Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer's NT CommentaryCRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL

COMMENTARY

ON

THE NEW TESTAMENT

HANDBOOK

BY

HEINRICH AUGUST WILHELM MEYER, TH.D.,

OBERCONSISTORIALRATH, HANNOVER

TRANSLATED FROM THE SIXTH EDITION OF THE GERMAN BY

REV. PETER CHRISTIE

THE TRANSLATION REVISED AND EDITED BY

FREDERICK CROMBIE, D.D.,

PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM, ST. MARY’S COLLEGE, ST. ANDREWS.

EDINBURGH:

T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.

MDCCCLXXX.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF DR. MEYER

BY HIS SON, DR GUSTAV MEYER, PH.D.

MY father, who died on the 21st June 1873, was born in Gotha on the 10th January 1800. On the 12th January he was baptized in the St. Margaret’s Church, and received the names Heinrich August Wilhelm. His father was shoemaker to the ducal court, and was a native of Rügheim in Lower Franconia. An old family document,—a certificate of my grandfather’s baptism,—composed with the pleasing diffuseness of the olden time, states that Rügheim was “under the dominion of the most reverend Prince and Lord of the Holy Roman Empire, Lord Francis Louis, Bishop of Bamberg and Würzburg.” It is a peculiarity of this document, drawn up in 1781, that the name is never written Meyer, but always Majer or Mayer. My late father was a tender child, and a crayon portrait which has been preserved, representing him when a boy of about seven years of age, shows a pale and delicate face—in which, however, the large, earnest-looking eye suggests an active mind. His bodily training was anything but effeminate. He practised swimming and skating, not merely as a schoolboy and a student, but at a much later age, when such exercises had long been given up by many of his companions. And it was in truth not a time for rearing boys tenderly. One of his earliest recollections was of the autumn of 1806, when, not quite seven years old, he saw the prisoners from the battle of Jena confined in the churches of his native town. Gotha lay in the line of retreat of the beaten French in the days of October 1813; and he was an eye-witness of the way in which the Cossacks drove before them and made havoc of the magnificent Imperial Guard.

He received his school training in the Gymnasium of his native town, which had a reputation passing far beyond the narrow bounds of the little province, and could point to pupils drawn from the most remote regions. His teachers were Döring, Kaltwasser, Galletti, Kries, Schulz, Regel, Uckert, Rost, and eventually also Bretschneider as religious instructor. At the Gymnasium of Gotha he laid the foundations of his classical culture; there he first acquired a deep and thorough familiarity with the laws of the Greek and Roman languages,—a tenacious adherence to which was a characteristic feature of his later labours, and not unfrequently brought on him the reproach of pedantic stiffness. While he greatly lamented the neglect of modern languages during his days at school, he was yet far from granting that the methods of instruction pursued in the Gymnasia of more recent times, or the requirements of the Abiturient examination, were preferable to those of his youth. He conceived that in former times there were greater facilities for each individual following out his own course of self-development. It was not to be denied that an Abiturient of the present day, after having passed a good examination, could show a greater extent and wider range of knowledge; but it was to be feared that this knowledge was more of an encyclopaedic nature, and excluded thoroughness and depth. Be this as it may,—and the question is not even now to be held as decided,—the grammar-schoolboy, August Meyer, who had gradually been advanced to the highest class and to the foremost place in it, must have been esteemed by his teachers as one who had well bestowed his time and strength on following out his predominant bias—bordering perhaps on one-sidedness—for the classical languages.

