Augustus Neander On the Inevitability of the Christian Faith (1856)

Augustus Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, trans. Joseph Torrey (Boston: Crocker & Brewster:1856),

p. 1.

‘[In this book it] shall be our purpose to trace, from the small mustard-grain, through the course of the past centuries, lying open for our inspection, the growth of that mighty tree, which is destined to overshadow the earth, and under the branches of which all its people are to find a safe habitation.

The history will show how a little leaven, cast into the mass of humanity, has been gradually penetrating it.

Looking back on the period of eighteen centuries, we would survey a process of development in which we ourselves are included; a process moving steadily onward, though not in a direct line, but through various windings, yet in the end furthered by whatever has attempted to arrest its course; a process having its issue in eternity, but constantly following the same laws, so that in the past, as it unfolds itself to our view, we may see the germ of the future, which is coming to meet us. But although the contemplation of history enables us to perceive the powers as they are prepared in their secret laboratories, and as they are exhibited in actual operation, yet in order to a right understanding of all this, it is pre-supposed that we have formed some just conception of that in its inward essence, which we would study in its manifestation and process of development.

Our knowledge here falls into a necessary circle.

To understand history, it is supposed that we have some understanding of that which constitutes its working principle; but it is also history which furnishes us the proper test, by which to ascertain whether its principle has been rightly apprehended.

Certainly, then, our understanding of the history of Christianity will depend on the conception we have formed to ourselves of Christianity itself.’

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