tradiction. The knowledge of the existence of this personality certainly leads to the recognition of its immortality, and it exists in close relation with it. But this relation can by no means be regarded in the form of a necessary conclusion from the personality." The author then remarks, that philosophy finds its appropriate place in confirming and illustrating the revelations of Christianity on this subject. We may here mention that Muller is, or was lately, a professor at Göttingen. Göschel is a professor at Berlin. Immanuel Hermann Fichte is a son of the celebrated philosopher, whose life he has published. He is himself an able philosophical writer, and is a professor at a gymnasium at Düsseldorf. Christian Hermann Weisse was born at Leipsic in 1801. Since 1827, he has been professor of philosophy at Leipsic. He has distinguished himself by his spirit and acuteness in philosophical investigations, at first in the manner of Hegel, but of late with more independence. In the 8th vol. of the Stud. u. Krit., J. O. Møller, a licentiate of theology at Bâle, has inserted an essay on the question, 'Is not the doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body one of the ancient Persian Doctrines?' He contends, in opposition to Havernick, that it was one of the articles of belief in the old Parsee system. In the 9th vol. pp. 187-219, Weisse reviews a volume of Göschel entitled, Proofs of the Immortality of the Human Soul.' Göschel, in the same volume, presents a positive philosophical theory on the soul and immortality, and endeavors to show that the doctrine of immortality is not peculiar to any one philosophical system, but is the united result and import of all the philosophical investigations of all times and of all philosophical schools. Weisse finds occasion to controvert some of the main positions of Göschel. In the subsequent number of the work, Weisse himself has inserted an essay of more than 150 pages on the Philosophical Import of the Christian Doctrine of the Last Things. We have also a paper in the same volume from the pen of Weizel, a repetent in Tübingen, on the primitive christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul. These references will serve to show the fertility of the Germans, and the interest which is felt on this and on kindred subjects. NOTE K, p. 278. Eschatology. This is from the Greek lozatos hóyos, Doctrine of the Last Things,' Res ultimae aut novissimae. Four subjects are commonly embraced in the term, viz. death, resurrection, judgment, the end of the world. NOTE L, P. 279. 'The opponents of Origen among the Greeks and Latins began to insist, that not merely the resurrection of the body (corporis) should be taught, but also carnis (crassae). The older fathers used corpus and caro interchangeably, as was also done in the older symbols, and intended by the use of these terms to denote only that there would be no new creation of a body; since both of these terms, according to the Heb. usus loquendi, are synonymes, as when we speak in reference to the Lord's Supper, of the corpus and caro Christi. But since caro implies, according to the same idiom, the associated idea of weakness and mortality, it was abandoned by many who wished to use language with more precision, and instead of it, the phrase resurrectio corporis was adopted. It was on this account that the Chiliasts insisted so much the more urgently upon retaining the terms odos and caro.' Woods's Trans. of Knapp, 11. 633. Lange here refers, in a short paragraph which we omit, to some speculations of Goethe, which may be found in Mrs. Austin's Translation, I. 65. The speculations were thrown out in the course of a conversation between Goethe and Von Falk, on the day of the funeral of Wieland. The friends were conversing in respect to the actual condition of the departed soul of the poet. The destruction of such high powers," said Goethe, 'is a thing that never, and under no circumstances, can even come into question. Nature is not such a prodigal spendthrift of her capital. Wieland's soul is one of nature's treasures; a perfect jewel.' Goethe then goes on to develop his theory, or speculation, for it can be called nothing more, concerning monades. 'I assume various classes and orders of the primary elements of all existences, as the germs of all phenomena in nature; these I would call souls, since from them proceeds the animation or vivification of the whole. Or rather monades :— Let us always stick to that Leibnitzian term; a better can scarcely be found, to express the simplicity of the simplest existence. Now, as experience shows us, some of these monades or germs are so small, so insignificant, that they are, at the highest, adapted only to a subordinate use and being. Others, again, are strong and powerful. These latter, accordingly, draw into their sphere all that approaches them, and transmute it into something belonging to themselves; i. e. into a human body, into a plant, an animal, or, to go higher still, into a star. This process they continue till the small or larger world, whose completion lies predestined in them, at length comes bodily into light.' NOTE N, p. 285. 'The apostle shows no fear of death, since he is ready to die, if it be necessary. Still he is a man, and has not thrown off man's nature so as to make us believe that he had a stoical contempt of death; otherwise, he would not have expressed such thoughts as he has in 2 Cor. 1: 8-11. Here, however, he seeks to explain in a christian manner that fear of death which is fixed in human nature, and also in his nature, while he teaches us that there is cause for feeling, not because Christians dread annihilation, or that they see ground for fear in respect to their eternal life, but merely from dread of the process of unclothing, in which the soul becomes an exile from its home. Therefore we groan, says he, and feel ourselves bur dened, since we do not desire to be unclothed, but rather to be clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life, that is, we would desire such a change, that, without the bitter separation of the soul from the covering which now surrounds it, we might, as it were, put on the new garment over the old, and then the living principle of life in the new, would destroy the principle of corruption in the old; we would become immortal without passing the gates of death. In respect to the possibility or impossibility of it, he says nothing; still less does he undertake to point out the mode or manner in which the thing might take place. It was enough for him to show what that is which the heart, properly speaking, feels, and what is the nature of the wish which lies at the ground of the universal dread of death.' Rackert, Comm. on 2 Cor. 5: 4, p. 149. |