The third centenary celebration of the Reformation was duly honoured even in the Gymnasium at Gotha. To Meyer was entrusted the Latin address on the occasion, which was to be delivered in hexameters. There lies before me the third edition of Heyne’s Tibullus, which was presented to him by some of the citizens “in celebration of the jubilee festival of the Reformation, 1817, upon the recommendation of his teachers.” Half a year after this incident, important at all events in the career of a grammar-schoolboy, namely, at Easter 1818, he passed his Abiturient-examination, and entered the University of Jena to study theology. “These were different times,” he was wont to say, “from the present. Everything was much simpler and less luxurious than now, when the course of study costs more than twice as much, and yet not twice as much is learned.” All honour to the greater simplicity of those days; but unless money had had a far greater value then than now, such a course of study, moderate as it was in price, would not have been possible for him even with the strictest frugality. The father of the young student of theology had sustained a serious loss of means by the continuance of the troubles of war, the quartering of troops in large numbers, severe sickness, and other misfortunes. His son cost him at Jena 80 thalers (£1.2) half-yearly. He had no exhibition, no free board; only he had, of course, mostly free clothing, the renewal of which was as a rule reserved for the holidays. And yet he was withal no recluse. The charm of the fresh student-life, which, just after the War of Liberation, burst into so fair a bloom, had strong attractions for him. He was a member of the great Burschenschaft. Most leaves of his note-book exhibited the crossed rapiers with the G. E. F. V. of the fraternity. Thoroughly simple must have been the social life of that joyous academic youth of 1818 and 1819! Should these lines perhaps meet the eyes of one or another of my father’s old comrades, especially in Thuringia,—and some are still there, he was wont to say, but not many,—they will possibly awaken recollections of the cheap Commerse in the public market, of the drinking and guitar-playing, of the rapier duels fought out in the open street, of the journeyings home at vacation time,—fifteen hours on foot from Jena to Gotha, without putting up for the night, not seldom in bad weather, in snow and rain. Many who shared these journeys are doubtless no longer surviving. One who, on account of his ever-ready knowledge of Greek, was called by his friends the Count of ἐπί, equally prepared for conflict with the rapier or with the tongue, was especially often mentioned by him, and held in sincere esteem. He was called away long before him, and died universally respected as a Head-master in our province. After the unhappy deed of Karl Sand in March 1819, and the dissolution of the great Burschenschaft which thereupon ensued, my father took no further part in student-life, but applied himself all the more zealously to those studies of which he had not hitherto been neglectful. His theological teachers were Gabler, Schott, Danz, Baumgarten-Crusius, Kosegarten the Orientalist, Eichstädt the philologist, Fries the philosopher, and Luden the historian. As he was fond of recalling—and not without regret that their days were over—the lectures read in Latin, such as Schott’s, he often also, and with pleasure, called to mind the discussions on theological subjects, which were started by the young students even in their walks and were conducted in Latin. He felt himself least attracted by the prelections on philosophy; his whole bent was already at that time decidedly towards the field of languages.

After a curriculum of two years and a half, at Michaelmas 1820 he left the University; and entered, as domestic tutor, the educational institution of Pastor Oppermann, who subsequently became his father-in-law, at Grone near Göttingen. The time for young theologians then was similar to what it is now. They were wholly, or almost wholly, spared that long and laborious career of domestic tutorship, which led many a one, amidst the subsequent crowd pressing forward to the study of theology, to lose heart and hope. At Easter 1821 he underwent his examination as candidate at Gotha, and soon he had the choice between an appointment in the Gymnasium of his native city and a pastorate. He chose the latter; and in December 1822 was nominated as pastor at Osthausen in the district of Kranichfeld, which subsequently (1826) was ceded, on the division of the ducal inheritance, from Gotha to Meiningen. In January of the following year, when exactly twenty-three years old, he was installed as pastor in Osthausen; and in July of the same year he brought home from Grone to fair Thuringia his youthful bride. How soon afterwards came a change of times! To the candidates who not long thereafter appeared in numbers exceeding the demand,—men, who had but finished their examinations at the age of thirty, whose hair not seldom began to get suspiciously grey while they were still domestic tutors, and who counted the duration of their affianced state at least by lustres,—it must have sounded almost like a fable, that a young theologian had established for himself a home of his own as an independent pastor at the age of twenty-three. God, who bestowed on him this great favour, granted to him also a duration of the married state for almost forty years.

