Although Dr. Schaff's favorite pursuit was Historical Theology, and to this his life was consecrated, yet exegesis always attracted his attention. This was one of the two subjects upon which he lectured as privat-docent at the beginning of his university career. And it was the theme of the chair he occupied in the Union Theological Seminary from 1875 until he was called to succeed Dr. R. D. Hitchcock in Church History. It also occupied his attention in the Scripture Commentaries, which he edited, and of which he was in part the author. Although in early life he studied both Testaments, and at one time gave instruction in Hebrew, yet in after years he devoted himself mainly to the Greek Testament, and here his profiting: appeared unto all.

In the summer of 1843 there called at the plain and obscure study of a young man in Berlin two visitors from America. They were a committee in search of a professor of theology in the German Reformed Theological Seminary, in Mercers-burg, Pennsylvania. They had consulted Tholuck, Julius Müller, and Neander, as to the most fitting man for the position. All pointed to young Schaff. The delegates visited him to make the offer in person. Though only twenty-four years old, he had given strong proof of his ecumenical quality. A native of Switzerland, he had gone to Tübingen and Halle for his initial theological studies; had been drawn later to Berlin to complete them, under that “last of the Church Fathers,” Neander; and had made an iter academicum to Italy. He was now entering upon his duties as an academic teacher in the University of Berlin. He accepted the call to America. But he was not to leave the Old World without giving still further proof of that intense cosmopolitan spirit which grew with his years and expanding knowledge. The young Teuton was already eager to learn of Anglo-Saxon theology. It was a prophecy of his later unifying power.

No theologian, we believe it can be confidently asserted, was so familiar with the life and history of the churches that have found a home in America, as was Dr. Schaff. His name was pre-eminently that which would have been given by an intelligent representative of any of the larger communions as that of the one scholar outside of his Church who best knew it. His rare intellectual activity, his unwearied habits of research, and his marvellous memory were aided by his constant personal contact with leaders of the various phases of religious thought, and his warm sympathy for what he deemed the most essential factors of religious life wherever found.

Concerning the Episcopal Church Dr. Schaff writes as follows, in his “Paper on the Reunion of Christendom,” prepared for the Parliament of Religions and the National Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, held in Chicago September and October, 1893:

“The Episcopal Church of England, the most churchly of the Reformed family, is a glorious Church, for she gave to the English-speaking world the best version of the Holy Scriptures and the best Prayer Book; she preserved the order and dignity of the ministry and public worship; she nursed the knowledge and love of antiquity, and enriched the treasury of Christian literature; and by the Anglo-Catholic Revival under the moral, intellectual, and poetic leadership of these shining lights of Oxford, Pusey, Newman, and Keble, she infused new life into her institutions and customs, and prepared the way for a better understanding between Anglicanism and Romanism.”

More eloquent tongues than mine have already paid due tribute to the memory of the venerable scholar, whose great learning and manly virtues we can all unite in praising, without regard to religious or scientific differences, however profound and essential they may be. I will not dwell upon the historical training, the grasp of scientific method, and the ripe scholarship which were distinctive of Dr. Schaff, nor upon his sincere sympathy for the spiritual and religious element in the history of human thought, nor upon the uprightness of his historical conscience, and his desire to be objective and candid in the statement of views which were not his own,—these are the primary qualities which we demand of a Church historian, and especially of one who assumes the delicate and responsible office of an historian of theology. You have requested me to speak of the deceased in his relations with the Catholic Church, and I propose to confine myself to a brief enumeration of the motives why that Church respects such men as Dr. Schaff. He devoted his life in a great measure to the history, the theology, and the original texts and sources of the earliest Christian ages, those distant but all important years when the foundations of the Catholic Church were being sunk, and the great beams were being laid on which she has since arisen. He endeavored to bring back the minds of men to a consideration of those primitive days when there was but one spirit and one heart in the Christian body, when belief and discipline, religious life and organization, were substantially of the same type in all the Christian communities.

My acquaintance with Dr. Schaff was not as long as that of some of those who have read papers at this meeting, but it extended over eight years, and was developed under circumstances various enough to give some clear impressions of the scholar, and of the man. I met him at the Hartford Seminary and at Union Seminary, at his own table and at the Century Club, in Washington, in New York, and in London—here, there, and everywhere. I knew him as host and as guest, as junior partner in literary work and in plans for the promotion of theological learning, and as friendly gossip, interested in the shrewd views which he expressed on every topic under the sun, and pleased (not to confess flattered) to surrender to his all-embracing interrogations wahtever was of interest to him.

I am indebted to your kindness for the opportunity of adding a word to the many testimonials of gratitude and respect which the memory of Dr. Schaff has called forth. It is, indeed, little more than a word of apology that I can speak of him very inadequately at best, for rarely have our paths run together in so vast a field as that which includes them both; and of regret when I think how much more fit a word might have been said by my dear and venerated friend, Professor A. P. Peabody, whose versatile studies extended as broadly as the wide range of the Christian fellowship he rejoiced in. You remind me of the special service which Dr. Schaff has rendered, by the breadth of his intellectual sympathies, to that goodly fellowship of Christian scholars which it is one chief aim of our Society to promote and cultivate. I owe to this same motive of his labors the one opportunity I have had of meeting him personally, at a reception given in Boston on occasion of the completed Revision of the English Bible, which he, without doubt, has done more than any other to introduce and to interpret intelligently to our own public,—when I saw for myself something of the urbanity and kindliness that have made this great scholar so widely loved and esteemed as a gentleman and a friend. More than any other single service rendered to me personally, I recall the value and help I found, at a particular period of study, in that admirably conceived and edited work, The Creeds of Christendom.

