AND TUTOR TO PR^JDERICK THE NOBLE. 



221 



Saviour's actual humanity to an extent that alarmed the 

 Trinitarians. 



Meanwhile his credit, from France and Switzerland, extended 

 to Germany and Holland. English and Swedish translations 

 followed upon the German and Dutch. The University of Basle 

 made him a D.D. honoris causa. 



AVhat was there then in Godet that made his teachini]^ of such 

 worth in countries teeming with most varied and able exponents 

 of Scripture ? That the lieformed churches of Eomance Swit- 

 zerland and France should gladly greet in him the originator of 

 a kind of scriptural interpretation in which they were sadly 

 deficient fifty years ago is not surprising. 



]\Iust we assume then that the same lack existed in England 

 and Germany ? That would be assuming too much. But close 

 at hand was the fact that in Germany philological theology liad 

 undergone an enormous development, yjartly owing to the 

 extreme activity engendered in every field of research by the 

 Universities. There was therefore room for a man whose intel- 

 lect would collect, and act as a strainer to, the accumulative 

 mass of German thought and newly built-up knowledge, who 

 would pass it, as it were, through his vigorous, independent, 

 keen Latin mind. 



Of course, we no more have in view here Baur and Strauss 

 in German Bible criticism, than we think of Eenan in French 

 criticism. The German " constructionists " who honestly 

 prepared scientific material as servants of Christ, are alone those 

 whom we have to consider here. 



Godet went to school with them, after havins; beaun his 

 studies of Scripture in an atmosphere full of the most reverent 

 spirit. When he ceased from his German studies, it was to 

 return within the Church, which, though Calvinistic and French, 

 was closely allied to the centres of political and religious 

 thought in Prussia. Godet thus became a link between the 

 non-German and the German Protestant minds. 



But he was not a subordinate instrument or what might be 

 called a passive link. However painstaking his scholarship, 

 however close his preparatory labours, with a magnificent Greek 

 scholar at his elbow in the person of Professor Prince, yet his 

 primary gifts were fire, intuition and plastic power, a rapid 

 judgment, originality of imagination, much vivacity in ex- 

 pression, a perpetually strenuous and eager grasping forth for 

 knowledge. 



He was a thinker, something of a seer, much of a poet and 

 an accurate scholar. His poetic gift was characteristically 



