SCHLEIERMACHER, FRIEDRICH Enss'r DANIEL, one of the great( st and most influ ential theologians of modern times, was born at Breslau, Nov. 21, 1'706. His boyish years were spent in the school kept by the Moravian brotherhood at Niesky, and here he first received those religious impressions, the influence of which was visible in his whole after-life. In 1787 lie proceeded to the university of Halle; and, ou the conclusion of his academie coarse, acted for some time as a teacher; but in 1791 became assistaut-clergy man at Landsberg-on-the-Warthe, where he remained for two years. He then went to Berlin, and occupied himself partly in the translation of souse of Blair's and Fawcett's sermons, and in the redaction of the Athenueum, conducted by his friend Friedrich Schlegel; but the first work that won for him general celebrity was his Ralen fiber die Religion (Discourses on Religion, Berl. 1799), which startled Germany from its spiritual torpor, vindicated the eternal necessity of religion, and sought to separate those elements of it that are essentially divine from the incrustations of dogma and the formalities of practice. Neander looked upon these reden as making the turning-point in his spiritual came/. They are now regarded as both making and marking an epoch in the theological history of Germany. The reden were followed by the Munologen, and the Briefe eines Predigerc ausmrhalb Berlin in 1800. Two years later lie was appointed preacher at the charity-house in the Prussian capital; and during 1804-10 produced his famous translation of Plato, with commentary, which is considered in Germany, to this day, the most profound and penetrating treatise on the philosophy of the great Athenian, though English scholars are disposed to regard its criticism as decidedly too subjective, and in many important respects baseless. In 1801 appeared the first collection of his predigten (sermons), followed between 1808 and 1833 by no fewer than six other collections. They are masterpieces of penetrating and eloquent discussion, appealing equally to the heart and the intellect of hearers and readers. In 1802 Schleiermacher went as court-preacher to Stolpe, where he published his Gru ndlinie,: diner Krilik der bisherigen Sittenlehre; and in 1SO4 was called to Halle as university-preacher, and professor of theology and phil osophy. In 1807 he returned to Berlin, having previously published Die Weihnacht.feier, ein Gesprdeh (Christmas festival, a dialogue, Halle, 1806), bearing on the calamitous state in which Germany then found herself, owing to the victorious insolence of the French.'
Among his next publications may be mentioned Ueber den Sogen«nnten ersten Brief dos Paulus an den Temotheus (concerning the so-called first epistle of Paul to Timothy, Berl. 1807). In 1809 he became pastor of Trinity church, Berlin; and in 1310, when the uni versity of Berlin was reopened, with a brilliant array of professors, under the rectorship of Fichte, no mime shone more conspicuous than that of Schleiermacher. In 1811 he was chosen a member of the Berlin academy of sciences, in whose Transactions are to be found many valuable papers by Schleiermacher on the ancient philosophy, and in 1814 secretary of the philosophical section. In 1817 he was appointed president of the synod assembled in Berlin. His latest, and perhaps his most important work is Der Chrislliehe Glaube flack den der Evang. Kirehe urn Zusanzmenhange dargestellt (the Christian faith systematically presented according to the fundamental propositions of the evangelical church, 2 vols. Berl. 1821-22), in which his deepest and most Christian thought is visible. He died at Berlin, Feb. 12, 1S34. The list of Schieiermaclaer's disci ples—i.e., of men who have derived the groundwork of their principles froin him—is one of the most splendid that theological reformer could show, embracing. among others, the names of Neander, Twesten, Olshausen, Lucke, Bleek, and Ullmann. In 1864 appeared a posthumous work of Schleiermacher, Das Leben Jesu,Vorlesungen an der Unive'sitrit zn Berlin in: Jahr, 1832, in which lie conceives of Jesus as a man in whom the divine spirit works as perfectly as it possibly can in humanity, and treats his history accordingly. Strauss has replied in a critique (Berl. and Lond. 1865). Schleiermacher was very far from what in England is called orthodox, but Ile was a great, earnest, devout Christian man, of massive understanding, and whose eloquence was scarcely less golden than that of Plato himself. Germany overflows with literature on Schleier timelier, his system, and his ideas.—For an account of his earlier life, see the autobio graphical sketch first published in Niedner's Zeitschrift far historische Theologie (1851); and for his later life, A us SeIdetermacher's Leben in Briefen (1858; translated by Frederica Rowan, Loud. 1860).