Among the creators of the American nation is Bishop Francis Asbury. Not as a discoverer, a military chieftain, a philosopher, a legislator, or diplomatist, but as a purifier of the nation's morals in its germ. While a galaxy of great men like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Alex. Hamilton were fighting for liberty, laying the foundation of government and building up a peerless system of free institutions, Asbury was devoting himself assiduously to the culture of the nation's heart. Nor did he do this with towering intellect like that of Jonathan Edwards, or classic writing like that of Timothy Dwight, or flaming oratory like that of George Whitefield, but by simple unsophisticated preaching, prayer, and expostulation throughout the length and breadth of the colonies and infant States.

Benjamin Schmolck, the author of the favorite hymn “My Jesus, as thou wilt!”, was born in Brauchitsdorf, Silesia, December 21, 1672. It is registered in the Calendar as St. Thomas' Day, and Schmolck says that it often led him, in the troubles of his spirit, to think of the wounded side and the bleeding nail-prints of his Saviour. He was contemporary with a kindred spirit and lyric poet, John Anastasius Freilinghausen, born the same month, though two years later, and dying two years earlier, and on the same day of the month with himself. His father, Martin Schmolck, was for twelve years associate-pastor at Schniedsberg, where he wedded Rosina Dehmel, daughter of Martin Dehmel. In 1665, the senior Schmolck was made pastor of Brauchitsdorf, Liegnitz, a village of some eight hundred inhabitants, where he remained forty-seven years; a man fatherly, faithful, and indefatigable in his office. Benjamin, the hymn-writer, was his fourth child; and him the father solemnly dedicated to the work of the Christian ministry, baptising him on the fourth day after his birth.

All general works treating of the history of the Church, of dogma, Christian literature, and especially philosophy, have much to say of S. Thomas. Of the latter class, history of philosophy, I would name as giving particular attention to-the Angelical Doctor, Ueberweg, Stöckl, Hauréau.

It is perhaps not unfitting that some notice should be taken in our Society of Church History of what has proved to be one of the most interesting and important literary finds of recent years. I refer to the Greek MS., discovered by U. Bouriant in a tomb at Akhmîm, Egypt, in 1886, and first published in the fall of 1892. The MS. contains, as is well known, brief fragments of an early Christian Gospel and Apocalypse and two more extended fragments of the Book of Enoch. The fragment of the Apocalyse does not contain the name of its author, but toward the close of the Gospel fragment Peter is indicated as the writer of the Gospel in the sentence: “I Simon Peter and Andrew my brother took our nets and went away to the sea.” We have references in early Christian literature to a Gospel and an Apocalypse of Peter, and there can be little doubt that the fragments in question belong to those long-lost works. I shall concern myself to-day only with the Gospel fragment, which has excited chief interest among scholars and has already given rise to an extended literature.

It is with hesitation that any one at this day adds to the appalling mass of Faust literature, but two facts have led to the present paper: 1. The exhaustive work of Kiesewetter on the historical and traditional Faust, just published, and the equally interesting and exhaustive work of Faligan, published in 1888, practically ignore the most plausible hypothesis of the very origin of this story. 2. There are two or three matters of undoubted pertinency which have not hitherto been brought to bear on the subject. The discussion of these will at least bring together lines which have been followed out too independently, and, with the addition of one or two facts and observations, will furnish a positive historical hypothesis which may hope to prove the solution.

The General Court of Massachusetts, from the settlement of the Colony, in providing for the support of the Christian ministry, followed the ecclesiastical law which had been in force in England long before the Reformation, viz.: that every man should be taxed for this purpose in the town, parish, precinct, or district where he lived, unless specially exempt. In 1638, it was enacted that “every inhabitant who should not voluntarily contribute to all charges, both in Church and Commonwealth proportionately, according to his ability, should be compelled thereto by assessment.”

A definition of terms is essential at the outset of this investigation, but I am not aware of a definition of Apostolic Succession that would be accepted as authoritative by those who profess the doctrine, In this paper the term will be held to mean the doctrine that the order of bishops exists in the Church jure divino; that the first bishops were ordained by the Apostles as their successors, and that these orders have been transmitted by an unbroken succession to the present time; and furthermore, that without bishops there can be no valid orders, no valid sacraments, in short, no Church. It is not proposed in this paper to question the truth of this theory—to inquire whether there is adequate evidence in its favor either in the Scriptures of the New Testament, in the early Christian literature, or in the institutions of the Church of the first two centuries. Assuming that the doctrine rests on the sure foundations of Scripture teaching and institutional Christianity—or, at least, allowing that this may be the case—our task is to trace the effects of this doctrine upon the external history and internal life of the Church of England.

On tombs of ancient Egypt have been found inscribed requests, as from those buried beneath them, that passers-by would pray for them. Here and here alone in all the ancient world we first find such praying held to be of any avail to the departed. Later and later it becomes a characteristic doctrine by consequence, of the views of ancient Paganism almost everywhere concerning the dead. In pagan Greece the very chief of the philosophers, and in pagan Rome the poets so view the condition of the departed as to make inevitable the thought of praying to effect some improvement in their condition. In the modern Paganism of India we have the burdensome services of the Srádd'ha or funeral obsequies for the repose of the dead, and for the securing of the efficacy of which it is inculcated that “donations of cattle, land, gold, silver, and other things” should be made by the man himself at the approach of death, or, “if he be too weak, by another in his name.”