RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Mather Matheson
MATHESIUS, JOHANNES: German Reformer; b. at Rochlitz (16 m. n.n.w. of Chemnitz) June 24, 1504; d. at Joachimsthal (14 m. n.n.e. of Elbogen), Bohemia, Oct. 7, 1565. He was the first biographer of Luther, the Reformer of Joachimsthal, and one of the most powerful preachers among the Reformers of the second period (1504-65). He studied at Wittenberg, which he gratefully praised as his spiritual home, always regarding himself as a member of the church and school there. In 1532 he became the seventh rector of the Latin school at Joachimsthal, the then new city of northwestern Bohemia which had achieved prosperity by its silver mines and had adopted Lutheranism. In 1540 Mathesius went again to Wittenberg, where he became Luther's table-companion and made notes of his table-talk. In 1542 he was ordained by Luther. In the church at Joachimsthal he labored for nearly a quarter of a century, first as preacher, then as pastor. He was the most famous preacher of that place and of German Bohemia, being distinguished for learning and for spirited and genial eloquence. Under him church affairs became firmly established and protected against disturbances from without and within. Mathesius was so closely bound to his office and position that he refused all offers from abroad, including a call to the University of Leipsic. Against his desire he went to Prague (1546) together with the magistrate and thirty delegates to defend themselves before King Ferdinand I. for their attitude in the Schmalkald war. After that affair, there followed some years of relief, of successful work, of literary activity, and of beneficial intercourse with colleagues in school and church, at home and abroad. But domestic troubles, new political storms, religious persecutions, and physical ailments brought him, prematurely aged, to an early grave. For more than one hundred years the effects of his work remained. The memory of the Joachimsthal " angel of the church," disturbed by the rage of the Jesuits, was renewed there even by Catholics through a memorial tablet. His sermons have been circulated in numerous editions and revisions; some were translated into foreign languages. Best known are two collections of popular yet scientific, instructive yet devotional, lectures delivered in the carnival season, when something amusing was expected. The " Sarepta " was intended to explain sayings, stories, and examples from the Scriptures which mention mining, in order that the Joachimsthal people might have their " mining-book of homilies " as farmers and viticulturists had theirs. In the " Lutherhistorien " Mathesius proved himself a pioneer in the kind of homilies for the church of the Reformation which the Roman Church had given in her " sermons on the saints." They constitute the first real biography of Luther (Nuremberg, 1566). These more than any others carried through the Centuries the memory of the Joachimsthal preacher, and in spite of deficiencies, inaccuracies, and mistakes they are still a source of information (last critical edition, Prague, 1906). In Mathesius' sermons seriousness and humor, bluntness and tenderness, go hand in hand. (Geohg Loesche.)
Bibliography: The Ausgewahlte Werke, 4 vols., are ed.by G. Loesche, with introduction and commentary, Prague,
1896-1908. Extracts are by K. F. Ledderhose, Heidelberg, 1849, in French by L. Schweitzer, 1871. The chief biographical work is by G. Loesche, 2 vols., Gotha, 1895; cf . his Mathesiana, in Jahrbuch filr die Geschichte des ProtestantismusinOesterreich, Vienna, 1904; idem, inZeitschrift filrdeutsche Wortforschung, i (1900), 235-238. Consult also the works by: Balthasar Mathesius, Dresden, 1705; J. Abraham, Wittenberg, 1883; K. Amelung, Gutersloh, 1894; G. F. Fuchs, in Halte was du hast, xxv (1902), 366-373.
MATHESON, GEORGE: Church of Scotland; b. in Glasgow Mar. 27, 1842; d. at North Berwick (19 m. e.s.e. of Edinburgh) Aug. 28, 1906. Although his eyesight gradually failed him until in his eighteenth year he had become blind, he finished his school and university course at Glasgow with high honors (B.A., 1861; M.A., 1862; B.D., 1866) and was licensed to preach in 1866. During the next year he was assistant to John Ross Macduff (q.v.) of the Sandyford Church, Glasgow; from 1868 till 1886 minister of Innellan (35 m. down the Clyde from Glasgow) ; and from 1886 till his retirement in 1899 minister of St. Bernard's, Edinburgh. Being in easy circumstances he was always able to employ secretaries who read to him and wrote for him, and having an extraordinarily retentive memory and strong literary bent he produced many books which display much reflection and, considering his restrictions, no little learning. He was very broad-minded and saw good in creeds which he rejected. His preaching was of a high order. In consequence of his standing as preacher and author he was the recipient of many honors — D.D. of Edinburgh University, 1879; call to succeed John Cumming (q.v.) as pastor of Crown Court Church, London, 1880; Baird lecturer, 1881; preacher before the queen at Balmoral Oct. 25, 1885; Gifford lecturer, 1899 (declined); fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1890; LL.D., Aberdeen, 1902. His books may be divided into three classes: first, those of a philosophical character: Aids to the Study of German Theology (Edinburgh, 1874; 3d ed., 1876), issued at first anonymously, a sympathetic study of German theology from Kant to Dorner with a view to relieving it of the charge of " atheism "; Growth of the Spirit of Christianity from the First Century to the Dawn of the Lutheran Era (2 vols., 1877), in which he showed his reading in comparative religion, a favorite study, and his acceptance of Hegelian principles as guiding lines in the presentation of church history, but it is not a church history in the ordinary sense; Natural Elements of Revealed Theology (1881), his Baird lectures, in which he again utilized his attainments in comparative religion to commend Christianity; Can the old Faith Live with the New f or, the Problem of Evolution and Revelation (1885; 3d ed., 1889), an attempt to show that even if evolution be true, and he was non-committal on that point (though afterward he came to the conclusion that it was not true), belief in it is compatible with belief in Christian doctrines; he presented the same idea in more popular form in The Psalmist and the Scientist, or, Modern Value of the Religious Sentiment (London, 1886; 3d ed., 1892) ; The Distinctive Messages of the Old Religions (1892; 2d ed., 1893), an attempt to state that for which each of these religions stood. The second class of books was those which are more directly
Mathew Matilda