PRINCETON, N. J. \f^UL.€^^nJ C/^ BV 2372\a1 S73 ISTOT ^ Stevenson, W. Fleming 1832- 1886. Lives and deeds worth k-nowincr ;5ihnnt V// LIVES AND DEEDS WORTH KNOWING ABOUT aSEitl} otfjcr fflisrcllanies V . ry^ i ly^^ f '^ * ^ LIVES AND DEEDS WORTH KNOWING ABOUT smith other ^lisccllnnics By the Rev. WILLIAM F. STEVENSON AU IHOR OF " I'RAYINC; ANU WOKKIXG " NEW YORK ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS No. 530 BROADWAY 1870 CONTENTS. PACK PASTOR HAKMS OF HERKMANNSBURG ... .1 HANS egede's mission ,33 SPITTLER AND HIS WORK 63 CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB BARTH . . . ... . . 88 BATSCH AND HIS CO-WORKERS 100 MADAME ZELL 116 GEORGE NEUMARK 132 MICHAEL FENEBERG AND HIS FRIENDS 154 JOHN HUSS 181 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS, HOMME DE LETTRES . . . . '208 DR. CHALMERS AT ELBERFELD 247 ON THE BIOGRAPHY OF CERTAIN HYMNS . . . . 267 SOME GUESSERS AT TRUTH 290 ON VAGABONDS . . 319 LEBRECHT FRIEDEFELD's TRIALS 354 PASTOE HAEMS OF HEEEMANNS- BUEG. jITHIN the last ten years a small country parish in Hanover has gained a singular notoriety in the history of Missions. It has originated, planned, and sustained a Mission of its own. It is neither large nor wealthy, yet it has more Mission stations abroad than some not inconsiderable Churches, and it supplies not only money but men. Familiar as we are with brilliant missionary enterprises, this seems to surpass them ; and it rather gains in interest and marvel when we know that it is the work of one man. It is from the parish minister that the impulse sprung : the conception was his own ; and but for his undaunted, simple-hearted faith, it seems 2 PASTOR HARMS OF HERRMANNSBURG. unlikely that it could have been carried out. Now that he is gone to his rest, it may be worth while to look into his life ; to see what light it throws upon his work ; to discover by what power he did so much. Louis Harms was born in Walsrode, in Hanover, in 1808, the son of the clergyman of the parish, and when he was nine years old shared the family migra- tion to the parish of Herrmannsburg. Neither the neighbourhood nor the people could have had any great attraction for a man of ordinary character. The Liineburg Heath, in which Herrmannsburg is situated, would be to most eyes bleak and monoto- nous; a mere vast tract of heath and bog, thinly inhabited, and poorly tilled. But the purple heather- bloom, the deep rich colouring of both cloud and sunshine, the clear broad streams, the clumps of wood, and the sudden valleys that dip down like crevasses in the even roll of the country, laid hold of Harms with a powerful fascination, and he declared there was not a country in the world he would as soon live in. The people might be ignorant, but they were sturdy, free, and independent, like the fresh strong winds that swept their heath ; and Harms had a firm, strong will, a determined inde- PASTOB HABMS OF HERBMANNSBURG. 3 pendence, and an unmistakable individuality of character. From the first he was attracted to the place, and seems to have always turned to it with more than the feeling of a home. At school and at the university he left the impression of great ability and the most rigorous application ; and at Gottingen, where he studied, he seems to have conceived the idea of ranging through the whole domain of human learning. His brother states that it was to satisfy the unrest of his spirit, which had not yet found satisfaction through faith in Christ, With the aid of an extraordinary memory, extraordinary perse- verance, and a large self-reliance, he made rapid progress in his studies, and became the pride of his fellow-students and his home. He was an adept in such manly exercises as a German university will recognise, in fencing and swimming ; and he had a lofty sense of truth, and a purity that is attributed to his passionate love for his mother, and that made him instinctively shrink from many sins. "Bear up," he wrote in a friend's album about this time, " although the last prop break, and all is lost, if you have only honour." He did not know what fear was : " I never was afraid in my life," he said. He was impetuous, impatient, not very considerate of B 2 4 PASTOR HARMS OF HERRMANNSBURG. others, imperious, and inflexible, and the awe of his brothers and sisters. It was a mixed and very intelHgible character; a character that he always retained in its main features, though the defects were greatly modified by the grace of God. The strict morality he maintained, passed at the time for Christian life ; and in a Church where the spirit of religion had worn down to be a form, and a univer- sity where almost every man was a rationalist, he found little encouragement to faith. As late as last year he ^vrote that out of the two millions of Christ- ians in Hanover, the most never read the Bible, nor went to the Lord's Supper, nor appeared at church ; but occupied themselves entirely with their own concerns : and thirty years ago the picture would have been less favourable. A man might travel then from north to south of Hanover, and not find a single faithful pastor. It was not by outward cir- cumstances, but against them that he was led to Christ. As he sat in thought one night, he turned to the seventeenth chapter of St. John. It was over this prayer of our High-Priest that the light came upon him, and he recognised the sacrificial death of Clirist. Ignorant of fear, yet on that night, he says, when he was brought to the knowledge of his sins, PASTOB HARMS OF HERRMAJSNBBUEG. 5 he cowered under the wrath of God, and trembled in every limb. He had already passed through much inward conflict, of which he long bore the traces ; no one of ordinary intellectual power could well escape it when thrown into the student society of the time. But now that he had fairly passed out of it, his life assumed a new direction. He left Gdttingen after a final brilliant examination, to take the situation of tutor at Lauenburg for nine years. His design of mastering the sciences was thrown aside ; he sought out the isolated Christians and drew them into fellowship, and Lauenburg held always a dear place in his memory. He removed in 1839, to Liineburg, where he continued his Bible-meetings, and preached, though still holding the position of tutor. His peculiar mental training and mental conflict, the firmness and entireness with which he held the truth, and his knowledge of many forms of error, won for him considerable influence. It was scarcely possible to resist his appeals : even then men noticed the deep and settled peace, and felt that nameless but powerful impression left by an earnest, holy man. He had a habit of looking straight into the face with a fixed and calm glance that reached to the innermost heart, and drew out a frank con- 6 PASTOR HARMS OF HERRMANNSBURG. fession and confidence. During this time he had been asked, both to join the mission-house at Ham- burg and to go to New York ; but his passion for the Heath overcame every other feeling, and thirteen years after he had left the university, he joined his father at Herrmannsburg ; the next year he was appointed his coadjutor ; and on his father's death, in 1848, he became sole pastor. He now fairly settled down to his work. It was among peasants and peasant proprietors, and the people who would be found in a common country village. Slowly a change came to be noticed in the parish. The careless, stubborn, and ignorant dimi- nished: the farmers came more regularly to the church ; ploughboys sang Luther's hymns instead of country ballads ; in houses where the Bible had not been opened, it was daily read ; the people spoke frankly on rehgion, and were gi-ave and quiet, and came to be known as Herrmannshurgher at the markets and fairs ; and any stranger who passed that way would notice the tidier houses and brighter look of the neighbourhood; and if he passed at noon would be amazed to hear the bell peal from the little wooden spke, and to see in every field the labour stopped, and the head unbared, at prayer. PASTOE HARMS OF HEBBMANNSBUEG. 7 and to hear from some groups of haymakers, or at the early harvest, the measured cadence of a hymn. There -was evidently some remarkable influence at work : every inquiry traced it up to the new pastor. He had not only determined to work, but had flung himself upon his work with a characteristic impetu- osity, not to be either slackened or exhausted, till he could work no more. Woe to me, he once said, if I live to be both old and strong. He preached four, sometimes five times every Sunday, and his services were often prolonged to three hours. He catechised not only the young but the old. He came into constant intercourse with his parishioners, and led them into the fullest intercourse with him. And it was natural that labour so ardent, so fall of faith and self-sacrifice, of a man whose spirit was visibly touched by God's Spirit, and his Avords with God's word, should produce a singular result. Outwardly at least there was not a parish in Hanover like Herrmannsburg. It recalled, in its piety, simplicity, gravity, and the vigour of its Christian life, in the universal and apparently hearty service of God, the full and happy recognition of Jesus Christ the Saviour, and the manifest living presence and ope- ration of the Holy Ghost — in all these it recalled 8 PASTOB HARMS OF HEBBMANNSBURG. the ideal and beautiful pictures painted of apostolic times. Almost immediately after Harms was settled in his charge, there rose before his soul one night, he says, the words, Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men ivherehy we must he saved. He could not sleep ; " for it continually thundered in my soul : Man, what hast thou done to help so many perishing men ? I had no other answer than, Nothing. The day after, I went to some of them that believed, and that I knew loved the Word of God, and I put before them that we must do something for the poor heathen." Elsewhere he wrote, " It is not long since there came to Herrmannsburg a poor disabled Candidat — disabled, for he dared no longer preach ; poor, for it had been his habit to live so that he had nothing over. He had no money to pay his way ; but a lady presented him with three gulden, wrapped in a quarter of a pound of tobacco, and with these he went on his journey. When he came here, he made known to the people that there were heathens, wi'etched and miserable. Then the people said. If that is true, we must help them; and a widow came and brought six shillings, and a labourer PASTOB HARMS OF HEBBMANNSBURG. 9 sixpence, and a child a silver penny." Suggestive hints like these were sure to act powerfully upon a man like Harms. The zeal for God which had been kindled in his parish was easily turned upon mis- sions ; as he went from house to house, the words he dropped fell like seed into ready ground ; what was so much in his thoughts worked its way out almost involuntarily in his sermons; and when he took courage and proposed to his neighbours that they would be their own missionaries, twelve stepped forward and said they were ready. At that time any one who spoke of missions was laughed at ; to be interested in them was considered the sign of a disordered intellect ; and the man who advocated them was deemed scarcely safe except in prison. It was as bold an act of faith as will be found in the history of missions, when Mr. Harms, in such cir- cumstances, brought forward his proposal. For he did not suggest an annual sermon, a collection, that they might help some existing society, or that they might support a missionary — proposals which, in this country, vfould not fill us with any surprise, yet above which a congiegation never soars ; but in the midst of general indifference and contempt for missions, he put it to a group of peasants and small lo FASTOR HARMS OF HERRMANN 8BUBG. farmers, witli no doubt much of the prejudice and ignorance of their class, to volunteer for missionary service, and to take the entire burden of supporting a separate mission. He seems to have felt that what was done at Antioch might be done again, and not to have distrusted that where the Spirit of God works, a right and lofty enthusiasm is always possible. " If not, it were surely the stupidest folly if I touched this work with so much as a finger." No doubt he went about it thoughtfully, and not by rash impulse ; for enthusiasm is not made up of even any number of sudden impulses ; and no doubt his thoughtfulness made him rest his appeal on the primitive ground of faith, and to condemn, with perhaps too sweeping words, the mere mission work which becomes a fashion in the Church, and to which people give because it is the custom. He had no patience with the principle by which, "having had a new coat for ourselves, we will bestow the clippings on the heathen." "As a believing Christian," he asserted, " you cannot help carrying on mission work with all earnestness and with all your heart, though you should have to do it alone." " Generous," " Good," " Manly," men are disposed to say : but he was satisfied that it was right. PASTOR HARMS OF HERRMANNSBURG. u House-room was not difficult to obtain, for one of the yeomen who had volunteered brought his farm with him as a gift to the mission. Aided by his brother, Harms began the suitable training of these men, and led them over a very suitable and extensive course of theology, taught, no doubt, in its practical aspects, and adapted to the position and habits of the students. Africa was fixed on for a mission field ; the students and all the parish fell heartily into the project; and the only remaining difficulty was the expense of transit. A sailor who had joined the mission-house suggested the building of a ship; it would be their own property, would perform all their journeys, and might earn as much by freight as would maintain it. Harms stepped boldly into this undertaking also, and commissioned a ship, the Candaee, to be built at Harburg ; and this being ready in due time, sailed in the end of 1853 with eight missionaries, two smiths, a tailor, a butcher, a dyer, and three labourers on board, and took them safely to Natal. They had intended to make their way to the Gallas, the most desperate tribe of Eastern Africa ; but as the Imaum at Mombaz had refused them passage through his land, they sought to pene- trate through Natal among the Kaffirs, and work 12 PASTOR BARMS OF HERRMANNSBURG. their way northwards, planting stations as they went. This entire mission project was of large outline. It embraced missionaries distinctively to teach, and colonists distinctively to labour ; yet the missionaries were not to shrink from work, nor the colonists from teaching. It was conceived that these colonies might be made partly self-supporting, that the sta- tions would thus be more stationary, that settlements would be formed, on which, if necessary, the outposts could fall back. It was the transference of an en- tire Christian community to a heathen people, to live among them as Christians, and with the one object of introducing Christianity. It was also a bold and large conception to push up these colonies through hostile tribes and over tracts unknown to Europeans, to link them in a long chain, and at every halt in the patient march to spread the knowledge of the Gospel. So this little peaceful army contem- plated fighting their way till they had conquered the land for Christ. It was grand enough work for a king- dom, tedious and difficult enough to task the energies of an entire Church ; but it was projected by a single man, and to be carried out by a single parish. The ship had not long sailed when the vacant places in the mission-house were filled. Fresh PASTOR HARMS OF HERRMANNSBURG. 13 volunteers came forward, other colonists were ready to share the privations of their brethren ; and as often as the Candace returned she was sent out again with fresh supplies of men. It was a great drain upon the parish ; but there is scarcely a corner of Germany from which there is not an emigration, and Herrmannsburg could as well spare its people to Africa as to America. Upwards of forty have sometimes left at once ; and forty-eight young mis- sionaries are always in training. For, as the need became greater, the zeal of the people kept pace with it, and five years ago a hundred offered them- selves in a body. The training has grown more systematic ; the students continue to be examined and tested by the supreme ecclesiastical tribunal, and depart with their authority and sanction ; and almost uniformly they have turned out well. It was in the comparative leisure of waiting for the first tidings of the ship that Mr. Harms planned another work. Touched, as some of the best of his country- men were about that time, by the position of dis- charged convicts, it struck him that to improve it would be a righteous mission at home. Suspected, and possibly tainted by imprisonment, they found an honest calling almost impossible, and their sym- 14 PASTOR HARMS OF HERRMANNSBURG. patties and habits had been perverted to crime. If they had some shelter till the possible good in them was strengthened, some time of probation that would stamp them again with an honest mark, and some kindly and firm friend to watch them, they might be restored to society. A neighbourhood so peaceful, orderly, and Christian, and so far away from the stir of life, seemed to Harms favourable for the experi- ment. A farm was bought large enough to employ the men in tillage, one of the parishioners took charge of it, and the Asylum has since kept its doors open to those who came, with various results, but a preponderating success. About the same time, also, it became necessary to start a Missionary Magazine. It was impossible to satisfy all who wished to hear of their friends in Africa, by letter. The interest rapidly spread out of the neighbour- hood, and, indeed, out of Hanover, and to meet the demands made upon his time and pen. Harms took refuge in printing. It was well also that the young missionaries should become familiar with type ; they might, if it proved necessary, print their own books, and set up a press among the heathen. A modest beginning was made at the mission-house with a monthly missionary paper ; hymn-books and cate- PASTOB HARMS OF HERBMANNSBUEG. 15 chisms ; reprints sufficiently accurate and orthodox to satisfy so thorough an antiquarian and sound a Lutheran as the pastor; sermons preached in the village church ; and other volumeS; followed ; and the press, never idle, brings in an annual profit of six hundred pounds. While Mr. Harms was under- taking these fresh labours, he took nothing from the old. His parish was as closely tended, his services were as numerous, his activity and minute self- sacrifice as remarkable : and while his influence was thus spreading at home, he was able after ten years to sum up such results as these abroad : — " In the year 1853 our first missionaries sailed from Ham- burg, and as they entered on their work in 1854, our mission in Africa is now ten years old. "We have there the following mission stations, Herrmanns- burg, Ehlanzeni, Etembeni, Miiden, New Hanover, Empangweni, Enhlangana, Sterkspruit, Emakabeleni, Emonjeni, Emlalazi, Endlangabo, Injesane, Isisin- gisingi, Entombe, Ehlomohlomo, Etaka, Emyati, Enhlonyana, Etombe, Ekombela, Linokena, Goyon, Litheyane. and two that are not yet completed. Besides the necessary dweUings and offices at these stations for the missionaries, colonists, and for some of the converted Kaffirs, there are six pretty i6 PASTOR HARMS OF SERRMANNSBURG churches, small and great, and the stations are sur- rounded by tilled fields and gardens. Herrmanns- burg has the look of an imposing village, and hun- dreds of cattle, almost a thousand sheep, and many horses and swine roam through the fields : poultry crowd the farm-yards, and smiths, carpenters, wheel- wghts, shoemakers, tailors and others, all have their workshops. Avenues of gum trees run through the streets, and beyond the town are little forests of peaches. In Herrmannsburg, Etembeni, Litheyane, Linokena, and Goyon, there are altogether one hundred and ninety baptised natives, of whom one hundred and thirty are Bechuanas, and sixty are Kaffirs; in New Hanover there are two baptised families, and in Ekombela the first baptised Zulu. At several stations, such as Empangweni, where all seemed dead, there is now life. The Bechuanas are increasing their attendance at school, so that there are more than a hundred scholars at Linokena, and even the old chief, Moilve, learns his letters, spec- tacles on nose. This hath God wrought, the same God who so often and so sharply smote us, but who hath not turned away his grace." These last words show that the mission was not exempt from trial. Those who went out first were PASTOR HARMS OF HEBIIMANNSBUEG, 17 roughly enough received ; sent from coast to coast, suspected in one place as democrats, in another as Jesuits, and obliged at last to make such shift as they could. The Candcice was sometimes in danger ; was at one time maliciously inserted in the Shipping-list as lost, and was not always fortunate in a captain. Rumours were spread of the most ridiculous sort : as that Harms had fled to America with the mission- chest, that he had fitted out the Candace as a pri- vateer, manned her with Malays, and was watch- ing vessels at the mouth of the Elbe. Living was found more expensive than had been supposed; and the way north to the Gallas was sometimes suddenly threatened or closed. There were deaths, and alas ! even mutual recriminations and dissensions, and some of the oldest missionaries and one or two of the colonists split off from the main body, and stations were seriously crippled and forsaken. Some of these were serious trials, and painful enough to bear ; but it all came right in the end ; the seces- sionists returned; and last year there were fresh openings and encouragements. The missionaries were already located with Sechele and the Be- chuanas, with Umpanda and the Zulu Kaffirs, and had hopes of pressing on through Mosele-Katse's 1 8 PASTOE HABMS OF HEBRMANNSBUEG. people. They have now a firm hold on another tribe, the Mamagale, who were mixed up with the Bechuanas, and shared the confusion of the present Boer war. One of them had been taken prisoner by the English; and carried away to Kaffraria. When there he became a Christian, and returned to his people to tell them of Christ. He begged books on every side, and taught them to read in Dutch and in the Bechuana tongue, so that when they clustered round the Herrmannsburg missionary, and he settled among them, there were at once fifty candidates for baptism. A new station has been opened there, called Bethany — a village, laid out with six streets and a church and school — and already seventy-eight persons, including two of the four chiefs, have been baptised. " The women do much for the spread of God's kingdom, even those that are not baptised. In the largest village there is a woman, yet unbap- tised, who every evening makes a great fire in the open space, collects the young people about her, and teaches them often till midnight." Altogether, over one hundred and twenty have been baptised by the missionaries last year alone, and not after super- ficial, but thorough and most painstaking training. At home the asylum for prisoners continues to give PASTOR HARMS OF HERRMANNSBURG. 19 satisfaction ; some of the former imiiates have died, it is believed, in faith ; from others in England and elsewhere grateful letters have been received and good accounts; and as an institution the farm is almost self-supporting. So strong does the mis- sionary life continue, that it has overflowed its first limits, and six missionary clergymen have been sent to America, one to Australia, and one to India. The last mission was established through a curious coincidence. Mr. Nagel, of Hamburg, who has been banker, shipper, and factotum to Harms, had a brother-in-law in the Telugu Mission. This mission was not supported, and the missionary, a loyal Lutheran, begged for help from Herrmannsburg. Mylius had been formerly an Indian missionaiy, but, returning w^ith shattered health, he had been for thirteen years in the Frederiken-Stift, in Hanover. When the matron of this Stift died, the old love for India grew warm in his heart ; and he wrote at this time to Harms, " Send me to the heathen, to Africa, anywhere you will, only send me to the heathen ; " there was also over £300 in the mission treasury. It appeared impossible to mistake the drift of these cir- cumstances, and Mylius is now in Telugu, expecting fresh helpers from the inexhaustible little parish. c 2 20 PASTOB EABMS OF HEBRMANNSBUBG. During these certainly not inexpensive labours, Harms never seems to have wanted money. His theory was pecuhar. He made no appeal in anjr pubKc way save to his own church ; his people were poor ; he was not in favour with the wealthy ; he made no literal acknowledgment of money forwarded. He was a reticent, self-contained man, not given to babbhng out his own counsel, and he seldom talked of a plan until he was prepared to execute it. Yet he wrote of help mysteriously sent from places with which he had no communication, and at the times when he needed it. " God be thanked," he says, " that I have no need to beg from men. Through Jesus Christ, my great High-Priest, I go joyfully to the throne of grace, and I pray with assured confi- dence that I shall receive grace when I have need of it. Therefore I say to Him, ' Dear Jesus, thou wiliest that this mission be carried on : but see, here is one want, and there is another.' Verily, though you should require a thousand crowns or more, you would not apply there in vain." His way of keeping accounts was in unison. " In the whole course of the year I never make a comparison between income and expenditure. What is given I take, and what is to be spent I spend. In this way I spare myself PASTOR HARMS OF HERRMANNSBURG. 21 all anxiety about how far tlie money will reach ; and on the day before the annual festival I reckon up." As a theory this is subject to grave objections, and requires unusual conditions ; but in Mr. Harms' case it worked well. It requires a larger faith, a deeper mutual confidence, a more genuine simplicity and wisdom, than are readily found ; but gTanted that under certain circumstances it is possible, and there is no doubt of its superior ease — above all, of the advantage it gives of a more habitual personal de- pendence upon God, His parish supported him with an unsurpassed devotion and self-sacrifice. Some of his parishioners have handed him £50 and £100 at once ; some who had no money have presented him with property ; and all have laid their gifts down in the open and generous spirit of the early Church ; they gave, indeed, what they had, and with a patient and cheerful stinting of themselves that, were it general, would revolutionise our missions. " A short time ago," he once wrote, " I had to pay a merchant on behalf of the missions 550 thaler, and when the day drew near I had only 400. Then I prayed to the Lord Jesus that He would provide me with the deficiency. On the day before, three letters were brought : one from Schwerin with twenty, one from 22 PASTOR HABM8 OF HEBBMANNSBUBG. Buckeburg with twenty-five, and one from Berlin with one hundred crowns. The donors were anony- mous. On the evening of the same day a labourer brought me ten thaler, so that I have not only enough, but five over." " Last year," he said in 1858, " I needed 15,000 thaler, and the Lord gave me that and sixty over ; this year I needed double, and the Lord has given me double and 140 over." He has never withdrawn from his work for want of means ; as it has expanded he has always found his means expand. And this will be best seen from the accompanying table : — Expendi- ture. Income. Profit of the Printing Press, included in Income. 1854 Thaler. 14,950* 9,642 14,878 14,781 30,993 30,432 28,136 36,503 42,838 37,135 38,709 37,870 Thaler. 15,000 9,722 14,978 14,796 31,133 33,065 31,582 39,476 40,012t 40,321 40,904 . 40, 618 J Thaler. 2,600 3,785 9,707 3,094 4,765 4,000 4,114 1855 1856 1857 ... 1858 ... 1859 I860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 336,867 351,607 32,065 £50,530 £52,741 £4,811 * Including the "building of the ship. + A deficit covered by a balance in hand. X For 10 months only. And this exclu.sive of two donations, PASTOR BARMS OF HERRMANNSBVRG. 23 Besides money, an extraordinary variety of other gifts was poured into tlie treasury. Clothing, farm produce, school-books, and endless et ceteras accumu- lated for the annual meeting each year * If there was building to be done, tradesmen gave their time and farmers their horses. Nothing apparently that could be given was withheld. It is surprising to read of gifts so various and con- fusing in their prodigality ; but it is at least as sur- prising that the mission has been maintained for so little. At the two mission-houses and farms there are about 70 people, 48 of them students ; at the Kefuge one of 2000 thaler, since paid ; and a legacy of 2500, left by a yeoman who had wished to sell his farm and enter the mission- house ; but, hindered in that, had bequeathed this sum, payable at the end of last year. * Here, for example, is the curious collection for last year : — " Shirts, 720 ; shifts, 132 ; children's shirts, 65 ; frocks, 170 ; bed- ticks, 50 ; pillow-ticks, 40 ; sheets, 50 ; pieces of linen, 42 ;• pieces of towelling, 15 ; linens, 110 ; towels, 37 ; pocket-handlcerchiefs, 110 ; neckcloths, 220 ; aprons, 48 ; coats, 24 ; woman's dress, 1 ; woollen stockings, 800 pair ; women's and children's caps, Q5 (in- cluding 3 golden) ; a gixat-coat, some waistcoats, under- jackets, twine, thread, woollen yarn, sewing needlco, knitting needles, steel pens, copy-books, books, cups, plates, thimbles, toys, children's stuff, many sacks of wheat, buckwheat, linseed, and peas ; calves, geese, butter, fresh and dried fruit, jeef, cabbage, turnips of vari- ous sorts, wheaten meal, eggs, saiy ages, bacon, lard, ham, honey, hay, straw, and fire-wood. / 24 PASTOR HABMS OF HEBBMANNSBUEG. farm for the j)risoners about 20 ; about 160 settlers have been sent out to Africa, and those of them who are missionaries are of course entirely dependent on Herrmannsburg ; there are about thirty stations — New Herrmannsburg, the oldest, having a population of 109 ; and these missionaries have been equipped and transported, the ship built and maintained, churches and dwelling-houses erected ; upwards of 50,000 acres taken in Africa, and a farm purchased at home ; a printing-press set up, and commodious biiildings finished for the missionaries in training. To obtain thes6 results for the money that was spent shows very clearly not only a mse administration, but the advantage of a parochial mission. The official exj)enditure was reduced to the minimum, and on Mr. Harms' theory there was no expense in collecting funds. Deputations and travelling secre- taries were unknown. The missionaries were sent out loaded with affectionate gifts, more like sons leaving home for a new country than so many clergy- men at given salaries and fixed outfits ; and they were ready and urged to live simply, busily, and roughly, to beware of being fine ladies and gentle- men, and to remember that they had been plain people of the Heath. It would be too much to PASTOB HAEMS OF HEBBMANNSBURG. 25 expect many parishes like that in Hanover ; yet the parochial working of our missions might be more developed. It would not only be an economy, but a gain to the simplicity and the spirit of the work. It would require, indeed, men with something of Mr. Harms' temper, his devotion, energy, and self- sacrifice. Of men exactly like him the Church has porduced few. He was charged with the entire collection and distribution of the money ; he maintained a constant correspondence with all the stations; he superin- tended much of the education of the missionary students ; controlled and planned for the Asylum ; edited and wrote most of his Missionary Magazine ; and watched the printing-press. Sometimes for a year together he would thus be chained to his desk twelve hours a day. It was already more than one man's labour ; he was secretary, treasurer, principal, committee, and something over. Yet this was merely an addition to the work of pastor that he undertook at his ordination and carried out with unflinching fidelity and pains. His sermons were carefully studied and written in a clear hand, though fifteen to sixteen pages of large octavo in print did not occupy half that space — even unabbreviated — 26 PASTOR HABMS OF HERBMANN8BURG. in manuscript. They had a large circulation, for of the two years' that were published the press threw off more than 80,000 copies ; and they bear every mark of care, and of accurate, painstaking, faithful teaching. And besides, he found leisure for much reading and for antiquarian pursuits of a nature proverbially tedious. He had never married, he said he was too busy ; and it is doubtful if one so energetic and self-consuming would not have felt home ties a burthen ; if he would have been satis- fied with a wife less actively employed. He had nothing to fall back upon but work ; and yet there is a joyous ringing sound in his words, a hearty laughter, a free and quiet humour that almost imply leisure and rest. And they are the more noticeable because his health was indifferent. From the hour of his conversion he scarcely had a day without pain. He was smitten by protracted and most painful sicknesses, so that those who knew him would wonder how it was that a man should suffer so much. The thin, sunken, wasted cheeks, the deep eyes, the firm calm will about the mouth on which there often broke the sweetest smile, the pained look that wore away under the constant enthusiasm, were familiar to all the parish, and they PASTOR HARMS OF HEBBMANNSBUBG. 27 carried a gentle message to every sufferer. No con- stitution could hold out at such a rate of living, and his friends began to fear that each public appearance would be the last. The tall figure and elastic step were not met so often on the Heath. Then the mission meeting came round in June, and he was wheeled to the church in a chair. He could not climb the pulpit, but preached from the communion table. Preaching there as late as the 5th of Novem- ber, he sighed, "O Lord Jesus, if I can no longer preach, take me from the earth. Of what use can I be, if I can no longer speak of Thee . to my brethren?" Soon after, he accompanied a funeral. The next was his own. His death was the first rest he had taken, "dead-tired and dead-faint, an old man of fifty-seven years, but a young man in the fire of his spirit. The last hours of his life were full of unspeakable pains, but his mouth overflowed with prayers. His last prayer was. Help me, God, ahuays; make me ready for everlasting joy and felicity. Come, Lord Jesus. I can hear it no more. Neither his consciousness nor his faith was disturbed for an instant, and as he slept away at last, his wish was fulfilled, Lord, in ;pains of death, grant me a quiet countenance. Help me, that when 28 PASTOR BARMS OF HERRMANNSBURG. my heart breaks it may break softly, and my life go out like a light, without other woe, quenched in the innocent blood that Thou didst shed for me." "We cannot believe/' said his friends, "that our Harms is dead." Herrmannsburg had jQlled up every year, for two long summer days of mission festival. The people poured by thousands into the streets of the quiet village, a peasant's festival, Harms said ; " distinguished and high people did not come, towns- people only a few. There were even few pastors ; elsewhere hundreds go ; but there will be tAventy, or at most thirty, with us." They heard him preach and read his report; they heard the head of the mission-house with his statistics; they sang, and listened to the choir of forty voices, as they lifted up their glorious chorales to accompanying harmony of trumpets blo^n by the peasant-students ; they joined in their fervent liturgy ; and after service in and out of church, that lasted from morning till night, the kindly, hospitable village received its guests, and found mysterious room for them all. By daybreak the next morning, the murmur of family worship broke through the street ; and in the early sun all the villagers and their guests poured out along some quiet road cleft through the purple heather; and PASTOR HARMS OF HEREMANNSBUBG. 29 from every farm and by-path a rivulet of people flowed into the stream. Thus they went on, singing their hymns by the way, till in some secluded vale they halted, and till near sunset the time was spent in hearing missionary addresses, varied with psalms and prayers. On these days Harms was especially the moving spirit ; every one looked for him — every one felt his presence. On the l7th of November, 1865, a greater crowd than ever filled the streets : but no joy streamed from their faces ; people moved and met in silence ; tears stood in almost every eye. "The darling of the Christian people, the father of his congregation and the mission, the great teacher of the Church was no more. He lay in a little room of the voiceless vicarage ; on his face the orave earnestness of death and the peace of God Neither wife nor children wept about his bier, but his spiritual children took their place. The coffin was borne away covered with flowers and crowns, and burning lights upon it. Then rose the deep psalm, more wept than sung— ' All men that live must also die.* It was one of his favourites, that he had sung hun- dreds of times as he followed his own children to the 30 PASTOR HABMS OF HERBMANNSBURG. grave My brother once said, ' We pastor's children have no home on earth. When the father dies, we must leave the house where we were born. But we have another home in our dear church ! ' So the body lay in this home, and round it stood the thirty preachers, and his mission students, and in and about the church many thousands. Beloved Niemann was present to represent the High Court of the Consistory, and by charge of the royaJ family to lay upon the coffin five palms and five wreaths from the King and Queen, the Crown Prince, and the Princesses. And then, with solemn words and broken prayers and solemn psalms they buried him. * A dear heart is stilled, a precious life is over.' " " What was it,'* said Niemann, " that made his lips eloquent, that gave his teaching a living sin- cerity, his words a mighty force, his often eager voice ever the sweetest tone ? What was it that flamed in his rebukes, that quickened his entreaties, that breathed in his simple prayers and drew the soul up with him to God ? What else than that to him to live ivas Christ ? What was it that made his heart the heart of his people, that helped him to share all the sorrow and want and sin of the parish and of every one in it with warm sympathy, that led him PASTOR HARMS OF HERRMANNSBURG. 31 after the erring, and made him the most welcome visitor to the sick and afflicted, that helped him to receive with gentle kindness the weak and fallen that made him seek out the publicans and sinners, that made the doubting and despised cling to him, and the penitent and anxious open their hearts, and gave him to see many a sinner turned from the error of his ways, and many a soul saved from death ? What else than that to him to live was Christ f What was it that made him work with such self- denial and sacrifice for the kingdom of God, that made him find in it his highest joy, his jDeace, his all, that helped him to carry it on year by year, day by day, and even hour by hour, without the need of rest, that kept him from forgetting the near in the far, and the far. in the near, reaching out to Chris- tians and heathen the same helpful hand, that enabled him to kindle in many a heart the like spirit of sacrifice for the mission work, so that the people builded mission houses with their own hands, and he builded up this parish of Herrmannsburg into an evangelical mission parish ? What else than that to him to live was Christ ? What was it that kept him undaunted by any difficulty, made him fear no want, held him unmoved by mockery, con- 32 PASTOR HABMS OF HEBRMANNSBURG. tradiction, contempt, and laughter of the world, made him cleave bravely to his plan through what- ever struggle with the powers of darkness, that held together the perishable tabernacle so that he faith- fully carried out his manifold work through many trials, and unspeakable afflictions, and bodily pains, and never left it till his last breath, and when he lay prostrate would rise again, and run and not be weary, and walk and not faint ? It was this, that to him to live ivus Christ." HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. fOME years ago I went mih a friend to the Mission House at Barmen. It was a Sunday afternoon in winter, and under tlie clear stars groups of peasants and artisans came trooping into the large saal. They filled every corner save that reserved for the young missionaries ; and presently one of the old hymns of the German Church was lifted up by a body of strong voices, too strong almost for the room. There was to be what is called a Missionsstunde, or an hour with the missionary, especially intended for the pupils of the House, but at which the good people of the Wupperthal took special care to be present. The point of departure was Greenland, and the speaker had soon riveted the attention of the meeting by a simple lively sketch 34 HANS EGEBWS MISSION. of the early fortunes of tlie Mission. It struck us both at the time so much that I venture to repro- duce Herr Wildenhahn's story, with but little abbreviation. The Lifoden Islands lie off the thinnest part of Norway, and separated from the mainland by the narrowest of straits. The long deep fiords pierce them in all directions, and image in their calm mirrors the summer sunshine, and the stars, and the flashing of the great Northern Lights. They are not thickly peopled ; but the region, with its vast cliffs rising precipitously from the dark waters, and its fir woods moaning plaintive music to the winds, looks more wild and inhospitable than it is. Patches of tilled land dot the slopes of the hills, the hunts- man's horn rings merrily in the forest, every rocky nook by the shore has its fishing-boat, and every stream the music of its little mill. Villages, too, quaintly roofed, lie in sunny sheltered spaces, and the sleigh bells tinkle merrily through the long evenings, and guests from neighbouring farms assemble in cheerful homes round the great log- fires. As the spur of a ridge of rocky mountains in these islands descends into the West Fiord, HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. 35 it clasps the quiet northern hamlet of Vaagen, nestled most of the year among its snows, and inhabited by quiet, sturdy Norwegian peasants and farmers. A hundred and fifty years ago, the village pastor was a Dane by birth, and had been settled in his charge at twenty-one. He was popular with the people, and happily married ; and lived among the simple Northern folk the quiet life of a true-hearted man of God. With little incident, save funeral and baptism, the time rolled away, until the clergyman's wife brought him a fourth child, whom his father named Paul. " My son," he said, " thou shalt be called Paul in honour of the Apostle of the Gentiles." " But why," said his wife, " do you look so sad ? " "I can scarcely tell," he answered, slowly; then added in a brighter tone, " You must not vex your- self, dear wife ; for as soon as I know the will of the Lord, you shall know it. We must be still and wait." For all this the shadow never passed off the clergyman's face. Even the villagers began to notice it, and would say, What can be troubling our minister? His wife grew uneasy. At last, one D 2 36 SANS EGEDE'S MISSION. Sunday, as they sat together after the service in the church : " You must not think it is mere curiosity or impatience/' she said, " but I cannot bear to see you suffer this sorrow alone. Do tell me what it is. You said we were to wait on the mil of the Lord ; has He shown you His will ? " ''I will tell you everything," he replied. "The Lord has greatly blessed us in our home and in my ministry ; and I might be the happiest man in all the kingdom, if my heart were not full of the poor heathen, who walk in darkness, and know not of the grace of God in Christ. It makes me sad to think of them ; and night and day I hear a voice, saying : ' Thou art rich ; wilt thou give nothing to thy poor brethren ? ' " " What poor brethren do you mean ? " " If you were to take ship here and sail five hundred miles out into the west, you would touch an island called Iceland ; and sailing farther into the west from that, you would reach a mighty region called Greenland, a land girt about with ice, yet, as the skip23ers tell, so rich in meadows and flowers that they have called it the green land. Thousands of poor heathen live there, and thither would I go to preach the Gospel." HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. 