MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF FRANCIS VOLKMAR REINHARD, S. T. D. COURT PREACHER AT DRESDEN. FROM THE GERMAN. BY OLIVER A. TAYLOR, HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY 1875, March 22.. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1832, by PEIRCE & PARKER, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. PREFACE. THE first object of this work is to make the public acquainted with the life and character of the learned, pious, and eloquent F. V. Reinhard of the last generation, for more than twenty years Chief-Court Preacher at Dresden. It is divided into two parts. The first comprises his letters or confessions, in which he gives an account of his education for the sacred ministry, and a general criticism of his sermons. These letters were occasioned by a review of some of his works in the Hall. Lit. Zeit, and written during the winter evenings of 1809-10. They have passed through several editions, of which, however, I have seen only the first. While translating Reinhard's Plan of the Founder of Christianity, I became much interested in these letters; and deeming them an excellent piece of autobiography, I thought they would constitute an acceptable present to the public; and having consulted a friend, upon whose judgment I relied, who had also read them, and ascertained the coincidence of his views with my own in these respects, I prepared them for the press. In the mean time, I felt the need of mak ing some additions to them by way of completing the view they give of their author; and hence, added the memoirs or second part. The translation of the confessions was not a difficult task, but the second part has cost me much and severe labor. It has been drawn chiefly from Böttiger's Delineation of Reinhard's Character; a pamphlet rich in materials, but written by an antiquary in an intricate, parenthetical style and full of learned allusions. It contains matter, however, drawn from other sources, interwoven with ideas of my own, the whole of which has been arranged in the order which struck me as the best.* The likeness which accompanies the volume was originally taken from a portrait of Reinhard, drawn three years before bis death, by his brother-in-law Von Charpentier. This portrait was considered an excellent one. It supposes Reinhard to be sitting in his study. With one hand he sustains his head, while with the other resting on the Bible, he holds a manuscript, containing a train of thought deduced from the Scriptures, in meditating upon which, the light of faith bursts in upon his mind, and he is supposed to exclaim, "Yea, thou art the truth." The look in the original is said to be very striking and destitute of all ambiguity. Much of its expressiveness was lost in the first process of reducing the portrait and engraving it. I am aware that the work will, after all, furnish but an imperfect account of Reinhard; especially so, as all the biographies which have been written of him in Germany, are more or less imperfect, time enough not having yet elapsed to permit many of his letters, directed as they were, to persons still on the theatre of action, to be brought from their * Perhaps the reader should be informed, that I have not reduced the dollars named in the course of the work, to our own currency; and hence, that they express a little too much, |