OFTEN, within the present lustrum, has it been our painful lot to behold some of the most distinguished men of our nation depart from amongst us; precisely those to whom, in different departments of the intellectual life, the present generation is indebted for its peculiar character and progress.
Barthold Niebuhr, the great explorer of history, opens this series of illustrious dead; at the commencement of a season of commotion, in which more general calamity might possibly occasion the particular loss of this great man to be felt less at the moment, though the sorrow to which the event gave rise could not be wholly suppressed. Goethe, Hegel, and others, have followed him. Now, Schleiermacher, too, is no longer among us. Thus are the great personalities, the stays, the luminaries of our age, one after another, taken away from us. This is a circumstance which happens in accordance with the everlasting order of nature. Still, it is not on that account any the less painful. He who loves the heights and the mountains, descends unwillingly into the level plain. And yet this alternation of mountain and plain, of heights and levels, is, in the spiritual world also, order and law. The history of humanity pursues its course between concentration and origination in distinguished individuals, and gradual diffusion and developement in the mass. Thus has it been ordained, even from the beginning, by Divine wisdom and love. No one ought to complain of this arrangement; least of all he who has been taught by the Gospel to discern even in death the law of life, and in the evanescent kingdom of nature the everlasting kingdom of Divine grace.
Schleiermacher, at a recent Festival of the Dead,1 while instructing and consoling a Christian assembly with regard to the loss of distinguished men, by a reference to the arrangements of the Divine kingdom, uttered these memorable words: “This, too, is God’s arrangement,—that there exists among the children of men a great, yea, often a very great difference, as well in relation to the intellectual gifts with which God has furnished them, as to the position which he has assigned them, and to those external conditions of efficiency by which one man seems to be favoured more than another. This difference exists, and we dare not deny it; so that when we look at human affairs in a general point of view, we cannot say that one human life is of the same value as another. And this Divine arrangement—where could it have been more clearly manifested,—what could have been a stronger expression of it, than the difference which obtained between the Redeemer and all other children of men? That was the highest point to which this diversity amongst men was to rise: that in the midst of the sinful race of men the Word was to become flesh,—that the express image of God was to walk amongst them. In comparison with this difference, every other may well disappear; and yet he who was thus distinguished, was scarcely permitted to attain the bloom of manhood, but was then to be taken away hence again. And what did he send in his room? By what means was the work which he had begun, to be now further carried on? He sent the Spirit of Truth; he poured out upon his disciples this Spirit, who took of that which was his, and made it clear to them,—who distributed gifts, and, according to his good pleasure, left not himself without witness, in a greater or smaller degree, in one and another. And thus it is, too, in all human affairs. Oh! when we call up before our minds, as a whole and in detail, the chequered web of our social affairs, consisting as it does of manifold complications, truly, how much seems often to rest on one beloved head! How often is the experience repeated, that upon the determination of a single individual, upon the fact of its coming to maturity or the contrary, a large part of the immediately ensuing course of human affairs depends,—war and peace, order or destruction, prosperity or ruin! Thus does it happen with regard to the civic concerns of men. The case is the same, too, if we have regard to the cultivation of their mental powers; in which, also, it often happens that one man outshines all others by a great example, and levels paths which were before blocked up: but it is necessary that he should be protected in his activity for a certain time, if the newly-opened field is not to be buried again under rubbish, and nothing to remain but what existed before him. Let us not forget, however, that on the one hand the Redeemer was the culminating point, the highest summit of this Divine arrangement; but that he was also, on the other hand, the being through whom the prophecy was to receive its accomplishment,—that every valley should be filled up, and every height be made plain. And the more the community of man is developed,—the more widely the points of friendly contact, which as a common bond of union embrace all, extend,—the greater the influences which diffuse themselves from every part over the whole—so much the smaller does the influence of individual men become. Most of all is this intended to be the case, most of all is it actually the case, in the Church of the Lord, with regard to all that belongs to the concerns of salvation. It is true that even here, we see how, immediately in the room of the Saviour, the Spirit, poured out by him, moulded as its especial instruments only his apostles and some few individuals besides; and subsequently, too, we see that even the Church of Christ, from time to time, fell into such outward entanglements or such inward obscurations, that it became necessary for the Spirit of God to impart to individuals an especial energy, to kindle up an especially clear light in one, or in a few souls, in order that thus there might proceed from certain particular points a new life, which should continue to diffuse itself, should pervade the darkness, and, in the name of the Lord, awaken those who were dead to a new and fresh life again. But this is what constitutes our true confidence in the kingdom of God and its continuance,—that there are continually fewer and fewer of these disturbances, and that for this reason the necessity that individuals should be prominent in the kingdom of the Lord, also becomes more rare. If the Spirit of God is continually to advance in the accomplishment of his work in the human race, his influence must be exercised upon men more and more on every hand [all-sidedly], his presence and operation must be capable of being perceived in every human life; and in the same measure must the disparity diminish amongst those who have found salvation in the name of the Lord, and are now seeking to diffuse that salvation more widely throughout the world. Therefore, as often as we derive from the life and activity of any individual, the feeling that he is, in a greater or smaller degree, an especial instrument of God and of his Spirit, it is very possible that when the period of his activity comes to an end,a feeling of anxiety may arise in our hearts; but this anxiety is not the product of faith. Faith ought to know that the Lord, when he recalls one, also calls and appoints another; and he will never be at a loss for instruments to accomplish that which, in his Son and through him, is already accomplished everlastingly, and in the progress of time shall be ever more and more accomplished, through the increasingly equable co-operation of human energies, enlightened and directed by God.“