37 '* God forbid ! " Elizabeth cried, with a great start. " A thousand miles away ! How have you ever come to think of it ? " " It was the Lord's doing. Three years ago an ancient chronicle fell into my hands, and there I read that about the year 982 Greenland was dis- covered by our countrymen of Norway. The Gospel was preached in it ; and the old chroniclers say that the Lord converted many dear souls. Ships sailed thither and thence for four hundred years ; till, about the middle of the fifteenth century, the ice waxed so exceeding great that no one could enter or depart ; and in about the same time the black pest broke out over Europe, and communication with Greenland was broken off, and so has continued for nigh three hundred years. And still the word says in my soul, What about the poor Greenlanders ? Has the last spark of light perhaps been quenched by the darkness ? " " And what can you do ? " " If I were the only Christian that felt this, and if the Lord had thus chosen me out to preach the Gospel to the Greenlanders, could I refuse to go, without sin ? " "A thousand miles!" Elizabeth cried, with new 38 HANS EGEDE'8 MISSION, terror, "into a land girt about with ice, and to which no one can come. Will you leave your beloved congregation ? Do you forget your wife and children ? Could we follow you ? " ^' If the Lord will that cannot hinder. The Lord will feed my sheep, and you and the children will come with me." " No, no," cried his wife through her tears. " The bare thought of it, that the poor children and I should travel a thousand miles over the wide waste sea, among the many shipwrecks, into a land that is set round with icebergs — dear husband, is it not tempting God ? What can you do that you may not do here 1 Are you not serving the same Lord that you would serve in Greenland ? Has He not called you to this work ? And can you lay down an office w^hich you have from Himself? " " If the Lord calls me to another office, shall I not do w^hat becometh His servant ? " "You cannot thus stay my fears. You are the pastor of this congregation ; and you know I have never complained, though you should not see us from morning till evening. I know that your wdfe and children have no claims on you till your congre- gation is served. But are we not a part of your HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. 39 congregation ? Are you not also our shepherd ? and how can you think of others without first caring for your own ? If you were alone in the world it would be something different ; but you are husband and father. Dearest husband, I beg of you, think no more about leaving us." He shook his head, and smiled sadly, as he replied to this appeal : " Christ saith : Whoso loveth father or mother, or wife or child more than me is not ivorthy of me" "Nor is it for our sakes alone," she continued, with increasing energy, and heedless of his quota- tion. '' You have poor kinsfolk here, dependent on your help. They have no one but you. If you go a thousand miles, so goes their succour. There is your poor sick sister, that lives with us. If you go to Greenland, must Dorothy go to the poorhouse? You will save heathens and bring sorrow upon Christians." It was denunciation rather than declamation ; and the man sat still in anguish before he answered : " You rend my heart in twain, Elizabeth. I cannot resist your pleading, but for all that I have no rest. Believe me, the Lord will have me do something. I am certain of that." 40 HANS EGEDE'8 MISSION. "Well, tliat may be," rejDlied his wife, conscious and liappy that for the present her point was gained and the danger averted. "You think of following the will of the Lord ; but are you certain that His will means Greenland ? If you are to preach to the heathen, may it not be another land ? My advice would be, to wait on the Lord in patience, and if it be His will He will make it plain. Will you wait, Hans?" "Dear wife, you have not said that of yourself, but the Lord has spoken by you. Yes ; I will wait." And he murmured to himself, " Wccit on the Lord and He will strengthen thine heart,'' and smiled, like a man free from heavy cares. Four years passed away in quiet parish work. Greenland seemed hidden and forgotten behind its icebergs ; and though it lay back in the heart of both husband and wife, it never came up in conver- sation. The country-folk saw the cloud vanish from their minister's face, and the little Paul found nothing but smiles and happy caresses. One morning Hans entered the room with a light step. " Should we not give account of our stewardshij) HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. 41 in God's kingxlom, dear wife, and prove the signs, whether they be of God ? " " What ! " said Elizabeth, sick with the old terror, " has He showed any ? " "Many and wonderfid," replied her husband, as he laid three letters on the table. " The first is from Drontheim, through our worthy Bishop Krog. The good man writes to me that I must go to Green- land; he is full of joy and hope, promises all pos- sible support, and makes my going almost a matter of conscience. Well, what say you to the first sign?" " I would hear the second." " That is from Bergen, from Bishop Randulf. He writes likewise that I must go, and he writes almost in the very words of Bishop Krog. Is it not won- derful?" "And the third sign?" " The most wonderful of all. It comes both from Denmark, my old fatherland, and from Norway, my adopted land. The richest of our merchants have undertaken to reopen the trade with Greenland. And the dear, good men promise one of their ships for me and my family. They will provide us with the necessaries of life, and leave some of their 42 HANS EGEDE'S MISSION, people behind as a trading colony, so that we will not be alone. Why are you so silent, dear wife ? Is it not wonderful and gracious, and the very hand of Gfydl" Elizabeth had sat still, overwhelmed with grief. Her heart was never with Greenland; and this conversation had brought up the old alarms of years before. The happy life about her threatened to dissolve before this strange fancy of her husband; and each sign as it came was like the clay thrown in upon the bared coffin. Her eyes filled with sudden tears, and her voice trembled as she snatched up little Paul and pressed him to her bosom, and said, "Dearest husband, with my soul I say to you as Ruth to Naomi, Whither thou goest, I will go ; and where thow lodgest I ^uill lodge; thy people shall he my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest will I die, and there will I he hurled : the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought hut death ]part thee and me. But, dear Hans, you will forgive me, if I wish to know more fully of these signs, how they came about. How did it come that the Bishop of Drontheim knew you would go to Green- land?" The minister hesitated a moment, and then said, KANS EGEDE'S MISSION. 43 half-asliamed, " Well, I wrote him, laying tlie matter before him, and asking his advice." "And how did the Bishop of Bergen come to write to you ? " "Well/' said the minister, hesitating more than before, " I wrote also to him." "And how did the Danish and Norwegian mer- chants come to think of reopening the trade with Greenland?" "Well, I must confess I wrote to them all, and stirred them up.' Elizabeth's face was slowly brightening as her husband's slowly lengthened during this confessional. With a quiet smile she continued, "And is that what you mean by waiting on the Lord in iDatience ? Is there anything wonderful in the good bishops writing when you pressed them? If you tell a merchant of a trading venture, is it anything wonderful he should embark in it ? " " Well, and what would you say ? " " That I cannot be sure that all this is the won- derful working of God. You have taught me your- self to call that wonderful which happens against our expectation, and without the ordinary use of means ; but is not all this your own work ? The 4 44 HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. bishops and the merchants have only followed your suggestions ; the one knows that it is not everybody that will go to Greenland to preach the Gospel, and the others know that a Christian minister settled in Greenland would make an excellent interpreter, and encourage the traders that settle m the colony. What is there wonderful in their consent ? " The minister was troubled. "It makes me sad, dear "wife," he replied, after a moment, " to find you so zealous against my joy in God and my love to the poor heathen. Is it not wonderful that the Lord should keep this thought of Greenland in my heart ? If the bishojos approve of my going, I take it as a sign of God's good pleasure. It is not so easy to establish a mission in that land of ice, and they must have given it grave consideration before they promised help ; nor is there anything there to tempt the hazard of our merchants, or promise them repay- ment of their large outlay. Wife," he continued, with rising w^armth, "those that will not see the wonders of God, see them not : but those whose eyes are open, see them everywhere, and bow before the mighty God wdiose ways are wonderful.'' Ehzabeth felt ashamed that she had not responded to her husband's enthusiasm. She sat still, reflect- HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. 45 ing how much nobler he was than she, and that though the signs might not be infallible, yet it was her selfishness and not her faith that opposed them. She might even have yielded, but that an unex- pected auxiliary made his appearance. For the door opened to admit neighbour Lorentzen at the head of a deputation, " Minister/' he began, plunging right into his subject after the manner of deputations, "the whole parish is in ginef that you would think of leaving us. The news has spread from house to house. What have we done that you should forsake US'? Are we less worthy of you than the Green- landers ? For the sake of the souls of our people, minister, leave us not." " You, too ! Have you leagued with my wife against me, or rather against the Lord in Heaven ? " " God forbid ! It is our anxiety for the souls of our people. "Why should the parish be starved because you will go to Greenland ? " " My dear friend, if I go you will soon find another preacher ; but if I do not go, who will go to Greenland ? And I say that not of pride, but because the Lord has so thrust the thought into my heart and made me feel that Greenland is my working place." 46 HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. " We are simple folk/' said Lorentzen, " and what we know of the will of God we have learned from you. But you used to prove to us, both out of Scripture and the History of the Church, that often the Lord only tries us as He tried the obedience of Abraham ; and though He asked the sacrifice, yet He was content with the willing spirit. Might it not be so with you ? " "It might be. But you know that in place of his son God provided Abraham with another sacri- fice. If the will of God had been so revealed to me, I would be still." Answered here, Lorentzen had nothing left but to return to his direct appeal. " Must the prayers and lamentations of your people for their minister and father and friend count for nothing ? Does God not provide a sign in the thousands of tears that are already shed at the bare thought of your departure ? " " And are not we something ? " said Elizabeth, who could no longer contain herself ; " your poor children, and your wife, who would die if she went with you into the ice land — and your Paul, who would not survive the long sea — and your kinsfolk, who must perish without you — are these not offerings provided HANS EGEDWS MISSION, 47 by God? Has not God given you to me, dearest husband ? Has He not given us our children ? Have you not received your people from his hand, and charge to feed them as a faithful shepherd? What drives you away? No need, no sorrow, no ingratitude, no opposition, no enemy : they all love you. Is not the bond that binds you to us of God's own making ? " The minister was deeply moved. He turned aside and repeated the words of Paul, What Tnean ye, to weep, and to break mine heart ? " Husband," cried the wife, " you must stay with us." " Minister," cried the men, with one voice, '' you must stay with us. Wait the Lord's will in patience." The minister started. " That is marvellous," he cried. '' With the same words of Scripture that once overcame me, you take me captive again. Be it so. Once more I will draw back. This time I will take your prayers as the sacrifice the Lord has provided. But mark me well. If the Lord calls a third time, I will go." " The will of the Lord be done," said the men reverently, with bowed heads. " The will of the 48 EAN8 EGEDE'S MISSION. Lord be clone," Elizabeth murmured, as slie pressed Paul fondly to her bosom. It was not more than a year after this that as the minister sat in his study absorbed in thought, his wife entered unobserved. Starting from his reverie; and surprised that she should be there at so unusual an hour, he fancied that some of his children must be sick. It was not that, "but I came," she said, "because I have been restless for weeks past." " Are you unwell ? " " Not in body ; but I must be in mind." " And you have never told me ! Well, we must put it to rights. What is it ? " " It has many sources ;■ and yet I am almost ashamed to mention them, lest you should reproach me." Then suddenly changing the subject, she added, "It is long since you spoke to me about Greenland. What do you think of it now ? " " I wait patiently on the Lord." "Really patiently? Have you done nothing to confirm the Lord's will ? " " I have. I have prayed often." " Does that mean you have jDrayed that tlie Lord would fulfil your wish ? " HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. 49 '' It does most certainly. And if you reproach me that that is not patience but impatience, I will not gainsay you. Yet I can get no rest. Day and night the Lord puts this word to me : Whoso loveth father or TYiother, or wife or child, iinore than me is not ivorthy of me!' " Has the Lord given you no signs ? " " None ; save that the old signs abide as a heavy burden on my soul. But you, wife," he continued, with a start of joy gleaming in his eyes, "have you signs 'i This is the first time that you have spoken of Greenland of yourself ; is this, perhaps, a sign ? Tell me, dearest wife, has the Lord revealed His will to you?" " No," she answered, casting down her eyes. " I have said already that you will laugh at me if I tell you the cause of my troubles. There are many unfriendly people in this place." '■' Has any one done you hurt ? " " It is true. You would think they had conspired together how to make my life miserable. There is our maidj who was so willing and kindly at first, and for weeks past she has vexed me by her idleness and saucy speeches. Mrs. Thomsen's garden is divided from ours, you know, by a low hedge, and it may be 5o HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. that once or twice the children have made their way in through the gaps, as children will. But Mrs. Thomson has gone about saying that the minister's children dirtied the washing and tore the flowers, and that the worst of them was young Paul. I am quite sure* it was the neighbours' children did it. For three weeks I have kept the children out of our garden, and yet no later than yesterday Mrs. Thomson declared that Paul had carried off a whole armful of flowers. Then, as you know, I give what I can to the poor. Well, a week or two ago, old Dieck came to me and begged for a shirt, and the same day old Holm came and begged for a coat for his little boy. And, because I could give neither the one nor the other, unless I had taken the coat off Paul, or one of your own four shirts, the two men have cried me up round the town as a gi'eedy and hard-hearted woman, and said that the last minister's wife was far kinder. Yet you know that I give more than our circum- stances perhaps justify. I thought you would laugh at me ; but does not this lying and ingratitude vex you ? And this is not all. There is the Dorcas : and for a long time past Mrs. Wilmsen makes a point of opposing every proposition of mine, and, being richer than we are, she carries everything against me, and HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. 51 sets the ladies against nie by unneigliboiTiiy ways ; so that I am made like a stranger and a sinner among them. Often I have thought I would with- draw, but I was afraid of that wicked Leumund, who would say I did it because I did not care for the poor. Don't you feel for me? Before, I was so happy here ; and now I feel as if I had no home." When the good woman checked herself, it was because she expected some comforting words from her husband ; but when he only smiled she gTew vexed, " Hans, have you no comfort for me ? Have I really done wrong in everything ? " ''No, no, dear wife. I neither accuse you, nor excuse you. Forgive me if I think not of what you relate so much as of its consequences. Tell me all that is in your heart, for I know, my own Lischen, there is a hidden thought. Tell me now; what would you like to do ? " Elizabeth flushed, and struggled with herself for a moment, but said frankly, " My hopes, and joy, and peace here in Vaagen are fled. There must be some other place where it will be better than here." " And where may that place be ? " Elizabeth was silent. " Suppose it was Greenland ? I see you shrink. 52 HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. But what if these little sorrows are a sign from God ? What if He has thus begun to loosen those bands that bind you to this little spot of earth ? Elizabeth, the ways of the Lord are wonderful. We are often so childish that the Lord must treat us like children. But for that old calling to Greenland, I would say to you : ' Do not allow these little annoyances to hinder your duty. These are the thorns that spring up about all roses.' Now, it is totally different. You know we have been waiting for signs. The Lord has spoken to me clearly enough. I know that I musi: go to Greenland. May not these trials be His signs to you ? I do not press," he continued, " for an im- mediate answer. Bear this burden before the Lord in prayer, and to-morrow, or the day after, or the third day, tell me what He hath answered." " I will," said his wife, softly, as she withdrew in deep thought from the room. The next day she entered his room with a bright, decided face. "The Lord has decided," she cried. " Thank the Lord with me, for He has had mercy on the folly of His handmaid. I passed half the night in prayer, and I was heard. The Lord will have it. I go with you to Greenland ; this very day, if need be. When I asked little Paul, this morning, as the HANS EGEDE'S HUSSION. 53 youngest of our children, if we should go to the heathen in Greenland? 'Yes/ he said, 'and I will tell them about Christ, and teach them to say Our Father.'' " And, much moved, she threw herself into her husband's open arms. " The Lord be praised ! " he cried. " For six years have I longed for this hour. Now it has come, and all my troubles are forgotten. The Lord bless thee, dearest wife ! " " And will you forgive me all my selfishness and stubbornness ? I am not worthy to take share in your work of love. I have been guilty of resisting the will of the Lord." " Make yourself easy on that point, wife. Do you not remember the words of the Lord to the two sons ? To the first He said, ' Go, work to-day in my vineyard ; ' he answered and said, ' I will not ; ' but afterwards he repented and went. And He came to the second, and said likewise, and he answered and said, ' I go, sir,' and went not. Did not the first do the will of his Father ? And are you not like the first? May the first thanksgiving of a poor saved soul in Greenland be the seal to you and me of the wisdom and gTace of our Lord ! " 54 SANS EGEDWS MISSION, On the same day the minister wrote to the two bishops of Drontheim and Bergen that all difficulties on his side were at an end, and that every day he spent now in Norway was a burden to him. Three years of those days were permitted to try his faith. The bishops found more difficulties than they had expected : the merchants went slowly to work. His faith sometimes wavered, once it almost sank. " Wife," he said, one day, " you know that I have never troubled myself about temporal goods, or food and raiment : I confess I may have thought of them too little. I never doubted that we should find our daily bread in Greenland; and I knew that we should lose all our little comforts and have to work with our own hands. But there are six of us. Does it not seem almost tempting God to go without any care for food and raiment and shelter into that inhospitable land ? The merchants hesitate to make any promises, and the bishops have not yet suc- ceeded in obtaining from the king even the smallest annual support. If, simply to go to Greenland, I lay down my office, I lose all right to a pension; nor can I expect that my parish will support two ministers, one in Greenland and one at home. I am not afraid about myself, but about you and the chil- HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. 55 dren. If I bring you to hunger and nakedness^ will I not be guilty ? " " Hans, is that really what you think ? " " Why, would you blame me if I remembered that I am both husband and father ? Have not you and our children claim upon me ? " " We have the claims which love gives and takes and hallows. But, dear husband, although I long- resisted the truth, yet I always knew that the wife and children of a Christian pastor are like the dogs of the Canaanitish woman in the Gospel — we live on the crumbs which fall from the table on w^hich you feed your people. First your office, then your house." " But is not my house a part of my people ? " " Certainly ; and as for our souls' nourishment, we sit at the table where you feed souls with the word of God. But the crumbs are what remain over from your own time and strength and care. I know, Hans, you only want to try me if I really mean to go with you to Greenland. But as the Lord liveth, I go with you and with the children ; and if you knew what joy fills my heart at the thought of saving these poor heathen, you could not doubt." He was deeply moved. 56 HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. " Wife, your faith has rebuked my unbelief, I was not proving you. I never doubted you from that blessed hour. But I am the weak and sinful man who would keep his life, and will therefore lose it. I am the Demas of whom Paul says that he for- sook him, having loved this present world." " You must not judge yourself too severely," said his wife, as she noticed how his voice trembled and the tears ran down, his cheeks. " It is but your great love for us that tempted you. He wdio feeds the birds and clothes the flowers will also give us bread. Let every thing be taken if we only keep the Kingdom of God ! " " Amen ! I will write this evening to the Mission Board, and will send in my resignation to the Town Council and the Consistory.'* So the time passed on with torturing slowness till, in the spring of 1721, the ship that was to carry the minister to Bergen sailed into the harbour. The whole parish was up. One after another came drop- ping in, to say, " Is it really true ? And you are going to leave us 1 " The parsonage was crowded with weeping groups, and the minister's courage had almost given way. But his wife whispered to him, Whoso loveth father or mother, wife or child, friend HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. 57 or hrotlier "more than me, is not worthy of me. Yet his trials were not over. For as the melancholy ' little procession wound out from the village down to the beach, a boat was seen to land some sailors^ and as the minister set his foot on the plank to go on board, one of them came up. " Sir," he said, " might I make bold to ask for what port you embark ? " " For Greenland." " Then in God's name stay at home. If you love your life, if you will not devote your wife and child- ren to death, stay where you are. Death w^aits for you in Greenland." " How do you know ? " said the minister, alarmed. " Sir, we come from Greenland. Cannibals live there. And when some of our own people went on shore, over fifty Greenlanders fell upon them, beat them to death, and then ate them. Sir, sir, do not give your wife and children a prey to those wild heathen ! " The minister started back, smote his hands toge- ther, and cried, " Lord, my God, help me ! Be gra- cious to me ! I cannot lead my children on to such a death." 58 HANS EGEDWS MISSION. " Eight, dear, good sir," shouted the people who stood by. " Stay mth us. Despise not the warning of God." Whereupon they surrounded him, and fell on his neck with tears, and took the four children by the hand to lead them back. Then Elizabeth stepped boldly forward on the plank, and cried with a loud, clear voice, " O ye of little faith ! Ye say it is a sign from Heaven. And it is : not a sign to return, but a sign to prove our faith if we are worthy. Hans, be a man. If God is for us, who can be against us ? Hearest thou not the prayers and sighs of the hea- then in Greenland ? Far, far over the sea they pierce into my ear. You know that the need there is great. It is greater, it seems, than we thought. In the name of Jesus Christ — in the name of the Triune God, I call on you to follow me." With these words she walked up the plank, and sat down in the boat. Her husband stood for a moment overwhelmed with shame. " Lord," he prayed, " lay not this sin to my charge ! " then took his children and followed. " Onwards, in God's name ! " cried Elizabeth to the boatmen. The sail was spread, and the people stood weeping on the HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. 59 shore. And in the boat the minister wept and his four children : but his wife stood up against the mast with great sad eyes, and her whole face glowed with holy and triumphant faith. The rest of this story, too long for even the most elastic Missionsstunde, is one of the most familiar yet heroic in the history of missions. Even at Ber- gen, from which the expedition was to sail out into the West, hindrances rose unexpectedly. Sailing at last in the good ship Hope, they found no green land, but endless hummocks of ice, along which they coasted for weary days, and in imminent danger of shipwreck, until they landed at a small bay and began to build on Hope's Island. The people avoided them ; nor for seventeen years was there much of Christian life. The Greenlanders were content with their blubber, and cared for no paradise without it. Every miracle of the Gospel they matched by a marvellous tale of their own wizards ; every story of the Bible by an Arctic legend. If they were discredited, they said they had as good a right to be believed as the missionaries. If they were asked had they ever seen an angekok, they answered by asking if the preacher had ever seen a 6o HANS EGEDWB MISSION, miracle. In another direction also the minister was fated to disappointment. The traces of the ancient colonists were pointed out, and much of their story was told with that tenacity of tradition which has enabled Captain Hall to recover particulars of the old expedition under Frobisher. But every vestige of Christian learning and habit had vanished, and the Greenlanders seemed to have sunk deeper in barbarism. Troubles also arose with the colonists. The traders were godless, and grew reckless as they threw off restraint. The trade was as slow and dis- appointing as the Mission. But through all, the minister's wife cheered her husband's faith, and won a holy ascendency over the rough spirit of the men. The very first year the ship that had been promised with annual stock of provisions, failed. May and June passed, and the slender store in the island was almost exhausted. Disheartened and uneasy, the colonists came to the minister and would have had him embark at once and leave their home in the one ship that lay at anchor. When he refused, they made their own preparations, and pulled down their huts. With rough kindness they advanced to pull down his own, and compel him on board. Sud- denly they were confronted with the calm presence HANS EGEDE'S MISSION. 6i of the minister's wife. '' Are ye not ashamed ? " she cried. " Ts the hand of the Almighty shortened ? Know ye that our rescue is nigh ? The ship hath left, but contrary winds have hindered it. Only wait three days and ye will see the salvation of our God." Laughing, mocking, swearing, and blas- pheming, the crowd received this prophecy with jeers, " Are ye men ? " she cried again. " Are ye Christians ? Will ye show yourselves weaker than a weak woman ? Will ye bear home the message of your own shame '. Take the bread we have kept for our children. It will be only for three days, and we will not die of hunger." They stood silent and undecided. " If there be a man or a Christian among you, let him hold up his hand that he will wait till the third day." Sullenly and one by one the hands went up, but the men swore with a terri- ble oath that they would wait no longer, not an hour. And on the third day the sail rose over the horizon, and the provision ship rode in the harbour. It was a crisis in the Mission, one of many. In ten years more the colonists had left the missionary alone. His health and spirits were rapidly breaking down, when the Moravian missionaries cheered him by their unexpected arrival ; but, in 1735, his wife died. 62 HANS EGEDW8 MISSION. And Egede took her bones and bore them over the sea, and laid them in the church of St. Nicholas at Copenhagen. In Copenhagen he passed the remain- ing twenty years of his life as the head of the Col- lege for training Arctic Missionaries. But behind him he left the little Paul — a minister now like his father — and a Christian colony that grew into gTeat power, and by which God did many wonders among the heathen, and to after ages a name of most blessed memory, in Hans Egede, the Apostle of Greenland. SPITTLER AND HIS WOEK. |T rained all mght It was raining in the morning. There was no doubt about it. Out of the window there was a leaden haze, flecked with the light of a dull, spiritless dawn. Rain was falling in the fountain, streaming past the panes, murmuring on the roof; a trickling, patter- ing, liquid sound that went up and down the silent street. Sir Francis Drake stood it out unmoved, like a brave old English mariner as he was ; but the wreath on his brow was battered under his chin, and the garlands hung in drabbled tails down his back. The banners clung to their poles, the arch of evergreens was like a weeping willow, and the pretty rifle festival of Offenburg had ended in a wetting. The town has a broad street, a good hotel, a copy of the Times, and a weakness for 64 SPITTLEB AND HIS WOBK. potatoes, — qualities of wliich the inexorable rail permitted the briefest enjoyment; and by the sup- posed time of sunrise we were bowling away from it at an easy twenty miles an hour. The carriage was crowded with a miscellaneous company; rifle- men in tall Tyrolese hat and feather ; farmers with broad-brims, long coats, great buttons, and gigantic collars ; market-women with hair brushed straight back, and tied on the crown with broad knots of ribbon or lace, while the peasant girls preferred to fasten it with a two-edged silver knife ; a student or two with inevitable spectacles and merry humour; — pleasant, honest faces, a shrewd, self-possessed, independent folk, who kept np the liveliest con- versation, and passed the dullest jokes, entered with a cheery Good, morning all! and left with the friendliest Adieus. Your Briton resigns himself to the rail like a martyr, prepares his mind for an accident, grimly suffers himself to be led along at express speed, builds np a wall of newspaper about him, or harrows his feelings with a sensation article. Talk would be frivolous and impertinent in such a temper, as indecent as gossip on the way to an execution. But your German travels among the gaieties of life ; it is a pleasant episode : it is like SPITTLEB AND HIS WORK. 65 seeing company, a sort of open club where every- thing is discussed and everybody welcome ; a place for little courtesies and self- forge tfulness ; and his frank smile is like a shake-hands all round. The Black Forest was on one side, the Rhine upon the other. Geographically that was our posi- tion ; actually it was in a drizzling mist of rain ; by careful rubbing of one glass a ditch was occasionally visible ; by occasional opening of the other, there was evidently a dull mass of trees piled up over the slopes of long hills, and with as much actual form as the shading round a sepia sketch. Some darker shadow would sometimes fly across our road, and some hand would point vaguely out to castle this or that, spectral ruins over which the rain and mist had flung themselves for centuries, out of which the legends of the past stalked harmlessly into the busy sceptical present ; knights in armour, princesses in misfortune, robber captains, emperors' daughters that were always in love with the wrong person, emperors' sons that were always in disguise, the lady's foot -page and the rubicund friar, gay caval- cades to gayer tournaments, treasons and stratagems, and hfe and death, as they were wrought out before printing and gunpowder and autumn tourists. 66 SPITTLEB AND HIS WORK. At Freiburg we stopped, and those who care to explore the Forest will do the same. Like Heidel- berg, it stands at the entrance of a valley, and for reasons of their own, the clouds make such places their special fortresses ; pile themselves up in high blockade against the outer world ; sink deeper and look denser than elsewhere ; almost dip into the streets, and sweep the people off to cloudland. And so as we went round by dripping vineyards, and streets that murmured like water-courses, round by narrow lanes, and under spoutless eaves, crossing the gutters by plank bridges, and stumbling over children — young Bacchanals that must needs launch ships of vine-leaves, and as we came into the cathedral square, the light fretted spire not only touched the sky, but pierced it and shot up into it, till spire and clouds were mingled together. The rain had driven the apple-women into the shelter of the great portal, where, as heedless of proprieties as the carved virgins above them, they drove a lively trade and livelier gossip, — gossip that some untoAvard puff of wet did not help to bring into harmony with the situation. Incongruity seems to have fixed itself in this Romish worship : buildings of exquisite and solemn beauty piled over the ugliest and tawdriest SPITTLEE AND HIS WORK, 67 of wax-dolls ; an-angements of painted light, and aisles of pillars, and dim vaulted roofs, lofty heights, and shades of rich gloom, that call up a natural awe and reverence, but that are used for other arrange- ments of service that call up disgust ; reverence and irreverence divided by a curtain at the door ! There is no spiritual sense, no fitness, no impression of an inner life. Keligion has exhausted itself in a beauti- ful form, and cannot fill it with the spirit, but shows off puppets of its own in the empty space, and strangers may be excused if they remember a cathedral only by its Holbein, or Raphael, or Rubens, its glass or its wood-carving. Yet Alban Stoltz lay on every bookstall, well-thumbed editions that had passed through the hands of many readers; and when Alban Stoltz preaches, there are "words of life from a Roman Catholic pulpit." Such men are themselves an incongruity, ethically as painful and far more puzzling than any other ; speaking truth and content to be wrapped in the folds of error. But we may judge them too hardly, forgetting the second nature of old habit ; and Stoltz, at least, does preach Christ in a most striking and genuine way, and his writings are popular in Freiburg as elsewhere. The inn window looked out upon the cathedral, F 2 cl-t^^ 68 SPITTLER AND HIS WOBK. and the cathedral filled up all the space with its noble lines marked out against the sky, and glowing through the sombre air by the ruddy colour of its red sandstone, and across it, and away to the left across the vision of vineyards, hung the rain-pall. Wet feet occasionally plashed over the pools outside ; wet travellers came in, till the room was sprinkled with a wet company; a wet dog of enormous pro- portions went sniffing round their pockets, and thrusting his terrible nose under their hands. Mid- day it rained, and long after mid-day, and it was raining still, when we took our seats with a desperate alacrity in the omnibus for Todtnau. Steaming horses, a mist of wet over the windows, a straight watery road, and off to the right and left, fat, steam- ing meadow-land, backed by vast shadows that might be either hill or cloud. But in an hour it changed. The road wound up in long curves; the hill-sides naiTowed in ; the pine-woods grew into distinctness ; the mad brook foamed among huge boulders close by the horses' hoofs; the ragged mist rose up a hundred feet ; there was a long stretch of soft valley behind; gigantic masses of shadow darkened the view before ; wild, picturesque saw-mills perched upon the stream; the six horses could only walk. SPITTLEB AND HIS WORK. 69 We were fairly into the depths of the Forest. The brook sunk into a lonely glen, and sent back its hoarse murmur of companionship; the road went right up above our heads by a series of sharp zigzags, and the higher it rose the higher and darker rose the woody peaks above it, while the light wind moved among the low clouds, and showed great mountain shoulders with their shining cliffs and water-gullies and matted brushwood clinging to the rock and sombre rows of firs, rank above rank, or it opened chasms in the mist, through which the woods rolled back in interminable folds, or some green meadow flashed through the rain. Wooden cru- cifixes had dotted the way, beside an orchard, or leaning over a mill, against some quaint brown gable at the road end of a straggling hamlet, or under the shelter of a lonely rock, of the homeliest and ugliest manufacture, repulsive, rotting away by sheer care- lessness. But the last was left far behind, and the next was on the level crown of the hill, where the charcoal-burners moved about their fires like spectres in the darkening twilight. Then a quick canter down by bare fields ; lights, wide apart, that leaped out of the darkness, then an irregular cluster, the clatter of hoofs through a village street, and the 70 8PITTLER AND HIS WORK, pleasant parlour of tlie John Bull. And still it rained. Yet they reveal a certain true power. They asso- ciate religion with common life. It is a dedication of it to God in a clumsy, superstitious, perhaps to many, repulsive way ; an effort to realise what most men forget. That very iiTeverence of the Romish worship may have its better side. It is a worship that endeavours to make God near, to realise him under visible forms and a real presence. But he is made near, treated as an idol, not realised as a per- sonal being, already near, sharing the life, dwelling in the heart. But in that cheery parlour there was little heed of weather. A clock hung against the wall ; no vulgar, loud-ticking, showy time-server, but a very library clock, that paced the hours with noiseless step, and would have been the pride of a city watchmaker ; and near it stood a piano, excellently wrought, and that for tone might have held its own with a CoUard — uncommon luxuries for a country inn, and in the Black Forest. But they were Forest made ; for in watches and clocks, and intelligent craft of that sort, these foresters are eminent, and even great traders, and hide, in the depths of their brown woods, the SPITTLEB AND HIS WORK. 71 very spirit, and enterprise, and shrewdness, and skill of our English manufacturers. For the rest, the room was as unpretending as could be. At one of the long tables sat some twenty villagers, under pre- sidency of the host — a sort of choral union by which they pass the time in long evenings — for their spring, and summer, and autumn, are thrust into less than four months, and winter breaks off their communications with the world, — and they sung part songs and Suabian ballads with most excellent harmony, and played snatches of wild mountain music, and quietly went their ways at evening chimes — courteous, frank, and simple people, and left us to forget the dripping and gurgling of the rain in the absurd discomfort of a German bed. These Forest hamlets are marvellously picturesque, with their scattered groups of houses, and deep pro- jecting roofs and wooden galleries, and brown, old- world, comfortable look, and primitive ways. There is no poverty among them, no beggar-nuisance as in other places, and at Todtnau everybody seemed to own cattle ; for in the morning the rustic square was filled with kids and goats at the blast of a horn, that brought them out with the suddenness of Roderick Dhu's men and they had no sooner been despatched 72 SPITTLEB AND HIS WORK. up the hills, in charge of two or three young herds, than the cows came trooping out of house doors, and stumping down wooden steps, and round from by-lanes, till the square was as full of them, and they were packed off under similar charge to the meadows below — a marshalling of the resources of the village that had a singular effect, and a system that could only be maintained by an honesty of man and intelligence of beast that are rare. Down the winding road to Mambach is as pleasant a walk as can fill up an autumn morning ; up the Mambach slopes and over the long crest of the great Todtmoos mountain, is, no doubt, even better. But while we could still hear the children's voices as they played round the Mambach doors, the invete- rate mist rolled heavily down, and the rain began to soak through the trees ; and out on the open moor, and through the long grass, and over the heavy clay roads, up the hill and down the hill, and into the valley of the Wehr, it rained with a pitiless patience. We remonstrated. It was not what we had come for. Rain could be had anyivhere, and to quite the same extent, and there was nothing peculiar or ex- hilarating about it. It was rather in the way; we could not see the next field ; the large drops some- SPITTLER AND HIS WORK. 73 times missed the ground and stumbled against the face ; there was an unpleasant wetness about every- thing. But remonstrance v/as useless ; it had made up its mind to it, and at least a walk by the Wehr on a rainy day was a novelty. There were precipi- tous cliffs, with fringes of trees about the top and bottom, gigantic rocks that jutted out across the path, and assumed the most fantastic shapes, a tor- rent that brawled its very loudest, dense woods dyed with all the colours of autumn, and over all a dense misty shroud; and we were down in the hollow, where there was scarce room for the road and the river, and from which the sides rose up like walls into invisible heights. There may be more. I would not do it an injustice, nor answer for what is visible in dry weather. But that is what we saw : miles of that. And it rained all the time, and all that evening, in the railway carriage and across the bridge at Basel, and it was raining when we went to sleep in the Three Kings, above the soft swift purling of the Rhine. Rolling hills and deep valleys and the wood that has crept over and round them all ; rivers between narrow strips of fresh pasture- land ; villages that nestle in among the lonely hills, and busy towns, where the din of the workshop con- 