46 Guyot on Carl Bitter. 



his most earnest desire was the promotion of knowledge and 

 not of his own name. 



But if all these noble gifts bestowed upon him by nature, 

 were brought to the fulness of a harmonious and normal de- 

 velopment, it is only by drawing new sap from a still deeper 

 source of excellence, from a strong and living Christian faith. 

 Kitter never spoke much on this subject ; nor are there found 

 in his writings any formal, uncalled for, expressions of his 

 religious convictions. He was not the zealous, polemic, criti- 

 cal partisan of any particular intellectual formula of the 

 Christian faith ; but his life and his teachings breathed that 

 meek, trusting, and loving spirit by which we recognize the 

 true disciple of our great model. Here, as in his scientific 

 efforts, the living substance prevails over the dead form. In 

 that sphere also, we can follow the phases of a gradual, but 

 sure progress, which led him to the aim. Brought up by 

 Salzman under the rationalistic influences then prevailing in 

 Germany, but in an atmosphere of great moral purity, his lov- 

 ing heart and scrupulous conscience soon led him further. In 

 the second period of his life the feeling of his indebtedness to 

 a kind Providence grew every day stronger, and increased the 

 sense of his moral obligations towards his Heavenly Father. 

 In the third period, which begins with his first sojourn in Ber- 

 lin, his Christian convictions assumed a more definite shape. 

 His friendly intercourse with that modest and living Christian, 

 the Baron von Kotwitz, who was a blessing to so many in 

 Berlin during a whole generation, doubtless exercised a happy 

 influence upon him. Later in life we find in Kitter the sin- 

 cere, humble, and joyful Christian, grown to his full stature, 

 who reveals himself by that oneness of mind and heart, that 

 harmony of thought and action, which can flow only from a 

 perfect and willing obedience in love to his heavenly Master. 

 But let his own words bear testimony to his deep convictions. 



When his students requested of him a motto to be placed 

 at the bottom of the portrait just alluded to, he gave them 

 that sentence that you read in the autograph which is before 

 you : " Our earth is a star among the stars ; and should not 

 we, who are on it, prepare ourselves by it for the contempla- 

 tion of the Universe and its Author ? " Truly, the expression 

 of the spirit of his instructions and of his " Brdkunde ! " 



In the last letter that it was my privilege to receive 

 from him, Kitter, alluding, without the shadow of a murmur 

 however, to his advanced age, his declining strength, his ap- 

 proaching departure, speaks also of that work, the object of his 



