions that came with the reaction against Napoleon and the whole policy of the Holy Alliance. In France and England, the elements of reform were stirring, and the English Reform Bill and the French citizen king were proof that the comfortable middle classes were not willing to let the old aristocracy crush out their life. In England, too, thoughtful scholars were apparently conscious of the rising social agitation, and within all the asceticism and extravagance of the Oxford reaction against the new utilitarianism, we may discern a yearning for a more godly order of life, and an unwillingness

to give up the Romish rule, without accepting the catholicity that was the origin of its power. Germany felt something of the same movement. The states, that were not allowed to come together in hearty patriotism were permitted by the ruling powers to unite in a commercial league, and with this domination of the new commercial spirit we may discern a priestly reaction, very much like the Oxford Tractarianism; and Hengstenberg started his noted Church Journal in 1827, about the time when Pusey became canon of Christ Church Cathedral, and entered upon the career which, in so many respects, resembles that of the high church German Lutheran. Throughout Christendom the great questions turned, not so much upon rival schools of opinion as upon rival powers of society and government. Rothe brought from Rome to Germany the essential principles that were to shape his life, and give him his peculiar power as a teacher of his country and his age. He not only opposed the Roman priesthood, but the idea of an exclusive priesthood itself. He was the apostle of the laity, the prophet calling all men to be Christian men, and to build the state itself upon such foundations of faith and virtue that there would be no need of an exclusive priesthood or a separate church rule.

Rothe did not begin his work in the Wittenberg Seminary with any startling paradoxes, but went patiently through his appointed round of service. He read lectures (1) upon the history of Christian church life on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from eleven to twelve o'clock; (2) upon distinguished speeches and sermons of ancient and modern times on Thursdays from eleven to twelve o'clock, Fridays from ten to eleven, Saturdays from eleven to twelve. Every fortnight, also, he held a discussion from two to three o'clock; every month a catechetical exercise on Wednesday from three to four o'clock, and every three weeks a pastoral consultation on Friday from two to three, and a homiletic conversation on Thursday from two to three, besides another weekly exercise at a convenient hour. So far as the hours of service were concerned he did not regard his duties as

oppressive, but he found himself severely tasked in his preparation for his lectures on church life, because he had not previously given the subject any thorough investigation. He spoke, however, with great satisfaction of the opportunity to study this subject thoroughly, and he hoped that under the spur of necessity he might learn more in two years thus than in ten years of plodding routine.

He does not find the religious life and thinking of Wittenberg quite to his liking. He complains of the want of fresh personal experience in preaching, and of the habit of putting formal rules of composition in the place of direct resort to the fountain head of Christian life. Devout as he is, he writes to Bunsen that he cannot bear the usual way of separating Rationalist from Orthodox believers, and he insists upon the duty of comprehending all who are practically Christians within the same generous fellowship, instead of regarding only a single aspect of opinion or life. He says that in his own case he appreciates persons of both classes, and has constant intercourse with them. He does not like the spirit that prevails, and is not ashamed to confess to Bunsen that he misses the genial fellowship and hearty devotion of his Roman years, and that he sometimes sighs for the poverty of that typical Babylon, Rome. There is too much smoke and torchlight, and too little sun-light, in the pulpit he says; more of the flickering meteor than the constant sunshine. The Roman leaven is all the while working within him, and he wrote in 1832 to Bunsen that he was learning constantly to appreciate the influence of his life at Rome. He will soon try to show the results of his experience and his studies by a treatise upon Episcopacy in its relation to the church of the first three centuries. He has been hard at work now for four years, but he hopes to bring together the result of his not unblessed labor, and to connect the separate problems with the whole, to which they belong, and to consider them in their root.

He tells Bunsen that his present theology may seem to him much secularized; yet he must speak very plainly, and

not be misunderstood. History has taken a sudden start since they last met together, and most of the objects of spiritual life have taken a new position. Political history has, since July 1830, won for him sense, understanding, and charm. He cannot take the radical side, nor be content to remain indifferent. He must beg to be excused from taking sides with the so-called Christian civil rights doctrine of Hengstenberg and his party, in the Church Journal. In Rome he had held the cheerless view of history which broke the heart of Niebuhr, but now he saw the signs of actual development of life under all this ferment in which his friends discerned only scum and dregs.

We will not enter into the details of Rothe's course at Wittenberg, nor give a list of his various instructions in his new office of Ephorus, or leader of the devotional exercises of the seminary. We can see in all his correspondence and his teachings the working of the same ruling convictions and purposes. He is peculiarly impressed by the death of Schleiermacher, and in his letter to Hahn, February 22, 1834, he expresses his great comfort in the dying theologian's witness of his faith, by receiving the communion upon his death-bed, and giving it to his family and friends with prayer. His studies appear to be drawing together towards a practical point, and all his devotional expositions of scripture, his elaborate lectures upon catechising and upon preaching in the different ages of the church, are helping on the memorable work which first gave him his place in Germany as an original thinker. We refer to "Die Anfänge der Kirche und ihrer Verfassung," or "The Beginnings of the Church and its Constitution." We must not forget, however, his previous treatise, his Exposition of Romans v. 12-21, in which he sets forth essentially the same views of New Testament exegesis as afterwards appeared in his dogmatic lectures.

Rothe published the first volume of his work on the Origin of the Church, at Wittenberg in 1837, and announced his intention to add a second volume forthwith, but he did not do this, although he probably carried out his essential idea in