him by an epidemic fever in the year 1693. Thus he "lost one chief human support of his temporal welfare, but not the providential care of his heavenly Father"; for David Wendel Spindler, a friend of the deceased, immediately undertook to superintend his education. This gentleman's qualifications for such an undertaking could only be equalled by his love to the bereaved child. But in consequence of the French invasion under Louis XIV., whose troops had already made considerable desolations in Suabia, his widowed mother's dwelling-house, which she had recently purchased, was soon afterwards reduced to ashes; and thus her late husband's library, which had been left to our little scholar, was totally lost. This, however, only served to make him thankfully acknowledge in after-life the kindness of Providence, which thus removed from him the temptation of reading too great a variety of books. Mr. Spindler, who previously to the French invasion had been master of a seminary at Winnenthal, was now obliged to remove from town to town, till in 1699 this excellent preceptor obtained a permanent station as tutor in the High School of Stuttgart. Little Bengel had all along accompanied him as a boarding pupil, and to him no removal could have been more favourable than this to Stuttgart; for, having made such progress in early knowledge that Spindler's elementary tuition was now insufficient for him, he was thus brought at once among the best instructors the country afforded, especially for those branches of education which were become almost absolutely necessary to him. His proficiency placed him directly in the senior class of what was called the middle school, conducted by Mr. Sebastian Kneer, an excellent Greek scholar, by whose valuable help he completed his elementary preparation within

that of this excellent man: for in the forty-third year of his age, and the twelfth of his well-discharged ministry at this one place, he was called away by a malignant fever then prevailing, on the 21st of April, 1693, as a good and faithful servant, to enter into the joy of his Lord. His attention to the sick by night as well as day, particularly in the adjoining hamlet of Hartmannsweiler, was indefatigable. He fearlessly entered the most infected cottages, caught the fever, and after a short confinement to his bed, was called home to God. This was indeed a trying season, for only four months afterwards our town was miserably destroyed and burnt to ashes by the French. Thus in the death of this valuable minister were again fulfilled the words of Isaiah, lvii. 1, 2. The righteous are taken away from the evil to come,'" &c.

His widow died at Denkendorf only a few years since, having fallen asleep in Christ, full of joy and peace in believing. She was daughter of the Rev. J. L. Schmidlin, rector of the cathedral of Stuttgart; and was a great grand-daughter of the famous Würtemberg reformer, John Brentius. Her name is still sacredly remembered and beloved by persons of this town, &c.

the short space of six months; so that at the age of thirteen he was promoted into the upper school, where, under the professors Meurer, Schuckard, Hochstetter, Erhard, Canstetter, Essich, and others, he advanced most satisfactorily in the dead languages, and gained very competent acquaintance with history, mathematics, French and Italian.

His mother, who remained ten years a widow, was married in 1703 to John Albert Glöckler, Esq. steward of the theological seminary of Maulbronn. This pious and excellent man was a real second father to him; a circumstance to which the church and learning appear indebted for the further advancement of our very hopeful young pupil, who long afterwards related that it was "by this second father's kindness and encouragement that he was enabled to proceed to the university"; so that in that same year he became a member of the theological College of Tübingen.

We do not know why his studies there in philosophy and in the higher branches of philology, were restricted to a single year, when two years was the usual time; but he "was enabled fully to make up for this at a more distant period." At Tübingen he attended the lectures of Andrew Adam Hochstetter, afterwards doctor of theology, Matthew Hiller, the professor of Hebrew, John Conrad Klemm, Rösler and Creiling. For more private study he chose Aristotle and Benedict Spinoza, and gave attention to Poiret, Leibnitz, and Bayle's "Dictionnaire Historique and Critique." The ethical treatises of Aristotle and Spinoza were valued by him as helps in moral philosophy, which he was studying under Hochstetter's public lectures. At the same time he acquired such competent knowledge of Spinoza's Metaphysics that professor Jäger set him to prepare and arrange materials for a treatise "De Spinocismo," which the professor afterwards wrought up and published. And Bengel expresses himself "thankful to be able to say, that his attention at that season to metaphysics and mathematics gave his mind a clearness for analysing and expounding the language of Scripture." He ended his philosophical pupillage with the degree of Master of Arts, at taking which he defended (as respondent) Professor Hochstetter's final disputation—" De Pretio Redemptionis," ("On the Price of Human Redemption"), when the latter was admitted to the faculty of Doctor of Divinity. Bengel, at this taking of his degree, showed such proficiency in academical studies that he

was placed first of the men of his year, though most of them were older than himself.

