It is quite too late to answer the charge against Neander's profundity. His achievements are his best defense, and the pen of censure is fast beginning to lose its bitterness. It is not time for him to be fully appreciated at home; for, as the beauty of the landscape is dependent on the sun to make it apparent, so Neander's character and labors must wait for an honorable and universal recognition until new evangelical light shall have overspread the land. A century hence he will be loved as dearly by the German people as he was by those weeping students who gathered around his grave to see his face for the last time. What Krummacher said on the occasion of his burial will yet be the testimony of the church, whose history was Neander's earthly Eden: "One of the noblest of the noble in the Kingdom of God, a prince in Zion, the youngest of the church Fathers, has departed from us." Neander's relation to his times was most important. The various influences hitherto employed against Rationalism had proceeded as far toward its extinction as it was possible for them to go. Philosophy and doctrinal theology had spent their efforts. The history of the church having always been treated mechanically, it was now necessary that the continued presence and agency of Christ with his people should be carefully portrayed. The progress of his church needed to be represented as more than growth from natural causes, such as the force of civilization and education. It was necessary to show that a high superintending Wisdom is directing its path, overcoming its difficulties, and leading it through persecution and blood to ultimate triumph. Neander rendered this important service. He directed the vision of the theologian to a new field, and became the father of the best church historians of the nineteenth century. The child-like simplicity of his character was beautiful. Everything like vanity and pretense was as foreign to him as if he dwelt on a different planet. A recent German writer calls him a "Protestant monk or saint, whose world was the cloister of the inner man, out of which he worked and taught for the good of the church."