GIESELER, Johann Karl Ludwig (1792-1854), one of the most distinguished of the modern school of scientific writers on church history, was born at Petershagen, near Minden, where his father, a man of considerable vigour and independence of character, was minister, on the 3d of March 1792. In his tenth year he entered the orphanage at Halle, whence he duly passed to the university, his studies being interrupted, however, from October 1813 till the peace of 1815 by a period of military service, during which he was enrolled as a volunteer in a regiment of chasseurs. Having in 1817 taken his degree in philosophy, he in the same year became assistant head master in the Minden gymnasium, and in 1818 was appointed conrector of the gymnasium at Cleves. Here he published his earliest work {Historischkritischer Versuch über die Entstehung u. die frühesten Schicksale der schriftlichen Evangelien'), a treatise which has had considerable influence on all subsequent investigations and discussions of the question as to the origin of the gospels, in so far as it may be considered to have finally disposed of that theory of a “primitive” written gospel to which most critics in the earlier part of the century had inclined. In 1819 Gieseler was appointed a professor ordinarius in theology in the newly-founded university of Bonn, where, besides lecturing on church history, he made important contributions to the literature of that subject in Rosenmuller’s Repertorium, Stäudlin u. Tschirner’s Archiv, and in various university “programs.” The first part of the first volume of his well-known Church History appeared in 1824. In 1833 he accepted a call to Göttingen, where the remainder of his life was spent, marked by few noteworthy events beyond the steady publication of volume ...