74 SPITTLEB AND HIS WORK. trasts strangely with the cincture of endless trees and the silence of the forest paths ; the brightest of green fields, sparkling like jewels, and hemmed in by great belts of pine and fir ; gorges where the sun scarcely shines, and pleasant dales that the sun seems never to have left ; charcoal-burners and way- farers ; watchmakers and toymakers ; honest peasant men and women ; the quaintest of costumes ; these repeated over and again within every few miles ; these, and a universal brooding quiet ; — that is the impression of the Black Forest ; and a pleasanter place for a thorough bracing repose it is not easy to find. But of all this, and how it was seen under rainless skies, it would be almost impertinent to write, since Auerbach's charming Forest stories are in everybody's hands ; and no one can introduce us to such living Forest people, or show such exquisite Forest pictures, or bring its old legendary past into such happy contact with the present. There is a deeper interest, and less known, missed by most tourists, and yet worth walking after through a whole wxek of rain ; and if any reader has been drawn away from his easy chair into the mists and misfortunes of wobegone pedestrians, it has been with good intention at the bottom. SPITTLER AND HIS WORK, 75 As the Rhine flows towards Basel, and before it turns its back upon France, the Black Forest on the one side, and the Jura on the other, send out long spurs, and they leave just space enough for the haughty river, some level fields of beans, vineyards, and here and there an ancient town. On one of those northern spurs, and overlooking Basel, a chapel was built hundreds of years ago — how many hundreds is not positive, but there is a legend, that when the lady Ursula was returning from Rome, three of the eleven thousand virgins in her train lingered at Basel, and one, by name Crischona, lived upon the hill, and founded a church ; and of that legend any one may believe as much as is convenient, and as the sacristan of St. Ursula, at Cologne, can tell him without laughing. But this is certain, that the hill is called St, Crischona, and that there is a chapel upon it, which twenty years ago was in ruins, and had fallen so low, that a neighbouring farmer made it a sty for his hogs. Here, in the year 1840, two men knelt in prayer; and the chapel rose up out of the ruins ; the nettles and rank grass became a flower garden ; and the hogs were changed into fat cattle. It was no miracle, but a very simple matter. Mr. Spittler had a cherished purpose in his- 76 SPITTLEB AND EIS WORK. heart of training young men of the country-side for missionaries ; they would be pilgrim missionaries, wandering up and down among the heathen; not resting, but in motion. They should not linger by any sweet spot of life, but journey onward, staff in hand, preaching Christ as they went. They should be found in every hving throng, passing through it, and scattering glad news on every side ; in the crowds at a Hindoo sacrifice, through the ranks of the fire-worshippers, at the feast of the Ramadan, in the streets of Canton, on the prairie of the Red Indian, by the kraal of the Kaffirs, — solemn- voiced messengers of God, speeding over the earth, and crying, Mepent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He begged for the ruins of St. Crischona, and having freely got them, he went np with his architect, and prayed that God would guide him in his work. Part of the chapel was restored suffi- ciently to live in, and here he lived for some time alone. Basel is wealthy and generous, but it did not sympathise with him : men did not come in ; and still he waited. Then one joined him ; then three ; and soon they were six. The chapel was ceiled, and dormitories made of the upper story. The dormi- tories were crowded ; a fresh building had to be 8PITTLEB AND HIS WORK. 77 undertaken, and the hill is now held by this Chris- tian colony. A hundred and fifty have gone out from it ; and there are fifty there at present. They are young men, mostly peasants, and while they study they are not above peasant's work. There is a farm, that serves both for their support and training ; they manage all their household economy ; the last glimpse we had of them was singing — and their singing is worth hearing — over their washing-tubs. Their teachers live with them, men of ability and Christian worth ; their education is not sacrificed to their work, but is thorough, and well adapted to their calling ; the tone of the place is manly, healthy, and earnest ; and the basis of their training, and the very formation of their house, is faith in the living God. The aim of the institution has scarcely yet been reached, but one branch of it realises the character of the whole. It is proposed to establish such a chain of mission posts as will connect Jerusalem with the Cape of Good Hope. Missions already reach up as far as the Zambezi ; the mission at Rabba Mopia will form a link between the Kaffir stations and Abyssinia ; and from Jerusalem to Abyssinia Mr. Spittler proposes establishing twelve stations, each sufficiently strong to command the 78 SPITTLER AND HIS WORK. surrounding district, and sufficiently near the next to maintain easy communication, and these he calls the Apostolic Way. As means are provided, the stations are established, and already there are two, and prospect of a third. While it may be thought that there is something sentimental in this project, it is plain that missionary centres of this sort, each a link in a long chain, are the most effective of all ; that the isolation of a station is a source of weak- ness, and, perhaps, of ruin ; that, on the other hand, a station must be effective enough to bear being isolated at any juncture. There is need also for a comprehensive mission scheme, for developing mis- sion effort with more system, and on a larger scale ; distributing the forces of our Christian soldiers through new provinces, placing them in the most effective positions, not only for single but united work, and waging the war on a scale commensurate with the object. Now that missions are no longer the experiments they were at the commencement of this century, unfamiliar and unsupported, it might be worth while and practicable not only to plant fresh stations, but to plant them in such a way that they shall be part of the mission system of a coun- try or an entire continent. India might be so SPITTLER AND HIS WORK. 79 mapped out, that as each post was occupied, it would be a step towards completing the general India mission system ; and as towns outside of India were occupied, it might be in subjection to the wider system for Asia ; and each society might assume the vacant places as it was able. A chain of missions through the dry heart of Africa is a venturous thought, fit to be conceived in a venturous age like ours, and Christians will watch its progress with much eagerness and sjrmpathy. If climate and situation have any effect upon the mind, it might be supposed that St. Crischona, with its width of prospect, had some influence in giving Mr. Spittler his larger views of missions, for the country lies under the eye, from the glittering peaks of the Bernese Alps, and almost a hundred miles of the valley of the Rhine, to Freiburg — as lovely and varied a view as one could have on a summer's day. Leaving this elevation, however, and descending to the village of Riehen below, we meet Mr. Spittler again. Indeed, it would not be easy to avoid meeting him anywhere round Basel. There, oppo- site us, lies his Reformatory, deep among its vines. He intended it for wild lads who might have run off from home, gone to sea perhaps, or in some way cast So SPITTLEB AND HIS WORK. off all parental restraint. He thouglit there might come a time when they would be softened, and anxious to return, when a kind word might break down their pride, and they would accept a refuge from the wild life that had deceived and wearied them. The first lad who came had been a sailor ; he proved diligent and serious ; the change in him was so marked that he was soon transferred to the Mission House, and from there he has gone out to a new station on the Apostolic Way. And though there has been no other story to match this, the Reformatory has succeeded, and its rooms are filled. Down below us also there is a large and picturesque building, one of the best institutions for the deaf and dumb in Germany ; and if you ask about it, you are informed it was raised by Mr. Spittler. Go to the Tract Society, and you are still in Mr. Spittler's domain. The great mission-house at Basel reckons him chief among its founders ; it was he almost as much as Zeller that founded Beuggen. For these last sixty years he has worked at every Christian work in Basel. He is one of the few surviving members of the old Christian Society, from which it may be said the modem missions of Germany have sprung. When Gossner was in early trouble, SPITTLER AND HIS WORK. 8i it was to Spittler that he came. When Zeller was bent upon saving the outcast children, it was to Spittler that he confided his plans. And now, in his old age, he is working still, and watching the works already begun as they grow and strengthen under unseen hands. And for the reason of that success, and the motive of that life, he has no answer but one, that it is of faith and prayer. This, however, has been by way of interruption in our descent to Riehen, and our chief object there was to visit the Deaconesses, for whom it may be said, once for all, Mr. Spittler also is answerable. The house lies in an open garden, a quiet, simple, country house, with no pretensions, but perfectly neat and clean. Unlike Kaiserswerth, it is but a single house, and not the centre of a busy Christian colony. Everything about it is quiet ; the view of the soft hills and woods up the valley of the Wiese ; the meadows and still grave-yard opposite ; the flowers before the door, and what one might call the cheerful silence within. There are few Deacon- esses ; the hospital is on the smallest scale ; the country air breathes through the rooms ; and sick- nursing is all that is attempted. Nothing can be simpler, less like an order, or even organization. G 82 SPITTLEB AND HIS WORK. But Riehen has an importance that cannot be gauged by size or numbers. It is yet in its infancy, moreover; only ten 5^ears in existence, yet there have been from seventy to eighty deaconesses con- nected with it ; and during last year more than 200 patients passed through the hospital. The arrange- ments are almost identical with those at Kaisers- werth ; there is the same tidiness in the rooms., the same attention to hght and air, the same provision for sick children, the same regular medicine-room, the same love of flowers, the same homeliness ; there is in the one as much as the other a calm Christian atmosphere, a careful, gentle, genial nursing. But the order is different. Riehen is under the presi- dency of a lady ; there is no resident chaplain ; no fixed term of service ; there are scarcely any rules. It is a proof that the usefulness of the deaconess is not confined to any system, that the principle of associating Christian women in Christian service is independent of any special regulations, that it is capable of being adapted to the freest states of society. Nothing, indeed, can well be simpler than the Riehen foundation, and it must be remembered that this simplicity has been found sufficient to meet very varied and scattered work. Some of the dea- SPITTLEB AND HIS WORK. 83 eonesses are in the hospitals of Basel, others at Zurich and Schaffhausen ; some are private nurses, and some tend the insane. And Riehen is the parent house, and its rules must serve, not only for itself, but for its various offshoots, sufficiently com- prehensive and strict to maintain unity in spite of separation and difference of circumstances. What might be defective in system, however, is balanced by the carefulness of selection. Many of those vi^ho offer their services are at first rejected. Of the rest, some prove unsuitable before the time of probation commences ; and the probation itself, which com- monly lasts a year, is a time of wise and loving scrutiny. It is felt to be no ordinary duty that is undertaken, but one that requires the highest de- votedness and the power and clearness of a simple faith. "Deaconesses are servants of the Lord in works of merciful love, and the Deaconess Institu- tion at Riehen presents an oj^portunity of hasten- ing to the help of suffering humanity, and thereby furthering the kingdom of God on the earth ; " but just because it is such, the intending deaconess " must earnestly examine herself before God." " Natural kindliness and head-Christianity " are not enough : there must be " Christian knowledge united 1 G 2 84 SPITTLEE AND HIS WOEK. with the experience of a life in God." Those who pass this probation, and are recommended by the superintendent, are set apart at a solemn service, and receive a solemn charge. The charge iterates with great emphasis the leading principles of their calling, its luillingness, obedience, and fidelity. "Obedience," said Pastor Harter of Strasbourg, at the opening, "is the humility of love, willingness the joy of love, fide- lity the steadfastness of love. A deaconess without humihty is impossible, — a contradiction in terms. Deaconesses are not only an association but a cor- poration; a humble obedience holds it together. As members of the corporation, the sisters have their higher and lower functions, yet so that none shall hold herself above another." It is not the obedience of a vow ; the blind submission to a su- perior ; nor obedience for merit's sake and because it is a glorious thing to crucify the self-will. It is simply so much intelligent obedience as may make order and help practicable ; so much submission as one must render in a corporate body for the good of the whole. Nor is the fidelity an inviolable promise for the future. It is quite true that the calling of a deaconess is contemplated as permanent ; that there SPITTLEB AND HIS WORK. Ss is no desire that it should be lightly taken and as lightly thrown off — serve only to pass some idle days of life. It is in this respect simply on a level with other callings. It is understood that there are persons who may look to it as their life, deliberately prefer it to any other life ; that it puts within their reach what they needed, a calling by which they can humbly serve God. The deaconess is set apart on the understanding that she has deliberately chosen her diaconate, that she does not anticipate resigning it. But there is no promise sought or given. She may withdraw by giving some months' notice. She may marry. There is no hindrance to such seces- sions ; they will always be occurring ; nor are they without great good. They spread the help and skill of the deaconess over a larger surface ; as a Christian wife or mother she may aid in many ways waves and mothers of her acquaintance ; and the fact of such secessions acts healthily back upon the dea- coness, and prevents her becoming touched with the spirit of a mere order ; prevents anything approach- ing a conventual separation from the world. But the dedication is on the principle that the calling is steadfastly assumed, and will be steadfastly pur- sued. A very cheerful calling, to judge from the Z6 SPITTLER AND HIS WORK. brightness and peaceful look of every thing, and every one at Riehen. Among her requirements, a deaconess is to be of those whose "natural dis- position is lively, friendly, affectionate, and with- out any tendency to gloom or excitement." The spirit of the place is just such as to foster such a temper ; her common work is just such as to require it. A gloomy nurse is an aggravation of sickness : a perpetual black draught. Yet how many martyrs suffer by such a simple cause ; how many, as soon as they enter a sick-room, muffle the voice like a drum for the funeral march, lengthen the face, and speak gracious and friendly words with a solemnity that is appalling ! Christian truth is joyful , Christian life is sunny. A Christian nurse should enter the room like a sunbeam, as noiseless and as cheerful. And much like the sunbeams do those gentle Eiehen deaconesses go about their work, flitting softly through the rooms, and lighting up the faces of their patients as they pass ; — true Christian women, who live for Christ, and freely use their privilege of nursing for winning others to the Saviour and his peace. The last glimpse we had of Riehen was of a sim- ple dress of black and white, moving over the gar- 8PITTLEB AND HIS WORK. 87 den-walk and the simple house among the flowers. Behind lie the dark shadow of the woods, and the darker shadow of the past. There are charities of greater bulk and pretension, but there are few as interesting as those of the Black Forest ; the growth of one man's effort, gifen indeed by God in answer to one man's prayer. And this spirit of prayer, this childlike dependence on God, and bold, hearty faith, characterize each. They are wisely and carefully conducted, so modestly, that few have heard of them ; I have only mentioned one or two out of many. Yet from that quiet retirement a living power goes out that is felt in the backwoods of ' America, and up the Nile, and away in Abyssinia ; that betrays itself in movements affecting the future of the Church, that sus^ofests the mosfc effective means for large social reforms and healthy Christian, work ; and that power is nothing else but faith in the living God. We turned reluctantly away up the road to Schandau — we, that is, he and I, for we were two. He was the best of companions, the pleasantest of travellers. May no worse fate ever befall him than a wetting in the Black Forest, and a day at St. Crischona ! CHEISTIAN GOTTLOB BAETH. |0 more welcome utterer of good words has lived among men than Christian Barth. Before his death he might have pre- sented his guests with the 175th edition of his first book ; he might have given them ample choice of language, for it was printed in half the lan- guages of the globe ; but for his modesty, he might have informed them that his works circulated by the million. Other statistics that reach us are on the same scale. His correspondents included about a thousand missionaries; he carried on four mission-journals at the same time ; he wrote the most popular of religious stories ; he worked out a Society which is to Germany what The Religious Tract Society is to us. With all this he was a CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB BARTH, , 89 genuine man, sincere, simple, unpretending ; a man who, for what he did and what he was, demands some memorial, and the more, as there was little extraordinary about him, save his work, to raise him much above other men. The biography of splendid genius is often chilly and disheartening; pleasant to read — impossible, if not unnatural, to follow. It is helpful to learn the story of some average man, and how, by exercise of some quality not beyond common reach, he placed himself above the average ; helpful above all when his quality is rather Christian consecration and earnestness, than any one gift or prominence of character. Barth was born at Stuttgart, in the last year of last century, of humble but devout parents. His father, a painter by trade, belonged to one of those small circles of pious Christian folk that abound in Wurtemburg. For Wurtemburg is the religious heart of South Germany, as the Wupperthal is of the North ; and the WUrtemburgers are marked by a certain very warm and impulsive piety not always within the strictness or control of the Church. For, indeed, it is this warmth and force of religious life there which nourishes, and to some extent forms the Church, and produces a freer church-life than 90 CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB BARTR. elsewhere ; a life sustained more by the communion of saints than the orthodoxy of creeds and ecclesi- astical order. The people have their own meetings, unite by mere sympathy of Christian brotherhood, study the Bible for themselves ; and these little groups are thickly scattered over the country, and are so many sources of Christian influence, and a pleasant sign in any Christian land. But not without dangers and drawbacks, and many party differences on minute points, and singular small heresies and hobbies, like that of Mr. Hoffmann for the rebuilding of Jerusalem ; just such aberrations and divisions as are associated with the history of Pietism, and prove it, for all its attractiveness, to be one-sided, and to need the definiteness of the Church. To one of these pious circles the elder Barth had attached himself, and from schoolmaster Gundert and others his son (left early fatherless) heard an excellent report, and grew up with the dear memory of a Christian father. His mother is described as a woman of great force of character and even majesty ; and graceful in her true simplicity ; a woman of the temper of good Monica, and of many prayers and tears for her children. Thus, in a pious CHBISTIAN GOTTLOB EARTH 91 atmosphere and a happy home, young Earth grew up, and even at eleven was a lad of great promise. In the gymnasium he was painter, musician, poet ; and wrote political ballads during the stirring close of the European war, but merely, it would seem, to work off some natural effervescence, for almost im- mediately there followed grave hexameters on Jung Stilling, whom he had visited, and who left on him, as on most earnest men of the time, a profound impression. Till his death it Avas his habit to read Stilling's Homelongings once a year. At Tubingen he had the reputation of a brilliant student, of humour, quickness, and thorough earnestness. He joined a set of afterwards eminent men, almost exchisively Pietists, — Passavant, Hoffacker, Roos, Burk, and others, — to whom he was a perpetual marvel and uneasiness, as not knowing whither his restlessness and genius might lead him. He chose for his motto, Odi traiiquillitatem ; studied classics and philosophy ; read hard in the Talmud ; painted his friends ; taught ; wrote pamphlets ; preached occasionally. His pamphlets were successful; people flocked to hear his sermons ; yet his friends were still uneasy, his mother more than all. He was unsettled, would be a missionary at one time, then 92 CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB EARTH. a pastor, then a writer. She longed to see him enter with more consecration on the duties of a minister. She criticised his sermons ; told him it was a mercy he ever got through them. She put down his pamphlets as much as others put them up ; " don't believe those who flatter you," she would say, "but kneel down and ask forgiveness for all your sins." Earth stoutly maintained his views even in the face of such counsel, and proved that there was less vanity than she dreaded, more truth than she hoped. Still he found afterwards that there was much truth in hers; and faithfully and unshrink- ingly she dealt out her counsel, and rejoiced in secret over any sign of his spiritual progress. He left the university with the testimony of Fallen away into the errors of mysticis'tn, and entered at once into close intercourse with Pietists of every school. After two or three curacies, he was ap- pointed pastor of Mottlingen in the Black Forest, and commenced the work of his life. One leading thought of his was the unity of Christians ; a prevalent thought with the genuine mystic — more prevalent in Earth's early days from the necessity for true Christians of every type working heartily together. His friends were chosen CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB BABTH. 93 in no narrow circle. Their aspirations, the aspira- tions of most pious men then, were the same ; strong sectional barriers in the Church were ignored, Christ only was sought. Even Roman Catholics dropped their exclusiveness for the sake of Christian union. In the north, Protestants and Romanists met at the table of Princess Galitzin ; in the south, Gossner and Bois were welcome guests in Christian circles ; the Romanist Van Ess took Earth's place at a missionary society. For the mission in Germany sank its confessional element in its origin ; it rose out of the free intercourse and zeal of private Christians : it offered a meeting point and common sphere of work for those who lamented the careless- ness of the churches as well as for those who longed to forget church differences in the love of God. It was natural that the mission should take its strongest hold upon Barth ; that his sermons should be touched with it ; that he should seek content with missionary workers. Its breadth, and union, and downright earnestness were irresistibly attrac- tive. Wherever he was he founded some missionary society; and at last altogether withdrew from the pastorate to work out the cause of missions at Calw. His pastorate was faithful, and a blessing 94 CHRISTIAN' GOTTLOB EARTH. that was long thankfully remembered in the parish. But it was not as pastor God had chosen him. To increase the interest in missions he proposed adding a new periodical to the only one then existing. The friends at Basel laughed at the notion. He matured it, and in January, 1828, there appeared the first number of the Calwer Missionary Journal, a paper which sj^eedily rose to a large circulation. Three other mission periodicals were added by him and carried on simultaneously, each addressing itself to a special class of readers. The income, which grew to be considerable, was his donation to the Basel Society. By the interest of his papers he mainly fought the battle of missions. From being scorned and few, he lived to see them honoured and wide- spread. And Gossner's name was not oftener nor kindlier spoken than Christian Barth's. What the man himself was like at this time and afterwards, what impression he made, cannot be better told than in a letter which I have received from a friend who was also his friend : — "I visited Dr. Barth in the winter of 1851. Having reached his door by an eilwagen long after sunset, and left it next morning before dawn, I have ' CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB BARTH. 95 no knowledge of the town of Calw or its neighbour- hood. Amidst the darkness which in memory broods over that district of the Black Forest, the only luminous spot is Dr. Earth's room, with his own glowing countenance as its sun, radiating ' godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity.' "The feature of that house of his which survives every other minor impression made by it, was its singular missionary character. One felt as if in some centre of telegraphic communication with all the missions of the world, and that the Doctor had only to touch some mysterious wire and ascertain what was doing in Otaheite or Sumatra, Greenland or New Zealand. When I entered his study, I found a comfortable table spread for me, but it was all redolent of missions. I was welcomed with a glass of wine sent by missionaries from Lebanon ; helped to reindeer tongue sent by missionaries from Greenland ; and to honey gathei-ed by the bees of Bethlehem. My footstool was a stuffed panther, the original stuffing having been made by Gobat in Abyssinia. The room in which we sat was hung with large mission maps. Primitive working clocks were ticking from its walls, which had been made and presented to him by Moravians, and they were 96 CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB BAETH, set so as to tell the time at Jerusalem, New York, Otaheite, and Pekin. 'All ! see now,' Earth would say, pointmg to one of them somewhere or other during the night, 'the sun is setting just now to the missionaries in Jerusalem ;' or, ' It is wakening them up in Sumatra.' On his desk were mementos of names ' familiar as household words ' in the Church, such as Oberlin, Neff, &c. In another room he had an interesting missionary museum, full of minerals, coins, dresses, arms, models of houses, ever illustrative of the natural history, manners, and customs of the inhabitants of those lands in which missionaries laboured. Letters had come in that evening, as I presume they had come in every even- ing for years, from different missionaries, telling him, as if to a Pope or General of an ' Order,' all they w^ere doing, and asking his counsel. We sat up until it struck three in the morning, and never did I spend a more delightful night. He was so full of information, so genial and frank, with so much freshness and humour, and so thoroughly sincere, truthful, and godly, that it did good to heart and head to gaze on those full hazel eyes, twinkling through the large spectacles, with the broad forehead above, and the brown hair which strewed down on CHRISTIAN QOTTLOB EARTH. 97 each side of the full cheeks, with the large knotted white neckcloth that supported the broad chin. I felt as if talking to some mediaeval portrait that had walked out of a picture frame. The only thing one saw in the living man, which has never, as far as I know, been pictured in the portrait of a clergy- man, was a cigar, which either lasted for hours, or was a successor or predecessor of similar lumi- naries. " When at length I retired to my room, to snatch a little rest ere resuming my winter journey, I found every inch of its walls covered with engravings of the clergy of all lands — a large, interesting, and most powerful Evangelical Alliance. The likenesses seemed taken from every available quarter, books having evidently afforded a considerable number of them. The Doctor called them his ' cloud of witnesses.' ''I need not trouble you with any part of our conversation that night, which was wholly on the work of the Christian Church I shall ever re- tain a most affectionate remembrance of him, as one of the simplest, purest, best, and most interesting men whom I have ever had the happiness of meet- ing or the high privilege of knowing." H 98 CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB BARTH. How in this quiet forest village lie grew to be a man of fame in the broad world ; how visitors came to him from every part of Europe, missionaries from every corner of heathenism, a Russian princess one day, a native preacher from India the next; how he wrote wonderful tales for children, and Bible stories that have been translated into fifty languages, and all manner of histories, and even an edition of the Bible of no little notoriety ; how his publishing office at Calw grew into importance, and furnished half the juvenile Christian books of Germany ; how he received crosses and ribbons from almost every sovereign of Europe, and quietly put them away in his drawer ; how he did the same by university honours, and the like, that crowded on him : this and the rest will no doubt be one day related. Through all, his character remained unchanged — his freshness, naivete, homeliness, and strong indi- viduality. To the last he held a free position in the Church, and sought his early ideal of union. To the last, he was singular in some of his views, entertain- ing some theological speculations with which the Church has little sympathy. But to the last, also, the love of Christ sustained him, filled his heart with life, and peace, and brotherly love; and none CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB BARTR. 99 that loved Christ could resist the infection of his sympathy. On a November day of last year, a modest funeral wound up from the picturesque Calw, — up, and over the rough forest-paths, over the dead red leaves, and under the silent pines; and through every hamlet that they passed the mourners chanted funeral psalms, and the villagers came out to meet them, and stood with bared head bent in prayer as the train passed by, until at last they came to Mottlingen. And there, in his old cure, beside his faithful mother, they laid the good man to his rest. Other men will fill a larger space in the eye of the world, but Christian Gottlob Barth will always have a large place in the story of God's kingdom. H 2 BATSCH AND HIS CO-WOEKERS. ELIEYE, hope, love, pray, burn, waken the dead ! Hold fast by prayer ; wrestle like Jacob ! IJp, up, my brethren ! the Lord is coming, and to every one He will say, Where hast thou left the souls of these heathen? — with the devil? Oh, swiftly seek these souls, and enter not without them into the presence of the Lord ! " With these instructions from Father Gossner four missionaries sailed for India, about 'fnl^eii years ago. When they reached Calcutta they found that their proposed mission field was impracticable, and somewhat sad of heart they waited for a fresh open- ing. It was not long, however, till this was dis- covered, and they were on their way to preach the gospel to the Kohls. BATSCH AND HIS CO-WOBKEBS. loi This is one of those wild tribes found in many of the mountainous districts of India, of an evi- dently different origin from the surrounding popula- tions notable for rude and savage ways, a very low and undeveloped religion, consisting mostly of the worship of good and evil spirits, and for the con- tempt with which they are regarded by the Hindus. There seems little doubt that they are primitive inhabitants, pushed up into the mountains by the pressure of foreign invasions. Wherever found, whether in the west or east, there are broad, com- mon resemblances between them, and probably the Kohls present most of the characteristics of the race. The district they inhabit has an area of 44,000 square miles, and a population of about four millions, two-thirds of whom are Hindus, and the rest are made up of a number of aboriginal tribes, unlike in language, physiognomy, and char- acter, but allied in worship and traditions. There are Kohls, Santhals, Circars, and Mundas, and it was among the former that these German mission- aries determined to settle. They received much sympathy; they were delighted with the appear- ance of the country, which is exceedingly pictur- esque and charming, a broken, wooded, hilly country, I02 BATSCH AND HIS CO-WORKERS. well diversified with water, and possessing the climate of the South of Europe ; and if the people struck them at first as thoroughly ignorant, they were also frank and manly. " There are two races here," they write, " thoroughly distinct. The Hindus are bent on gain, merchants for the most part, or artisans, keep close by their idols, eat no meat, not an egg even, for they say there is a chicken inside. The Kohls are simple, cultivate the soil, and are greatly oppressed by the Hindus. They are quite ready to eat meat, and even count rats and mice among their luxuries. Not long ago an ox died in our neighbourhood ; the vultures collected to the feast, and we feared lest the smell should be intolerable the next day ; but in the morning the ox had vanished, for the Kohls had eaten it." They are the navvies of India : athletic, powerful men ; lazy at home, but capable of hard work abroad. Labourers are sought eagerly from Chota Nagpore. Kohls are found on the Indian roads, canals, and railways ; in the West Indies, British Guiana, Australia, and the Mauritius. The demand induces emigration. Every year there are thou- sands who go out to seek their fortune ; and yet BATSCR AND HIS CO-WORKERS. 103 there are no people more attached to their birth- place ; nor would even the high wages tempt them to leave, were it not for their persecution by the zemindars at home. For these zemindars, who are the landed proprietors, use every effort to crush them, so that they live in terror of a zemindar's passion or revenge. Nor when they go out into the world do they fare much better, but are in the habit of hearing from their employers, — You are our oxen ; we feed you ; and do you mean to say you will do what you please ? — a mode of argu- ment not unaccompanied by blows. It is little wonder tJiat this system of oppression and ill-treat- ment has left them a barbarous and uninstructed people. But this, as the missionaries soon found out, was not the worst. They had no knowledge of a supreme and holy God, no hope of a future life, and but a very slight perception of the difference between good and evil. Any one who has been a witness of their festivals, cannot conceive how a race of men have sunk so low. Vices of every kind flourish among them without shame or restraint. Their devil-worship leads them into the cruellest practices, even the secret offering of human sacri- fices. They worship him out of fear lest he should I04 BATSCH AND HIS CO- WORKERS. destroy tliem by the wild beasts of the jungle. Their misfortunes are attributed to an insufficient reverence for this evil being. A father will ascribe his child's death to him, and straightway flee far off, leaving his house and all that he has. Cruel in their superstition, they are cruel in their lives ; wild and bloodthirsty and merciless as the tiger. If they have no caste among themselves, each tribe is a caste to all the rest. A dog may lap from the same dish, but they will not throw it away, but quietly eat on, only taking care that they do not come short. But as soon as a man of another tribe, although it is a Brahmin, unintentionally shadows their food, it is cast out with the utmost abhorrence. If they were uneducated in the formidable mysteries of Brahminism, they were found within the last fifty years to have borrowed hundreds of its popular idols, and to worship also trees and stones and the sun. They were devotees to their animal cravings ; and if a man had his stomach satisfied, and the brandy- bottle in his hand, he considered himself in want of nothing. Whole villages were found in ruins; for " an evil spirit has settled in them." " Get up ! be off ! " shouted the excited people to the mission- aries, as they camped on a little green knoU near BATSCH AND HIS CO-WOBKERS. 105 the hamlet. " Why ? " " That is our devil's place ; you must not inconvenience our devil." Whole villages were sometimes found with a drunken population. The people who came to hear the missionaries were drunk. It is not respectable for a man to get drunk till he has children ; but after that the missionaries' letters report a fearful amends for this abstinence. They are fond of music, and especially singing; and have lewd dances, which they practise daily. They are stupid towards all higher things, for they have no sense of beauty, or morals, or truth. And they are helplessly obstinate. " It is no use speaking to a Kohl : prayer is our great refuge." It was among this tribe, barbarous, cruel, super- stitious, despised, stupid, that the missionaries settled, and began forthwith to teach and to preach the gospel of the kingdom. At first they opened a school, and built an orphan house. Some children were slowly sent in, and learned pretty hymns, and sung them sweetly. Some of these children were afterwards brought into the fold of the Good Shepherd, and died, as the missionary believes, in Christ. The school had its hard struggle, however, for at first the fifty naked little things would occa- io6 BATSCH AND HIS CO-WOBKERB. sionally hurl round the room with wild shouts and laughter, and end with a cxj in full chorus of " Give me food, give me clothes 1 give me a book ! " and the lessons must have been oftener interrupted than profitable. Still, the children were sent, and though there were few if any Kohls among them, it was an actual result, and a work that kept the missionaries' hearts from altogether sinking. But after some time the schools were less hopeful, and the mission prospects continued of the gloomiest. The first house was but built when one of the brethren died. Three arrived soon after, but one of these also died; and up to 1851 the mission had lost five of the brethren, and one sister by death. These were heavy personal trials, and trials of an- other character made them all the more painful. As soon as they had learned the language, the mis- sionaries had begun evangelistic tours through the district. These appeared to be without the slightest results to those for whom it was begun. Brahmins and Mohammedans would sometimes collect round the preacher, enter into conversation, and dispute with him, asking for his book. The Kohls re- mained studiously away, and could by no means be drawn into any interest in religious conversation. BATSCH AND HIS CO-WOBKERS. 107 This continued for five years. Through private sorrow and disappointed hopes the missionaries had held on. They had never ceased to teach the plain word of God, nor to study how best it might be brought before so rude and careless a people. They had not lost their faith in the work God gave them ; they were as urgent in prayer as at the first. Without a visible sign of success, against ordinary rules, against their own misgivings, they have been sustained by the grace of God, and they had their reward. They were sure that the Word was a good seed ; they were sure that God could prepare the hearts of the Kohls to receive it ; that, lodged there, it would be a living and glorious power. They were sure also of their duty, that it was to do precisely what they were doing, and that the consequences must abide in God's hands ; and their duty here corresponded to the promptings of their honest, lively hearts. In 1850 there were symptoms that the Word of God had pene- trated even such gross and heavy hearts. Kohls came round the mission tent. They entered upon religious subjects. They began to show some notion of sin ; although they threw their sins over upon the priests, and the priests again upon the Com- io8 BATSCH AND HIS CO- WORKERS. pany, as having the broadest shoulders to bear a burden, and with some dim notion, that as the Government had taken the disposal of their terri- tory, it must also have assumed the responsibility of their conscience. They denied that they wor- shipped the devil : No, no, they cried, not that — they meant that they only respected him. In 1851, the missionaries could report that divine service was well attended, and that if in the course of but six months they had lost three faithful workers, from three to four hundred heathen had been sent them in exchange. " We are now seven years," wrote Brother Batsch, " in this land, and since others have followed us almost every year, we have been able to establish three stations, where the Word of the Cross was preached without interruption. But through these long years it was but trial of our patience and endurance. The Word was re- ceived either with mocking and scorn, or with the deadest stupidity and want of concern. Every- thing seemed to be in vain, and many said the mission was useless. Then the Lord Himself kind- led a fire before our eyes ; and it seized not only single souls, bat spread from village to village, and from every side the question was borne to us, BATSCH AND HIS CO-WOBKEBS. 