The pleasant leisure which fell to the young pastor’s lot in a community of about 400 souls—for which down to the close of his life he cherished the utmost affection—did not make his mind indolent or his hands idle. It was natural that so juvenile a pastor should still for a time address himself to private study before coming before the public as an author, and all the more so in his case, seeing that in 1827 he went to Hannover for the purpose of passing a Colloquium, with a view to acquire the privilege of naturalization in the then existing kingdom. But as early as the year 1829 there was issued by Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht—the esteemed publishing-house, with which he so long maintained most friendly relations—the first portion of his work on the New Testament, containing the Greek text and the German translation. In the year 1830 followed his Libri symbolici Ecclesiae Lutheranae. In the same year—as a fruit of his Colloquium, and probably also of the services already rendered by him in the field of theological literature—he was appointed as pastor at Harste, near Göttingen. Although he had paved the way for such a step by acquiring naturalization in 1827, and had by his marriage with the pastor’s daughter in Grone become half a Hannoverian, and indeed a man of Göttingen, the breaking up of the home established seven years before at Osthausen was a sore trial to my parents. On the day after Christmas, amidst a severe snowstorm, when they doubly missed their wonted comfortable abode, they set out on their perilous journey from Osthausen amidst tears shed alike by those departing and by those left behind. It was not till the third day that the hardships and perils of the winter-migration were oMatthew :Their new relations were not at first of too agreeable a nature. They needed to be gradually inured to their new position in life before they could feel themselves at home in it. With the far less perfect communication at that time between the several districts of our country, and with the loose connection subsisting between one portion of the Germanic Federation and another, a journey from the Meiningen to the Göttingen district was a more distant, and a transference of abode thither in more than one respect a more difficult, matter than at present. Yet, in spite of the many new impressions which had to be formed and assimilated,—the power of which did not permit him in the remotest degree to anticipate that he would part from this community also with deep pain,—my father did not allow his scientific labours to lie in abeyance. In the beginning of the year 1832 appeared the second part of his work on the New Testament, containing the Commentary. The long time that elapsed between the first part (1829) and the second is explained by “the change of his place of abode, and the edition of the Libri symbolici, issued in the jubilee-year of the Augsburg Confession” (Preface, 20th Jan. 1832). The Commentary, according to the original plan, was to form two divisions, the first of which was to extend to the Book of Acts (inclusive), and the second was to embrace the remaining books. That this idea proved a mistaken one; that the work has extended to 16 divisions; that his own strength did not suffice to overtake the constantly increasing labour; that new editions were continually needed; that an English translation of it is in the press,—all this is evidence of the rare favour which the Commentary has retained for more than forty years among the theological public of all schools. It would be surprising, if in so long a period the standpoint of the author, diligent as he was and unwearied in research, had not undergone modifications; and that in the course of years his views did become more positive, is a fact well known to his readers; but to the principle of grammatico-historical interpretation, on which so much stress is laid in the Preface of 1832, he remained unalterably faithful down to the close of his life. And as a zealous representative of this school he will maintain his place in the history of exegesis, whatever new literary productions time may bring to light.

With a rare activity of mind, he had the skill to lay hold of whatever—whether from friends or from opponents—could be of service to him. The circumstance that he mastered without difficulty the contents of the most voluminous Latin exegetes, and most conscientiously consulted the old Greek expositors, cannot surprise us, when we consider his preponderant leaning to classical studies; but the facts, that he used with ease commentaries written in English and French, that he never left out of view works composed in Dutch, and that he made himself master of Gothic so far as in a critical and exegetical point of view he had need of it,—all serve to attest alike his uncommon qualifications and his iron diligence. Everything new that made its appearance in the field of theological literature, especially in the domain of exegesis, excited his interest; sparing in self-indulgence otherwise, he conceived that, so far as concerned the acquisition of books, he had need to put a restraint on himself; as regards edition, place of publication, size, rarity, and the like, he had an astonishing memory. The administration of a large and liberally supported library seemed to him to be an enviable lot. The theological public hardly needs to be told that studies so comprehensive in range required of course years, and many years, to reach maturity, and that between the Commentary on Matthew of the year 1832 and the fifth edition of the same work in 1864, a very considerable difference in every respect is discernible. Among the MSS. left behind him I find a sixth edition of his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, which, although according to his own expression not yet quite ripe for the press, to judge from a superficial glance through it, deserves in every respect to be pronounced an improvement on its predecessor. He was in the habit of long polishing at a work and correcting it, before he marked it “ready for the press.” The ninth division—the Epistles to the Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon—was being printed in a fourth edition, when an incurable visceral disorder threw him on his last short, but painful, sickbed.

It was beyond doubt in great measure a result of the favour which his Commentary enjoyed, that the author was at a comparatively early age withdrawn from the quiet work of a rural pastor and called to Hoya as superintendent at Michaelmas 1837. In this position as Ephorus and as preacher in a country town, whose inhabitants must be presumed to have had other claims than those of simple villagers, two aspects of his nature had opportunity to show and further develope themselves—that of the practical man of business, and that of the pulpit orator. In the first-named relation he was thoroughly exact; his principle was “to be always ready.” To postpone disagreeable affairs, to put off irksome reports, was just as impossible for him as to leave accounts unpaid. He vied with his fellow-commissary, the no less exact von Honstedt, former high-steward at Hoya, in the quick despatch of the business on hand, and the art of gaining something from the day—namely, by early rising. As a pulpit orator he strove honestly and with success to expound the word of the cross in plain and simple form as the power of God unto salvation, and he was listened to with pleasure so long as he acted as a preacher (till Midsummer 1848).

