Nitzsch, Karl Immanuel, one of the most pro- found evangelical theologians of the 19th century, was born Sept. 21, 1787, at the Saxon town of Borna, near Leipsic, Germany. His father, a Lutheran theologian, a Church superintendent, and a professor at Wittenberg, destined Karl from infancy to the priestly office, and personally superintended his education until his six- teenth year. He then placed him in the excellent clas- sical school at I'forta, where young Nitzsch soon distin- guished himself both for beauty of character and for thoroughness of scholarship. He became so imbued with the classic languages as to be more ready ami flu- ent in them than in his vernacular. At the age of nineteen he began his universitj' course at Wittenberg, doubtful for a while whether his call was not in phi- losophy rather than in theology. But the pious Heub- ner won him over for theology. For a few years his mind was powerfully wrought upon and perplexed by conflicting currents of thought — by Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, by the "romantic" poets, and by the influ- ence of De Wette and Schleiermacher, against the cold orthodoxy of his father. Under these influences he was forced to the construction of a theological sys- tem of his own. This system became what is known as the "mediation theology" — essentially an independent further development and complementing of the better tendency in Schleiermacher. To the consistent devel- opment of this position Nitzsch consecrated fifty j-ears of earnest ecclesiastical and academic life. At the age of twenty-three he began his career as privat-docent at Wittenberg, and as assistant pastor at the cathedral of the place. As pastor he soon met with severe trials — during the French occupation of the place in 1813-14 — being left for months, with only a single helper, in pastoral charge of the beleaguered town. His faithful care of the sick and dying during these long months contributed largely to enrich and ripen his religious life. The removal of the university to Halle interrupted his academic labors. In 1817 he resumed them in the newly established theological seminary at Wittenberg. Having already obtained some reputation for a number of erudite dissertations, he was now honored with the theological doctorate by the Berlin faculty. His lect- ures in the seminary were on Church history in its sev- eral branches. Affected in his health by his twofold office, he was forced to ask relief in 1819, and served for a time in the rural parish of Remberg. In 1821 he accepted a call to the 3'oung university of Bonn. Here opened before him twenty-five years of his most fruitful academic and churchly labor. He stood and worked by the side of such men as Liicke, Sack, Blcek, Brandis, Niebuhr, etc. Systematic theology was here his chief field. Basing himself upon Schleiermacher's Dogmatics, he began to give positive form to the views which he afterwards gave to the public in his two master works : Christian Doctrine and Practical Theoloyy. The for- mer work presents Christian doctrine and life, dogmat- ics and ethics, as an inseparable unitary whole, in their mutual interpenetration. The latter presents the Church life in its wide-reaching actual process of transforming the world into the kingdom of God. In 1828 Nitzsch lent UUmann and Umbreit an active hand in establish- ing the Studirn und Kritiken, to which he contributed some essays of epoch-making character, e. g.on the Im- manent Trinity (1841), and especially his "Protestant Reply to the Symholik of JMdhler," and his "Theological Criticism of the Dogmatics of Strauss." In the last two essays he gave scientific expression to the essence of Christianity as distinguished from the opposite errors of Romanism and mythism. Nitzsch soon obtained such a name that students from all parts of Germany flocked to sit at his feet. He was the " pearl" of the whole uni- versity. His power, however, lay not iu the beauty of his style, for this was to the student at first both ob- scure and repellant, nor in any outward expression of
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piety, but in the profound and deep flow of genuine sci- entific Christian thought. As university-preacher, he exercised for years a potent intiuence on the whole life of the university. This pastoral office formed the basis of an active and wide intiuence, affecting the Church life of the two Rhine provinces, and promoting the Prus- sian union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches, for which Nitzsch had earnestly labored ever since its in- auguration in 1817. He finally became its acknowledged first champion. This reputation contributed to his call to Berlin in the spring of 1847. He was now sixty years of age, but twenty years of vigorous life lay yet before him. The political convulsions of 1848 called out heroic conduct from Nitzsch as rector of the univer- sity. His firmness contributed largely to checking the mad waves of radical demagogy, both in the university and in the Church. In politics he was conservative- progressive. After the revolution he was elected twice to the Prussian Chamber, where he opposed the extreme reactionism of the Stahl party. In this interest he also effectively labored in the columns of the newly estab- lished WochenUaU. To check the tide of Neo-Luther- anism he joined MliUer and Neander in 1850 in the publication of the Zeitschrift fur chr. Wissenschaft. In 1857 he saw his favorite scheme of Church union as- sume a more encouraging phase, and a decided check put to the confessional tendency ; and he welcomed the Evangelical Alliance as the dawning realization of his own idea on a still grander scale. The date June IG, I860— the congratulation day of his fifty years of uni- versity labor — brought him abundant evidence from far and near that evangelical Germany honored in him the preceptoi- Gennanice of the day. At the age of sev- entj'-five he began to feel old; and he was compelled, one by one, to lay down tfie many offices which had ac- cumulated themselves upon him — first his lectures, then his charge of the Homiletical Seminary, then his seat in the Consistory, and, lastly, the pastoral office in the church of St, Nicolai, of which he had been made pro- vost in 1855, though he closed his life before the ac- ceptance of his resignation. He died Aug. 21, 1868. One of the chief labors of his latter years was the com- pleting of his elaborate work on Pracdsche Theoloyie. He had begun it at Bonn, and the volumes followed each other in 1848, 1851, 1857, and 1867. It is the greatest of his works — rich in practical wisdom, largely drawn from active experience in Church life, a rich storehouse for the pastor — the testament of its author to posterity. Nitzsch must be regarded as one of the lead- ers of that school of thought in German theology of which Neander was the greatest representative. Like the latter, Nitzsch endeavored to reconcile faith and science, not by forced and unnatural methods, but by pointing out their distinctive spheres, and by exhibiting in his own spiritual life that union of reason and rever- ence for which he argued in his writings. In theology his position will be best understood when we say that Nitzsch suborilinated dogma to ethics, or, rather, that he accepted and prized chiefly those dogmas that re- sult from an ethical apprehension of Christianity. In many respects Nitzsch and Buiisen labored in common, especially in harmonizing their ])olitical with their re- ligious obligations as citizens of a Church united with the State. The high Lutheran party having denounced liberal politics as irreligious, Nitzsch and Bunsen came forward with others to vindicate them on liberal grounds, and not without success. Nitzsch's System der christ- lichen Lehre appeared first in 182i), then, enlarged, in 1833, and between then and 1851 in four further con- stantly enlarged and enriched editions. He also pub- lished several volumes of lectures and sermons, remark- able for their extraordinary richness of thought. See Hoffmann, Lchcnsahriss nebst Geddchtnisspredigt (Berlin, 1868); the elaborate article by I)r, IJeyschlag in Stud. V. Krit. 18G9, No. iv; Meth. Qii. Rrr. ()ct. 1873, art. iii; Schwarz, Gesck. de?- neuesten Theolofjie. p. 337 sq. ; Kah- nis, Ilist. of Germ. Protestantism, p. 257. (J. P, L.)