109 What shall we do ? How shall we be saved 1 . . . . Many are now baptized, several are candidates for baptism, others are learning in order to be received on probation. The chapel, or our house, which holds about 125 persons, is not sufficient for the worshippers, and we are compelled to think of building a church." The beginning of the movement was the baptism of four of the Kohls in 1850, persons of some im- portance also, as two of them were proprietors of land, and the others were by right, though deprived of their property by a trick of their oppressors, the zemindars. It seems as if this public act was the signal. Immediately the people crowded in ; inquirers came in great anxiety ; persons journeyed forty or fifty miles to have an interview with the missionaries. A severe outbreak of cholera occur- red at this time, and tested the mission and the converts. The heathen fled into the jungle, and left entire villages depopulated. The Christians came the more eagerly to the church. But the thought that it might be the punishment of so many forsaking the devil-worship, long withheld those who were only well-disposed from approaching the sta- tion. Yet, soon again, it could be written that no BATSCH AND HIS CO-WORKERS. whole villages had declared themselves for Christ, and crowds stream in on Sunday from places four and five hours distant to hear the good word. Several families are already baptized, and from four to six families will immediately receive baptism. These receptions of families must have been singu- larly interesting; one mother coming with her child in her arms, and another leads hers by the hand ; fathers and sons, grey-haired men and little ones, all grouped together, and waiting to be received into the fellowship of the church. Nor was there any laxity of admission, or wish to encourage numerical increase. Faithful to Christ in the days of waiting and disappointment, the missionaries ever kept as faithful in the days of success and fruition. The baptized remain a year, sometimes longer, under probation. They came regularly to the Sunday ser- vices, for which they had to suffer much, not merely severe reproaches, but oppression and actual wrong. Several were thrown into prison, others were starved, others struck with heavy blows. They had borne it all, and held out and witnessed a good confes- sion. The last three weeks before baptism they live entirely under the eye of the missionaries, and receive still fuller instructions. Nor were there BATSCH AND HIS CO-WORKEES. ni any temporal advantages connected with the mis- sion. During the time of probation they were re- quired to bring their own food; the missionaries gave them nothing earthly, only what is hea- venly. On the 18th November, 1851, the foundation- stone of the church was laid with some ceremony, in the presence of many natives, and the English residents. There was much singing, and of a more advanced character than is common in India ; there were chorales, sanctuses, chants, and Te Deums; and they were sung by the native Christians in the first part, and very well. Singing is cultivated among them with great success ; and by their natural aptitude for music, and their intense love of it, the Kohls were led rapidly on. The children sing with as much clearness and melody as in Germany ; and when they sing before the houses of the brethren, one of them says he could have be- lieved it was the boys of his gymnasium. Unless I had seen it, I could not have believed that heathen children could be brought so far on. They learn tunes quickly. And "Ein feste Burg," which Brother Schatz translated, they are declared to sing so that Luther himself would have rejoiced. The 112 BATSCH AND HIS CO-WOBKERS. cliurcli they dedicated was completed after some years, and is a handsome Gothic structure, capable of accommodating close upon a thousand people. It was built by men who knew nothing either of archi- tecture or building, and remains a monument, and with every prospect of being a lasting monument, to the perseverance, and readiness, and skill, of Father Gossner's workmen. Meanwhile the whole land is seeking after re- demption. A lady of the Royal family asked one of the native Christians, " How many people have become Christians now 1 " " Oh," he said, " very many in Benares, Calcutta, Burdwar, etc." "No," she replied, "how many in Nagpore?" "Very many, and every day there are more." " Have any of our Royal family become Christians ? " " Some attend Divine service, but none have been yet bap- tized." "I know, I know," she added, "that the whole land will be Christian, and we too." Events followed quickly that seemed to show she was right. In 1856, at the times arranged for baptism, it was no longer one or two who came forward, but forty, fifty, and as many as seventy-five at once. " What a blessed joy it was to see them," writes one at the time. " Hundreds of Christian Kohls filled the spa- BATSCH AND HIS CO-WORKERS. 113 cious lighted pillared cliurch, and the seventy-five candidates stood up, to praise and confess God before them all ; and I thought it was no more a heathen land I was in, but a Christian, and at home." The number of inquirers still continued to increase. They no longer come singly, and, like Nicodemus, by night, but commonly many houses together, and sometimes an entire village, or more than one. The Gospel continued to spread with amazing power, and the few missionaries felt the burden of their labours almost intolerable, under the pressure of so many inquirers. Just, however, when there was the most life and hope for the future, the rebel- lion broke out ; the missionaries escaped with some difficulty; and for months the Kohls were left as sheep without a shepherd. It was a time of intense anxiety ; and so soon as the way became safe, the missionaries returned. They found a sad picture. The stations were in ruins, the books were torn and burnt, the property plundered, and the converts were scattered abroad. Then they came slowly dropping in, each with a tale of heavy sorrow. They had suffered incredible hardships ; had been driven out almost naked into the swamps; had been tor- tured with a fiendish barbarity, — stri]Dped of every- 114; BATSCH AND HIS CO-WORKERS. thing they possessed ; and now they came, homeless, wounded, wasted, lame, sickly sufferers, with wounds scarcely healed, with diseases caught in the swamps ; but with the word of God faster than ever in- their hearts. They had not betrayed the name of J6sus, but, by the grace of God, had glorified Him in their hungerings and persecution. One by one they dropped in, and the scattered church was again gathered together. Singularly enough, it was found that the number of converts had largely increased in the time of trial. The persecution purified and chastened those whom it overtook ; they acted on others with greater singleness of purpose and more devotion and spirituality. The work of God in this country has progressed at even a more rapid speed than before, and there are at present between 800 and 1000 villages where there are Christian families, where there is family and social prayer, and where the elder converts are daily instructing the younger, and preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ. , This- mission has important bearings upon mission work in India. Hitherto the natives have been approached very much by their mythologies and philosophies; the educated, well-informed, high- caste classes have been specially assailed. The result BATSCH AND HIS CO-WORKERS. 115 has not been very striking, for the conversions have been for the most part solitary, and there has been nothing like a local, much less a national movement towards Christianity. On the other hand, no sooner has the gospel taken hold of rude tribes, like the Karens in Burmah, and the Kohls, than it becomes a marvellous energy and touches thousands; and the people come as a people to the truth. These Kohls are said to be the best fitted for evangelising the empire. Once instructed themselves, they are indefatigable in teaching others. The tiTith com- pletely masters them, they are capable of enduring all things for the sake of Christ. They have much honesty, simplicity, integrity; their moral firmness, developed by Christian teaching, resembles more the Anglo-Saxon than the Asiatic character. If the entire province becomes, as there seems every reason to expect, a Christian province, their influence may spread through all our Indian possessions ; and they may be made the means of a general yielding up of India to the Gospel. i2 MADAME ZELL. |N the 3rd of December, 1523, a mighty crowd thronged the aisles of the great cathedral at Strasburg, honest, hearty Strasburg burghers all of them, dressed in their stiffest and best. They were proud of their beau- tiful church, and the giddy spire, of which the older men had seen the building : they were prouder just then of a certain name that was hummed about in the crowd. For they had come to see a wedding. Matthew Zell, the clergyman of St. Lawrence, and the most popular man in Stras- burg, was to be married to Catherine Schiitz, the carpenter's daughter. Zell had been rector as well as professor of the University of Freiburg, a place which he exchanged for the priesthood of St. Law- MADAME ZELL. 117 rence and the post of Confessor to the Bishop ; and there the priest soon became the warm and daring preacher of the Gospel. Luther's writings had already found adherents in the substantial middle class and intelligent artisans of the town ; and Zell's sermons attracted extraordinary numbers. The Chapter interfered and shut up the pulpit ; but every Sunday the carpenters went into Winch Lane, and brought out a pulpit of their own. " Why do they persecute these teachers of the truth ? " cried Zell ; " I will tell you ; because they know that if indul- gences and purgatory are false, they will get no more money." Whereupon the Bishop prosecuted him, but failed to do more than take away his Confessorship. This was in the year 1523, in which there had happened another notable event. For in the early spring there had come to Strasburg a poor Dominican monk, by name Martin Bucer, who, not twelve months before, had married a Benedictine nun ; and being a scholar and a notable preacher of the new doctrines, which he set forth with the charm of a powerful and musical voice, was perse- cuted from city to city. His father was a working cobbler in some one of the tortuous lanes of the old town ; but it was Zell who threw open his parsonage ii8 MADAME ZELL. to the fugitive ; and from that time they preached on alternate Sundays from the same impromptu pulpit in the cathedral. This same Bucer it was who, on the 8rd of December, married his friend, and after the ceremony they all partook of the Sacrament in both kinds. Of Bucer it is not needful here to say more. He lived long in Strasburg in unbroken intimacy with Zell ; left in his letters some graphic sketches of Zell's wife ; lost his own wife and five children by one stroke of the plague ; and when he married again, it was a widow who had- the singular fortune to be the wife of three of the most eminent men of the Reformation, (Ecolampadius, Capito, and Bucer, to outlive them all, and to be buried at last in the grave of the first. Neither of Zell need more be now said. He was an earnest, loving man, who cared little for public business and much for his parish ; inclined to make somewhat light of controversies in which others saw grave questions at stake ; and tolerant of what seemed to him the peculiarities of those who really confessed Christ. The parsonage that sheltered Bucer soon received Calvin and Du Tillet, and Schwenkfeld had his room as well as Zwingie. The keener spirits hinted that he might have been more decided ; that MADAME ZELL. '119 he was in danger of losing his faith among good works : but he held on unmoved, and " good Matthew , Zell " lives in grateful Alsatian memory to this day. Zell's wife is less known ; and for those who know no more of her than the hurried but lively sketch in the last volume of D'Aubigne's monumental ''Life of Calvin," some details of her life will be interesting. She was a woman of great ability, and has left a letter to the citizens of her native town, which contains ample information of herself "From my mother's womb," she says, *'the Lord was my teacher, so that after the measure of my understanding and of His grace I was always diligent in seeking the truth in Jesus, and for this cause was a favourite with all good ministers. And for the same reason my pious Matthew Zell, when he began the preaching of the Gospel, chose me for his wedded wife." There is certainly no concealment of herself in this ; and throughout the Letter breathes the same frank and healthy spirit. There may have been a little self-consciousness in it. Bucer querulously writes one day that Zell's wife is over head and ears in love with herself, and complains again that Zell is ruled by a woman. She had great energy, and I20 MADAME ZELL. was likely enough to rouse, and sometimes sway, her more easy husband. But her energy was always thrown into the good cause. She was as gentle and tolerant as '' good Matthew/' and her self-conscious- ness is too truthfully transparent to be set down as mere vanity. Perhaps her account of her conversion will show both sides of her character in the fairest light. " Since I was ten years old I was a mother in the Church, an ornament of the pulpit and the school, esteemed all learned men, visited many of them, and conversed not on balls and carnivals, but on the Kingdom of God. For this reason my father, mother, friends, and townsfolk, and many of those learned persons I have mentioned, manifested to me the highest honour and esteem. All the while I had great struggle for the kingdom of heaven's sake. In all my works and service of God; and in my sore pain of body, I could find no certainty of the love and grace of God. Nor could all the learned men give me comfort. In soul and body I fell sick nigh unto death, and was like the poor woman in the Gospel that had spent all her substance on the physicians, but when she heard of Christ and came to Him was helped by the Same. So was it with me and many another stricken heart that was with MADAME ZELL. 121 me in that conflict, many noble, aged women, and also virgins, that sought my society and were my companions. And as we abode in such anxiety, and sought for the grace of God, and could find no rest in all our many works nor in the service and sacra- ments of the Church, God had mercy on us and many more, and raised up the worthy and now departed Doctor Martin Luther, and sent him out to speak and write. And so beautifully did he wiite to me and others of the Lord Jesus Christ, that it was as if I was drawn up out of the pit, yea out of grim, bitter hell itself, into the blessed sweet kingdom of Heaven. And I thought on the word of the Lord Christ that He spake to Peter : ' I will make thee a fisher of men ; henceforth thou shalt catch men ! ' And day and night I sought to lay hold of the way of the truth of God, which is Christ the Son of God. What trial I met before I had learned thoroughly to recognise and confess that Gospel, is known to God." This leaning that she had to learned men comes out distinctly all through her life. Luther and the Bishop of Strasburg were among her coiTespondents ; and her dehght scarcely knew bounds when "for fourteen days I was maid and cook to CEcolampadius 122 MADAME ZELL. and Zwingle" on their way to the Conference of Marburg. Nay, in 1534 she even accompanied her husband on his journey to Wittenberg to see Luther on the conchision of the Wittenberg Concordia. " I am a weak woman," she writes, " and since I was married have had much to do and much to suffer, but I loved my husband so much that I could not let him journey alone when he determined to see and hear our dear Doctor Luther, and the churches and preachers of the towns by the sea. So I left my father in his seventy-fifth year, and my friends and engagements, and travelled with my husband on that journey 1300 miles there and back." Such tendency to learned men, however, was only a by-play of her life, one of its amusements. Her real work was the tending of the poor and needy, in which it appears also that the learned men had their full share. " From the very commencement of my wedded life I received many illustrious learned fugitives. Once, for example, fifteen dear good men of the Margravate of Baden were pressed to go against their conscience ; and there was an aged, learned man among them. Dr. Mantel by name, whom I had known before : and he came to have counsel and comfort from me, saying with tears. MADAME ZELL. 123 ' I am but a poor old maD, and I have many chil- dren.' And when I promised him Matthew Zell's house and home, how his heart rejoiced and his feeble knees Avere strengthened ! For he had suf- fered much, and had lain four years in prison.'^ There was Marx Heilandt also, three centuries predecessor of Dr. Barth in Calw, who came at the letter of Mistress Zell, and ended his weary life in the rest of the parsonage. Nor were even students neglected; for when, as the Reformation advanced, from all parts men drew to Strasburg, where Capito read the Old Testament and Bucer the New, and the number of poor students increased, it was Mis- tress Zell who busied herself to find a home for them in the cloisters of St. AVilliam, and so founded that Wilhelnistift from which many a Strasburg scholar goes thankfully out into the world. It was in deeds like these that the most of Mis- tress Zell's life was spent, until indeed it was ques- tionable whether she or her husband was the more popular person in Strasburg. Nor was there any narrowness in her charity. Neither locality nor opinion affected it. If a fugitive loved Christ, the clergyman's door stood open, and the clergyman's wife ready. " All that believe and confess the Lord 124 MADAME ZELL. Christ," she said, *'to be the true Son of God and the alone Saviour of men, will share our table and rooftree. "We must share with them in heaven, be they who they may. Many are the folk that, with Zell's knowledge and sympathy, I have taken up, and spoken or written for them, whether the follow- ers of our dear Doctor Luther, or Zwingle, or Schwenkfeld, or the poor Baptists ; rich and poor, wise and unwise, as St. Paul says, all might come. What is their name to us ? We are not bound to be of every opinion and creed; but we are bound to show every one love and service and mercy, for so hath Christ our Teacher taught." Wise and loving words, up to which the busy earnest woman strove to live. When Calvin and Du Tillet stood penniless and friendless in the streets of Strasburg, it was the Zells that took them in. When Schwenkfeld, aris- tocrat and mystic, was driven from city to city, it was with the Zells that he found a haven. Luther might passionately call him Stinhfeld ; Bucer might say sharp things about heretics ; but Catherine Zell stood by him, wrote to him, comforted him, yet never yielded one jot to his views. She dreaded the persecuting spirit that threatened the growth of the Church. " These poor Baptists," she wrote, " against MADAME ZELL. 125 whom you are so wrath, and would hunt the rulers upon them, as a huntsman sets his dogs upon boars or hares — they confess Christ the Lord on that same ground on which we separated from the Papacy, the redemption by free grace, If in other things they differ, must we therefore persecute them, and Christ in them — Christ whom they confess with a zeal that has brought many of them into poverty, prison, and fire ? Kather than that, let us think whether we in our doctrine and life are not the cause of their separation. Let the rulers punish them that do evil, but they have no power to lord it over our faith : that belongs to the heart and conscience, not to the outward man. Were the state to persecute, it would inaugurate a tyranny that would leave our towns and villages desolate. Strasburg happily still stands an example to the German land of mercy, sjrmpathy, and care of the poor ; and God be praised, is not yet weary of sheltering many a poor Christian whom you would like to see expelled : Matthew Zell never scattered the sheep, but gathered them. And when the learned men once called upon the magistrates to help them against heretics, -with a heavy heart and great earnestness he declared openly from the pulpit ; " I take God, heaven, and earth to 126 MADAME ZELL, witness against that day, that I will be clear of persecuting these poor folk.' " Nobly spoken in any day, nobler then. It is proof that the principles of toleration were not so unknown as some would have us fancy, that there may be less excuse for the breach of them than we have been apt to recognise. By this Strasburg woman, at least, they are broadly stated, and with a sharpness not unworthy of later times. It was a clear and broad faith she held, so clear that she would yield nothing of it to the teaching of the man she honoured most, so broad that she felt it must embrace minds widely different from her own. Her tolerance sprung out of the warmth of a loving heart, a heart that revolted against the teaching of force. But it was something higher than herself that taught her to enunciate principles of an after growth with such a fulness and protest, and by which she showed herself as much a pattern of apostolic charity, as she was a follower of apostolic Dorcas in good works. Mistress Zell also was not unmindful of the j^ress. The year after she was married, she printed a defence of her husband, which the magistrates seem to have suppressed, no doubt finding it better to let Zell preach, than have his wife defend. But the same MADAME ZELL. 127 year, when the poor folk poured in from Kenzingen, she issued a more fortunate appeal, '' To my sisters, the suffering, faithful Christian women of the com- munity of Kenzingen." Ten years later, when Jacob Frdhlich printed an edition of Weisse's Hymn-book, she wrote a characteristic preface, saying, that " since all the world over there are so many scandalous ballads sung by men and women, and even children, and since the world will always be singing something, it seems to me most excellent and useful, that the entire work of Christ for our salvation should be set forth in song, as this good man has done, so that the folk may sing their redemption with lusty hearts and clear voices, and the devil may find no room for his songs among them." Further writings have not come down to us; but there are certain books of hers, in which she has written out her mind over the broad margins in such fashion as, " Oh, Strasburg ! if God take away from thee Matthew Zell, what will become of thy people ? " or this, " Lord Christ, make me live in Thee." Matthew Zell indeed was devoted to his wife, and no woman honoured her husband more loyally, notwithstanding those hints of female supremacy, dropped by Bucer, if not by Calvin. " My husband," she says, " gave me the heartiest i28 MADAME ZELL. permission for all that I did, and loved me the more on that account ; yea, was willing to suffer the want of me at times in his own house, that I might serve the Church better." And to Schwenkfeld, she writes : " My dear husband always gave me leave to read, hear, pray, study, early and late, day and night, as I would; yea, and furthered me therein, and would have been glad that I should do it even at the cost of his own comfort. Nor has he ever hindered me from sj)eaking to you, nor from the fullest intercourse, nor from writing to you : he never punished or hated me on that account, but hath much the more loved me." There was the frankest confidence between them, and the happiest kinship of aim ; and if Zell's was the most hospit- able house in the town, it was perhaps the most like to a Christian home. They had passed their silver wedding-day when her husband died at seventy- one. " Say to all my helpers," he said to his wife on his last night, " my deacons, and young preachers, that they must leave Schwenkfeld and the Baptists in peace, and preach Christ ; and for thyself, continue to do as thou hast done." Whereupon he slept away, praying for his congregation. " And I have striven," she wrote. MADAME ZELL. 129 " to do as he said ; and in the two years and eleven weeks I remained behind him in the parsonage I have thrown it open to the poor and persecuted, and helped the Church at my own cost, as before." But evil days came to the now aged widow. The com- promise of the Augsburg Interim filled her with shame and foreboding. Bucer had fled for refuge in England; and with the scattering of her friends there rose up a new generation of an opposite spirit. A bigoted, exaggerated Lutheranism reigned in Strasburg in place of the free, loving preaching of the Word ; and Louis Babus, its chief, was a poor lad whom Zell had taken into his house, and his wife cared for as a mother. Rabus even spoke bitterly or contemptuously of the good old Strasburg teachers, at last of Zell himself. Catherine Zell was not the woman to see a slight put upon her hus- band's memory and the good cause. She wrote him a kindly letter, and was answered with grossness.* She replied to this in the spirit she had lived : " Dear Master Louis, a year ago I wrote you a friendly, motherly, and most true epistle, impelled thereto by weighty reasons. You returned an un- * " I have received tliy heathenish, unchristian, filthy, and lying letter," so Rabus began. K I30 MADAME ZJELL. friendly answer. And I am vexed, as one who loves you and seeks your true welfare." So the letter runs on with mild entreaty, but firm statement of opinion, written with the already trembling hand of advancing years. " 0, blessed Wolf Capito ! " she breaks out towards the end, " Caspar Hedio, Matthew Zell, how well for you, you rest in Christ ! you who never gave up your fellow- workers to the devil ! But God has had mercy upon you, and in his grace taken you away from the evil to come. Blessed be his name ! Amen." Meanwhile her charities held on unbroken. Her means might be small, but her heart was large* When Bucer fled to England, he left some gold pieces enclosed in a letter to the widow. When she found it, she wrote off at once : — " You have greatly hurt me by leaving those two pieces of gold behind. . . . . I put them now back again, as Joseph did with his brethren. A poor preacher, with five children, came to me fleeing from the Interim ; and there came also a preacher's wife that had seen with her own eyes her husband beheaded. I kept them ten days, and at parting gave them one of the gold pieces, not for my sake, but yours : and the other is inside. You must use it yourself, for you will have MADAME ZELL. 131 need of it, and likewise your family, if tliey must follow you to England. God keep you eternally, and defend you from all his and your enemies ! " So the good true-hearted woman lived on ; falling slowly into the infirmities of years, helping the poor, writing to her friends, and still remembering with pride that she was " only a piece of the rib of the blessed Matthew Zell." Fourteen years after her husband's death she was yet alive, but worn out with weary sickness, and unable for months to hold a pen. Her death cannot have been long delayed ; and when it came, no doubt it found her as she had lived — a Mother in Israel. K 2 GEORGE NEUMARK. HE Thirty Years' War was over, and Germany rested from blood. Two years after the peace a young man was liv- ing in one of the narrowest and filthiest lanes of Hamburg. No one visited him, and all that the people of the house knew of him was that for the most part of every day he played his violon- cello with such skill and expression that they thronged round his door to catch the music. His custom was to go out about mid-day and dine in a low restaurant frequented by beggars ; for the rest, he would go out in the twilight with something under his shabby cloak, and it was always noted that he paid his bill the day after such an expedition. This had not escaped the curiosity of Mistress GEORGE NEUMARK. 133 Johannsen, his landlady, and having quietly followed him one evening, he stopped, to her dismay, at the shop of a well-known pawnbroker. It was all plain now; and the goodnatured woman determined to help him if she could. A few days after she tapped at his door, and was filled with pity to find nothing in the room but her own scanty furniture. All the rest had been re- moved save the well-known violoncello, which stood in a corner of the window, whilst the young man sat in the opposite window-corner, his head buried in his hands. " Mr. Neumark," said the landlady, " don't take it ill that I make so free as to visit you ; but as you have not left the house for two days, and we have had no music, I thought you might be sick. If I could do anjrthing " "Thank you, my good woman," he answered wearily, and with a sad gratitude in his tone. " I am not confined to bed, and I have no fever ; but I am ill — very ill." " Surely, then, you ought to go to bed ? " " No," he replied quickly, and blushed deeply. "Oh, but you must," cried Mistress Johannsen boldly. " Now just allow me. I'm an old woman 134 GEORGE NEUMABK. old enough to be your mother, and I will just see if your bed is all right." "Pray don't trouble yourself," he replied, and sprang up quickly before the bedroom door. It was too late, however ; for the good woman had already seen that there was nothing but a bag of straw, and that same shabby mantle in which he made the evening journeys. " My good woman," said Neumark, quickly, " you are perhaps afraid that I will not pay the next rent ; but make yourself easy ; I am poor, but honourable. It is sometimes hard enough, but I have never been left utterly destitute yet." " Mr. Neumark," she replied, with some hesitation, and after mustering all her courage, " we have little ourselves, but sometimes more than enough — as, for instance, to-day ; and as you have not been out, if you would allow me " The young man coloured deeply again, rose from his seat, walked up and down the room, and then, with apparent effort, said, " You are right. I have not eaten to-day. I " Without waiting for another word, the landlady had [left the room, and in a few minutes returned laden with dinner. GEORGE NEUMARK. 135 ''You must not take it ill," she began, when dinner was over ; " but you are surely not a native of our town. Do you not know any one here ? " " No one. I am a stranger ; and you are the first person that has spoken to me kindly. May God bless you ! " " Well now, if it would not be rude, I would like to ask you some questions. Who are you ? What is your name ? Where do you come from ? What is your business ? Are you a musician ? Are your parents alive ? What are you doing in Hamburg 1 " Breathless rather than exhausted, she stopped, and the young man, smiling at his goodnatured cate- chist, began : — " My name is George Neumark. My parents were poor townsfolk of Miihlhausen, and are both dead. I was born there nine-and-twenty years ago, on the 16th March, 1621. There have been hard times ever since, and I have had to eat, and often first to seek, my daily bread with tears. Yet I must not be impatient, and murmur and sin against the Lord my God. I know that He will help me at the last." " But how did you think to get your living ? '* interrupted the landlady. " I studied jurisprudence ; and there I fear I made 136 GEORGE NEUMABK. a fatal mistake, since both by disposition and from love to my Saviour I am a man of peace, and cannot take to these quarrels and processes. Had I under- stood my God's will when I commenced those studies, it had been better. But to continue my story : for ten years I suffered hunger and thirst enough at the Latin school of Schleusingen, a little town in the neighbourhood of my birthplace, where I learned that the wisdom of this world will not bring me bread. Then, at two-and-twenty, I went to Konigs- berg to study law. It was far to journey, but I fled from the hideous strife that wasted my fatherland. I avoided the horrors of war, but only to fall into the equal horror of fire, and I soon lost by the flames all I had, to the last farthing, and was a beggar." " My poor man ! Did not that leave you in despair ? " " I won't appear better than I was ; and as I strove in the great city, without friend or help, my heart sank ; but the dear God had mercy on me, and if I bore the cross, I lived well in body and soul" " Why, what had you to live on ? " " The gift of God. You must know that I am a GEORGE NEUMAEK. 137 poet, and may have heard that I have some readi- ness in pla}dng the violoncello, and by these I found many friends and benefactors, who helped me indeed sparingly enough." " And did you remain in Konigsberg till you came herer' " No," he answered, sighing heavily. " After five years I went to Danzig, in the hope of earning bread there, and finding that a false hope, went on to Thorn, and there succeeded beyond my expectation. God brought to me many a dear soul that took me for friend and brother. But for all that I could find no official position, and so I determined at last to seek in my native town what was denied me else- where. Hamburg lay in my way, and as I passed through it a voice seemed to say to me : ' Abide here, and God will supply thee.' But it must have been the voice of my own will ; for you know now that things are not bright with me here." " But tell me," said the landlady, " what office do you seek ? " " If it were God's will, I could earn my bread at scrivening, or a clerkship of any sort." " Then you are not a musician 1 " " Well, I am, and I am not. I can play a little, 138 GEOBGE NEUMABK. but for my pleasure, not to win bread. This violin is my only friend in the world." " But how do you live ? " " My good woman," he said, with a faint smile, " I could tell you much of the wonderful goodness and mercy of God to me in all my misery. It is true I have now nothing left but this dear old violin. But you know Mr. Siebert ? He has a clerkship vacant, and he is to answer my application to-day. I believe it is time for me to be with him, so you must excuse me." II. Nathan Hirsch, the Jew pawnbroker, dwelt in one of the narrow, crooked lanes that led down to the harbour. He listened from morning till night to the music of the steps that crossed his threshold. Late one evening a young man in a shabby cloak entered the musty shop. "Good evening, Mr. Neumark," said the Jew. " What brings you so late ? Have you no patience tiU the morning ? " " No, Nathan ; if I had waited till the morning, perhaps I had not come at aU. What will you give me for this violoncello ? " GEORGE NEUMABK. 139 " Now, what am I to do with this great fiddle ? " drawled the Jew. " That you know perfectly well, Nathan. Put it in the corner there behind the clothes, where no one will see it. Now, what will you give me for it ? " Nathan took it up, examined it on every side, and said, as he laid it down, " What will I give you ? Is it for twopence-worth of wood and a couple of old strings ? I have seen fiddles with silver and mother-of-pearl ; but there is nothing here but lumber." " Hear me," said Neumark. " Full five years long I hoarded, farthing by farthing, full five years I suffered hunger and pain, before I had the five pounds that bought this instrument. Lend me two on it. You shall have three should I ever redeem it." The Jew flung up his hands. " Two pounds ! Hear him ! Two pounds for a pennyworth of wood ! What am I to do with it, if you won't redeem it ?" "Nathan" — and the young man spoke low and strong — " you don't know how my whole soul is in this violin. It is my last earthly comfort, my only I40 GEORGE NEUMARK, earthly friend. I tell thee, I might almost as well pawn my soul as it. Wouldst thou have my soul ? " "Why not? And if you did not redeem it, it would be mine. But what would the Jew do with your soul ? " " Hush, Jew. Yet the fault was my own. The Saviour whom thy people crucified has redeemed my soul, and I am His. I spoke in the lightness of despair. But I am His, and He will never suffer me to want. It is hard when I must sacrifice the last and dearest. But He will help me. I will pay thee back." " Young man, you will not deceive me with these vain hopes. The last time, did you not tell me that a rich merchant would help you ? " " Siebert ? Yes. I went to him at his own hour, and he said I came too late : the place was given to another. Am I to bear the penalty of the conduct of others ? " " I deal with you, and not with others," returned the Jew, coldly. " Take your great fiddle away." " Nathan, you know I am a stranger here. Re- member when you were a stranger, and the Christ- ian helped the Jew. I know no one but you. Give me but thirty shillings." GEORGE NEUMAEK. 141 " Thirty shillings ! Have I not said already that no merchant can give thirty shillings for a penny- worth of wood ? " "Thou art a hard and cruel man." And with these words Neumark snatched up his beloved violoncello and rushed out of the shop. " Stop, stop, young man," cried the Jew ; " trade is trade. I will give you one pound." "Thirty shillings, Nathan. To-morrow, I must pay one pound, and how am I to live? Have mercy." "I have sworn that I will not give thirty shil- lings ; but out of old friendship I will give you five- and-twenty : that is (you will note), with a penny interest on every florin for eight days, and for the next week twopence, and if you cannot pay me then, it is mine. Now, what am I to do with this great piece of wood ? " " It is hard : but I must submit. May God have mercy on me ! " " He is a good and faithful God, the God of my fathers, and He helped me much, or I could not afford to lose by such bargains as this. Twelve pence and four-and-twenty pence make six-and- thirty. I may as well take it off the five-and- 142 GEOEGE NEUMARK. twenty shillings. It will save you bringing it back here." Neumark made no answer. He was gazing at his violoncello, while the tears rolled silently down his cheek. "Nathan, I have bnt one request. You don't know how hard it is to part from that violin. For ten years we have been together. If I have nothing else I have it ; at the worst it spoke to me, and sung back all my courage and hope. Ten times rather would I give you my heart's blood than this beloved comforter. Of all the sad hearts that have left your door, there has been none so sad as mine." His voice grew thick, and he paused for a mo- ment. " Just this one favour you must do me, Nathan — to let me play once more upon my violin." And he hurried to it without waiting for an answer. " Hold ! " cried the Jew in a passion ; " the shop should have been closed an hour ago but for you and your fiddle. Come to-morrow, or, better, not at all." " No — to-day — now," returned Neumark. " I must say farewell," and seizing the instrument, and GEORGE NEUMAEK. 143 half- embracing it, he sat down on an old chest in the middle of the shop, and began a tune so exqui- sitely soft that the Jew listened in spite of himself A few more strains, and he sang to his own melody two stanzas of the hymn — " Life is weary, Saviour take me." " Enouo^h, enouofh," broke in the Jew. " What is the use of all this lamentation ? You have five-and- twenty shillings in your pocket." But the musician was deaf Absorbed in his own thoughts, he played on. Suddenly the key changed. A few bars, and the melody poured itself out anew ; but, like a river which runs into the sunshine out of the shade of sullen banks, he sang louder, and his face lighted up with happy smiles — " Yet who knows ? The cross is precious. " " That's better. Stick by that," shouted the Jew. "And don't forget that you have five-and-twenty shillings in your pocket. Now, then, in a fortnight the thing is mine if you have not redeemed it." And he turned aside, muttering mechanically, " but what am I to do with a great piece of lumber wood ? " Neumark laid his violin gently back in the corner. 144 GEORGE NEUMABK. and murmured, " Ut fiat divina voluntas, As God will, I am still : " and without a word of adieu, left the shop. As he rushed out into the night, he stumbled against a man who seemed to have been listening to the music at the door. " Pardon me, sir, but may I ask if it was you who played and sung so beautifully just now ? " " Yes," said Neumark, hurriedly, and pushed on. The stranger seized hold of his cloak — " Pardon me, I am but a poor man, but that hymn you sung has gone through my very soul. Could you tell me, perhaps, where I might get a copy ? I am only a servant, but I would give a florin to get this hymn — that was just written, I do believe, for my- self." " My good friend," replied Neumark, gently, " I will willingly fulfil your wish without the florin. May I ask who you are ? " " John Gutig, at your service, and in the house of the Swedish Ambassador, Baron von Rosenkranz." " Well, come early to-morrow morning. My name is George Neumark ; and you will find me at Mistress Johannsen's^ in the Crooked Lane. Good night" GEORGE NEUMABK. 145 III One morning, about a week after this, Gutig paid a second visit to Mistress Johannsen's. Neumark received him kindly. " Perhaps, sir, you will think what I am going to say foolish ; but I have prayed over it the whole night, and I hope I may make so bold " " What ? Is it a second copy of the hymn ? Of course, you may have it with pleasure." " No, no, sir ; it is not that. I have the copy you gave me in my Bible, to keep it better; though if it were lost, I think I have it as well off as the Lord's Prayer and the Creed. But yesterday You won't take it ill ?" " Never mind ; go on." " Well, sir, the ambassador had a secretary that wrote all his letters. Yesterday he suddenly left the house ; why, no one knew ; but we believed that the master found him in default and let him easily off. Yesterday evening, as I saw my lord to bed, he said to me, ' Now that Mr. Secretary is gone, I know not where to look for as clever a one.' Somehow your name came into my mind ; for the secretary lives in the house, and is entertained at the table, and has a 146 GEORGE NEUMARK. hundred crowns a year paid down. So I said, ' My lord, I know some one ' ' You ! ' lie cried, and laughed ; ' have you a secretary among your friends V * No, my lord,' said I ; ' though I know him, I am much too humble to have him for a friend or acquain- tance/ So, to make a long story short, sir, I told him all " " All ! " interrupted Neumark. *' And that you made my acquaintance on the doorstep of Nathan Hirsch, the Jew pawnbroker, where I was pledging my violin ? " " Yes, all that," replied Gutig ; " and if I have done wrong I am very sorry ; only my heart was so full. My lord was not offended, but bid me bring your hymn, to see how you wrote. ' Writing and poetiy both admirable,' he said, as he laid it down ; ' and if the young man would come at once, I would see ; perhaps he might do.' I was uneasy after- wards lest you might be hurt, sir ; and between that and wishing you might be secretary, I could scarcely wait for the morning. The ambassador likes an early visit, and if you would pardon me, sir, and think well of it, you might go to him at once." Neumark, instead of answering, walked up and down the room. " Yes," he said to himself, " the GEORGE NEUMABK, 147 Lord's ways are surely wonderful. They that trust in the Lord shall not want any good thing." Then turning to the servant, " God reward you for what you have done ! I shall go with you." The ambassador received him kindly. " You are a poet, I see, by these verses. Do you compose hymns only ? " " Of the poor," said Neumark, after a moment's pause, " it is written, theirs is the hingdom of hea- ven. I never knew any one who was rich and en- joyed tliis world that had written a hymn. It is the cross that presses such music out of us." The ambassador looked surprised, but not dis- pleased. " You certainly do not flatter us," he said. " But, young man, your experience is but narrow. Yet you might remember that our King Gustavus Adolphus, though he lived in the state and glory of the throne, not only composed, but sung and played a right noble Christian hymn. However, you are poor, very poor, if my servant's account be correct. Has poverty made you curse your life ? " " I thank the Lord, never, though I have been near it. But He always kept the true peace in my heart. Moreover, the Lord said, ' the poor ye have always ; ' and another time he called them blessed ; L 2 148 GEORGE NEUMABK. and was Himself poor for our sakes, and commanded the Gospel to be preached to the poor ; and the very poor, as the Apostle says, may yet make many rich. It is not so hard, after all, to be reconciled with poverty." " Gallantly answered, like a man of faith. We may have opportunity to speak of that again. — I hear that you have studied law. Do you think you could sift papers that require a knowlege of jurisprudence and p)olitics ? " " If your grace would try me, I would attempt it." " Well, then, take these papers and read them through. They contain inqviiries from Chancellor Oxenstiern and the answers I have been able to pro- cure. Bring me a digest of the whole. You may take your own time, and when you are ready, knock at the next door." IV. Neumark left the hotel of the ambassador that evening with a radiant face, and as he walked quickly through the streets, talked with himself, while a smile stole across his lips. " Yes, yes ; leave God to order all thy ways." GEORGE NEUMABK. 