BY THE TRANSLATOR.
On the 15th February, 1834, a funeral procession was seen moving through the streets of Berlin, the like of which that capital had rarely before witnessed. The coffin, covered with a black pall and simply decorated with a large copy of the Bible, was borne on the shoulders of twelve students of the University, thirty-six of the most robust of whom had volunteered to perform, alternately, this pious service. After these came a train of mourners on foot, extending upwards of a mile in length, and these were followed by one hundred mourning coaches, headed by the equipages of the King and the Crown Prince. Along the whole line traversed by the procession, dense crowds of sympathizing spectators had gathered, while in the cemetery, beyond the gates of the city, similar crowds were assembled; and on every countenance might be read the fact, that the individual borne to the grave, was one of those representative men in whom are concentrated, as it were, in a focus, the moral and intellectual life of the nation and the period to which they belong, and who become, in consequence, centres of new light and diffusers of new and vivifying warmth. Such was, indeed, the case; for it was Friedrich Ernst Schleiermacher, whom, by a spontaneous movement, the capital of Protestant Germany was thus honouring in death.
During a quarter of a century Schleiermacher had exercised in that city the double function of a teacher in the university and in the church; and approving himself a fearless citizen in times of imminent peril, and an inspired preacher during a period of great religious indifference, he had, at a most critical juncture in the history of Prussia, contributed more than any other individual to keep alive, in all classes, the pride of nationality and the love of independence, and to awaken religious earnestness and quickening moral sentiments. Ever ready to sacrifice himself, in the interest not only of his country but of the whole German nation, then bending under the yoke of France, his example had acted contagiously, in Berlin more especially, where his influence was supreme, and had sustained in the people that determination to liberate themselves when an opportunity offered, which was ultimately so nobly carried out.
“His fresh, mighty, ever-cheerful spirit,” says a contemporary, “had the effect of a courageous army during the period of greatest depression; and the energies which he set in motion were not isolated and superficial, but were the deepest and noblest in the human breast.” Children crowded to his religious lessons, men and women of the highest culture hung upon his lips when he addressed them from the pulpit, and in private life clung to him with reverent affection; while the hundreds of students who flocked in yearly from all parts of Germany to attend his philosophical and theological lectures, carried away by the extraordinary influence of his individuality, assumed the character of disciples rather than of pupils. In this way, as well as through his writings, his influence had spread throughout the whole of Protestant Germany, and attained a height rarely, if ever, equalled in modern times; while over the theologians of the rest of the Protestant world, also, the opinions of this highly gifted man exercised no inconsiderable sway
Five-and-twenty years elapsed, and though Schleiermacher’s name and influence were kept alive by his theological and philosophical works and his numerous printed sermons, the admirers and disciples of the great theologian looked in vain for a biography of him, which should exhibit the inner harmony that had existed between the preacher, the scholar, and the man. Such a biography, it was thought, would be doubly interesting and important to those who had not known Schleiermacher personally, as by all who had enjoyed that privilege it was universally maintained, that great as he was as a writer, and wonderful as were the versatility and profundity which he evinced in treating the most diversified branches of human life and human knowledge, it was, nevertheless, through the living influence of his entire personality that he had effected most in the world. Under such circumstances the book, a translation of which is here presented to the English public, though neither a biography nor an autobiography in the strict sense of the word, but a record of thoughts and feelings fresh and warm as they flowed from his mind and heart, in confidential communion with friends and relatives, could not fail to meet with a hearty welcome in Germany, where it has, indeed, so to say, made Schleiermacher once more a living presence among his countrymen. Among us, also, though less familiar with Schleiermacher, much interest will undoubtedly be felt in a series of letters which, though having especial reference to the most intimate relations of his own life, nevertheless incidentally throw new and interesting light upon all the great provinces of human life and thought, such as the Family, the Church, the State, and Science in its various aspects; and which more particularly lay open to our observation the gradual inward development of an individual, one of whose chief characteristics it was to endeavour “to possess his own soul,” to observe its workings, to trace its individual peculiarities, and to sift the accidental from the essential; whose lively self-consciousness and constant self-observation did not, however, degenerate into sickly dreaminess, but was combined with healthful vigour and manly resoluteness of action in the outward world; whose serenity of mind and calm self-confidence was never disturbed by calumny or cavil; and whose strong moral nature passing unscathed through every storm, remained true to itself under all circumstances.