THE ECCLESIASTIC

AND

THEOLOGIAN.

FRIEDRICH PERTHES.

Life of Friedrich Perthes. Translated from the German. Hamilton & Co., Edinburgh.

THIS is a work of great interest, containing the history of the interior rather than of the exterior life of a man of some note in Northern Germany, during the earlier part of this century. The workings of his mind are given in full detail from infancy to death, and they form a valuable contribution to the intellectual phenomena of the day. We will briefly sketch the leading features of his life. Perthes' relations were ultra-Calvinists, and by them he was apprenticed at an early age to a publisher of considerable eminence, who held him under an iron rule for several years, and thereby saved him from the temptations to dissipation and folly which beset his companions. He was however himself singularly pureminded, and whilst still a mere youth he was busied in endeavouring to form a theological system for himself, upon which to found both his line of conduct for the present, and his hopes for the future of another life. He seems to have thought it neither necessary nor desirable that he should adhere to the narrow Protestantism of his early associations, but practically adopted a sort of refined Deism, in which the great principle was the possibility of man attaining unaided to absolute perfection on this earth. Perthes not only believed this, but with an energy and resolution which showed how noble and right-minded he was, even in error, he set himself steadily to accomplish it in his own person,-the result was, as might have been expected, that he fell from time to time into great despondency, and was soon constrained to seek some better hope for his fallen nature. About this time he commenced business as a publisher on his own account, and settled in Hamburgh. Throughout VOL. XIX.-JANUARY, 1857.

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his whole life he ennobled his trade by the high principle with which he conducted it: he absolutely refused to publish books which he thought likely to be injurious, and gave every encouragement to authors who wrote what was likely to further the cause of religion -such as he regarded religion to be. His high character, as well as his intellectual powers, soon gained him friends amongst the celebrated men of his own country, Schlegel, Stolberg, Fouqué, &c., concerning whom many deeply interesting details are given in his memoirs. Soon after Perthes established himself at Hamburgh he married a person of ardent piety, and of a devout and contemplative mind. Had she been a Roman Catholic she would certainly have been a nun of the most secluded order, and even out of the barren elements of her Protestantism she drew the materials for a very holy and self-denying life.

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Madame Perthes did much in leading her husband to the Foot of that Cross, where ultimately his whole being was flung; and perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the description of the gnawing want that made itself felt within his soul for One to stand between him and his GOD, who should be sinless as that GOD and yet man as he was himself. That One he found at last, and from that moment his faith in CHRIST never faltered. Surrounded though he was by all the rapidly growing rationalism of the day,-Kant, Strauss, and their multifarious followers assailing him on all sides, he calmly analyzed and refuted their theories.

Now his family increased around him, and sorrow and trial fell to his lot. Germany was convulsed by the political storms which Napoleon's career brought upon Europe. Much blood was shed, and many families ruined. Perthes threw himself into the cause of his country with ardour, risking his life and totally destroying his domestic comfort,-yet acting throughout as a man who has weighed the interests of this life against those of eternity, and counts them but dust in the balance. When tranquillity was restored, his mind began to be agitated by another question, which tried him greatly, viz., the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. Stolberg, and others of his friends pressed him sorely on this point. He was too earnest a Christian not to have comprehended that CHRIST designed to save His people through the Church, and through that alone; and he saw that the efforts of the German Protestants to organise a sort of unity had failed completely: yet it was to his conscientious mind an impossibility to believe in all that Rome taught, or even in her claim to universal supremacy; he felt that he could not in sincerity and truth accept her as she stood. It would be impossible to describe all the variations of his mind on this point; but ultimately he seems to have settled into the belief that the Great Head of the Church would at last so purify Rome, and purge her of all false and presumptuous claims, that she would be reunited to the other Branches of the Church, and gather into her fold all those

who wandered homeless in the world. For this blessed hope of future unity he deemed that men should wait in patience, and he explicitly stated his belief that individuals, by changing their com munion singly and without authority, did actually mar and cause to be delayed the realization of this glorious plan.

Finally, but a few years since, so long was his life, Perthes was laid upon his death-bed, where a protracted sickness kept him lingering several months; and many of the words which fell from his lips during this period are worthy of record. On one part of his experience he especially loved to dwell-he said, that whatever men might say of sudden conversions at a given period or inward assurance of faith, he had learnt in the many years of his life that the renewing of man's nature can only be a slow and gradual process, hastened or deferred according to use made of the grace imparted, and that no sudden emotion or fancied illumination could really effect the work which must be carried on, God aiding, from day to day and hour to hour.

During the last weeks of his life Perthes' mind was a good deal occupied with considering the conditions of the world beyond the grave, on which mysterious subject he spoke well and wisely; and into that world he passed at length-calm but not presumptuous, and with the name of his LORD almost on his lips.

THE PRIEST IN HIS INNER LIFE.

(Continued from Vol. XVIII. page 564.)

II. It may be safely asserted, that generally speaking no one practice of the Religious Life can exist alone. In dogmatic theology, we know, that each separate article of the Faith implies, with more or less distinctness, that whole cycle of teaching of which it is a part. In morals, a single defect is held sufficient to vitiate an action or a life, and excellence must be complete "if it is to exist, in any true sense, at all." Bonum ex causâ integrâ, malum ex quolibet defectu. So the religious life is a whole, and to its continued existence the integrity of its essential elements is absolutely necessary. A solitary religious practice, isolated from the other acts and temper of which it is at once the expression, and complement, will dwindle first of all into a formalism, and at length be abandoned in disgust.

1 Compare S. Thom. Aq. prim. sec. qu. 18. art. 4. 3; or Sanderson, serm. i. ad pop. § 15.-De obb. consc. prælect. ii. § 9