149 It was to Jew Nathan's that he took his way. " Give me my violoncello," he cried. " Here are the five-and -twenty shillings and half-a-crown more. You need not be so amazed. I know you well. You took advantage of my poverty, and had I been an hour beyond the fortnight you would have pocketed the five pounds. Still, I thank you for the five-and- twenty shillings : but for them I must have left Hamburg a beggar. Nor can I feel that you did anything yourself, but were simply an instrument in the hand of God. You know nothing of the joy that a Christian has in saving another, so I pay you in what coin you like best, an extra half-croAvn. Here are the one pound seven and sixpence in hard money. Only remember this, * "Who trusts in God's unchanging love, Builds on the rock that nought can move.' " Seizing his violoncello in triumph, Neumark swept homewards with hasty steps, never pausing till he reached his room, sat down, and began to play with such a heavenly sweetness, that Mistress Johannsen rushed in upon him with a storm of questions, all of which he bore unheeding, and played and sang until his landlady scarce knev^' if she was in heaven or on earth. ISO GEORGE NEUMABK. "Are you there, good Mistress Johannsen?" lie said when he had finished. " Well, perhaps you will do me the kindness to call in as many people as there are in the house and in the street. Brinof them all in, and I will sing you a hynm that you never heard before, for I am the happiest man in Hamburg. Go, dear good woman ; go, bring me a congregation, and I will preach them a sermon on my violoncello." In a few minutes the room was full. Then Neu- mark seized his bow, played a bar or two, opened his mouth and sang. ' ' Leave God to order all thy ways, And hope in Him, whate'er betide ; Thou' It find him in the evil days Of all-sufficient strength and guide. "Who trusts in God's unchanging love, Builds on the rock that nought can move. " "What can these anxious cares avail, These never-ceasing moans and sighs ? What can it help us to bewail Each painful moment as it flies ? Our cross and trials do but press The heavier for our bitterness. " Only your restless heart keep still, And wait in cheerful hope, content To take whate'er His gracious will, His all-discerning love, hath sent ; Nor doubt our inmost wants are known To Him who chose us for His own. GEORGE NEUMABK. 151 *' He knows when joyful hours are best, He sends them as He sees it meet ; When thou hast borne its fiery test, And now art freed from all deceit, He comes to thee all unaware, And makes thee o\vn His loving care." * Here tlie singer stopped, for his voice trembled, and the tears ran down his cheeks. The little audience stood fixed in silent sympathy : but at last Mistress Johannsen could contain herself no longer. " Dear, dear sir," she began, drying her eyes with her apron, for there was not a dry cheek in the crowd, " that is all like as if I sat in the church and forgot all my care, and thought of God in heaven and Christ upon the cross. How has it all come about 1 You w^ere so downcast this morning, and now you make my heart leap with joy. Has God been helping you ? " " Yes, that He has, my dear gracious God and Father ! All my need is over. Only think : I am secretary to the Swedish Ambassador here in Ham- burg, have a hundred crowns a-year; and to com- plete my happiness he gave me five-and-twenty * From the admirable translation in the "Lyra Germanica" of the well-known *' Wer mu' den lieben Gott lasst wolteu." 153 GEORGE NEUMABK. crowns in hand, so that I have redeemed my poor viohn. Is not the Lord our God a wonderful and gracious God ? Yes, yes, my good people, be sure of this, — * "Who trusts in God's imcliaiiging love, Builds on the rock that nought can move.' ** " And this beautiful hymn, where did you find it, sir, if I may make so bold ? For I know all the hymn-book by heart, but not this. Did you make it yourself ? " " I ? Well, yes, I am the instrument — the harp ; but God swept the strings. All I knew was this, ' Who trusts in God's unchanging love ;' these words lay like a soft burden on my heart. I went over them again and again, and so they shaped them- selves into this song. How, I cannot tell. I began to sing and to pray for joy, and my soul blessed the Lord, and word followed word like water from a fountain. Stop," he cried, " listen once more : — " Nor in the heat of pain and strife. Think God hath cast thee off unheard ; Nor that the man whose prosperous life Thou enviest, is of Him preferred ; Time passes and much change doth bring, And sets a bound to everything. *' All are alike before His face ; 'Tis easy to our God Most High GEORGE NEUMABK. 153 To make the rich man poor and base, To rjive the poor man wealth and joy. Trae wonders still of Him are wrought, Who setteth up and brings to nought. " Sing, pray, and swerve not from His ways, But do thine own part faithfully ; Trust His rich promises of grace, So shall it be fulfilled in thee ; God never yet forsook at need The soul that trusted Him indeed." When he ceased for the second time, he was so much moved that he put away the violoncello in the corner, and the little audience quietly dis- persed. Such is the story of one of the most beautiful of all the German hymns, one of those which has preached the truest sermon to troubled and fretted and despairing hearts. After two years, Baron von Eosenkranz procured his secretary the post of Li- brarian of the Archives at Weimar, and there he peacefully died in his sixty-first year. He wrote much, verses indeed almost innumerable, possibly to be read at Weimar still by such Dryasdusts as care to look. But the legacy he left to the Church was the hymn that the simple-hearted man played when God gave him back his beloved " Viola di Gamba." MICHAEL FENEBEEG AND HIS FEIENDS. N the year 1770, two young men met at the Jesuit School at Landsberg as novices of that Order. They were of the same age, of the same stamp of character, both sprung from the poor, both eager students, they lived in the same house, and became fast friends. Michael Feneberg was born in February, 1751, at Oberdorf in Bavaria. The son of peasant parents, he had few advantages and few opportunities. To his parents' discomfort he declared he must be a student. They had strong objections. The ''learned handicraft," as the country-folk phrased it, was uncertain ; every other handicraft had a golden floor. It took up time, moreover, and it was so FENEBERG AND HIS FEIENDS. 155 many years before it brought in any return. And then it cost florins upon florins ; and at the bare thought of that scandalous waste, all to make a man speak Latin, the honest couple declared against the student. A fire, which left them nothing but their lives, conspired to crush the boy's hopes. But in some way it happened that he became a scholar; was somewhat stupid at his first school, an average pupil at the second, and then rose to be first of his class. Michael Sailer was born in November, 1751, also in Bavaria. His father was a shoemaker, and a devout man in his way. Of his mother nothing is known, but the touching picture in the preface to one of Sailer's books, written forty years after her death. The memory of the slightest detail of her life — the glance of an eye, the touch of a hand, any household work — quickened in him a religious sense, that " no distance of time, or press of sorrows, or even sin itself could weaken." It is the strong expression of a profound feeling that does equal honour to mother and son. The village schoolmaster taught him what he could, and the chaplain grounded him in Latin, until, what with his own application and his teacher's enthusiasm, it was plain he should 156 FENEBEBa AND HIS FBIENDS. go to college. His father viewed it hopefully, but always with this conclusion : " From all they tell me about that craft, it is too costly for us." Rieger, the carpenter, was of another opinion. "I am as poor as you," he would say, "and my son is a student in Munich. As for life, neighbour, God gives that, and good men give the rest." It was a sanguine view of the world, and an imperfect theology ; but it so far impressed the shoemaker, that when Michael was ten years old, his father took him to Munich. Passing a gamekeeper's on the way, Rieger solemnly adjured his neighbour to buy a brace of snipe, and the other from some whim or impulse obeyed. Anived at Munich, the snipe and the gracious words of the shoemaker opened the schoolmaster's heart ; young Sailer was introduced to a wealthy family, became companion to their son, and obtained board and schooling for more than six years, and a friendship for life. He used to go back with peculiar pleasure to this epoch. When his school-fellow, long after, entertained him at dinner, '' next to God and the two snipe," he said, I owe my entire literary existence to you." For the snipe were never forgotten. He used to say meditatively among his friends, " It was by two snipe that God FENEBEBG AND HIS FBIENDS. 157 made me what I am." His seal was two snipe with the legend. Under God's guiding. And when the art-loving King of Bavaria raised him a statue, he ordered two snipe to be carved on the pedestal. In due time the snipe also led him to Landsberg, — a clever, thoughtful, hard-reading student of nine- teen ; and at Landsberg the two peasants met. Sailer wrote of Landsberg that it was a paradise. IS^otwithstanding, in 1773, it was suppressed, with every other Jesuit institution in the country. Pro- bably the Government had no adequate notion of a paradise of Jesuits ; probably the student saw in his teachers only kindly, intellectual, genial men, and cared and knew little of a world outside his books ; perhaps there is some truth in what he said afterwards : " In the origin of their Order there was much that was divine ; in its sjDread much that was human ; in its suppression much that was ^ neither human nor divine." But, being suppressed, even enthusiastic pupils submitted to the new order of things ; and the two friends went to study canon law at Ingolstadt. Ten years have passed, and we catch a glimpse of these friends again. Sailer is professor at the University of Dillengen, reading lectures on pas- IS8 FENEBEBG AND HIS FBIENDS. toral and po23ular theology, and discoursing on religion. Feneberg is also at Dillengen, professor at the g}^mnasium. For ten years more the gjmma- sium prospers ; students crowd the University class- rooms ; Dillengen rises into note ; men come to it from remote angles of the kingdom, and even foreigners matriculate ; and the jDrofessors work with a harmony which has passed into a proverb. There is some power and attractiveness growing silently up within the queer little cloistered place ; something that is not in the established routine ; some independent interest. Rumours spread about the teaching. The dogmatic positions of the church, it is said, are thrown lightly aside. Christ and Divine love are spoken of more than the canons, and indeed without much regard to canons. Stu- dents return home quoting Lavater and Stilling, and dee]) in the writings of Fenelon and Tauler. They even profess to reverence and believe the Bible, against the free assertions of the philosophers. Dillengen becomes to the ex-Jesuits '' a dangerous place ;" they warn against it ; "a young man may lose his faith there." Hints are thrown out that the professors belong to the Illuminati ; they are called mystics, and Jansenists, and Protestants ; the FENEBEEG AND HIS FBIENDS. 159 Illiiminati themselves league against them ; secret influences are brought to bear upon the government ; Feneberg is removed from the gymnasium, and Sailer and his friends are crushed out of the University. Feneberg retired to the vicarage of Seeg ; Sailer wandered to Munich. " What brings you here ? " said his old friend Winkelhofer. " They have dismissed me." " Oh ! Then come and rest with me. My room, my table, my bed, my goods, my heart, — all mine is thine." In this matter the sagacity of the Jesuits did not play them false. They were right in tracing up to Dillengen "a dangerous tendency ;" they were right in fixing on the two friends as its real strength. Sailer and Feneberg were the most eminent men of the place. They were men of the purest and sim- plest lives, loving, loveable, and blameless. They had rare gifts of teaching ; they loved it for its own sake. When Feneberg, in an early curacy, found leisure time hanging on his hands, he set up school in his house, and was, he says himself, " head-master and usher, rector magnificus, bedell house-father, and often housemaid ;" he composed hymns, and sung them with his pupils; walked, and played gymnastics with them; studied them and studied i6o FENEBERG AND HIS FBIENDS, with them. It was his pleasure, his hoHday. One of those fifteen pupils has written how his master shrewdly cured him of ghost-fears, bringing him up to the spectre pretty much as you would a shying horse. And there lingers still another tradition of cure, quaint if not graceful, by which he reconciled two boys who would not speak, setting them down to their porridge with but one spoon between them. Sailer, also, was never so happy as in the professor's chair ; and one of the best books he wrote was on education. He knew what was passing in young men's minds ; the vague speculative thoughts that rise up, at which they are half proud, half startled ; their struggles with the past and with tradition and with all beliefs, through which they often pass by fiery ordeal. By his gentle wisdom he disarmed them of the proud sensitiveness with which they cling to thoughts that oppose them to the rest of the world. By his sympathy he deprived them of that chivalrous despair that has sometimes forced a man on into positive scepticism, because every man's hand was against him. His frankness, mild- ness, purity, won them rapidly over to his confidence; and men of the wildest natures, restless, lawless, defiant minds, were often noticed to yield to him FENEBERG AND HIS FRIENDS. i6i after a single interview. And the two men were not only gifted with singular power over others, but were in the best position to use it. The High School was the feeder of the University; and the boys who were for years under Feneberg, went with minds ready, softened and plastic, to be moulded into men under Sailer. The one prepared the way for the other, and the tendency of both was the same. Before Feneberg was long at Seeg he had won the hearts of his people ; and, successful as he was in the High School, perhaps the pastorate was his pro- per sphere. One winter evening, however, as he was returning from preaching on the patience of the saints, his horse fell on the slippery forest path, and Feneberg's leg was broken. A clumsy country doctor tried to set it ; two stout peasants were ordered to push the bone into its place. A surgeon came at last, and, after tedious waiting, amputation became necessary. "The Lord hath visited me!" was his simple exclamation when his leg was broken. When they told him of the surgical decision his prayer was as simple : — " Lord ! Thou givest faith, but mine is very weak, even as this foot. Yea, it is Thou who plantest faith, and causeth it to grow. Give me i62 FENEBEEG AND HIS FRIENDS. faith. Nature would willingly keep the limb ; but not my will, Thine be done." The leg was taken off and buried ; a wooden one supplied its place ; and henceforth Feneberg signed his letters, "the one-legged vicar," or — for no other word comes so near the strong idiom — timber-toes. There was a deep humour in the man, that came out, as it usually does with quiet natures, in his misfortune. "Dear heart," he would exclaim, " I used to be melancholy when I had two feet. I can say now, a broken leg is good medicine." And many a hymn of Claudius, and other favourite poets, made the sick-room cheery. " Happily," he wrote to Sailer, " the nag was a neigh- bour's ; so the credit of Tny old nag is saved." Weber in Dillengen used to say, that having been nearly drowned he had got a new idea; and Feneberg chuckled over that meditative professor that the wooden leg gave him new ideas every day. He used to boast of its uses : — " There is the economical, for I only need one stocking and one shoe ; there is the social, for I need go no more to court, for which nature never meant me ; there is the religious," and so on, counting them up upon his fingers as he lay wearily upon the sofa. As he got better, and his trusty chaplain, Bayr, would take the crutches to FENEBERG AND HIS FRIENDS. 163 show how easily one might walk with them after all, — " Ay, ay," he would laugh, " if you have two sound legs, and go on a pair of crutches besides, no doubt you will go bravely." Nor even when the leg was buried had it performed all its functions. It was dug up some years after, and placed on the study- table, and honoured with an inscription. " Has not the Apostle said," he once appealed to an angry married couple, " that ' a man will no more hate his own wife than his own flesh ? ' Why, there is my leg, a dead bone, and yet I love it still, for it is part of my body. And you would hate each other ! That leg will plead against you at the last day ! " "Perhaps," he addressed the soldiers as they were marching to the wars, " you may have a leg shot off in battle. What matter ? Don't you see by me that you can get on in the world with a wooden one?" But the lesson he was learning most was this : " Oh, that I could draw nearer to thee, Lord, and I would cheerfully give thee not one foot but two ; yea, my hands and my head ! " Up till this time he had been drawing hionself nearer by self-denial, patience, diligence, devotional thoughts. His know- ledge of the truth was more outward than inward, M 2 i64 FENEBERG AND HIS FRIENDS. what it should be and not what it really was in himself; his relation to Christ was still legal, and he had but the dullest sense, and that only at times, of justification by faith ; even the Bible, he complained, Avas to him a book sealed with seven seals. The complaint ceased before his illness left. Instead of dead letters, the words came to him like a living and searching spirit. But in proportion as he felt that, he felt as if he were drawn away from Christ. Sin became to him an awful teiTor and guilt ; it started up among the purest thoughts of his life ; it fronted him at every memory ; it spoiled his virtues. And this feeling, startling to himself and growing in intensity, threw a darkness over his life. He was restless and peaceless, and day and night he poured out through his tears one cry, Lord, save rne, I perish ! Meanwhile, Sailer was passing through much the same struggle, but with less of spiritual intensity. From his boyhood, his devotional habit and his intellect had been at war. At Landsberg, at Ingol- stadt, at Dillengen, he had been a doubter. Under the strong calm exterior, the wise and patient words, the brilliant and eager lecturer, there lay at times unspeakable anguish, that tenible anguish to FENEBEBG AND HIS FEIENDS. 165 a devout temper of intellectual scepticism. " You believe in Christ, because the apostles declare him," it whispered once ; " but what if the apostles were deceived and deceiving ? " He opened his mind to an Indian missionary. Father Pfab talked with him for hours about his travels, and the country, and the people. After some days, he asked, " Can you believe what I have said ? Do you think it is true?" "I do not doubt it for a moment." "But I might have deceived you." " But a man who left his country for the sake of the Gospel will not lie, and he will not deceive." " And you believe that of me, and not of the apostles ! " It struck home, and Pfab urged it with great skill and power. Yet, what could it do beyond what it did, bring Sailer to his knees for a little, crying out, 3Iy Lord ! my God ! Intellectual doubt goes deeper down than the intel- lect; nor will intellectual clearness cast it out. Unless the heart be settled in Christ, the intellect may go on doubting for ever. Unless the spiritual atmosphere be clear, it matters little what is the character of the intellectual. It is that spiritual kingdom that gives laws to all the rest ; they depend upon it, not it upon them. And as long as a man's spiritual relations are uncertain, he is liable to be i66 FENEBERG AND HIS FRIENDS. tormented by the cruellest, and what perhaps his reason would call the foolishest doubts. Sailer was pacified for a little. But fresh agony returned; fresh and ugly questions leapt up in his soul ; they came to him in silence and the night ; they haunted him in dreams ; — behind that face from which so many took courage, and those clear, earnest words that throbbed in the hearts of his scholars, what darkness and misery ! — a death's-head, how cun- ningly concealed ! Nor is Sailer the first to w^ear the mask, nor does he carry it more bravely than another. Behind, what quiet placid looks, what courteous and kindly ways, what thought and affection for others, what firm show of energy, what busy or vacant or smiling face, — ^the agony of the soul may be acted out as a mere every-day matter, the battle of life and death raging within, while the man is counselling a neighbour, or the woman spinning at her wheel. Now, at this time, Sailer was more than com- monly agitated by the tidings of a sudden move- ment in a distant parish ; a movement of a pro- foundly spiritual character, that was getting talked about with great warmth and suspicion; but that he felt concerned himself, and his deepest and still FENEBERG AND EIS FBIENDS. 167 unsatisfied want, and in which he was an uncon- scious agent. Among the students at Dillengen, there had been one too noticeable to be forgotten. Martin Boos had been dropped into the world apparently by mis- take. He was the fourteenth child of a small farmer — a " Christmas-child," yet born in so cold a night, that the water in the room froze. An orphan at four, his eldest sister's first thought was how to dis- pose of him with due regard to economy. Being a sturdy girl, she set him on her shoulders and started for Augsburg ; but, getting tired, she flung him into a corn-field by the way, where he soon cried himself asleep. However, in the afternoon she returned, laid him at an uncle's door in the city, and went her way. The lonely child managed to grow up in some fashion in this surly uncle's house, saved himself by his scholarship from becoming a shoemaker, and went to Dillengen, where a brilliant, handsome student, he carried off the first honours. Sailer's teaching had more influence than he knew. And when his uncle had celebrated his first mass by giving a three days' shooting-party, he thankfully subsided into a quiet parish priest, cultivating, in thorough B-omish fashion, holy affections, and yearn- i68 FENEBERG AND HIS FRIENDS. ing after that calm,, mystic relation to Christ that had been pointed out in the lectures. " I lay," he says, ''for years together upon the cold ground, though my bed stood near me. I scourged myself till the blood came, and clothed my body with a hair-shirt; I hungered, and gave my bread to the poor ; I spent every leisure moment in the precincts of the church ; I confessed and communicated every week." He "gave himself an immense deal of trouble to lead a holy life," and was unanimously elected a saint ; but the saint was miserable, and cried out, luretcJied Qnan that I am / who shall deliver me ? Going to see a pious old woman on her deathbed, he said wistfully, " Ah ! you may well die in peace ! " " Why ? " " You have lived, such a godly life." " What a miserable comforter ! " she said, and smiled ; " if Christ had not died for me, I should have perished for ever, with all my good works and piety. Trusting in Him, I die at peace." And from this time the light fell in upon his soul ; the dying woman had answered his miserable cry. He stayed some months with Feneberg, at Seeg, as voluntary chaplain ; with Sailer, was one of those who accompanied the good man on the first Sunday he went out with his wooden leg ; then received a FENEBEBG AND BIS FRIENDS. 169 curacy at Wiggensback, near Kempten, and began preaching Christ. " Flames of fire darted from his lips, and the hearts of the people bm-ned like straw." He declared their sins, and when they cried, "What shall we do ? " he gave them no answer ; " repent ? " no answer; " confess r' no answer; "good works?" no answer ; until the question was driven deep into their souls, and then they knew how vain was any answer but one — Christ Moreover he had a terse, original way of putting things, and a power of homely, some may think too homely illustration. One or two examples may be given at hazard. " They are dearer to God that seek something from him than they that seek to bring something to him." "He that says he is pious is certainly not." "The most read their Bibles like cows that stand in the thick grass, and trample the finest flowers and herbs." " People think it a weak- ness to forgive an insult. -Then God would be the weakest in heaven and on earth, for no one in heaven or on earth forgives so much as he." " Death strips us of this world's glory, as a boot-jack draws off your boots. Another wears my boots when I am dead, and another wears my glory. It is of little value." " The most learned declare they knov^^ nothing, and I70 FENEBEEG AND HIS FRIENDS. the most pious that they have nothing; therefore the profoundest learning is in knowing nothing, and the profoundest sanctity in having nothing." "A gentleman passed through to-day, and the people said, ^ He wore the cross of St. Theresa ; he must be some great man.' A cross was once a disgrace. Now, the larger the cross, the greater the man." A preacher of this stamp would make himself be heard anjHrvhere ; and it is little wonder that great excitement gathered about the little country chapel in Bavaria. Many found the Saviour when he preached; persons came long journeys to hear so strange and blessed a doctrine ; and the chapel was thronged with men and women who had gone about anxious, heavy laden, and hopeless for years. Fene- berg heard of it, longed for more than he had yet found, and wrote that he was like Zaccheus, waiting in the tree till Christ should pass by. " Then wait quietly in the tree," Boos wrote back ; " Christ will soon enter thy house and thj heart." This was in the autumn of 1796, when Feneberg was bitterly crying for light. In December, Sailer came to him on a visit, much disturbed by the news from Kempten. " Let us send for Boos, and hear it from himself/' he said. Boos came, and brought with FENEBEBG AND HIS FRIENDS. 171 him some of the awakened to speak to their own experience. According to one of Feneberg's poems, his vicar- age was *' Lean and ngly, all decaying, And a haunt of loneliness ;" but it received the guests genially, and a more singular Christmas party has seldom met. There was the vicar himself, with his two curates, Bayr and Siller; Sailer, Boos, and the converts — five Eomish ecclesiastics, met to hear about an evan- gelical revival, begun by the evangelical preaching of one of their number. A peasant girl from Boos' parish whispered him, almost as soon as she saw his old professor, " That man has much that is childlike, and a good heart, but he is still a Scribe and a Pharisee, and must be born again of the Spirit." Boos was startled, and assured her she must be mis- taken. But before the evening was over, she said openly before them all, " Sir, you have the baptism of John, but not the baptism of the Spirit and of fire ; you have drunk out of the river of grace, but not yet plunged into the sea. You are like Cor- nelius, and have done and suffered much for the truth, but you have not yet received Christ." There 172 FENEBERG AND HIS FRIENDS. was an awkward pause ; no one knew well what to say. But finding Sailer silent, Boos himself urged the truth with great earnestness. Sailer, still silent and much disconcerted, withdrew. He had left the next morning before the house was astir, but one of the peasants said he had met him, and had repeated out of John, He caone unto his own, and his own received Him not ; hut as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God; and that he had replied, " Good, good ; " but his face was troubled, and he rode away. They blamed themselves, fearing they had offended him, and the woman wept ; but presently she lifted up her eyes, and said joyfully, " Be comforted : grace has met him on his way. God works wonders with him. The Lord will appear to his heart." She had scarcely spoken, when a messenger came to the door with some lines written by their friend on horseback. " Dearest brethren," they ran, " God has given me an unspeakably quiet mind. I do not doubt that He has come to me in soft whispers ; yea, is already in me. I believe that John baptizes with water, but Christ with the Spirit. Pray, brethren, that we may not fall into temptation. The rest we will give over to God. Farewell" " Blessed be God ! " exclaimed FENEBEBG AND HIS FRIENDS. 173 the vicar, who had never ceased to pray, Lord, if thou wilt come to us, come first of all to him. Before the Christmas party broke up, Feneberg was also filled with joy, and Bayr and Siller received Christ. Boos returned to Wiggensbach. This awakening spread more widely than ever ; and on new year's day, 1797, a hot persecution broke out on every side. The '' Jesus preachers," as they were called, were hunted from their cures; the converts were mocked, stoned, imprisoned, thrust out of their homes. Boos himself was obhged to flee, and found refuge with Feneberg, but a decree of the Inquisi- tion was issued against them, the vicarage was ransacked in their absence, all their papers were taken, and they themselves brought up in custody. One of Feneberg's answers throws some light on his position. '' Do you know why you have been cited here ? " " Yes. Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, has fulfilled to me, a poor sinner, and more than a hundred others, His precious word that He spoke at the Last Supper : He that loveth me shall he loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him!' Union with Christ had been always his dream, but till now he 174 FENEBERG AND HIS FRIENDS. had never known the way. Union with Christ from this time became the distinguishing feature of his preaching and spiritual history. Christ for us, and Christ in us, were the leading points of Boos' doctrine, and of the movement that began with him. With Feneberg the Christ fbr us sinks somewhat out of sight ; his stress and happiness are laid upon the presence of Christ in the heart ; this communion, often mystically and dimly expressed, and perhaps at the best somewhat mystically seen, expresses the rest of his quiet life, and explains his contentedness with his Church. Keleased from his persecutions, and placed at Vohringen, he con- tinued his faithful ministrations, edified his friends, prayed daily for divine light and knowledge, and died peacefully at sixty-one. The continued sus- picion and malice that followed him did not seem to touch his calmness of communion; blindness threatened him, and passed away ; his friends were true. It was a gentle, simple life ; a fresh, pure, innocent nature. Nathanael he was called ; he was frank and righteous, unable to utter a compli- ment or hide the truth ; a man of great confidence and childlikeness before God. " If I could not caU Thee, Thou!' he was once heard to pray, " FENEBERG AND HIS FFdENDS. 175 Father, we could never get on." " It is a fine thing/' wrote Sailer, " if you can say a man lived and never lifted up a stone against his neighbour ; but it is finer far if you can say also, he took the stones out of the path, that would have caught his neighbour's feet. So did Feneberg, and this his doing was his life." Boos was driven from place to place. Through the best part of his life he may be recognised in swift and anxious and perilous flight. At last, at Gallneukirchen, in Austria, he seemed to be set- tled ; the scenes of Wiggensbach were repeated on a larger scale ; and this time he was accused at Vienna. " Dear children," said the Emperor to the peasants who crowded round him on his way through the parish, " your pastor is no teacher of error." It was the impulsive testimony of a man who had a finer spirit than his counsellors, but it did not avail ; and Boos had to leave the Austrian shelter, and commence his wandering anew. In 181 7, the Prussian Government appointed him Professor in the gymnasium at Diisseldorf; but it was not his gift to teach, and they exchanged it for the living of Sayn on the Khine. He lived for some years unmolested in this retired and 176 FENEBEEG AND HIS FRIENDS. lonely spot, visited by many friends, writing noble letters, guiding and inspiring the movement in his own country, and seeing more clearly the breadth and grandeur and all-important necessity of the truths for which he suffered. He lamented the unfruitfulness of his ministry. " There is scarcely a spot on these hills where I have not flung myself down and wept, and prayed that the Lord would give me again the grace to open my mouth with joy, and to preach His word to the awakening of the heart." This also was given him, and in. 1825 he died. Sailer lived the longest, and alone reached to any honour. The persecution fell lightest upon him. From 1802 till 1821 he was professor at Landshut and Munich. Besides his old subject, he lectured on morals and homiletics ; on liturgies, cate- chising, and education ; he had a class for the study of the Bible, and was university preacher. It was the most brilliant period of his life. Students came from every part of Germany, and his fame was car- ried back by them to their own lands ; he was called to one university after another, and at last to be archbishop of Cologne. But he refused every offer that would lead him out of his native country, while FENEBJERa AND HIS FBIENDS. 177 it was just there that hostile influences were used against him in the most opposite ways. He could be identified with no party, and was hated by each. Napoleon prevented his promotion at one time by assuring the King he was a mere hanger-on to the Roman Court ; the Pope refused it at ano- ther, because he suspected his attachment to the Church. At last he was appointed Bishop in par- tibus, and died in 1832, as Bishop of Regensburg. His character was of the same class as Feneberg's, but it exchanged much of his childlike spirit for shrewdness. He was one of the mildest and most tolerant of men, mild to excess. It is told that hav- ing preached one morning near Saltzburg, the parish clergyman rose up, and said he would preach himself in the afternoon, as Sailer had made the doors of heaven too wide. " You are excellent at bandages," said one of his friends, " but a bad operator." " Very possible," he replied : " in my life I have seen more wounds healed by a good bandage than by the knife." He was humble, patient, easy of access, sweet tempered under every trial, and a tried friend. His religious views wanted the fervour of Feneberg's, and the depth of Boos'. He never thoroughly understood the first of the two proposi- N 178 FENEBERG AND HIS FRIENDS. tions, Christ for us, but took it up in some purely mystical sense. His unrest returned after the Christmas of '96. Often twelve times in the day he withdrew to give himself up to God, crying, " Lord, I will not let thee go, until Thou bless me." Doubts hithei-to unknown swept over him and crushed his spirit. He found an answer on which he relied to the end, yet it would not have satisfied his friends. He was to look into his heart, and see if the thought of God pleased him more than any other. It was a poor, uncertain tenure of peace ; it was the Catholic doctrine still. A feeling that he must do something, give something, bring something, be something, ran through his theology, and weakened it. And as he grew older he seemed to turn more to the Church, abjured " all pseudo-mysticism," submitted himself " with filial piety " to Rome, and apologised for any inadvertent error, anything inconsistent with Romish teaching. Yet his testimony to Boos remains on the other side. " Boos is a spiritual. Catholic Christian. I would rather die than condemn a man possessed of so many extraordinary spiritual gifts, and who has led so many thousands to repentance and faith, for the sake of a few expressions, which, after all, are susceptible of an orthodox meaning. I am now in FENEBERG AND HIS FRIENDS. 179 my sixtieth year, and I would tremble to appear before the judgment-seat of God if I did not loudly confess before my death that this great work of the pious Boos is of God." There are points of great importance at which the limits of such a paper forbid even a glance. The narrative of the conversions is profoundly interest- ing, rich in every variety of spiritual incident. The persecutions — on so large a scale that twenty-four priests were at one time involved in them, and a minister of state led the assault — are not without a sad and tragic interest. The awakening presents features of striking resemblance, even in remarkable psychological facts, to the recent revivals in Great Britain and America. As for the entire movement, it may be asked, what became of it ? Was there any permanent influence ? Beyond the time, it would seem scarcely any. Hundreds of the clergy must have come under Sailer s influence, but he founded no school of religious thought ; and the explanation will probably be found in this, that his religious views wanted distinctness, that the power he wielded was one of personal character. He met, indeed, a wild young lad at dinner at a friend's house ; in an hour's conversation the youth became quiet and N 2 i8o FENEBERG AND HIS FBIENDS. thoughtful, soon after he studied for the Church, and died recently as Archbishop of Breslau. In Melchior Diepenbrok, Sailer's influence seems to have exhausted itself — a kind of genial, tolerant pre- late, like the well-known J. K. L., but without even Sailer's pietism. At Feneberg's table also there sat a young priest who bore a name honoured now in Protestant Germany and in far mission fields, the only one of the party that left the Romish com- munion, the venerable Gossner. These two bring down the links into our own generation, and there seems no further link to carry on the chain. Yet, if the story of many hearts in Bavaria were known, it might be found that there is still a spiritual seed there, that the light still shines in dark places, and men and women are walking by faith in the blessed words. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt he saved. JOHN HUSS. [OUSANDS of people pass every day be- tween the grey files of statues on the old bridge of Prague without much noticing those rude wind-beaten saints and heroes. Nor, in- deed, is there much to notice save where, about the centre, a figure, habited as a canon of St. Augustine, stretches out one hand in placid benediction over the hurrying human river above and the calm flow of the Moldau beneath. In the other hand there is a cross, and when the sun shines five stars of gilt bronze make a fair aureole overhead ; and at his feet lie wreaths of fresh flowers and bays and pots of rose- mary, the offerings of the maidens of Prague, who ' ' Into this well throw rosemaries, And fragrant violets and paunces trime." 