Dr. Schaff as Uniting Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon Scholarship

Abstract

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.