His ministry in Hoya lasted only four years, during which the publication of his Commentary went on with unabated vigour. At Michaelmas 1844 he was called to Hannover as Consistorialrath, Superintendent, and chief pastor of the Neustädter St. Johanniskirche. I well remember the many attestations of unfeigned affection and cordial attachment, when on the clear sunny autumn day, thirty-two years ago, he departed from Hoya to enter upon the more stirring and more responsible career before him in the capital. None but a man in the prime of his vigour could do justice at once to his position in the supreme ecclesiastical court, and to the duties of superintendent and pastor in a community of more than 5000 souls. He had but little ministerial help in his pastoral office. It was his duty to preach every Sunday forenoon; a scantily paid court-chaplain, who was obliged to make up the deficiency of his income by giving private lessons, had regularly the service in the afternoon, and was expected, moreover, to act for him in any pastoral duties when at any time he was hindered from discharging them. But how often it happened that he was called away even from the sittings of the Consistory to administer baptism to infants apparently dying and the communion to the sick, because his court-chaplain was under the necessity of giving private lessons somewhere! It required, in truth, a stubborn following out of his principle of “being always ready” (as in fact it was his wont, almost without exception, to prepare for his sermon even on the Monday), to remain faithful to his vocation as an exegete amidst this burden of work. It was again the early hours of the morning which put him in a position to do so. He obtained an honourable recognition of the services thus rendered at Easter 1845, when he was nominated by the Faculty at Göttingen Doctor of Theology, “propter eximiam eruditionem artemque theologicam eamque praecipue editis excellentissimis doctissimisque in libros Novi Testamenti commentariis, quibus consensu omnium de ornanda et amplificanda hermeneutica sacra praeclarissime meruit, comprobatam.”

Hitherto the lines of the son of the court-shoemaker in Gotha had fallen in pleasant places; but he was now to see days in which the hand of the Lord was to be laid heavily upon him. It was doubtless in part a result of the unusual demands made on his strength—to which was added his taking part in the Church Conference at Berlin in the winter of 1846—that at the end of February in that year he was stretched by a severe visceral affection on a sickbed, which long threatened to be his last. But the goodness of God averted the danger, and preserved him still for a number of years to his friends and to theological science. The strenuous care of the now long departed Hofrath Holscher was successful in putting him on the way to slow recovery, which was accelerated in a most gratifying manner by a visit to the mineral waters of Marienbad. But the old indomitable strength was gone. This he perceived only too plainly, even when he had for the second time gratefully felt the benefit of the Bohemian medicinal springs. His weakened health imperatively demanded a change in his manner of life, and a consequent diminution of the burden of labour that lay upon him. Henceforth he became—what he had never previously allowed himself the time for—a habitual walker. Every morning between 7 and 8 o’clock, after having previously devoted some hours to exegesis, in wind and storm, summer and winter, even on the morning of the Sundays when he had to preach, he took his accustomed walk, to which he ascribed in no small degree his gradual recovery of strength. At the same time he became a zealous water-drinker, and he called water and walking his two great physicians. The lightening of his labour, that was so essentially necessary, came at Midsummer 1848, when he resigned his duties as Ephorus and pastor, in order to devote himself henceforth solely to the Consistory, in which, however, as may readily be understood, the measure of his labours became greater in point both of quality and of quantity. Many of the clergy of our province belonging to the days when there were still three examinations to be passed and that in Latin, will recollect with pleasure the time when he conducted the preliminary, and regularly took part in the stricter, trials. His easily intelligible Latin, and his definite and clear mode of putting questions, were specially spoken of with praise.

