t and
day; and there are probably few who receive him so completely into the
sanctuary of the soul. It is surprising to see how all this has been
accomplished without any influence from abroad. It proceeds simply from
his own reflection and his innate love of study. He has learned to look
with indifference upon the outward world." Such was the beginning of his
illustrious career. He was thoroughly a Platonist. And it happened to him,
as to so many of the early fathers of the church before him; he was led
from Plato to Christ. The honored walks of the Academy were exchanged for
the manger and the cross; and so he passed from Judaism to philosophy, and
from philosophy to faith. "Pray and labor," writes he in one of his
letters, "let that be the bass-note, or rather praying merely; for what
else should a human, or even a superhuman do than pray?" This was the
dawning of the light. Of his progress in the Christian experience, we have
no means as yet of tracing the steps. We only know, in general, from what
he started, and to what he came.

In the April of 1806, he joined the University at Halle, where he came
under the influence of Schleiermacher, whose learned and thrilling voice
was the first to sound the return of infidel Germany to the truth as it is
in Jesus. Schleiermacher was then thirty-eight years old, in the first
bloom and vigor of his faculties, and made, of necessity, a very profound
and durable impression upon the young and ardent Hebrew Platonist, who was
already, in obedience to his own impulses, seeking the way of life.

He had been in Halle about six months, when the city was captured by the
French under Bernadotte. The University was immediately suspended by
Napoleon, and the students ordered to disperse. Neander fled, with one of
his friends, to Goettingen, the place of his birth, where, joining the
University, he came under the instruction of Gesenius, afterward the great
Hebrew lexicographer, then but twenty years of age, and just commencing
his distinguished career. The manner of their introduction to each other
is a curious bit of literary history worth preserving. Gesenius was
returning to Goettingen from his native place, Nordhausen, which was then
in flames, having been set fire to by the French. The soldiers of the
broken Prussian army were hurrying to their homes. In the general flight
and confusion, Gesenius saw two young men on their way from Halle to
Goettingen, one of whom had broken down, u