He now entered on the study of divinity with the serious diligence of a christian student, especially as "he had long been disposed to inquire devoutly after spiritual things, and had always felt most delight in the holy Scriptures." Here he had the help of Dr. John Wolfgang Jäger, afterwards chancellor of the university; Michael Förtsch, soon after professor in the university of Jena; Christopher Reuchlin; John Christopher Pfaff; A. A. Hochstetter; John Christian Klemm; and Gottfried Hoffmann. Several of these, especially Jäger and Hochstetter, took much interest in him. Professor Jäger, for whom, as already mentioned, he had prepared materials for a treatise on Spinoza's Metaphysics, and who was now intending to compose a Church History, employed Bengel in making researches for the purpose. This being done under the professor's own superintendence, "habituated" Bengel "to that clearness of arrangement and expression which is so observable in Jäger's own works." With Hochstetter he was even more intimate: that learned man had the valuable faculty of "discerning in young persons any rising disposition to improvement, and knew how to direct it to their best advantage. He valued their youthful efforts, however weak and uninformed, which he always seconded and promoted by the kindest encouragement and advice. He would often give such a turn to any business in hand as to make young persons feel that by going on to complete it they were performing an acceptable piece of service to himself." Bengel found him a faithful and experienced guide in all his literary pursuits; and was led by him into many a pleasing and profitable exercise of the kind, to which his regular course of study would not have conducted him. Among these Bengel reckoned his doing him the honour of making him his respondent in the disputation above-mentioned, which consisted of subjects purposely selected for the occasion; likewise that he set him afterwards to superintend the correction of a new edition of the German Bible, whose summary, contents, and preface, were drawn up by Hochstetter himself. He approved and encouraged Bengel's undertaking to make the punctuation of that version, (especially from the book of Job to that of Malachi inclusive,) more conformed to the accentuated Hebrew, as far as could be done without altering Luther's own renderings. This was an employment which, while it made him more familiar with the original text of Scripture, may also be regarded as

no unimportant preparative for his critical labours in the New Testament. It likewise gave occasion to his writing an essay on the Hebrew accents, which went to show, that though a general uniformity may be traced in the accentuation of all the prophetic books, yet each several book has further a distinct accentuation of its own, and that consequently the Hebrew accents, though they may not be of equal antiquity with the text itself, must be intimately connected with its genuine interpretation.

For a long time after he had quitted the university he had still the privilege of much personal intercourse with Hochstetter. Besides becoming his curate at the city church in Tübingen immediately upon his ordination, he served a curacy at Stuttgart, from 1711 to 1713, during which time his friend Hochstetter resided there as senior chaplain to the court; so that for nearly ten years Bengel had the benefit of that excellent man's familiar society, which may well be regarded as a valuable help to the formation of his future character.

Though he most attentively pursued at the university the course of private reading pointed out to him for benefiting by the public lectures upon the exegesis of the Old and New Testament, doctrinal and controversial divinity, church history, and homiletical studies, still he contrived to give also much attention to other theological works, particularly Spener's Latin treatise "On Impediments in the Study of Divinity," by the help' of which he endeavoured to become familiar with the arrangement of theological topics; and deeply interested himself about the right handling of Scripture by reading Franke's "Prolegomena (or preliminary notices) to the Greek Testament;" as also his "Manuductio," or "Guide to the Study of the Sacred Writings." He perused the Old and New Testament repeatedly in the original languages, and in several versions; making use of Flacius, Glassius, Sebastian Schmid, and Hedinger, for textual elucidation; and of John Meyer's edition of the Seder Olam for its historical illustrations of the Old Testament. For catechetical purposes he studied Spener's German Exposition of the Catechism; and for the science of christian ethics, Arndt and Schomer; and though he studied the two last authors very diligently, he often wished he had read them many times more instead of treatises by others upon the same science. On creeds and confessions he made use of J. F. König's "Theologia Positiva Acroamatica," as he was attending J. Ch. Pfaff's public lectures on that work; but

he afterwards studied the several creeds and confessions by themselves, and read the works of Chemniz and Spener in that department. "Such a variety of occupations gave him but little time for listening to "divers and strange doctrines," which we would often prefer to have been entirely ignorant of when we have to undergo the trouble of dismissing them from the mind. Yet he found it useful to depend less on his own isolated reading than on his free and familiar intercourse with experienced men of science, and on carefully recollecting and reconsidering their public lectures."

Having, with these studies, occasionally, during his last two years at the university, exercised his talent in preaching, and having in the twentieth year of his age completed his academical course of theology, he underwent examination for holy orders before the consistory of Stuttgart in December, 1706; held an academical disputation "De Theologiâ Mystica," ("On Mystic Theology,") at the commencement of the year 1707, (Dr. J. W. Jäger presiding as moderator ;) and conducted a public disputation of students terminating their academical course of philosophy. He then quitted Tübingen to enter on a parochial charge, as provisional curate of Metzingen-underUrach, and which he found to be a school of experience altogether new; for he was sent here, not as an assistant to an elder minister, as was usually the case with such young beginners, but into a sphere of labour entirely his own, and this from the great confidence placed in him. Hence he had to preach and catechize much oftener than an ordinary curate; and the entire care of the souls of his parish, together with the whole business of its church administration, rested with himself. What a field of ministerial knowledge and experience was here opened to him is expressed in his own Memoir, where he says, "My first fortnight's residence as curate of Metzingen convinced me at once what a variety of qualifications a young clergyman ought to have, but alas, seldom possesses, for such an office as this. How totally different is it from the notions one had formed of it at the university!"

Before he had passed a year in his country parish, he was I called to take the office of junior divinity tutor at Tübingen. This situation, though quite of another kind, was far better suited to his improvement in knowledge and science, and to the general formation of that special character which he was afterwards to sustain. While it still afforded him plenty of