His aged mother witnessed with just pride his enjoyment of the fruit of his exertions; she did not die till the year 1851, after she had had, and had conferred, the pleasure of a visit to him at HannoMatthew :On the Christmas eve of 1858 he stood by the bier of a son of much promise, who, as a teacher of the deaf and dumb at Hildesheim, was carried off by typhus, away from his parental home, in the flower of his age, at twenty-three. This blow was no doubt far more severe than that by which, in 1847, God took from him a boy of seven years; but under this painful trial the word of the cross approved itself to him a power of God. In May 1861 he became Oberconsistorialrath. The constant uncertainty of his health, moreover, and in particular a very annoying sleeplessness, made him even at that time entertain the idea of superannuation. In the summer of 1863 he sought and found partial relief at the springs of Homburg. In January 1864 the hand of God dissolved the marriage-tie, which he had formed in the year 1823. In the preface to the fifth edition of the Commentary on St. Matthew he has penned a well-deserved tribute to the memory of the faithful companion of his life, who had shared with him the joys and sorrows of forty years.

From the Midsummer of this year down to his death—exactly, therefore, nine years—he lived under the same roof with me, affectionately tended by my wife, the teacher, friend, companion, I might almost say playmate, of his two granddaughters.

On 1st October 1865 he retired from official life, on which occasion, in honourable recognition of his lengthened services, he obtained a higher decoration of the Guelphic Order which he had already worn since 1847—the cross of a Commander of the Second Class. At first he retained some share in conducting the examinations; but this official employment, too, he soon gave up. Twice after his superannuation he was present by direction of the Government at Halle to take part in the Conference, which occupied itself with the settlement of a uniform text for Luther’s translation of the Bible, and the fruit of which was the edition of 1870, published at the Canstein Bible-Institute. Now that, at the age of sixty-five, he was released from professional activity in the strict sense of the term, he could devote his life the more tranquilly to science and to the pleasure of the society of his friends. His two granddaughters accompanied him regularly on his walks in the morning; and I know several houses, the inmates of which looked out every day upon the company regularly making its appearance, in which hoary age, with blooming youth playing around it, seemed to return to the bright days of childhood. And the kindly grandfather in the midst of his granddaughters on these morning walks was not monosyllabic or mute. On these occasions jest and earnest alternated with instructions and reflections of the most varied character. Punctually every morning at the same hour he returned home from these walks, which he continued to his last day of health. But he returned not in order to be idle. He was wont by way of joke, even after his superannuation, to speak of how precisely his time was meted out, and how strictly he had to husband it. The earlier rapidity of his writing no doubt ceased, and increasing age imperatively demanded pauses, where his more youthful vigour would not have even felt the need of a break.

To all political party-proceedings he was thoroughly hostile; but he followed the mighty events of the years 1866 and 1870 with the liveliest interest. When the German question was being solved by blood and iron, when old thrones tottered and fell, he had a cordial sympathy with much that was disappearing irretrievably; but he did not obstinately close his eyes to the gratifying fruit which sprang up on the bloody soil of 1866. Difficult as it certainly would have been for the old man to reconcile himself to altogether new relations of allegiance, he sincerely rejoiced over the increasing strength of Germany, and that with the greater reason, because he knew from the experiences of his youth how sad was the prospect in those days when Germany was simply a geographical idea. And if the year 1866 may have kept alive some bitter recollections now and then in one who had grown grey in the service of the kingdom of Hannover, he well understood the language of thunder, in which God spoke to the nations in 1870, and he recognised the sovereign sway of the Almighty, who with strong arm saved us from the house of bondage. To a man, who in the years of his boyhood had so often heard the French shout of victory, had seen the great Napoleon, had passed through the times of the Rhenish Confederation, and had grown up to manhood in the period when so many political hopes were nipped in the bud, the blows of Weissenburg and Wörth, the united onset of all Germans, appeared almost like a fable. How often he changed the direction of his accustomed walks, in order to hear at the telegraph-office of new victories and heroic deeds! And how grateful was he, who had shared in the times of sore calamity and ignominy, for what God permitted the Germans to achieve! He was born under the last Emperor of the house of Hapsburg; could anything else be expected of the Protestant exegete, than that he should cordially rejoice at the mode in which the German Empire was reconstituted on the 18th January 1871 at Versailles?

In the sphere of religion, as in that of politics, all ill-temper and irritation were odious and repugnant to him. He had, in the course of time, as every reader of his exegetical work well enough knows, become more positive in his views; but he was far removed from any confessional narrow-mindedness or persecuting spirit. He desired that there should be no stunting or spoiling of the homely, simple words of Scripture either from one side or another; and he deeply lamented it, wherever it occurred, let the cause of it be what it would. He never concealed his conviction; it has gone abroad everywhere in many thousand copies of his book; and he carried with him to the grave the hope that it would please God, in His own time, to complete the work of the Reformation.

