FROM GERMAN LITERATURE. BY B. B. EDWARDS AND E. A. PARK, PROFESSORS, THEOL. SEM. ANDOVER. ANDOVER: PUBLISHED BY GOULD, NEWMAN AND SAXTON, CORNER OF FULTON AND NASSAU STS. 1839. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1839, BY GOULD, NEWMAN & SAXTON, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION, BY THE TRANSLATORS, THE LIFE, CHARACTER AND STYLE OF THE APOSTLE PAUL. By Prof. THE TRAGICAL QUALITY IN THE FRIENDSHIP OF DAVID AND JONA- 75-82 THE GIFTS OF PROPHECY AND OF SPEAKING WITH TONGUES IN THE THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD.-A COMMEN- LIFE OF PLATO.-By W. G. Tennemann.-E. III. First Residence in Syracuse, IV. School of Plato at Athens, THE SINLESS CHARACTER OF JESUS. By Dr. C. Ullmann.—P. Prefatory Note by the Translator, Section I. General Principles of Reasoning in this Treatise, Want of room prevents an intended notice of several errors, some of them errors of the INTRODUCTION. THERE are two great tendencies in human nature of which Plato and Aristotle are commonly regarded as the representatives. One of these tendencies or characteristics is indicated, in its various forms, by the epithets speculative, theoretical, ideal, abstract, doctrinal, subjective. The terms which are employed in describing the other tendency are practical, experimental, concrete, actual, objective. Plato, though not deficient in acuteness and subtlety, was meditative and profound. As the author of the celebrated ideal philosophy, he supposed that certain ideas existed in the Divine mind from eternity, to which God gave a figure or form when he created the world. He ascribed a Divine original to the human soul. True happiness, according to Plato, consists in the investigation of truth and in the subjection of the passions. Virtue is the perfection and health of the soul. It is manifested in the various forms of wisdom, righteousness, temperance, valor. Plato had a living power of imagination, a loftiness of thought, together with the ability to clothe his conceptions in the noblest and most beautiful forms. Under his pen the most abstract ideas assumed the character of life and reality. Spirit, vigor, warmth pervade his writings.1 1 See Schöll, Geschichte der Griech. Litt. I. 480. The moral character of Plato's great master is yet occasionally assailed with considerable violence. The charges against Socrates originated partly from calumny, which is always thrown out by the vicious against those who are more virtuous than themselves; and partly from a misapprehension of some Socratico-Platonic expressions. For instance, when Socrates said, in his last moments, that he "owed a cock to Æsculapius," any one, who regards his well known habit of irony, may suppose that he was not in earnest; that be understood by Esculapius health, and intimated by this form of expression that he had almost recovered from his long disease. In respect to another charge-that of sensuality-we have the explicit testimony of Xenophon, that physical love was directly excluded by Socrates. Alcibiades, in Plato's Dialogue, declares that Socrates was unsusceptible of every lower kind of love, being devoted to spiritual love alone. If Socrates had been |
