His work stands in the same
relation to criticism which Schleiermacher's _Discourses_ occupies to
dogmas, and as the latter appears sometimes to lean toward Rationalism,
so do we find in the former traces of concession to the destructive
method of criticism. Neander's work, despite everything which he grants
to his enemies, was the transition-agent toward a purer comprehension of
the life of Christ. While we lament that he interprets the early life of
Christ as a fragment derived from an evangelical tradition; that he
believes the influence of demons in the gospel period susceptible of a
psychological explanation, that the miraculous feeding of the five
thousand is but the multiplication and potentialization of substances
already at hand, that the feeding of the four thousand is a mistaken
account of the former, and that the changing of the water into wine at
Cana of Galilee was nothing more than an increase of power in the water,
as we find sometimes in mineral fluids,--granting these and all the
other interpretations which Neander makes on the score of nature or
myths, we must attach an importance to his _Life of Christ_ second only
to his _History of the Christian Church_.
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