A mere outward observer of the tranquil and regular course of life of my late father might not surmise, but those who were in closer intercourse with him for the last two years could not conceal from themselves, that his day was verging to its close. No doubt he still always rose, summer and winter, immediately after four o’clock; he was constantly to be seen beginning his walks at the same time; his interest in his favourite science was still the same; but his daily life became more and more circumscribed in its range, and the pendulum of his day’s work vibrated more and more slowly, so that its total cessation could not but be apprehended. The journeys to the house of his son-in-law, Superintendent Steding at Drausfeld, where he had so often found refreshment and diffused joy by his visits, had long since ceased. After a fall, which he met with about a year before his death, his walks were curtailed. To this outward occasion he attributed what was probably a consequence of gradual decline of strength and advancing age.

The Lord of life and death, who had so graciously dealt with him for seventy-three years, as he himself most gratefully acknowledged, spared him also from prolonged suffering at the last. On the 15th June he still followed quite his usual mode of life; he spent the afternoon with contentment and cheerfulness in his garden, then took a little walk, and went to rest punctually at eight o’clock, as he always did in his latter years. The walk on that Sunday afternoon was to be his last, and the unfolding glories of the summer were not to be seen by him again with the bodily eye. During the night, towards one o’clock, he awoke us, as he was suffering from violent iliac pains. With the calmest composure he recognised the hand of the Lord, which would remove him from the scene of his rich and fruitful labours. He declared that he was willing and ready to depart, asking only for a speedy and not too painful end. The medical aid which at once hastened to his side afforded indeed momentary relief by beneficial injections of morphia; but the eye of science saw the same danger as those around him had immediately felt and foreboded.[1] It was an incurable visceral affection, which was conjectured to be connected with the severe illness that he had happily survived twenty-seven years before. On the 19th June a transient gleam of hope shone once more for a short time. “Willingly,” he said on this day, after an uneasy night, “would I still remain with you; but willingly am I also ready to depart, if God calls me.” It was but a brief gleam of the setting sun before the approach of night. This we could not but soon perceive, and this he himself saw with the manly Christian self-possession, by means of which he had been so often in life a comfort and example to us. Soon after there set in a state of half-slumber, during which the most diversified images flitted in chequered succession before his mind. Now he saw himself seated before a large page from the New Testament, on which he was employed in commenting, while he fancied that he held the pipe in his mouth. In this way had he devoted many a quiet morning hour to his favourite study, when his window had been the only one lighted up in the street. Then, again, he busied himself with the Fatherland; “Germany, Germany above all,” we heard him distinctly say. Was it that the recollections of his cheerful student-days, when the Burschenschaft was full of fervour and enthusiasm specially for the Fatherland, became interwoven with the mighty events of his latter years? Soon afterwards he saw clearly the cross, of which he had so often during his long life experienced and diffused the blessing. On the 20th June there was given the fatally significant intimation that he might be allowed to partake of anything which he wished. He made no further use of it than to take some beer, of which he had always been fond. But it was only for a passing moment; and the beer also soon remained untouched, just as his pipe and box, formerly his inseparable attendants, had since his sickness lost their power of attraction. Violent vomiting and the weary singultus, which hardly abated for a moment, announced but too plainly that the end of that busy life was closely approaching. Shortly before 10 P.M., on the 21st June, he entered without struggle upon his rest. His wish, often and urgently expressed during his lifetime and also on his deathbed, that his body might be opened for medical examination, was complied with on the following day. The result was to exhibit such visceral adhesion and intussusception,—beyond doubt an after-effect of his earlier illness,—that even the daring venture of a surgical operation could not have been attended with success. On Midsummer-day he was buried in the Neustädter churchyard, where he had so often, during the exercise of his pastoral functions, stood by the open grave of members of his flock. On the cross at his tomb are placed the words from Romans 14:8 : “Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord’s.”

[1] I may here be allowed, under the natural impulse of melancholy recollection conscious of its indebtedness, to mention with the most sincere thanks the considerate and devoted care of the physicians in attendance on him—the chief-physician Dr. Köllner and chief-staff-physician Dr. Hübener. So often did they afford to their dying patient the great blessing of mitigating his pain, where their tried skill had limits assigned to it by a higher hand.

HANNOVER, December 1873.

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