1 82 JOSN BUSS. And to the stranger curious about such matters all Prague is ready to answer, with one voice, that this aureoled, wind-beaten saint, is St. John of Nepomuk, patron of all true lovers and their secrets, and therefore worthy of perpetual garlands ; guardian, moreover, of silence and discretion, and therefore painted with his finger — or in quaint old German prints, with padlock, as surer than the mobile fiuger — on his lips ; tutelar god of rivers and bridges, sender of rain and dew, and national saint of Bo- hemia. Nay, he reigns beyond Bohemia, and over more statues than any other saint, is painted in Italian churches, and sung in Spanish heroics. " I lived," says Mr. Jamieson, "for some weeks under the protection of this patron saint and Proto- viartyr of the Seal of Silence, at the little village of Traunkirchen (by the Gmunden-See, in the Tyrol), where his effigy stood in my garden, the hand extended in benediction over the waters of that beautiful lake. In great storms I have seen the lightning play round his head till the metal stars became a real fiery nimbus — beautiful to behold ! " And yet this wonderful, beautiful, bountiful, na- tional saint turns out to be an imposition, a myth, a two-centuries' mistake, and is not St. John of JOHN HU8S. 183 Nepomuk at all, but plain saintly John Huss, Proto- TYiartyr of the Reformation — John Huss, with a dim background of the old Sclavonic heathenism. But that is impossible, say the men of Prague ; for John of Nepomuk was a living man, and no myth : and was not this statue raised on the very spot where he was flung into the river by that King Wenceslaus, whose father had built the bridge five- and-twenty years before; and have we not that precious silver shrine that covers his tomb in our cathedral, and his own body resting quietly among us, as was discovered to all and proved by great miracles when the grave was opened nigh a hundred and forty years ago ; while as for this Huss, was he not burned, and were not his ashes borne into the lake of Constance ; and was he not almost a Pro- testant, and how could the Pope make such a mis- take? Now, I admit that the hazarded assertion requires confirmation, that there is a strong pre- sumptive case against it — that the story is one of the most singular, perhaps unique, in the hves of saints. And so it will be wisest and fairest to hear the version of the men of Prague first ; and it is this : — Our St. John was born at Nepomuk, or Pomuk, 1 84 JOHN BUSS. about 1320-30 ; and on the night he was born- tongues of fire streamed from the sky and settled on the house ; and when he went to school he got the service of the mass by heart, and used to run off to the Cistercian chapel to help the priest, which was a clear proof of his piety ; and from school he went to the university, and was master of philosophy and doctor of theology, and became the greatest preacher in Bohemia, and from the pulpit lashed the licentiousness and irreligion of the times and the court, and with such bold eloquence that even Militz was forgotten. Moreover, like a true saint, he refused a bishopric and a probstship that was the wealthiest in the country, and would only accept the place of almoner and confessor to the Empress. But Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia and Emperor of Germany, was a wicked and cruel king, who hated good men and fought with the Church, drunken and fierce and riotous ; and his wife was a pattern of virtue and sorrow, of whom he was one day tipsilj fond and the next madly jealous. And in some jealous fit he insisted that Nepomuk should reveal the confessions of the Empress ; and being refused, grew maddened, and smote him with bitter wounds. As soon as his wounds were healed, Nepomuk JOHN HUSS. 185 preached in the cathedral, and prophesied through his sermon all the woes that two centuries would pour out upon the true faith in Bohemia. Then^ having bade sorrowful farewells, he departed on a pilgrimage. Now Wenceslaus, sitting in a window of his palace, towards evening, espied him returning to the city; and being filled with sudden rage at his sturdy disobedience, oi'dered guards to bind him hand and foot and throw him over the parapet of the bridge into the Moldau ; and this was done on the 16th of May, 1383. Whereupon the tongues of flame returned, and streamed up and down the river, and shone on the water like a crown of five stars,, so that the city flocked out to see the wonder, and beheld, in the morning, the mild face of their beloved preacher. Then the canons came out and took up the body, and dug a grave in the cathedral. Grateful even then, the saint guided them to a spot that was filled with treasures of gold and silver and precious stones. But Wenceslaus ordered it to be closed up, and the body thrown into a corner ; which also being done, there came forth of that corner so sweet and diffusive an odour that the spot could no more be concealed, and the body was borne to its true resting-place with state, and pomp, and ring- i86 JOHN BUSS. ing of all bells, and marvellous healing of many that were sick. And ever since St. John has been honoured for his fidelity to the confession and his duty to the Church, and has helped those that be- lieved him and punished those that did not. For do we not know that for very shame at the royal insults to our saint the Moldau dried up, and famine and plague came upon the land ? — and how, when we had been given over to heretics for two centuries, a pious man on the eve of the battle of Whitehill, saw St. Wenceslaus, and St. Adalbert, and St. Nepomuk, as they rose out of their graves and held council together ? And does not every woman and child know that when three Calvinists went to scoff at St. Nepomuk's grave, one was struck dead, another died soon after, and the third became an idiot ; and that when two women of our to^vn walked upon his tombstone, as they went back over the bridge one began to swim as though she were in deep water, and the other struggled as though a storm would carry her over the parapet ; and when Father Chanowsky himself, who thought it was all a story, walked upon the stone, as he recrossed the Moldau, he measured his length in the mud before the crucifix on the bridge ? And on that same JOBN BUSS. 187 bridge did not the brazen statue of St. John visibly turn itself round as the Prussian infidels beleagured the town in 1744, so that it remains turned round as at this moment ? Moreover, there was little Anna Zahovzanskiana, that was blind, as everybody knew, but brought clay from the grave and mixed it with water, and rubbed her eyes, and in six hours saw : and there w^as Wenzel Buschek, who fell into a deep well over-night, but, calling on the saint, leaped out unhurt ; and Theresia Krebsin, who the doctor said must lose her arm, and she went to St. John and he threw a paper into her hand about fasting nine days and praying ; and she fasted, and the saint appeared to her by night, and she was healed ; and when Rosalia Hodanckidna fell into the mill-stream, and was swept below the wheel, and had been half an hour under water, she was drawn up unharmed, and given into her parents' arms, for St. John ap- peared to her under the water and kept her safe, seeing she had prayed before his statue every day as she went to school. Then there was Kralik, the brewer, that had killed his man, and lay in prison, where he learnt a prayer from a fellow- prisoner, and prayed it to St. John wdth his face to the grave, and when he was tried was let off with a 1 88 JOHN BUSS. petty fine. So when a young man of good blood was to be prosecuted for a gross crime, his father dreading the shame of his house, fled to the saint, and on the day of the trial the prosecutor had dis- appeared. Nay, there was even a certain smith out of Mahren that had murdered his wife, and as they led him off to prison he cried vehemently to St. John, and sprang at once out of the grasp of his captors : for it is a very proverb in our country, that he who would be kept from shame must pray to St. John ! So far the men of Prague, and indeed I might run on much further, and tell about the saint's house that he was born in, and where decent folk dwelt for some hundreds of years after, till there began a racket one night that seldom stopped until the house was emptied, and in the saddest way ; for the honest potter Gelinek that was in it did not understand these rappings and plain hints, and so was found dead one morning, after which there was nothing left but to build a church on the spot, according to the saint's desire, though it might have been more plainly expressed. Then the saint's tongue, that had been so guarded in life, remained inviolable after death, and is yet manifestly fresh \ JOHN HUSS. 189 so that when search was made into the matter by papal bull in 1725, before the gaze of all, the tongue began to swell, and change its colour into the purplish red hue of life. Finally, should any one presumptuously doubt what has been said, let him take warning by the sceptical archbishop, whose arm bore the mark of the saint upon it down to his grave. Therefore all Prague and Bohemia believe in St. John of Nepomuk; and after this mass of evidence, what wonder? Since these narratives it is clear are not legends but facts, else how could they be written down, with many more, by such excel- lent men as Balbinus, and Berghauer, and Navajo, and Kriiger, and in all Lives of the Saints down to the latest edition of Alban Butler ; and how else could everybody know them? And as for King Wenceslaus and the Battle of Whitehill, and the pope's bull, they are in every history ; and there is the statue on the bridge before our eyes. But unfortunately for saints as well as other men, there are people that cannot take everything on credit, but have an awkward habit of sifting freely for themselves, and more awkward still, of drawing their own conclusions; and this altogether irre- spective of what is everywhere believed, and of " re- I90 JOHN BUSS. spectable authority," and the " shock to the national mind," and anything short of the truth itself; inter- meddhng people, who come between us and the quiet old historical faiths of our boyhood ; men who would not be shocked if St. George of England turned out to be really the Arian Bishop who thrust Athanasius from his see, who might affect to dis- believe even the Seven Champions of Christendom ; and for such men, and the raising up of a school of right historical criticism, let us be profoundly thankful, and that the light is scattering the dense fable-clouds of the past. If we lose the tints and gorgeousness of cloud-land, we see the real living landscape. It is a noble gift these men exercise — a noble profession — of truth-seekers ; all the more powerful that it be not degraded into a mere profession ; that the search for truth do not become — as it has threatened to become — a mere clever and ingenious inverting of the judg- ments of the past ; that it be reverently, and even solemnly carried on, not without scepticism, but faith at heart. Carried on : this generation has declared it will be carried on into the highest regions, flippantly even where men before moved goftly or knelt, because it was sacred ground ; and JOHN HUSS. 191 carried on it ought to be : for the truth has nothing to fear from the light, and we have everything to gain. After fifty years of scientific inquisition into the Creation, that earliest chapter of the Bible still "soars away on the wings of the morning." And the Bible, as the Truth itself, not only defies, but rejoices in the keenness of criticism. It is unworthy of it to hide it, unworthy to tremble for it, unworthy to call up the fears of possible consequeuces, and place them against the certainty of its inviolable truth; unworthy, and paltry, and unrighteous, to think it needs the shelter of abuse, theological or other. It, indeed, is independent ; and to irreverent and captious investigators may almost assume the awful words : He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh : the Lord shall have them in derision. Re- verent search, from whatever quarter, it invites; wherein it is to be remembered, " that they that are of the truth hear my voice " — they, and no others ; and that we need not be troubled about the truth, which win never pass away, but about those that cannot hear it. And so we may be thankful, and not vexed or timid, as their "historical criticism" sweeps across our path ; even when it sweeps clean away such an ancient and national belief as that of 192 JOHN HUSS. Eohemia in St. John of Nepomuk ; for it has become very plain that St. Nepomuk must be given up, and consigned to the limbo of all nnhistorical personages. Not but that a John of Nepomuk really existed, and that he was really drowned ; and this is his life. His father was one Welflin, a citizen of Pomuk. He himself joined the clergy, and signed to his name in 1372 that he was " clergyman of the diocese of Prague and notary public." In 1380, he was preacher at the church of St. Galli ; in 1381, canon of the cathedral, archdeacon, and vicar-general ; in 1393, he was drowned by order of King Wenceslaus. His death (to use a bull) is the only part of his life on which history for a moment lingers, and that seems to have occurred in this wise. King Wen- ceslaus, it has been said, was not one of the best of kings ; and possibly, had Petrarch been his tutor, as was intended, it would have been just the same. He was a rough, rude-spoken, fierce-tempered monarch, with strong opinions upon his royal prerogative, and a strong dislike to the meddling and encroachments of the Church, — a forerunner of our Henry VIII., and with much of that prince's jealousy and unhappy family life. His name has come down as the Sloth- ful: his character is blotted by his feeble inter- JOHN HUSS. 193 ference for his friend Huss ; and there are more ugly- blots on it than one. But the evil-looking picture that has been accepted as a portrait has been proved by M. Palacking to be the work of the Jesuits, to whom his cardinal fault was resistance to the spiritual power. For all that, he was rough, if not furious, in temper ; and often, we may conceive, sorely provoked by the arrogance of his ecclesiastics. At the head of them was Archbishop Genzenstein ; and with Genzenstein was his archdeacon of Nepo- muk, at whose suggestion, it seems, an abbot was appointed to a new monastery without consult- ing the king. Wenceslaus wrote this archbishop a letter. " You Archbishop, give me up Castle Eudnez and all my other castles, and pack out of my kingdom of Bohemia. And if you undertake anything against me or my people, I will drown you. Come to Prague." The message was not courteous, but the prelate came with John of Ne- pomuk in his company, and, as prelates in those days thought most prudent, with an armed retinue. The king's wrath rekindled as he saw him ; and he ordered him with his household forthwith to prison,, saying, pointing to one and another: "I will dro-\vn you, and you, and you." Archbishop Genzenstein 194 JOBN HUSS. fled to Saxony. His household were brought into the torture-chamber, when the king flew upon them with a burning brand. All except the archdeacon escaped by unconditional submission : and he, in- deed, was so severely bui-nt that it may have been better for him to have been murdered outright by being flung over the bridge into the flooded Moldau. This, then, is the historical John of Nepomuk, for history produces but the one ; and that there were two contemporary Johns, both born in Nepomuk, both canons in Prague, both under the wrath of Wenceslaus, and both drowned in the Moldau ; and that the chronicles should mention only the one, who would never have been heard of, but for being in the household of the archbishop; and yet omit the other, whose fame threw the great name of Militz into shade, this is unlikely enough to be incredible. It must be granted also that the his- torical Nepomuk does not answer to what we must now call the legendary. The fame of a preacher, the posts of almoner and confessor to the queen, do not belong to the archdeacon; nor was the arch- deacon a mart}^: to the secrecy of the confessional, but to the conflicts between Church and State. The legend is right as far as it points to a real John of JOHN HUSS. 195 JSTepomuk and a real martyrdom tinder Wenceslaus IV., Emperor of Germany ; may it not also be right in its mention of a former preacher, who was also confessor to the queen ? May it not either confuse or blend some other name with Nepomuk ? For legends are seldom pure inventions, and in their simplest and earliest form are only the rude poetry of history, out of which it becomes the historical critic to eliminate what is fact. It is round the fact that the legend grows ; because of its fact that it is accepted ; on this basis — whatever it be — of fact that it flows down securely into the hands of his- torical critics. And if there is fact in this legend for the name, may there not also be for the charac- ter ? Now there was one man contemporary with Ne- pomuk and Wenceslaus whose ecclesiastical standing and reputation were precisely that of the legendary John, — and this was Huss. Huss was almoner and confessor to Wenceslaus' second queen. Huss was the preacher who would most naturally suggest Militz to "men's minds. For Militz, unlike Nepo- muk, was not a strict churchman, but one who inclined to the simplicity of the Gospel, whose heart was grieving for the worldliness of his brother minis- 2 196 JOHN BUSS. ters, wlio shrank from mere ecclesiastical power, and saw the true power of the church in faithful preach- ing of the Gospel and godly living of the clergy. And Huss went far beyond Militz in the same direc- tion, and preached more boldly than even he against the corruptions of the time, and was equally ready to attack false miracles or the drunkenness of the court. And with the fame of his preaching there spread his doctrines, until in Bohemia he grew to be the hero of a party, and that party, zealous for purity of doctrine and the national life ; and it may fairly be said that more clung to his name than even to John Militz. So, putting these two together, John Nepomuk, martyr in the Moldau, and John Huss, the famous preacher and royal almoner and confessor, we have pretty nearly this legendary and otherwise altogether apocr3rphal saint; and in the union it must be manifest that Nepomuk serves merely as the date, while the real figure is Huss, that the name and the martyrdom are the mere framework on which the character of the saint is raised. But how could the Church of E,ome commit an act so absurb and suicidal as to canonise the proto-martyr of the Keformation ? An impatient question, since it has not yet been asserted that the JOHN HUSS. 197 Church of Rome did canonise John Huss ; but not an impertinent question, as may presently appear. For that Huss was burned, and that the flames of his stake lighted a mighty fire in Bohemia, and that the Hussites established themselves, as the national and scriptural party, until, after two centuries of almost ceaseless conflict, they were van- quished at the great battle of Whitehill, this is com- mon history. In those two centuries Huss was the national hero, as much the political as the religious champion, for all through the religious stmggle the Czechs were asserting their independence and national life. He was the genius of the country in those its brightest and most vigorous days, the man whose memory was sainted even where his doctrine made little way, — -just the sort of name round which the legendary stories of the country- side would gather. This was the power that fought against the Jesuits when the country lay at their feet. Could it not be made to fight with them ? Why disturb traditions so deeply honoured ? Why uproot them? Why not give the traditions a Ca- tholic colour ? Such questions are not unfamiliar to Jesuit fathers, if we may believe the history of Jesuit missions. In China, Japan, and India, they 198 JOHN HUSS. have been started, and answered in their own fashion. Mythologies, and temples, and great names, and ancient legends have not been torn out of the hearts of the people, but consecrated to a Catholic sense. It has been the policy of the Church of Rome from the beginning. Santa VeTiere is still powerful in Italy ; Juno is scarce concealed in the Madonna ; the Pantheon raised by Augustus to all the gods is dedicated by the same name to all the saints. In Servia the old god of thunder has been christened Elijah, and St. Nicholas is the new name for the god of the rivers and the sea ; Woden appears as the archangel Michael, and the ancient Sclavonian Sauntewit migrated into St. Vitus. It is but one example out of many; hun- dreds of years after. Bishop Dubrav complained that the people still worshipped their old deities in the habit of the new saints. So let them keep Huss if they like ; let them honour his festival ; laud his character; cherish his patriotism; mourn his mar- tyrdom ; only let it be under a new name and in a Catholic sense. And so they went to work, cun- ningly, and in the end successfully. This drowned archdeacon came happily to hand. He became a martyr to the confessional — for it was aU-important JOKN HUSS. 199 to establish tlie authority of the confessional over Hussite Bohemia. Huss was the watchword of the independent party, and so Nepomuk became the champion of independent rights and liberty of con- science against a tyrant, whereby there was a doable Qfain : the strusfgle for freedom was linked with a devout Catholic, the king who dared resist the en- croachments of the Church was painted with the blackest odours on the Jesuit palette. The places of trust about the Court were easily transferred, and with them the clerical oratory ; nay, in the sketches of character, it has been observed, the very defects of Huss's vanity, obstinacy, and the rest, are almost carelessly reproduced. Then, having settled the saint's death to be on the day that the Hussites remember their founder, there remained nothing but to produce a supply of the stock church legends that are the recognised property of a saint, and spread the tale of St. Nepomuk in every parish. And in all this they were abundantly helped. For it must not be supposed that, clever as they were, they invented everything for themselves. Most of it was ready to hand in outline invented centuries before. The life of Ai'chbishop Wenzenstein, written soon after his death, mentions the martjTcdom of 20O JOHN BUSS. liis vicar, and vaguely certain accompanying mira- cles. In the middle of the fifteenth century it was noticed that nobody would tread upon this IS^epo- muk's tombstone. In 1471, Paul Zidek relates that he was confessor to the queen. Early in the next century the cathedral authorities placed a railing round the tomb, to protect the unwary from mis- chief. In 1341, Wenzel Hajek records additional particulars of this story, — all, indeed, that were want- ing. There was some prospect, therefore, that, but for the Hussite war, Nepomuk might have merged into a minor saint. He was not altogether un- familiar to his countr3raien. Since the character of Huss was inevitable, it could not have been tagged to a better name. There was but one mistake, and that was helpless. If Nepomuk was confessor, it must have been to the first empress, since Huss undoubtedly was to the second ; and as his martyr- dom could not thus be 1393, it became 1383 ; and that was unfortunate, since there was no drying up of the Moldau in that year, while in 1393 there undoubtedly was, following hard upon the great floods which closed the year preceding. The saintship of Nepomuk property began with the re-establishment of Catholicism in Bohemia. JOHX HUSS. 2or The battle of Whiteliill was lost in 1620; the first regular life of Nepomuk was put forward by the Jesuit Balbinus in 1670. It was " an expan- sion of Hajek's single chapter into sixteen ; " it was the foundation of whatever was written after. The saint was thus already canonised, but he never had the sanction of the Pope, and this was only granted after special sifting and a judicial process. This sifting — Acta utriusque processus in causa canonisationis — was pubhshed in 1722. Balbinus gave as authority for his biography various un- specified " contemporary manuscripts," that existed in his own brain ; these Acts bring forward various " independent " witnesses to repeat the manuscripts of Balbinus, Count Zynsky, of 74, had heard if from his father of 69. Dr. Alsterle had it from his parents, who had it from theii^s, and the family had been " for oOO years true to God, the king, and the Cathohc Church." Count Wratislaw's huntsman, being 118, gave ancient testimony: and Dr. Hawlicjek, of 70, had heard it from his grand- mother, who had heard it from her mother, an old lady of 100. Unfortunately, those ages, though respectable, were not enough, and a " contempo- rary great-grandmother of 300 could not be found." 202 JOHN BUSS. Nevertheless, the sifting was satisfactory, and the saint proclaimed in 1729 ; to which let us not de- mur, seeing saints have been proclaimed with less reason. There is a charming story of a St. Philu- mena, a beautiful Grecian princess, that fell into the hands of the Emperor Maxentius, and refusing to marry him, was flung into the sea tied to an anchor, and on the anchor refusing to sink was beheaded. But all that was ever found of this saint were three small bones in a tomb of the Catacombs, where was written Philumena, with a palm branch and an anchor and a flask of the wine of the sacrament — Christian symbols then not un- common ; whereupon the Jesuits took the wine for blood and the anchor for an anchor, and canonised a saint, and their own ignorance or worse together. So that this judicial sifting may be taken for what it is worth. Nepomuk was now canonised, but it was needful to have his portrait, and place him beyond sus- picion. This also was discovered, with the state- ment, "Painted from nature, 20th May, 1383;" and the crucifix is in his hand and the five stars are above his head. Stubborn, unbelieving criti- cism is not even yet satisfied, and proves that the JOHN HUSS. 203 five stars were never seen about the saint till after 1736, and tliat the date of the picture, in other respects, must be about the same time. Neither portrait nor statue of Nepomuk appears until Balbinus is spreading his legends and writing his book in the middle of the seventeenth century. But there were ancient pictures and statues of Huss ; as old, at least, as the century in which he was murdered. Iconoclasts as the Taborites were, they could not prevent the national hero-worship taking this direction. It is a curious proof of the change from the true saint to the false, that such statues of this sort as have been found are cunningly altered for adding the symbols of Nepomuk. And one recently discovered in a re- mote village, and which represents Huss with the Bible spread open on his knees, and his eyes up- lifted in prayer, has received its five stars upon the breast, because they would fit in nowhere else. While, as still more singular proof of the inter- change of Huss with Nepomuk, there are statues unquestionably of the latter, but with the Bible in his hand and other symbols of the Reformer. There remains one point more. St. Nepomuk is more than national saint : to the superstition of the 204 JOHN HUSS. people lie is national god ; it is not pretended for a moment that this was copied from Huss. This much indeed lay in the heart of the country, lay over out of old heathen times, and was preserved by the igno- rance and conservatism of the country-folk. There is not a land in Christendom where relics of the ancient heathenism do not linger on under the pro- prieties and resjoectabilities of modern life, sturdily surviving in traditional beliefs. There is probably not a county in England that will not furnish stories of its peasantry confirmatory of this fact. And, what better could be expected of Bohemia ? Since this faith was strong, let it clasp the legend round like ivy over a new wall ; give it that antiquity and sacredness that would gain it reverent acceptance in the minds of men. So the old river spirits play beneath his statue on the bridge ; and the old faith in the powers of nature invests him with control over showers and dew aud fruitfulness and famine ; and the old laughing mischief of the Scandinavian fays pee|)s out of such stories as of the two women who crossed his grave, and then so lamentably crossed the bridge : and the old dualism of the Northern gods steals into his character, mild and good-natured in their strength, when not provoked. JOHN HU8S. 205 but otherwise malignant and terrible. Like a " very Kobold," as Dr. Abel says, (and his little tract — Die Legends von heiligen Johann von Nepomnuh, con- tains the fullest information on this and on all other points of the story), he twitches the chairs, and sours the milk, and slams the doors, and pinches the sleepers, to eject the unhallowed potter from his birthplace. Like Thor in wrath, he smites the wicked Calvinist upon his tombstone. There is the background of heathenism ; but the foreground is prominent with the saint. ■» And so John Huss, the defender of Wickliffe, the preacher of the Word, the foe of the confessional, parent of the great Utraquist Church, of the Ta- borites, and Calixtines, and Bohemian Brethren, watchword of Bohemiam Protestants, and Proto- martyr of the Bohemian Reformation, has become a lawful saint of the Church of Rome, and guardian of bridges and cloud-compeller and rain-giver to his native country, and has a Society " for spreading his honour," and is worshipped by maidens of Prague, and by all the peasants of the Czechs, and with masses in every chapel* under infallible authority * 7034, in the cathedral of Prague, in the year 1716. 50,672, in the same place, in the year 1721. 2o6 JOHN BUSS. of the very Pope. And " the whirligig of time brings round its revenges," surely none more curious than this. Li 1719, ninety-three silver lamps were found at the grave ; from 1722-37, a multitude of hands, feet, heads, eyes, ears, foreheads, fingers, teeth, breasts, hearts, stomachs, and children, of silver and gold (one from Princess Schwarzenberg of fourteen pounds weight), was poured into his treasury. To whom do these and their successors belong ? To Huss and the Protestants, or to a saint that never existed, and cannot claim them? And the millions of masses and prayers, are they in- valid being offered to a heretic under ban of the Church ? Or are they more valid if offered to a saint that either never was born, or if born was drowned ten years before his death? Tliese are questions of some interest, but there are others of a very profound significance. What influence will this memory of Huss have upon Bohemia ? The worship of St. John, we are told, is decaying. Year by year his adherents de- crease. Even the feeble tide of political life in 1848 threatened to sweep away his silver shrine. Pro- testantism is on the increase ; in some places doubling its numbers within a dozen years. An JOHN HUSS. 207 entire village has been known to come over to the Protestant Church of its own accord. The Protes- tants, who are near a hundred thousand, have been granted a constitution. The Gustav-Adoli^h Society has planted its standard in the country, and the religious life and religious freedom are not slow to rally round it. The Bible is preached with enthu- siasm and purity in crowded churches, by men of a rare simplicity, faith, and godliness. Has Huss been preserved to become in his own name the watchword of a new crisis ? As the legfends of St. John of Nepomuk decay, will the true John stand out in his true light ? Already there are some curious facts. Bohemia is erecting a huge pile of granite where Huss was burned at Constance ; the present archbishop is holding up the example of Militz, and striving to unite men by their love of Christ and the Truth ; and this year Protestants and Catholics will be keeping the thousandth anniversary of the introduction of Christianity among them. Will Huss or Nepomuk be the word of power ? MATTHEW CLAUDIUS, HOMME DE LETTRES. lOMEWHERE about that year 1775, which Goethe has designated the intellectual spring of Germany, there issued from the editorial desk of a pretty village, and printed on dusky tea-paper, an invitation to all men to buy a book. Critics and newspaper writers could have it for three Hamburg marks, but to the general reader, as one indifferent to honest worth, it was made over for two. Subscriptions were to be ad- dressed to " Matthew Claudius, Homme de Lettres a Wandsheck" Now, of Men of Letters much has been written, and by the very skilfuUest hand, enough, indeed, for this generation; and in the next they are likely to take care of themselvea MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 209 Already, they are too many to be heroes; too common to sing paeans over them ; too strong to be helped up or put down. Yearly, monthly, daily, by tons of printed books, and magazines, and news- papers, they spread their works to the four winds, and whatever fifth wind may carry them down the tide of the future. Literature is reduced to a pro- fession, to the detriment of romance and hero- worship, but every other way a gain. The struggle, and hardship, and stern fight, even down into death ; the bitterness, and poverty, and mere hazard of success are almost passed. For the true type of literary hero we must go back at least a century. He may be heroic to-day, but it is the common heroism of a thousand besides ; and on the w^hole, he is sure of being made comfortable, and well-paid, and kindly and fairly dealt with. It is hard to evoke any greatness out of a man's availing himself of such uncommonly good arrangements. And with Men of Letters, as such, either past or present, this paper has no concern. But there is a Man of Letters of whom we have but one or two examples, whose rarity invests him with some interest, and who has hitherto been slurred over with the pal- triest notice — the Christian Man of Letters. He 2IO MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. is not to be confounded with the maker of Christian books, familiar to the librarians of the British Museum, and readers of literary advertisements, and generally to the religious public, a useful man in his way. Nor is he to be confounded, on the other hand, with the Christian teacher, whose accredited office is to teach, and who, for the most part, teaches nobly and well. He is a Christian, but as a writer he is peculiarly a Man of Letters. That is his profession, sole vocation that he recognises ; his business is with literature for its own sake, and literature in the broadest sense, but at the same time he is one who humbly behoves in Christ. Perhaps by the very necessity of the case this combination is rare. And for other reasons Claudius is unique ; a character and life for which there is no parallel. So peculiar a type of thinker must be worth looking at, independently of any merit and originality in his thoughts ; and his writings, unfor- tunately not yet accessible in English, furnish abun- dant material for the purpose. Matthew Claudius was bom in the vicarage of Reinfeld, in Schleswig, on the 15th August, 1740. He was of a clerical family, that had its line of MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 211 preachers unbroken from the Reformation ; and for at least four generations had settled itself in quiet secluded cures. Their simple lives seem to have flowed evenly enough ; nor did they make much noise in the world, being given to do their w^ork, and no more ; faithful, honest, God-fearing, and long-lived men, from whom at length sprung the Claudius that was to preserve them all in the tangled story of the world. Certain mellow and genial influences he brought with him out of that placid, pastoral ancestry that had taken so many gene- rations to ripen its fruits ; a meditative and calm habit that never could rightly accommodate itself to the city whirl and strife ; and a devout bent of mind and simple reverence for truth that single him from his better-known contemporaries. Certain other influences he drew from that hearty, sturdy peasantry to Avhom his father and grandfather had preached, — thorough German souls, with scarce a touch of foreign weakness ; primitive in manners, and speech, and morals ; a race on the whole of very notable and decided character. A deep im- pression was left by his father. He describes him as " a mild star shining out of better worlds," from which his life drew blessing and soft radiance ; and 212 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS, in some verses on his deatti, tie says, with great simplicity : — ** A good man lies beneatli this stone, And lie was more to me." For the rest, he was influenced, as most of us are, by teachers, and books, and men. A school was found for him about eighteen miles away, where he went through the usual training to fit him for the university; it being determined that he was to follow his father into the ministry. Beyond an occasional whimsical glance back at his rector, we learn little of his school-days. All the teaching was in Latin, and this was irksome to one that was to write a German as idiomatic and popu- lar as Cobbett's English. Punishments were fre- quent, and altogether the rector was a man of no great amiability, answering in many respects to famous James Bowyer, immortalized by Coleridge and Lamb ; for he was a scholar and made scholars, although given to hard flogging, and a rough sort of wit by way of running accompaniment. At nine- teen, Claudius joined his brother Josias at Jena, and entered the university as a student of law. It was not the profession that had been chosen for him, not that he would have chosen for himself, if indeed MATTHEW CLAUDIUS, 213 lie would have chosen any ; but a threatening of consumption compelled him to relinquish the mi- nistry, and of necessity he turned to something else, slowly drifting all the while into his proper calling. His university impressions were vivid through life, though he gained little from his teachers there. "I have been at the university, and studied. Well, I did not study ; but I was at the university, and know all about it. I was acquainted with some students, and they were the whole university to me. The students sit together on benches as if they were at church ; and by the window there is a stool, and there sits the professor, and delivers about this thing and the other all kinds of addresses, and they call that teaching. He that sat on the stool when I was there was a master, and wore a great frizzed wig, and the students said his learning was even greater and frizzier than his wig, and that, privately, he was as great a free-thinker as ever a one in England or France. He could demonstrate as quick as lightning. When he undertook a sub- ject, he just began, and before you could look round it was demonstrated. He would demonstrate, for example, that a student is a student, and not a 214 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. rhinoceros. For, he would say, a student is either a student or a rhinoceros ; but a student can't be a rhinoceros, or else a rhinoceros must be a student ; but the rhinoceros is no student : therefore a stu- dent is a student. You may think that was intelli- gible of itself; but one of us knew better; for he said, ' that a student is not a rhinoceros, but a stu- dent,' is a first principle of all philosophy. Then he came upon learning and the learned, whereupon he let himself loose against the unlearned. Whether God is, and what He is, philosophy alone teaches, he said ; and without philosophy you can have no thoughts of God. Well, no one can say, with any truth, that I am a philosopher; but I never go through a wood that I don't fall thinking who made the trees grow. Then he spoke of hills and valleys, and sun and moon, as if he had helped to make them. I used to think of the hyssop upon the wall, but, to say the truth, it never came into my head that our Master was as wise as Solomon. It strikes me that he that knows what is right, must, must — if I only saw such an one, I would know him, and I could sketch him with his clear, bright, quiet eye, his calm large consciousness, — such an one must not give himself airs, least of all despise and MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 215 scold others. Oh, self-conceit is a poisonous thing ; grass and flowers cannot grow in the neighbour- hood." Clearly, such teachers could do little for him ; and, as he says, his university was a group of friendly students. And to more than him, such are the truest Alma Mater that their kter life recog- nises, — living books from which they have drawn endless variety of living teaching. The genial col- lision of fresh and eager minds, and interchange of open friendly opinion ; country walks, sustained with keen and humorous debate; and evenings in friendly chambers, where the converse runs glori- ously on into the night, — it is these that have helped on the thought that a hundred lectures would never have reached. Nothing has been pre- served of that Jena circle which, we are told, grouped itself into a " German Society," and strove after higher things than beer and the duello ; nor is there other notice of that university career, save one, characteristic in its very sorrow. Josias died of the complaint that had threatened his brother, and young Matthew, then twenty, uttered a funeral oration, after the somewhat barbarous custom, before the faculty and students, on the thesis, 2i6 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. Whether and how far God determines the death of Three years later, lie made his first literary- venture, and left the university. The book was of no value, and but one trifling poem was rescued by his later judgment ; but it was significant. Book- wi'iting was manifestly to be his vocation, and he took no steps to any other. In Germany, the law throws open a variety of occupations inconceivable in this country; yet he remained passive at home. It may have been "shyness," as some suggest, or the " demand of a contemplative nature." Pro- bably it was something more commonplace, a defective business faculty, and a poor knowledge of his profession. He expressed to Herder a modest view of his acquirements in that direction : — " I can write and cipher ; I don't know much of law, either national or international ; I could once write Italian, and still write French grammatically but not idiomatically; I understand Greek, Latin, English, Danish, Dutch, and some Swedish and Spanish ; I heard lectures on the Institutes, and Pandects, and history, but I really know nothing more of Insti- tutes, Pandects, and history, than bare necessity compels," To those acquirements he might have MATTHEW CLAUDIUS, 217 added mathematics, a science that he pursued with uncommon zeal and skill, and even taught with some success; music, for which he had a genuine passion ; the modern literature of his country, and a faculty of verse. Yet none of them promised much help to the lawyer ; and young authors cannot afford to live on the strength of a book that no one will buy. So he went for a year to Copenhagen, as secretary to a Count von Holstein, then loitered three years again at Keinfeld, and, in 1768, went to Hamburg as a writer for the press. The poetic life within him was struggling into activity, and from the day of his acquaintance with Klopstock, poetry wore a new meaning. "Mr. Ahrens used to say to us at school, ' No, no ; these are not verses : verses must rhyme.' He would put • me before him, and pull me first by the one ear and then by the other, and say, 'There's an ear, and there's an ear, that rhymes; and verses must rhyme.' Why, I can read two hundred verses an hour, and it is much the same as wading through water ; but here [it is Klopstock's Odes] I cannot lift my eyes from the book, and it is as if forms I had once seen in dreams stood before me I had heard from Mr. Ahrens that verses were a kind 2i8 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. of foamy froth that must rhyme ; but my cousin says that they must not froth at all, but must be clear as drops of dew, and penetrating as the sighs of love." Another acquaintance was exercising no little influence upon him. This was Schonborn, the son of a Holstein pastor, whose brilliant intellect and energy won him a place among the best men of his time ; " with a face," as Claudius describes him to Herder, " like oak-bark, a heart like the down of flowers, and the mind of Newiion and Cartesius." Intercourse with other minds was bringing him into personal contact with the questions of the day. It was when the long reign of lifeless orthodoxy and propriety was drawing near its end, and the reign of doubt was beginning. The younger intellects were on the side of scepticism; they were impatient of mathematical demonstrations of truth and right; the old world of thought had become hollow and artificial ; and honest inquirers shrunk from it in dismay. Lifeless orthodoxy had almost ended in lifeless scepticism; and should any life come into scepticism, orthodoxy was in danger of being wholly swept aAvay. The older men clung to the church and its forms and its rules with a desperate tenacity; as for any living power in the word of MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 219 truth tliat carried its force of conviction within itself, they knew nothing, nothing but bare for- mulas. The younger men were weary, and sought something higher and worthier; but in the search they went adrift over the great sea of speculation, and took no guide. To them also the Word had no living power, and they cast it aside; but they looked for what had power, and believed they could find it, enthusiastic and warm as they were with the heat of youth. Such opp'osite parties were likely to stir many questions, and among them the very deepest. There was already beginning the strange and chaotic ferment of opinion that closed the century. And Claudius was now fairly in the fight with the rest. He had learned something in Copen- hagen, been at least roused and startled there ; he had gained much in the leisure years of thought that followed ; and at Hamburg he was thrown again into the strife. Lessing, Herder, Klopstock, were among his friends; at the house of the younger Beimarus he met the freethinkers ; a+. the Sieve- kings whatever of true culture and intellect and goodness there was in Hamburg. His own powers rapidly developed ; energy stimulated their growth ; and instead of being a mere unit in the brilliant 220 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. literary society, he became one of its noted mem- bers. His connexion with the first newspaper was dropped in less than two years, and he was only saved from absolute want by obtaining a place in the " Wandsbeck Messenger." This petty paper was printed at Wandsbeck, a pretty little village just out of Hamburg, and thither Claudius removed, and was content; though on how little, let under- writers for the German press declare. In one of his papers he alludes in his jesting way to Tycho Brahe's residence at Wandsbeck : " for you have no doubt heard that Tycho, maker-of-calendars, and peeper-at-the-stars, used in his time to observe the course of the stars from Wandsbeck, and that this Tycho Brahe had a nose of silver and gold and wax, since in the night-time a nobleman had duelled off his nose of flesh. I call him to witness that I have no nose of gold and silver and wax, and that hy consequence I do not observe the courses of the stars from Wandsbeck." If the pay is little and the wit is dull, and of that peculiar character known in Germany as humour, at least the writer is in good spirits, and looks cheerfully and bravely out at the world from the little red-roofed village street, not MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 221 dreaming as yet that Wandsbeck would be better known to after generations by its sad-coloured and over-scanty Messenger, than by any number of observations on the heavens. Other stars than heavenly, indeed, he found leisure to observe ; for, watching the village street, Claudius caught a new interest that absorbed him for the time. There are schools in Germany for knitting, and other housewifery work of that patient kind, — excellent institutions in their way, although not in- tended for what came of one in the sexton's house at Wandsbeck. Passing to the school, an " uncommonly beautiful, lively and loveable " young girl threw her pleasant shadow across the editor's window twice a day. This was too much for a poet, and homme de lettres. He learned that «he was the best answerer in the catechising at church, and that her father was a carpenter, and struck up an acquaintance by a true lover's ingenuity. He found that he wanted a large table, and that no one could make it but the carpenter Behn, yet so many alterations came about in that piece of furniture (happily still extant), and so many visits must be paid to carpenter Behn's house, that having one day invited some Hamburg friends and a clergyman, he surprised them by pull- 222 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. ing the licence out of his pocket, and begging them to remember they were wedding guests. The marriage was as happy in its results as odd in its conception ; and the charming purity and reality of the family life, so naively described by Claudius in his letters to Andrew, was long a healthy and noble protest against the Wertherisms and other hollow sentimen- talities that at that time overran Europe. " She had a pair of blue eyes," he says himself, " and her face was white and red. As it many a time happens that a blind hen finds a corn, so it was now. De gustibus non est disputandum; in short, once she