While it is indispensable to our full and lively appreciation of Neander that these little things be known of him, no one will be so foolish as to let such accidents and eccentricities of the outward life divert his attention from the grand and rarely equalled manhood which lay behind and beneath them.  To give anything like a just estimate of this manhood would be no easy task, however.  His native endowments, the attainments he had made in the learning pertaining to his department, and the part he was called to play in the regeneration of German science and German faith, were all remarkable.  From the first glimpse we catch of him, when, at 17 years of age, he had given his head and heart to Plato, he strikes us as no ordinary character; and our wonder deepens at every step, till at last we behold him sinking exhausted amidst his labors, and all Christendom gathered in sorrow around his grave.

His native instincts, tastes and sympathies were all singularly pure and generous.  His family attachments were strong.  In the latest periods of his life, when she had long been dead, the name of his mother could not be mentioned by him without a visible gush of deep and tender emotion.  The loss of his favorite sister, some years before his own departure, almost shattered him.  For days he drooped and mourned amongst his books, and could do no work.  Only the thought that God had taken her to Himself, and that He doeth all things well, finally availed to quiet him.  So of all his friends; he never forgot and was never false to them.  But his special care was bestowed upon the young men of the University, who had gathered about him, in the spirit of a most enthusiastic discipleship, out of all Germany, and indeed out of nearly all Christendom.  To the last he continued to be a young man himself, as fresh, impulsive and eager, and with as entire a freedom from all appearance of assumption and authority, as though his pupils and he were merely peers.  There was at once a warmth, a blandness and a child-like simplicity of manners, which made him the idol of every heart.  And he carried the same amenity of temper into all the theological controversies of his life.  He never stooped to ungracious personalities, and never seemed to be in pursuit of victory at the expense of truth and fairness.  The result was that he was never assailed with personalities in return.  Through all the bitterest contentions which raged around him, he was uniformly treated with respect and deference.  Not that men were ignorant of his opinions, or thought him neutral, but because he was felt to be an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile.  He committed himself to no clique, and allowed no clique to be committed to him.

In his personal habits he was temperate and frugal in the extreme; though not for the sake of accumulation.  His income from his books and lectures must have been considerable; but he gave it nearly all away.  Hundreds of indigent students could testify to his generosity, while amongst the poor of the city, there were many pensioners upon his bounty.