In order that the modern evangelical theology of Germany may become properly available for the benefit of the cognate Anglo-Saxon race, it must first be better and more generally understood and placed in its proper light against both ignorant and malevolent censure and indiscriminate praise. The growing interest in it seems to call for a work, which should furnish reliable and satisfactory information of its origin, history, connections and bearings and thus serve as a guide to the English and American student through the luxuriant forest of Teutonic systems and opinions. To such a task the writer brings the advantages of a regular German university education, some experience as a university teacher and an American residence, sufficiently long to enable him to understand the relations of German and Anglo-Saxon Christianity and literature and to view the old world from the standpoint of the new. With all the divines described, in the third part of this book, except the late Dr. Olshausen, he is acquainted not only through their works, but also by more or less intimate personal intercourse, lately renewed, during a protracted and delightful visit to Germany. Some of them were his honored teachers at Tübingen, Halle, and Berlin; others his fellow students, or colleagues; and with many of them he still keeps up a familiar correspondence. In occasionally introducing personal incidents, and harmless traits of character, not before made known to the reading public, he hopes he has in no case violated the strictest laws of propriety and delicacy, which are doubly binding when we treat of persons still living. He could easily have increased the number of sketches from personal knowledge; but he preferred to dwell more at length on the most worthy, characteristic, and influential representatives of the evangelical theology and Christianity of modern Protestant Germany. The writer has endeavored to make his book both instructive and interesting to the general, as well as the learned reader. But he must ask the kind indulgence of English scholars for the unconscious Germanisms and other defects of style, as this is the first time that he ventures before the public, in a work of such size, without the aid of a translator.

2021