pressed my hand under four eyes, and said that I was the one, and that so I should remain, I can never say what a stone fell off my heart, and how short the day and night grew, and how easy every- thing went." And in a poem to his wife on her silver wedding-day he says with deeper earnest- ness : — '* Fortune and weal of all my life art thou, Full -wise was I to find thee for my own : And yet not I. God gave thee then and now, Such blessings come from. His dear hand alone." Wandsbeck was the place for an idyl, and Claudius and his young wife entered on life in a purely idyllic MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 223 way. Yoss, the translator of Homer, and editor of the Gottingen " Almanack of the Muses/' was there, and he WTites : — " We are all day with brother Claudius, and commonly lie in the shaded arbour of the bowUng-green, and listen to the cuckoo and the nightingale. His wife lies beside us, dressed as a shepherdess, with loose flowing hair, and her child in her arms. We drink coffee and tea, smoke a pipe, and prattle, or compose something for the Mes- sengerr And even some years later, Voss's wife, beautiful, true-hearted Ernestine Boie, supplies a companion picture. " We visited Claudius' mother- in-law very often. She had a hostehy for honest citizen's families, and, with her two daughters, was right well skilled in serving the guests. There were two nine-pin alleys in her garden, and we took pos- session of one. Claudius was president of the society, and no one was invited without his permission. Every luxury was strictly forbidden, even coffee and tea. There was only Kaltenhof beer (Claudius' ideal), and pure water from the well, bread and butter, cheese, and cold meat. Many a time we played till ten o'clock, and in the moonlight." But life is more than playing nine-pins and dressing like shepherdesses ; and when two daughters were born, i224 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. and the semiquarto Messenger remained almost sta- tionary, life assumed a rougli and anxious aspect, and the prattling under green trees was exchanged for eager letters for help. To this end, Herder was busy at Darmstadt, and obtained at last a secretary- ship to the Chancellerie. Claudius, whose wishes were rather for " some quiet post, such as director of an hosj)ital, or other charity, in a wood ; steward of a hunting-seat, garden-inspector, village-bailiff," or other like modest work, shrunk from the higher station. He tried repubhshing his contributions to the Messenger ; his friends tried for a situation ; he even betook himself to translation, most hazardous and toilsome of all literary expedients. And he went about it with a buoyancy and simplicity of soul, and freedom from final apprehension, that tell much for his family peace. He was, indeed, never meant for a mere writing-machine. He would only write when he could, when his thoughts needed writing : and to go on pouring out words in continuous flow for a return of so much bread, was a task-work, and sacri- fice of truth and dignity, that was impossible. Yet he was a Man of Letters, — born for that as it seemed. At this juncture the problem was solved by MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 225 another Darmstadt offer ; and to Darmstadt he re- paired, to be one of the Commissioners of Land, with 600 florins of income. It has never been clearly made out what that ofl&ce was in Claudius' mind. " Mumsen asked him what he had to do ? ' Nothing/ he repUed ; ' but let everything go on.' " He lived "pleasantly and quietly/' had some genial literary intercourse, yet longed for the arbours of Wands- beck. And when the Land Commission broke downi within a year, he made joyful speed to the pretty idyUic village, with these thoughts for the future : — "Translation, continuation of Asmus, and commit thou all thy ways'' This slender provision is cha- racteristic. Life might be rough and harsh upon occasions, but he met it with the simple smile of present trust. He had few wants, and if only he could live it was enough. For two years, the sons of the philosopher Jacobi were boarded with him, and helped somewhat. But when they left, and he saw eight children about him, and felt how little his pen could do for so many, he took a singular step. For he wrote to the King of Denmark, then Regent, for " some post, not very lucrative ; " and as he felt himself incapable of all posts, he begged the Crown Prince " to speak a word of power, and to order for Q 226 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. him what he was fit for." Probably no one but Claudius would have thought of such a letter, and quite certainly no one else could have written it. The result came, with scarce any delay, in the shape of a bank appointment at Altona, involving no change of residence, requiring little attention, and bringing a salary of £150 a year. From this time he could write his fancies in peace, secure against the hunger-fiend. As a mercantile transaction, it was scarcely prudent ; and it would not be for the interest of banks to appoint every dreamy Man of Letters a director, and to leave them wooing the Muses in every pretty village of their liking. But it would not be in the interest of the world that Men of Letters should die of hunger; and it never has been in the interest of the world that it suffered its Men of Letters to starve in garrets, and roam through the homeless streets, and languish with- out hope in Grub Street. So much of the truest light that was in the world has been extmguished, trampled out by that world with its careless foot, while it strode haughtily on in its darkness. It is becoming slowly conscious of that now, establishing pensions and civil lists, and like institutions. Its Men of Letters are a glory to it ; it would wear them MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 227 as decorations, as many as it can show on its broad breast. It would even pet and huzza them — when they have shown that they cannot be put down. But it has not yet got to feel that they are its workers, as genuine and necessary as any other. And until then, we must accept such clumsy and harmless expedients as drew Claudius an income out of the Altona bank, and honour them as instalments of what is due, and as isolated, righteous, and beneficent acts. As Man of Letters, Claudius was true to his call- ing. Perhaps it is the best thing that can be said of him as such. He felt it to be something noble, almost sacred, not to be paltered with for bread or reward, not to be lowered into mere drudge work, counted out by the page, and weighed by the silver. He had no foolish scorn for the money value of thought. He had set himself to live by thought, if it would support him. " I beg all editors of newspapers, and the rest," he wrote half piteously, '^not to clip out my book into their columns, for it is my staff of life." But if such thoughts as he could fairly write would not support him, he would use no other. He wrote with a high and earnest purpose, as one who knew he uttered the inarticulate q2 228 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. thoughts of many, and that when they became arti- culate they would, in whatever feeble way, be a power in the world, and influence the hearts and lives of men ; and it concerned him that it should be such influence as he could honestly stand over. Soon after settling at Wandsbeck he had republished his contributions to the Messenger, and the success of that venture induced him to continue. What he had to say was thus given to the world in thin and irregular volumes, appearing at intervals between 1774 and 1814, and bearing the name of '' Collected Writinofs of the Wandsbeck Messeno^er, or Asrtius omnia sua Secuon 2^ortans." It was of the most various and miscellaneous character : epigTam, para- ble, essay, song, speculations on philosophy, criticism on current literature, letters, proverbs, dialogues with the Emperor of Japan, flights at politics, religious musings, all clustered together without effort at arrangement. From his editorial desk he looked out on the broad world as on some huge extent of panorama, slowly unfurling, and passed his remarks freely on whatever caught his notice, or sat silent as it pleased him. He is intensely personal, holds you by the button till he delivers his opinion ; a pleasant, satirical, not voluble companion, and never egotisti- MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 229 cai. Bidding farewell to his readers, he says, " I make no apology for my writings. I am not a learned man, and never gave myself out for it. What I have done has been to the best of my ability, and I say in all frankness, that I could have brought together nothing better." This earnestness and honesty of purpose, and frankness of self-esti- mate, give character to the eight volumes ; his own presence in every page lends them a peculiar piquancy and charm. He reveals himself in the pleasantest little touches of character, with the ease of being perfectly natural. He tells us how the tears sprung into his eyes while his mother told him that the moon went seeking Endymion through the sky ; that he could not bear to see even a dog die ; that he loved to wander through the deep woods singing his Psalm ; that he and his wife used to walk out under the silent, solemn stars ; and when Paul (the thief !) had stolen his hard-earned crowns, he walked into the country, and saw a river and soft meadow-land and horses and cows and sheep on the bank, and the cows well up in the water, leisurely drinking, " and I forgave him in my heart where I stood, and went home." It wavS so gentle a nature, so exquisitely sensitive to all influences of earth and 230 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. sky, so humble and tender and reverent and pure. There never was an evening hymn as compact of calm and loving and holy thoughts, as truly a bridal of earthly beauty and heavenly peace, as his Now rest the woods again, for which readers are referred to Miss Winkworth^s excellent translation. Yet there was nothing sentimental about him, but, on the other hand, great moral strength and healthful- ness. " If the sunrise does not move you, and you must squeeze tears into your eyes, then spare such made water, and let the sun rise without tears." '' Poor Werther," he says again, " if he had only just travelled to Paris or Pekin I " And his parallel between Shakspere and Voltaire is worth preserv- ing : " The one is what the other only appears, Voltaire tells you, ' Now, I shall weep,' and Shak- spere weeps." No modern German poet has written a healthier song than his Mheimueinlied, mighty and strong as the Rhine itself. His " Peasant Song " has all the breadth and manliness of Robert Burns, and what Burns had not, an outspoken and thankful faith in God : for, as he says himself, " a poet should be a pure flint from which the fair heavens and the fair earth and our holy religion strike out clear, bright sparks." MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 231 Claudius, however, was more than Man of Letters. His instincts and tastes were purely literary ; his life was a literary venture ; but the literature was the noblest. He was a sturdy fighter for truth in an age when doubt was put forward as a healthy condition of mind. He loved, and searched, and bat- tled for it with a passionate devotion. And it was the one absolute truth, the truth as it is in Jesus. To this end he wrote with a unity of purpose that underlies the most humorous and playful of his utterances, and gives his papers a completeness that so fragmentary and often whimsical a writer could never otherwise have attained. From the opening of the Messenger, his deep loving reverence for the Bible shows itself in contrast as much to the dog- matic orthodoxy as the rude unbelief of his time. " From my youth up," he says, " I have delighted to read in the Bible. Every word that proceeded out of the mouth of Christ, every movement of his hand — ^his very shoe-latchet, are sacred to me:" while over the very portal of his life as Man of Letters there are these words : " Most of all, I love St. John. There is somethino^ altogfether wonderful in him. Twilight-dusk and night, and the quick start of the lightning through it ! Soft evening clouds, and 232 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. behind them the gTeat full moon bodied forth. There is something so pensive, and lofty, and fore- seeing, that one can never have enough. When I read in John, I always feel as if I saw him before me, lying on the Master's breast at the Last Supper ; as if his angel held me the light, and at certain passages fell upon my neck and whispered in my ear." He would often pause from his chapter, in silent tears, and fold his hands and pray. The orthodox partisan said the Bible was tiTie ; would prove it, as his old teacher would prove a student not to be a rhinoceros. Claudius felt it, and spoke only as he felt. Religion which " is not in shallow dogmatics, nor unbelief, nor among the degenerate sons and whitened sepulchres of faith, which is not of the pure reason, nor orthodoxy, nor monachism" was to him for children. And in the spirit of a child he searched the Scriptures. Take, for in- stance, his comments on the Lord's Prayer : — " When I am to pray it, I think first of my father, and how good he was to me while he lived, and how willingly he gave to me. And then I put the whole world before me as my Father's house, and all the people in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America are then my brothers and sisters in my thoughts : MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 233 and God sits in heaven on a golden throne, His right hand stretched forth over the sea and even to the ends of the earth, and His left hand full of salva- tion and good, and the tops of the mountains smoke, and then I begin : — Our Father, ivlio art in heaven, Halloiued be thy name. I do not yet quite understand that. It may be the Jews knew certain mysteries of the name of God. I let that alone, and only wish that the thought of God, and every step by which we could reach to know Him, were above everything else great and holy to me and all men. Thy Jdngclom come. At this I think upon myself, what currents drive me hither and thither, and how one thing and ano- ther rules me, and that it is all vexation of spirit, and I never find a green twig. And then I think how good it would be if God would make an end of all strife, and rule in me. - Thy ivill he done on earth, as it is in heaven. At this I see heaven, with the holy angels who do His will with joy, and that never a sorrow vexes 234 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. them, and they rejoice night and day ; and then I think : if it were also so upon earth 1 Give us this day our daily bread. Everybody knows what daily bread is, and that we must eat as long as we are in the world, and that it is a right pleasant thing. And I think upon it. And my children come into my mind, for they are so ready to eat, and run so quickly and heartily to the dish. Then I pray that our dear God will always give us something to eat. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. It is hard to suffer wrong, and revenge is sweet to man. That is my own experience, and I could have a great desire to revenge ; but then I seem to see the wicked servant out of the gospel ; and I have no heart for it, and I determine to forgive my fellow-servant, and will never say a word to him about the hundred pence. And lead us not into temptation. Here I think of examples of every kind, of people who, under different circumstances, have quitted and turned away from the good, and that it would be no better with me. MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 235 But deliver us from evil. Temptations are still in my mind here, and tliat a man can be so easily led astray, and wander from the right path. At the same time I think of the burden of life, of consumption and old age, of childbirth and gangrene, and idiotcy, and of the thousand pains and sorrows that are in the world, and whereby poor human beings are plagued and martp'ed, and no one can help them. And you will find, Andrew, if the tears have not come into your e3^es before, that here they will come of a certainty, and one has such pitiful longings, and is as sorrowful and cast down as if there were no help. Yet must one be of good courage, and lay the finger on the lips, and march on as if in triumph : For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen." With what nawet^, and what singular depth and accuracy this is written ; a strictly personal comment in which the writer takes you into his confidence ; nothing formal or elaborated, but only a personal experience ; yet where else in the same compass should we look for so much poetry of feeling and 236 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. exquisite perception of truth ? This childlike spirit he carried into the great religious, or rather irre- ligious controversies of his time, and met the doubts and inuendoes and assaults of the sceptic with the positive strength of a man of faith. Religion was to him a personal matter, and had its surest ground and reality in the personal relation to God. It was out of this that his appeal went forth, and it was in this that his real power lay. His relation to his time, — to its scientific theology, and philosophical doubting, and incipient rationalism, — may be seen in such passages as these : — " Certain deistical gentlemen and Chinese wise- acres have equipped a host of objections and doubts out of Aristotle's Organon, Count Welling's Salz- lehre, Descartes' Mathematics, Wolf en's Experi- mental Physics, Geriken's Air-Pump Theories, etc., and have advanced to make a breach in the Mosaic cosmogony. Light, for example, should not have appeared on the first day, and the sun three days too late ; grass and trees should not have grown on the third day, when there was no sky till the fourth, and so on. And certain theological gentle- men and broad-minded philosophers have raised up a host of answers and solutions against them, MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 237 even out of Geriken's Air-Pump Theories, Wolfen's Experimental Physics, Descartes' Mathematics, Count Welling's Salzlehre, Aristotle's Organon, etc., and thereby have made the breach yet wider, seeing that the Mosaic cosmogony is not measured off according to Aristotle's Organon, Geriken's Air-Pump Theo- ries, Descartes' Mathematics, Count Welling's Salz- lehre, nor Wolfen's Experimental Physics, and there- fore is neither to be assailed nor defended by these. But if the Mosaic cosmogony is to be justified by none of these, it is not the fault of the lock but the locksmith. It needs no such artificial justifica- tion, and soars away on the wings of the morning high above all objections and doubts, yea, and triumphs." " Some famous learned men have thought out another plan of Nature. Species, they say, are only resting-points and steps, where Nature rests and collects herself in order to go on further, and always from the lower to the higher and more developed, so that an oyster ends in a crocodile, and a gnat in a serpent, and from the most developed of the lower animals come at last men and angels. This is put forward cleverly enough ; only that the first and chief 238 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. argument against it is, that it is not true. So little does Nature advance from one species to another, that she never alters the same species or makes it more perfect. The autumn spider spun its web among the Komans in the same wonderful mathematical form, with peripheries, radius, and centre, and already ^lian remarks that it does its work without Euclid. He relates, moreover, that it sits in am- bush in the centre of its web, as we see it sit after more than a thousand years." *^ Em'peroT of Japan. As I hear the world is everywhere the same, of course, then, you don't want in Europe for objections and doubts against religion ? AsTRUS. Mr. Lessing recently gave to the public various doubts of an anonymous writer, some of which are truly learned and clear. He has refuted them, however. E. Mr. Lessing belongs to the bench of philoso- phers ? A. I should say that your Majesty had better set him on his own chair. The common benches do not suit him, or rather he does not suit the benches. E. How has he managed with those doubts ? MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 239 A. In the usual way. He that is right will maintain the right. He ought to maintain it, and dare not shun the open field. So Mr. Lessing lets the doubts march on with upper and under arms, and the man with the truth marches against them. But as a troop of religious doubts is like a rattle- snake, and falls upon the first unarmed man, he will not allow that, and therefore he puts a muzzle upon every doubt ; something to gnaw at, until a learned and understanding theologian is equipped. And, says he, we must meet the foe honourably : and no one is to cry victory because he has fired off an old rusty musket with powder only ; and no one is to take up more ground than he can defend, and than the foot of religion needs. U. Mr. Lessing pleases me. Do you think he would care to come to Japan ? A. I am not aware. Sire ; your Majesty at least must make the conditions very minute and con- clusive, for he must see everything clearly with his own eyes. E. It seems the refutation is not of much im- portance ? A. Of none at all, Sire. By the help of Mr. Lessing's electric spark I seem to see Religion as a 240 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. medicine, and the doubter as Dr. Peter, and the refuter as Dr. Paul, and they quarrel over the medicine as it lies before them on the table. If I stood sick and wretched beside the table and the two doctors, and would willingly be relieved, and Dr. Paul was right, yet I would not be cured if I did not take the medicine ; and if I did take it, and it were good, I would be cured, even though Dr. Peter were right. So the maintaining of what is right is only for the gentlemen who can look on and listen ; but the taking of the medicine is the real business ; and one patient, Sire, who was cured, would prove more for those gentlemen who hsten, than a hundred victories of Paul over Peter." Should it be inquired what was the secret of the influence he wielded as a Christian thinker, it was just this, that he was a Christian thinker. He was content to be that, and his contemporaries were not. He clung to positive truth, not as a bulwark against infidelity, but as the life and joy of his own heart. The rest were looking at it critically, scientifically, poetically, as men of taste, and learning, and feeling. He looked at it as his possession, of which if a man robbed him, he might MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 241 as soon rob him of life. There were certainly greater men in his day, though not so much greater as his modesty made him believe ; men who specu- lated and wrote on the questions that came up in his papers ; yet there is not one that has left the same healthy influence. Lessing opened a door to doubt which he was not willing to close ; Herder preached himself into an unconscious pantheism ; Jacobi was philosophically neutral; Stolberg fol- lowed sentiment into the Church of Rome. Claudius held on by Christ as by a rock ; wrote letters to Andrew on the miracles; expounded Chris- tianity to his children ; put forward essays on prayer ; and each new volume became more tho- roughly imbued with Christian thought. We know- little of the way by which he was led to Christ a.s a Saviour. Hamann and Lavater seem to have had much power over him at the time, and he turns back to them with thankfulness. It would seem he had to pass through much personal struggle, and "to wander in defiles and labyrinths before reaching the doors of peace." It would seem also that from this time old friends separated from him, dropped at least the constancy of their intercourse. As years rolled on he kept more within the family 242 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. life at Wandsbeck, where the days passed in the cheerfulest simplicity. One daughter, Christiana, died ; another, Caroline, was married to Perthes the bookseller. Of Christiana he has touchingly written : " A star rose in the sky, And flung mild radiance down, And softly shone and high, Softly and sweetly down. * ' I knew the veiy spot Of sky that held its light, Each sundown had I sought, And found it every night. " The star is sunk and gone ; I search the sky in vain : The other stars come one by one. But it comes never again. " Caroline's life is before the world, and has been, and will long be, a strength and comfort to many hearts. In those noble womanly letters that are the greatest charm of the Life of Perthes, she has revealed the genuine force and tenderness of that Wandsbeck home. Another daughter was married to young Jacobi. And while his family was scattering from him, friends were passing away. Schonbom, it is true, had returned, a sluggish old man, wrapped for most of the day in a dressing-gown, not of the MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 243 cleanest, or standing in the doorway in long loose overcoat ; silent as if in a dream, or rude of speecli, with rough Low-Saxon idiom ; talking the boldest and grandest thoughts ; " the most thorough sceptic that ever existed;" perfectly friendless, and cast among a new generation of literary men ; a nuisance on the whole, but with a kingly mind, and so reluc- tant to die that he absolutely refused for more than a week, shocking all the proprieties of medicine. Claudius could not have much intercourse with him. Schlosser, Lavater, Klopstock, Herder, Princess Gal- litzin, and young Runge, the painter, were already gone. He might have said with Wordsworth :— " Like clouds that rake the mountain summits, Or waves that own no curbing hand, How fast has brother followed brother From sunshine to the sunless laud ! " Yet I, whose lids, from infant slumber, Were earlier raised, remain to hear A timid voice that asks in whispers, "Who next will drop and disappear ?" He did not long survive the trials of the French occupation. On New Year's Day, 1 814, he published a Lay Sermon to the German people. ''Sorrowful and anxious ones," it concluded, "who weep over your loss, for your sons, your friends, your well- E 2 244 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. loved, do not despair ; and if the comfort that they have suffered and died for freedom and fatherland, cannot comfort you, there is in Jesus Christ a pro- spect which can raise you over death and the grave, and all that is earthly, and thoroughly dry your tears." Next New Year's Day he lay on his death- bed in Hamburg. " I have all my life," he said, " reflected on these hours, and now they are come." He was quiet and joyful, and retained all his ori- ginality and peculiarities. He w^as constantly in prayer. One afternoon it was. Lead ime not into temptation, hut deliver me from evil. "An hour later he said Good-night several times, and in the moment of departure, he opened his eyes, and looked lovingly upon his wife and children." " The expres- sion of the whole person," writes Perthes imme- diately after, " is still very striking ; there is an air of weariness, as if he were satisfied and pleased to have done with the earthly ; while the brow retained its beauty and power, and the mouth all the fulness of affection, w^hich characterised them in life. The end of this man was indeed great and noble." The calm of that awaited death is in harmony with the rest. The shrewdness, and irony, and whim are stilled in the silent and thankful communion MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. 245 with God, and the veil is drawn softly over the sickly face and the " heavenly blue eye," over five- and-seventy years of a life that was not without its harshness, and coarse, strong lines, but that, as quaint, original, sincere, devout, was unsurpassed. Age had ripened his Christian faculties, and made him only more decided for the truth. " You write, Andrew, that it makes your hair grey to see Christ denied and despised — you, dear, righteous soul ; and well it may; but whoso carries grey hairs for Christ carries a crown." " Whoever," he wrote again, " will not believe in Christ, must just see how to get on without Him. You and I cannot." He translated Fen^lon in his latter days, grew somewhat mystical about the inner life, dwelt upon the perfect union of the soul with Christ, and wrote so earnestly that men said the old Messenger had got tiresome. To many he was scarce intelligible. They had relished the Man of Letters ; they grew weary and dull over the Man of God. Often Novalis is unintelUgible for the same reason. When he rises into the sphere of religious feeling, readers and critics, and very friends apologise for his obscurity. Knowledge of the intri- cacies of German thought is not enough to interpret him, though that impression is left by a recent and 246 MATTHEW CLAUDIUS. otherwise fair writer on Guessers at Truth. Know- ledge of spiritual life is more essential; sympathy with spiritual thought. And Novalis has been un- fortunate in being edited and reviewed, and intro- duced to us in England by those who frankly dis- avow a power of spiritual perception in any positive Christian sense. It is for the Christian thinker he has the profoundest interest, and to him he will yield the richest fruits. And it will be found that, where Claudius repels the mere literary seeker, there are hidden, but easily-yielded treasures for the spiritual mind. Wandsbeck still draws an occasional pilgrim to its shrine. The Messenger has passed into other lands ; his writings flourish in a seventh edition in his own. There is not a German student that does not sing his songs ; there is not a Holstein peasant that does not hum his pleasant rhymes. But deeper than all, he has struck root in the religious heart of Germany, and survives as the simple-minded Man of Letters who was not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. ' DE. CHALMEES AT ELBEEFELD. LBERFELD, to most people, is suggestive of Turkey-red ; and, no doubt, Turkey- red has everytliing to do with it. It was a notable place, however, before that excellent dye spread its reputation ; and is likely to remain so whether the dye holds or not. For the beauty of its neighbourhood and its picturesque contrasts alone, it is worth halting at longer than between two trains. It lies in a charming valley of the Berg ; and, fifty years ago, before the factory time, could boast one of the brightest and clearest of streams in the merry little Wupper. Pleasant heights, shaded with masses of wood, cluster round it. Away be- yond them, the river winds between the heights, and below the woods, and laving the greenest 248 DE. CEALMEBS AT ELBEBFELD. meadows. Tempting openings stretch up into the hills; and there are gloomy, grotesque-looking ra- vines, with curious caves scooped in their sides — caves with real legends, not of the Rhine stamp, but akin to those that linger by the heather braes of Scotland, of Christian men in hiding, and sore peril of life, and of grand hymns they made, that echo through all Germany to this day. Moreover, about the beginning of the century many eyes were turned hopefully to the quiet church, where the elder Krummacher declared the gospel with a fresh, faithful simplicity, that startled the careless Christian world ; and many hearts were praying that the light God had kindled there might not be put out ; and strangers came into the vale to hear the famous preacher, and carry with them the joy of his good tidings. And ever since, through the changes of its population and character, the vale has maintained its faith, and is among the foremost places on the Continent for the spread and power of the kingdom of God. It was in Elberfeld that the first German missionary society was formed, and that good old Hermann Peltzer, at three score and six, set himself hopefully to learn English, that he might publish translations of the BB. CHALMERS AT ELBEBFELD. 249 tidings from English missionaries. And at the next turn of the river there is Barmen, with its mission-houses and seminary, and famous mission- paper, and forty-one missionaries — the greatest missionary . organisation of Germany ; and from which, at present, two daring men are going out into the more hidden heart of Africa, to teach the newly discovered populations there. But, unde- niably the leading interest is Turkey-red ; and the little Wupper, that threw out its merry invita- tion to all the world, has been taken somewhat roughly at its word, and comes, coppery and hot and odorous, out of the dyeing-vats, and can no longer hear its own voice for the roar of the great factories along its banks. The town is like a hasty-grown boy, that shows awkwardly in lately proper but now ill-fitting clothes. A few hand- some streets cleave long rows of narrow passages, through which the current of business persists in flowing. Odd little lanes wind over the hills and throucrh the hollows, and cross and recross into an extraordinary network, where the stranger is left as in a labyrinth till some kindly opening reveals an escape. He emerges with a confused cricking of shuttles in his ear, and a very distinct sense of 250 DB. CHALMEBS AT ELBERFELD. small children and a dense population. The houses, with their wooden framework, running in fantastic pattern over the whitewash, are bewilder- ing enough ; doubly so, one somehow feels, when weavers are plying their calling in every room ; but they look comfortable, and the little fry are healthy and active, and there is a good-tempered quiet civility everjrwhere, that is not often met in our narrow lanes at home. Elberfeld, in fact, is now a wealthy, bustling manufacturing city, that has multiplied its population often since 1800 ; and Turkey-red has been at the bottom of all this, and also of that state of things which required the vigorous interposition of the author of " Civic Economy of Large Towns." For with. wealth there came poverty, and flung its shadow along the alleys, and below the rich men's houses, and out upon the broad sunshine and wide as the city reached, and fast as it grew, so wide and fast did the shadow. The town is always absorbing the country — its nerve and fresh- ness — its incapacity and need as well. And as weeds thrive best on untilled lands, so does poverty reach its rankest growth in the neglected haunts of city crowds. Manufacturing cities^ besides, DR. CHALMERS AT ELBERFELB. 251 have a special poverty of their own. Plenty of work draws plenty of hands ; but orders may stop with scarce a warning, and dull times set in, and the factory works at half-hours or at half-power, and then the strain begins, and there is pawning and debt, and by the time trade revives there are some who are too far down to rise. As often as this is repeated, some heads sink with the struggle, and cry below the smooth surface of the town's life. The poor have no monopoly of high-class virtues ; they are no more likely than the rich to be thrifty, and prudent, and patient, and made of the firm, stern stuff of martyrs. When the hard day breaks, it is not many who are ready for it. It is very painful, no doubt it is very blameable ; but before casting stones at them, it may be well at least to spend a thought or two upon one's own thrift, and prudence, and preparation for reverse, and to ask whether one has ever taught his neighbours to do better, or has reflected much upon the matter until he was told of a bare, fireless room, and naked children, and then began to mutter something about " their own fault," and " the poor-house." Elberfeld, with its rows of workshops, and fac- tory roar, has, in addition to its other poor, its 252 BB. CHALMERS AT ELBEBFELD. poor of this stamp — poor first by being thrown out of work and into beggary, and poor by being sprung from these, brought up among the influ- ences and woful habits of poverty. Charitable, as great cities are after their fashion, it was forward to relieve them. Alms were freely given ; poor- rates were freely paid. It prospered, spread up and down the Wupper, and over the country walks of the old grey-headed villagers, added field to field and trade to trade, and still the poor kept even pace, and the poor-rates were freely paid. At length murmurs rose. In 1847, 1848, 1849, its pauperism cost the city £17,000 "per annum ; its population was not 50,000, and the rate was up to 47s. a-head. The burden was pressing beyond endurance. Every year it was heavier and the ratio of pauper increase was far beyond that of population. The poor-rate struck at the beginning of the year never covered the necessity ; supple- mentary rates became the rule. Yet high as the tax was pitched, it proved futile. The more this hungry pauperism was fed, the more ravenous it turned ; like a diseased stomach, it created its own appetite ; and the citizens felt alarmed lest all their prosperous earnings should be drawn into its yawn- DB. CHALMERS AT ELBERFELD. 253 ing mouth. Was trade declining ? On the con- trary, it was steadily progressing, money was more abundant, new streets were rising, strangers re- marked on the rapidity of the improvements. Were the funds mismanaged? That was out of the question ; the greatest sufferers were on the ma- nagement, the system was well worked, the officers were rigid and careful. Was the system at fault? There were some who made bold to say it was wrong and dangerous from the foundation. At the beginning of this century, when Krum- macher was preaching and Peltzer was puzzling over his English, Elberfeld was a simple country town. The few poor wei-e supported by voluntary contribu- tions dispensed through ecclesiastical boards. Then, as time rolled on, beggars multiplied. They were like a plague in the streets and at the doors. ** To see the townfolk suffer so From vermin, was a pity. " And the townsfolk grew uneasy, and whether or no, like the rat-bitten population of Hamelin, they came to the town-hall with a " Rouse up, sirs ! give your brains a racking, To find tlie remedy we're lacking, Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing ! 254 DB. CHALMERS AT ELBEEFELD. At wliich the mayor and corporation Quakes with a mighty consternation " — we are ignorant ; but the corporation felt an emer- gency, and, for want of a "pied piper," determined to form a civic aid to help the ecclesiastical : the town collected, and the Church dispensed. Then there came disputes, debt, and the year 1816. It was a year of extraordinary distress, dearness, and idleness ; and the ecclesiastical boards, though of three confessions, proposed to their great credit to take entire charge of the poor. After twelve months' experiment the scheme broke down, and a plan of civic machinery was introduced ; poor- rates were levied, poor-law guardians appointed, inspectors, relieving officers, and all the other officers set in motion, and its machinery went, as machinists say, sweetly. The change was going on elsewhere, over entire Germany. The Church, which embodies in itself the fittest poor-law, was careless, and proved incapable. It was slowly thrust aside, tolerated perhaps with a seat at the new boards, while the civic powers took the matter into their own hands, until now there is a general approximation to our own poor-laws and our own powerless extravagance. It was this civic system which some in Elberfeld DR. CHALMERS AT ELBERFELD, 255 began to whisper was in fault. They pointed to the amazing increase of taxes, and to the yet more amazing increase of pauperism : they showed that the system worked admirably as a system, but that if it went on, bankruptcy hung over no very distant future. Gradually the corporation shared their opinion ; proposals which came to nothing were made to the ecclesiastical bodies ; and with this effoii} the people resigned themselves to an inevit- able fate. It was then that among one or two clear- sighted citizens such a plan was matured, which, carried into the happiest effect, has made Elberfeld famous in the civic economy of the Continent, and a hopeful lesson for our civic economy at home. Those who have read the " Memoirs of Dr. Chal- mers " — and who has not ? — will remember that most brilliant and most sad chapter which records the success and failure at St. John's. In this, and in so much else, far beyond his time, and following the instincts of a true and gi'eat heart that was sanctified by the Spirit of God and inhabited by His wisdom, Dr. Chalmers determined to establish his principles in the face of ever}'- resistance and scorn. In a parish of 10,000 he found an annual poor-tax of £1400. Four years after his induction he could 256 BB. CHALMERS AT ELBERFELD. say that the expenditure was £190, and the pau- perism vastly less. When eighteen years had passed, the average expenditure was found to have been £30 to every 1000 people against £140 to every 1000 people when he began. There the matter dropped, but the truth and the protest remain the same, and whoever has the confidence and manliness to try will find the result unchanged still. People were familiar once with the mode by which he wrought, but it has so long slipped away into the timid region of the impracticable, that few can talk of it now. It would be out of place to say more about it here. than that its chief points were the thorough personal visitation of the parish by the deacons, the proper selection and conduct of these deacons, the adminis- tration of help through them instead of through parish officials. How far his writings on this favourite subject may have influenced Mr. Yon der Heydt, Mr. Lischke, and others in Germany, it is not very pertinent to inquire. Their reputation in that country has been considerable, the course of the Inner Mission has of late diredted more atten- tion to them, and it is probable enough that besides the indirect influence of well-known opinions upon the general intelligence of society, Mr. Lischke may BR. CHALMEBS AT ELBERFELD. 257 owe much to the personal study of these writings. This, however, is certain and gratifying, that the parochial system of St. John's has been reproduced in Elberfeld on a large scale, embracing the entire population; and that in those principles of poor relief for which Dr. Chalmers contended, the only extrication has been found from the embarrassments which threatened that city. Those who sought a new system sought it on an entirely new basis. They felt that a human heart and hand must be substituted for a board. The poor came into no real contact with the rich ; they stood at a cold, legal distance. The rich came into as little contact with them, knew them only as people to whom the board gave alms. There was no attempt to check poverty, none to help the poor up. As many as were in bond fide need received a certain relief, and that was all. Alms were the easiest service ; and that discharged, through the poor-rate and the workhouse, people took credit for loving their neighbours as themselves. And not in Elberfeld alone. God's teaching, Christ's voice through 1800 years, and this is the issue of it in our illuminated nineteenth century ! And we will pay taxes fourfold rather than take the poor man by 258 DR. CHALMERS AT ELBERFELD. the hand, or feel the chill of his wan face upon our comfort, or remember that with the soil upon his life he is our brother, and we must answer for his blood. We hurry him to the great poor-house, and boast that we have done our duty by society, and feel it ought to thank us. Good-natured, pitiful, kind men will do it; they are not, as the poor may think, passive and bloodless as the stones : it is habit and theory, and the maxims of the world, that freeze them. Send him to the poor-house; but will you not first look into that miserable room where he is starving ? Pay the highest rate ; but will you not first consider the poor ? It is not far : a few steps down the next street, a little climbing up the dark stairs. It was where the Lord went, and He said : " Follow Me." This was what these men in Elber- feld thought, that it is selfishness to stow poverty in an almshouse, and never touch it with a little finger, though it has father and children, and heart and brain, as well as we ; that poverty will never come to an end that way ; and that we are in the world not so much to carry out the poor-laws as to love our brother. This was the foundation on which their plan rose. The official relation to the poor must cease, and give place to the personal ; aid must be BE. CRALMERS AT ELBEEFELD. 259 granted not by statute but by men whom the poor feel to care for them. Attain this, they said, and the rest will spriug from it ; better feeling, fewer poor, lighter taxes, less imposture, steady care. The system proposed and at present in operation is briefly this. The town, with a population of 53,000, is divided into 252 districts, 1 to about every 210 people. A visitor is appointed over each dis- trict. The visitors offer themselves for three years ; but, though they can then retire, by far the greater number have preferred remaining, and only those have withdrawn who were unable to continue. They are of all grades in society, in office and out of office, head-masters of the gymnasiums and ele- mentary teachers, great merchants and small, per- sons of property and young men in warehouses, manufacturers and journeymen weavers, artisans and bankers. They may be of any denomination; an important matter in Elberfield, which can boast almost every sect. They are only asked if they will faithfully discharge their duties. They are to visit fortnightly each of the poor in the district in their houses (the number of families allotted to one is not allowed to exceed four) ; to inquire into their cir- cumstances, to foster self-reliance, to counsel and s 2 26o DR. CHALMERS AT ELBERFELD. rebuke tliem, to reconstruct the ruined family life, to preserve and develop family and neighbourly relations, by every means to prevent dependence on charity, where help is imperative to give no more than is absolutely necessary, where work is wanted to provide it, to detect imposition, and reclaim the outcast. The districts are organised into eighteen circuits. Every fortnight, of a Wednesday the visitors of each circuit meet under the presidency of a superintendent. At this meeting they report upon the poor, and prefer their requests for help. In doubtful cases a majority of votes determines, and in no case can relief be granted for longer than fourteen days ; if still necessary, the application must be renewed. The superintendent must visit the poor of the district quarterly, as well as accompany the visitor in any circumstances of peculiar emer- gency. They appear also at the sittings of the Poor Law Board, which are held on alternate Wednesdays with the circuit meetings, report there upon the condition of their pauperism, and receive the needful supplies in money and kind for the circuit meeting following : they are, in fact, the organs of the board. This board is composed of men of high standing, who, like the rest, voluntarily offered their services. BR. CRALMER8 AT ELBEliFELD. 261 Its position is that of a committee of the Common Council. It fixes the assessment for the year, man- ages the outlay, superintends both the indoor and outdoor relief, investigates the condition and causes of the pauperism, and reconsiders, or, if necessary, changes the decisions of the circuit meetings. Its president is the Mayor, if we may so translate the Ober-BUrgermeister. And anyone who wishes fuller information on the constitution or working of the poor-law will find it clearly stated in the admirable paper read before the Kirchentag of Hamburg in 1858, by Ober-Burgermeister Lischke. Such is the scheme, somewhat complex perhaps, but working out its principles with a thorough persistency and order. The simple sense of a deep human fellowship is at the bottom of it, of the power of human sympathy and contact, of human duties that are owed, not through corporations, but from man to man. This is wrought into every detail, penetrates aod sustains the whole. To have a personal acquaintance with the poor, there must be frequent visiting ; to have a personal influence, the visit must be the prompting of neighbourly feeling. The one requires that the visitors be men with their own calling in life ; the other, that they 262 DB. CHALMERS AT ELBERFELD. bear the largest possible proportion to the popu- lation. If the visitor have more families on his list than he can attend to with ease, he will attend to none ; if he is appointed to visit as his calling, his visits become hopelessly official. The connexion established between the impulse of a private pity and the restraint of a public grant is also very happy ; the one stirs the heart, the other controls it by the judgment ; while the limit of the grant-in- aid to fourteen days is a continual and most whole- some check upon an imprudent benevolence. Each, moreover, has a personal interest in removing pauper- ism, and those who are best acquainted with it are made the instruments of relieving it. It was in 1851 that the plan, then well considered, was laid before the corporation. It was received with a storm of opposition, and not without ridicule. A well-meant impracticable theory 1 Who would volunteer to work like that? If one or two were ready, who would dream of 252 ? It was strangely Utopian ; the council might pass on to business. Keduce the visitors, suggested one member at length ; reduce the visitors, and it may have a chance. Re- duce the visitors, was the reply, and it is at an end. Perseverance won some little concessions : permission BB. CHALMERS AT ELBERFELD. 263 was given for an experiment ; it was allowed on sufferance ; of course, it was said, the men will never be found. Nearly 300 offered. Then sage people shook their heads, and said it would not last a month. The poor regarded it with suspicion. It went on without pause or hitch, and is now in its eighth year ; and with what result can be very briefly stated. In 1852, the town was in embarrassment, pauperism was advancing with the hugest strides, the poor-rates were enormous, the income fell far below the expenditure, the number of poor was upwards of 4000, or one in twelve. In 1857, the town breathed freely, the poor-rates were trifling, the reduced assessment much more than covered the need, street-begging had disappeared, there were no cases of neglect, the genuine poor received large help, and the number of poor had fallen to 1400, or one in thirty-eight, and was still falHng. In 1858, there were only 151 families. Nor have the circum- stances been favourable to this result. There was a continuance of hard years, when prices were high and work was slack. There was misapprehension, and the difficulty of an unfamiliar project. The accruing poverty of half a century had to be con- tended with. When these things are reckoned, it 264 DR. CHALMERS AT ELBERFELD. will be found that the figures are under a. true estimate of the gain. Nor has it been impracti- cable to maintain the efficient staff. Last year the number of applicants for visitorships far exceeded 252 ; instead of requesting persons to act, the board have always been in a position to select. At first, it was almost at the peril of the visitors' lives that they went among the poor ; now, they bring a joy into every household. And the impulse has reacted upon them. They have learned how it is more blessed to give than to receive, they have an un- selfish doing of good daily asserting itself against the gravitating force of business and careful world- liness, new lights have broken upon many, new sympathies been stirred in them, the harsh repulse of class is disappearing, there is a mutual knowledge and reliance of the rich and the poor. The story is uncommon and new. It is a plea- sant, hopeful thought that a spinning, trading, Turkey-red-dyeing, money-getting city like Elber- feld can produce 252 men who are unselfish enough to follow an unselfish purpose, manly enough to reach a warm hand to those whom poverty has thrust up a reeking alley, with time enough to say a cheery word to the sick woman in the garret, or to DB. CHALMEBS AT ELBEBFELD. 265 look out work for the poor fellow hidiDg in the cellar. It is not the tendency of our time ; it is not a story that we can easily believe. It is likely to be met with an incredulous stare.* Hamburg, Berlin, the great towns are incredu- lous. Yet there is the same peril threatening, the same burdens weighing them down. In 1849, in the forty towns of Prussia with more than 10,000 inhabitants, and a total population of 1,730,833, there was spent in in- and out-door relief £416,381. The number of those supported was 811,963, or two to every eleven of the poj^ulation ; and the poor-rate was 4s. lOd per head, or for a town of 100,000, £24,000. Do not the very same facts meet us at home ? The poor-law expenditure in Glasgow is upwards of £100,000, or above £250 to every 1000 people. Between August, 1840, and May, 1849, its population increased by twenty per cent., and the cost of its pauperism by 430 per cent. Are other towns any better ? Is it not a universal evil, to which only habit has reconciled us, while remedy * A well-known banker, the chief promoter of the system, men- tioned to the writer last year, that upon relating it a short time before to a member of our House of Lords, his travelling com- panion in the railway, he was told, " If I had not heard it from the lips of a living man, I should not have believed it.'" 266 DR. CHALMERS AT ELBERFELD, looks so unlikely that the few who dread the future are unwilling to alarm the present ? The marvel- lous elasticity of our commerce, the growing wealth of our traders, may make the evil more distant, perhaps also more gigantic. Is it not worth while to try some effort, not to stave off misfortune, but to avert it ? Is not Dr. Chalmers' plan worth being tested once again ? Elberfeld has shown, at least, that it is possible. Are men less ready to come forward here than there ? Are they less practical, less willing, less interested 1 Have we the poor less upon our hearts ? Or, rather, are not the workers ready, if there were only the guiding hand to shape the work 1 We may find fault with the Elberfeld organisation, we may say it is not adapted to our wants ; the principle remains intact : if it has been wrought into use and blessing there, it is hard to see why it could not be wrought into as much use and blessing here. It may be that this hasty sketch of what is doing in Germany will lead some one to think of what may be done in England, that the new birth and glory of a half-forgotten truth will give some one boldness to begin, let it be in ever so narrow a sphere, what was never really a failure at St. John's. ON THE BIOGEAPHY OF CEETAIN HYMNS. lOKBSWORTH'S Peter Bell was a pedlar, and there have been pedlars of a bet- ter character than Peter But the real Peter — the personality of Peter, as our German neighbours would say — must have been highly respectable; ** A primrose by a river's brim, A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more," These lines are an honourable scutcheon. They elevate him to the great body of respectable, well- to-do, steady people. Nine-tenths of our excellent acquaintance subscribe to them as the creed of plain common sense. Why make a fuss about a yellow 268 ON THE BIOGRAPHY liower? Why not be thankful that it has got a name to sejDarate it from other yellow flowers % Are there not thousands of them out in the fields, and have been since we were born ? And are they not all primroses, and is not that enough ? Of course, it is a prosaic view of the world ; but then, there are a great many worthy and good people to whom poetry is a bore, who are thankful to find the world already carefully labelled, who placidly accept every- thing about them as a fact, to whom a primrose is a primrose. There is a poem in the telegraph wire ; yet thousands of messages are sent every day with- out an inkling of it. De Quincey could not think of the stars without feeling their mystery and awe ; a sailor may class them with lighthouses as helps to navigation. A quarry was a mine of wonder and scientific truth to Hugh Miller ; to the quarryman it is represented by a rock and a shilling a day. Millions of years ago sunbeams may have been turned into coal ; Faraday can make a fairy tale out of the flame of a candle ; but we may put coal on the fire without thinking of sunbeams, and our thoughts of a candle used seldom to rise above the vexation of snuffing it. And why should coal not be coal, and a primrose a primrose ? Really, I do OF CERTAIN HYMNS. 269 not know. It is perfectly proper that they should be what they are ; and if any one persists in seeing more in them, perhaps it is perfectly proper that he should be voted a bore. And if any one is satisfied that a hymn is a hymn, and nothing more, this paper will probably bore him, and he is requested to pass over it without delay. The Biograjphy of a Peal of Bells would be as intelligible to him as the Biography of a Hymn. And a very pretty biogra- phy it might make. Sitting in the village church- yard, while the children play with flowers upon the sodded grass, and the slow gossips saunter past the gate, and the evening sunshine breaks in through the golden shower of the laburnums and rests peace- fully on the worn head-stones, the chiming of the bells trembles through the air like speech of living voices. What histories of human life have they not witnessed up in that grey tower among the ivy ! What fears and jealousies, what greed and passion and awful sins, handed down in whispers of dark tradition, have they not rung in and out at baptism and wedding and funeral ! What mysteries are sealed under these tombs, but no mysteries to them ! How they have chimed for every one that is buried round, and mixed with their thoughts, and wandered 270 ON THE BIOGBAPHY with them through other lands, and come to them in dreams; dying children have heard them call to heaven; they have lingered sweetly in the ears of happy brides ; lonely fathers have wept with them for the dead ; they have softened the prodigal's heart in a far country ; they have rung like the voice of peace through the din of battle ; they have startled the wicked thought and palsied the wicked hand, and there they peal still, out of the past into the present, over the dead and over the living. It is only a peal of bells, and we have heard them a thousand times, and nobody thinks of them; but yet all this, and a great deal more is in them. It is only hymns, common hymns, that are in penny books, that everybody knows, and yet they have biographies ; they have a life pierced all through, like ours, with joy and sorrow ; linked on, like ours, to other lives ; they have their birth and story, eventful sometimes, sometimes calm and even ; biographies that are written in the surest place — in the secrets of many hearts. Perhaps every hymn has its history ; but it would be cruel to suggest to any possible reader that every hymn should have its biography. Some hymns, like some people, have biographies ; the rest, like the OF CERTAIN HYMNS, 271 majority of the world, occupy just so much space, and that is all. Some have been mere untimely births ; some have died after a year or two of strug- gling infancy, and been buried in the British Museum or Stationers' Hall ; a vast number are simply labelled hymns, and exist in hymn-books ; of a few it may be said, they have lived. Some, no doubt, live on a precarious reputation, an accident of birth, the favour of a past generation, an incident in which they played an exaggerated part. Some would not bear a rigid scrutiny into their ante- cedents ; some have won their place by barefaced impudence and plagiarism ; many turn out shallow, and commonplace, and wearisome. But even here their lives will compare advantageously with other biographies, and there is not one of them guilty of having kept a diary. Most of them are democratic ; their story, tHeir power, belong to the people. The select aristocracy of hymns is not fertile in memoirs. They are well dressed, well printed, well bound ; they lie on the prettiest tables, and are welcome in cathedral closes : but they are uninfluential ; the pleasantest companions, friends even, but treated as such, as a charming addition and solace to life, and no more. It is in the penny hymn-books that the 272 ON THE BIOGBAPHY sense of power is felt. Probably the hymn is essen- tially democratic. It must seize the common thoughts of many, translate the feeling of some religious movement, meet the deep and often but half-con- scious craving of the people. If it appeals to an intellectual audience by its thoughts, or images, or play of pious fancy, it strips itself of power. And it is in the penny hymn-book that the fact of a biography of hymns has been recently recognised. Some of these books may have been noticed to be printed with a painful irregularity ; large, bold type, starting abruptly out from a crowd of small verses, sometimes a word, sometimes a line or a stanza. It is disagreeable reading, but it is only a rough way of stating a genuine truth. For every line in large type there is a story by which that line has con- nected itself with a human heart, with its burden, or sorrow, or longing, or sudden light, or eternal peace. It is a rough, ugly way of putting it, and probably, over-hasty; but it indicates where the truest biographical interest will be found ; it suggests also the difficulty of procuring biographical details. For the hymn is its secret autobiographer, and only by some casual accident is a page of that WTiting brought to light. OF CERTAIN HYMNS. 273 Yet even detail is not wanting. There is a memoir, now unhappily out of print, devoted to one hymn, My Mother dear, Jerusalem ! — a hymn that has been a great favourite by Scottish firesides, and wandered far and wide with Scottish emigrants. Others have not been so fortunate. But let any one stand in some old German church — for Germany is pre-eminently the land of Christian hymns — and listen to the h3rmn that is lifted up with such strong and hearty voices, and think how the same words have been sung by perhaps ten generations ; how the people have heard them from childhood ; how they have been met by them in every conceivable circumstance of life and in the brightest and darkest days of Christendom ; what struggles of the soul they have roused, and witnessed, and shared ; in what strange and often tragic scenes they have mingled ; what they have been to successive mour- ners, to widows and orphans, and the sick and dying, and h3rpocrites and plotters, to all that shifting group of worshippers, — let any one do this, and the hymn seems already to have received its memoir. A Jew passing by a church with his sister, steps in while the people are singing ; he cannot resist the hymn ; his sister rouses and scolds him in vain; it goes T 274 ON THE BIOGRAPHY singing on in his heart, though she calls it an abomination of the Gentiles ; and in the same church he is baptized. Luther ^vrites a hymn, and soon after a poor clothworker walks through the streets of Magdeburg singing it ; the mayor lays hands on him, and throws him into prison ; but the hymn has done its work, and two hundred sturdy Magdeburghers march up against the mayor and demand their singer. It must have been a heroic song, for Luther, shut up among doubts and fears at Coburg, took it for the comfort of his own heroic soul, saying to his servant, " Come, and let us sing it against the devil." And the crowd that followed Luther's body through Halle on its way to Witten- berg, strove to raise the same heroic measure through their tears. One would like to know more of this noble paraphrase of the 130th Psalm; but the only other record seems to be this, that it was the last Protestant hymn sung in Strasburg Cathe- dral, now well-nigh two hundred years ago. Another hymn has had a singular fate. It was a favourite of Luther's ; entitled by him A Song of the Laiv and of Faith, marvellous well furnished with Holy Scripture ; and the story goes that a beggar lad from Prussia sung it one day at Luther's door. OF CERTAIN HYMNS. 275 Handing him a crown of St. George, his last piece of money, with the words, " Come here, my St. George, the Lord Christ is there," he asked him to sing it again. And when it was finished he asked him where he had learned it ; and he said. In Prussia, where they used to sing it in church ; and Luther's eyes filled with tears of joy that God had spread his word so far. Afterwards the people with it sung mass and priest out of the churches in many parts of Germany ; and now, strange change of fortune, there are villages in Austria, where it is regularly sung at the close of the Romish worship, a last, and, in the circumstances, whimsical relic of the once prevalent evangelical faith. Magdeburg is memorable in the story of hymns, for it was at the cruel sacking of it by Tilly that the school-children marched across the market-place singing, and so enraged him that he bid them all be slain ; and from that day, say the chroniclers, the fortune departed from him, nor did he smile again. Other hymns were more fortunate ; for we read of a certain rough captain who would not bate a crown of the thirty thousand he levied off a captured town, till at last the archdeacon sum- moned the people together, saying, " Come, my chil- dren, we have no more either audience or grace with T 2 276 ON THE BIOGRAPHY men ; let iis plead with God ;" and when they had entered the church, and sung a hymn, the fine was remitted to a thousand. The same hymn played as merciful a part in another town, w^hich was to be burned for contumacy. Wlien mercy had been asked in vain, the clergyman marched out with twelve boys to the general's tent, and sang there before him, when, to their amazement, he fell upon the pastor's neck and embraced him. He had discovered in him an old student friend, and spared the place ; and still the afternoon service at Pegan is commenced with the memorable hymn that saved it. Of an- other, it is said that a famous robber having been changed himself, sang it among his men, so that many of them were changed also. Rough hearts, indeed, seem often the most susceptible. A major in command of thirty dragoons entered a quiet vicar- ao^e, and demanded within three hours more than the vicar could give. in a year. To cheer her father, one of his daughters took her guitar, and sang to it one of Gerhardt's hymns. Presently the door softly opened ; the ofl&cer stood at it, and motioned her to continue ; and when the hymn was sung, thanked her for the lesson, ordered out the dragoons and rode off. And another story of the same hymn I make OF CERTAIN HYMNS. 277 no apology for quoting entire. " In a village near Warsaw there lived a pious peasant of German ex- traction, by name Dobry. Without his fault he had fallen into arrear with his rent, and the landlord determined to evict him ; and it was winter. He went to him three times in vain. It was evening, and the next day he was to be turned out with all his family, when, as they sat there in sorrow, the church bell pealed for evening prayer ; and Dobry kneeled down in their midst, and they sang — * Commit thou all thy griefs And ways into His hands.' And as they came to the last verse — * When Thou wouldst all our need supply, Who, who shall stay Thy hand ?' there was a knock at the window. It was an old friend, a raven, that Dobry's grandfather had taken out of the nest and tamed, and then set at liberty. Dobry opened the window, the raven hopped in, and in his bill there was a ring set with precious stones. Dobry thought he would sell the ring ; but he thought again that he would bring it to his minister ; and he, who saw at once by the crest that it belonged to King Stanislaus, took it to him, and 278 ON THE BIOGRAPHY related the story. And the king sent for Dobry, and rewarded him, so that he was no more in need ; and the next year built him a new house, and gave him cattle from his own stall ; and over the house- door there is an iron tablet, whereon is carved a raven with a ring in his beak, and underneath, this verse — * Thou evemvliere hast sway, And all things serve Thy might ; Thy every act pure blessing is, Thy i^ath unsullied light,' " Of another hymn, we read that a countess once sung it in a public-house. For, as she was tra- velling in Austria, she stopped at a village inn, and found the parlour full of Austrian peasants. The law forbade Christian assemblies, but it allowed any drinking assembly, so they met, and had beer-jugs on the table, but in reality came to share the Lord's Supper. And having asked permission to join them, as also a servant of Christ, she raised the hymn. Yet the singularity of this incident is surpassed. A Christian nobleman put up on his jom-ney at a little village inn, where there was one of those wild immoral dances that still disgrace some parts of the country. Having obtained permission to look on at OF CERTAIN HYMNS. 279 the dance, he went up to the musicians, and asked if he would be allowed to have any tune he wished played for his money. And being told that he would, he asked them in one of the lulls of the dance to play a hymn, and sung it with them. Some ran away, but most stayed and he prayed with them, and this was the beginning of a singular awakening in the neighbourhood. Hymns have sometimes been curiously used in stirring times, especially about the Reformation jDeriod. More than once the Komish preachers have been compelled to abandon the pulpit by the vigo- rous singing of one of Luther's. They have played their part in battle. At the famous battle of Leu- then, one of Heermann's hymns was raised by a regiment before going into the fight, and one after another took it up, until all the columns were singing it as they advanced. " Shall I silence them ? " the general asked, as he rode up to stern, tobacco-loving, heroic King Fritz. " No ; with such soldiers God will give me the victory ;" and leaping down among the ranks and crying, " Now, children, in God's name," he led them into battle. When the battle was won, the field was strewn with dead and wounded ; it was night and the soldiers were 28o ON THE BIOGRAPHY weary. Then one began to sing a hymn of thanks- giving, the bands joined in, and presently it rose from the army in a full and mighty chorus that reached and greatly moved the king, who turned round exclaiming : " What a power there is in re- ligion ! " It was at the great battle of Leipzig that Gustavus Adolphus sang, with his army, Luther's Carmen Heroicum, and after it that kneeling on the field he thanked God for the victory in a stanza of the same hjnun. The Te Deum won the fight at Liegnitz ; it was a " poor sinner's song " of Luther's that the peasant raised before the battle of Frank- enhausen; and brave Earl Oldenburg triumphed at Drakenburg by the song of Simeon. So curiously are the lives of these hymns inter- woven with fiercest human struggles and profound- est human joys, with kings and politics, and famous battles that determined the fate of kingdoms, with poor peasants and lonely and nameless households, with crimes that leave the reddest stains in history, and softening of rugged and wild hearts. And it is pleasant to take up a hymn that has connected itself with past events, and can be traced into many a house and heart by its comfortable thoughts. Her- bert's Hymn on Sunday gains a certain mournful OF CERTAIN HYMNS. 281 delicacy when we know that he sung it himself upon his deathbed ; that " Like a sweet swan, lie warbles, as he dies, His Maker's praise, and his own obsequies, " Gerhardt, himself, died repeating one of his own hymns, and even with the very words, " Him no death has power to kill." And there is a touching legend by which as King Christian of Denmark lay sick at Christmas time, an angel came to him in a dream, and told him he would live but eight days. And on New Year's Day his chaplain preached him a farewell sermon ; but when his courtiers would not sing death-songs over him, he cried : " Then will I sing myself, and you with me, and it shall be said the King of Denmark sung himself to the grave." And he lifted up his voice clear and strong, and they sang the Song of Simeon ; but as they sung he fell asleep in Jesus. There is now a common hymn in German village churches that strengthened Queen Elizabeth in her last moments. Luther's Uine feste Burg gains something by the pretty story of Melanchthon ; how as he stood in Weimar with his banished friends Jonas and Creuzieger, a little maid sung it in the 282 ON THE BIOGRAFHY street, and he cried, "Sing on, my little girl, you don't know what famous people you comfort." We read our old favourite " God moves in a mysterious way," with a new interest and sympathy when we remem- ber Cowper composed it during a solitary walk in the fields, and under presentiment of an attack of his cruel malady. Even the Te Deimi wears ^ grander air when we think of it as so old that its origin is lost in one of the most curious of church legends: how that on the Easter night of the year 387, when Augustine was baptized by Ambrose, the two Church fathers stood before the altar, and the Spirit came upon them, and they sang it through in alternate strophes to the congregation, and the pious Monica cried out, '' I had rather have thee Aucfus- tinus and Christian, than if thou wert Augustus and emperor ! " That same Te Beuon has accompanied many a martyr to the stake in Flanders, and Ba- varia, and London ; Augustinian monks and stout- hearted laymen have sung it high above the flames ; it was our English Bishop Fisher's farewell as he stood beside the block. And once it was lifted up where no lesser hymn would have been fitting; OF CERTAIN HYMNS. 283 when Columbus discovered tlie first grey outline of the new world, and the crew threw themselves into each other's arms, weeping for joy. But of all the stories that hymns can tell of themselves, there are none more quaint and touching than those of Mende and Novalis. Mende was a night-watchman in Berlin before the poetry of night-watching was banished by police regulations, while the watchman's pious chant was still heard in the streets, and chorales were blown on long horns from the church spires. Mende was a living hymn-book, whose leaves were turned over by the night winds, and to many a sick room and troubled spirit Bible verses and stray stanzas would be borne in from the silent street. He had a verse for every house, and a hymn for every sorrow, and for five- and-twenty years the cheery voice of the old man rang through the dark, bringing more comfort and peace than all the ministers from their pulpits. " A glorious profession," he used to say ; " by day I sleep or walk, but all night long I am alone with my Lord." Now, Mende, passing one evening by a worthy shoemaker's, overheard eager discussion and heated denunciations of his beloved church, and began to fear that the honest Christian soul 284 ON THE BIOGRAPHY had fallen into the hands of some wandering dema- gogue. So, lifting up his voice, he chanted certain well-known lines of Gerhardt on the simplicity and unity of faith, and these, falling through the still air into the little parlour, so confounded the shoe- maker's guest, that he was fain to make his escape, while his host, full of joy, bade him adieu in the words of Paul, Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ Novalis, poet and philosopher, wrote some hymns of a won- derful and gracious beauty, intelligible to all, more- over, and singularly distinct from those specu- lations that ranked him chief of mystic thinkers. His father, a business-like, prosaic, working man, troubled himself little about either poet or philoso- pher, considered rhyming, indeed, purely mischie- vous ; but having a theory that boys would be boys, neither interfered with Novalis, nor, it is believed, read a line he ever wrote, unless it was in the ledger. Novalis died in his bright youth, and soon after, his father attended the Moravian Church on Sunday, as his custom was. The congregation sang words that he had never heard before, so thrilling, so full of Christian passion, so mournfully sweet, that he was deeply moved, and on leaving the OF CERTAIN HYMNS. 285 diurcli, asked a neighbour how they had come by so glorious a hymn, and if he knew the author's name ? " Why/' he replied, starting back, " don't you know ? It was your own son." Curiously, too, have some hymns been born, the merest accident seemingly presiding at the birth. An air floats pleasantly down from an old church tower into the pastor's study, and the pastor writes to the melody the sweetest of all even-songs. A poet is brought into such straits that he must pawn his violoncello ; with better times the violoncello is redeemed, and, as his fingers stray over it, his eyes full of happy tears, he sings what he calls with bare truth " a comfortable hymn, — for, that God in his own time will deliver every one that trusts in Him." During the plague, a clergyman follows 740 parishioners to the grave in nine weeks ; his own house remains untouched, " as if an angel stood on the threshold, and waved off the pestilence with his bare sword ; " and in that solemn loneliness he writes a farewell to the world, that has been faintly uttered by innumerable dying lips as their own. The very finest hymns of the six- teenth century sprung likewise from the plague : the poet watching for weary days the ceaseless funerals that wound past his door to the village God's Acre; 2Z6 ON THE BIOGEAPHY and so absorbed was he in the thoughts it sug- gested, that he remained in his room from morning till evening, and left it only when the hymn was finished. One is written to comfort a sick friend ; a few simple words at a death-bed are the origin of another ; a third grows out of a mighty sore wi'estling with the devil ; a fourth springs from the watchword of a famous battle ; the ancient hymn, In the midst of life we are by death surrounded, was begun while watching some masons building a dangerous bridge. Standing on the neck of Land's End, Charles Wesley's thoughts run into the memo- rable stanza commencing, Lo, on a narrow neck of land; the quarrymen at Portland suggest two striking lines ; riding from Cork to Barrow he com- poses "a hjrmn of eighty-eight lines for the con- version of Irish Roman Catholics ; " and when the rough tars struck into one of his services with Nancy Dawson, he sung at the next service to the same air a hymn beginning — *' Listed into the cause of sin, "Why should a good be evil ? Music, alas ! too long has been Prest to obey the devil." Curiously, moreover, these hymns are linked with their author. King Robert of France wrote what OF CERTAIN HYMNS. 287 Trench calls " the loveliest of all the hymns in the whole circle of Latin sacred poetry." The wife of the great Prussian Elector wi'ote the Avell-known resurrection h3rain Jesus my Redeemer lives. Zie- genbalg heard it before he died, and said it was as bright before his eyes as if the sun were shining in his face. One of the best of hymn-writers was an ancient Duke of Brunswick ; one of the tenderest was a ribbon manufacturer at Miilheim. Thomas of Celano wrote only two hymns beside the Dies irce ; Bishop Ken left three ; Nicolai wrote but the two finest — in structure and majesty and devoutness of thought — in his tongue. A single hymn has con- ferred immortality. Wearing but this one decora- tion, a man goes down to posterity and outlives the most famous of his time. The Dies irce has been oftener translated than any book except the Bible. The precentor of a country church is remembered in more hearts than the poet of a nation. The bio- graphy of a hymn will often reverse and confound the judgments of Letters. It is not the great poet but the obscure pastor who writes these " heavenly lays." In no country which possesses a hymnology have the great poets shared in its construction. Three of our greatest poets, Spenser, Milton, and 288 ON THE BIOGBAPHY Wordsworth, are essentially religious poets. You cannot read a page of their writings without being struck by the deep, pervading, religious feeling. Yet all the service Milton rendered that way (for the magnificent "Ode on the Nativity" is scarcely a hymn) was versifying, poorly enough, a few of the Psalms, while Wordsworth wrote some agreeable stanzas, which he called " The Labourer's Noon-day Hymn." It is not by its Schiller or Goethe that the great hymns of Germany have been sung, but by monks and country pastors, schoolmasters and humble men, whose names, if they were ever known, have long since been forgotten. And if we turn to the Bible, we find indeed the highest poetry in Job and the Prophets, the men who were poets and prophets by their calling ; but we do not find in their writings a single lyric. It was David the warrior and king, Mary the young virgin-mother, Simeon the aged man, who waited in the temple ; it was by them that those glorious hymns were written which have been sung these thousands of years, which will yet be chanted with holy joy in every land which the sun visits, from its rising till its setting. What curious and subtle interweaving of these divine songs with the thoughts and plans and final OF CERTAIN HYMNS. 289 purposes of countless beings ! What a story of infi- nite love under a thousand varying phases, what adventure and chequered life in that one Twenty- third Psalm, a pilgrim, as a recent writer pictures it, " commissioned of God to travel up and down the earth singing a strange melody, which, when one hears he straightway forgetteth whatever sorrow he hath." What a history, to be partially revealed at the last day, and for ever unfolding in heaven, in some solitary word of Christ, like that sweetest of lullabies sung to the weary. Come unto Me, and I will give you rest ! And every word that catches up the echoes of these that are divine, will have its tale to tell. And every true hymn from the legen- dary past, or struck out of some pause in the hurry of the present, with a great name, or no name, be it " common as the commonplace," even soiled in well- thumbed penny books, is writing its own life and yours as you sing it, or read it, or recall it in some low half-murmur to the melody it went by at your mother's knee. SOME GUESSEES AT TEUTH. OR now well-nigli six thousand years man- kind has been guessing at Truth, with what result its mythologies, philosophies, wise sentences, and the rest may declare to those that read them. That the Truth itself has been meanwhile declared, nay, has been declared from the beginning, has proved little check. For most of those years it has been known in the narrowest circle, a mere pin-point of light within a sphere of darkness ; and even now it is but advancing with a slow and irregular step, and as if fighting its way over the barricades. Four-fifths of men are still reduced to guesswork for any knowledge of the things that are, and failing the sun and stars, make shift to grope their way by a fitful firefly radiance. SOME GUESSERS AT TRUTH. 291 But even with positive truth known as widely as may be, there is abundant room and perhaps neces- sity for guessing. For the truth is so manifold, and by its nature hidden, that although discovered in its outline, various of its parts are still shrouded, and to be humbly guessed at rather than rudely unveiled. And if the True Light now shineth, and all that are not blind may see it ; yet on how many ulterior and distantly related truths it falls, not so much reveal- ing them as revealing that they are 1 To take truth in its most positive form, as contained in the Scrip- tures, is there not room and demand for abundant guessing concerning the meaning of its last solemn words of " Revelation ;" and concerning those higher and reconciling truths that shall unite what we see at present as the opposite poles of truth ; and con- cerning many matters purely spiritual, but left over as yet to speculation divinely guided ? While, if we wander out into regions less known and dimly ' lighted, this necessity of guessing becomes more evi- dent. Every fresh fact sets out some new relation of truth ; but then what relation ? Even science will not always yield to the thrusts of logic, but will sometimes open its knottiest secrets to the "inspi- ration of a guess." And if the patient and pregnant u 2 292 SOME GUESSERS AT TRUTH. guesses of certain noted thinkers have given us higher and more satisfying knowledge of physiology and psychology and magnetism, it is but rational to expect similar and larger gains in morals and politics and in the infinite bearings of the spiritual world upon the material. Guessing of this sort is no light and haphazard matter, a sport for idle hours, or for other than serious and profound minds. Least of all is it that shrewdness and cunning of insight into mo- tive, which it has come to mean in transatlantic speech, and of which Mr. Lowell has fitly sung in his last Yankee Idyll, " Ole Uncle Sam, sez he, I guess, I oii'y guess, sez lie." Those only who come with reverent and tractable minds to the truth they know, are likely to guess at the unknown ; those who search after it lovingly for its own sake, and serve for it in patient and long' and rigorous servitude. Like the well-known ideal Knight of Nature in Glaucus, they " must be of a reverent turn of mind ; not rashly discrediting any report, however vague and fragmentary ; giving man credit always for some germ of truth, and SOME GUESSERS AT TRUTH. 293 giving nature credit for an inexhaustible fertility and variety, which will keep him his life long always reverent, yet never superstitious ; wondering at the commonest, but not surprised by the most strange ; free from the idols of size and sensuous loveliness ; able to see gi-andeur in the minutest objects, beauty in the most ungainly ; estimating each thing, not carnally, as the vulgar do, by its size, or its pleasant- ness to the senses, but spiritually by the amount of Divine thought revealed to him therein ; holding every phenomenon worth the noting down ; be- lieving that every pebble holds a treasure, every bud a revelation ; making it a point of conscience to pass over nothing through laziness or hastiness, lest the vision once offered and despised should be with- drawn; and looking at every object as if he were never to behold it again. Moreover, he must keep himself free from all those perturbations of mind which not only weaken energy, but darken and confuse the inventive faculty ; from melancholy testiness, pride, and all the passions which make men see only what they wish to see." It is an ideal picture, no doubt, but at least it may set forth that the guesser at truth must be a truth-seeker, qualified for the search by proper gifts 294 &OME GUESSEBS AT TRUTH. of mind and temper, and by a diligent and unceasing training. Not but that there have been strange guesses, without guessers, so to say, and so strange that they ahnost bear in them the mystery of some dim prophetic vision. They may be stumbled on in the traditions and sacred books of most heathen nations. Paul, at Athens, could appeal to a poet who sung of men as the offspring of God ; a Latin poet made the golden age centre in a marvellous child. The legends of Buddha and Zoroaster repre- sent each as born of a virgin ; according to Caesar, the Gauls offered human sacrifices because a man was the fittest sacrifice for sins. The Karens looked for a coming of God with a resurrection and a new creation ; and there is a saying in India that the day will come when there will be neither idol nor caste. But, passing by theso and many similar, which can be traced to no definite source, but have lain in the heart of heathendom like ''unconscious prophecies," as they have been called, there are those others that have been guessed out, with more or less of conscious effort. We have those pregnant sayings of Socrates, whose dialogue was but the method of right guessing, and by which, as De Quincey somewhere wittily says, a man was fairly SOME GUESSEES AT TRUTH. 295 "backed into the well of truth." Eupolis, one of his scholars, gets the credit of a hymn which in one stanza contains the original of Pope's ''Jehovah, Jove, our Lord ;" and in another is singular for its nearness to the Gospel : — " A greater liero far (Unless great Socrates could err) Shall rise to bless some future day, And teach to live and teach to i)ray." And how rich in such border-truths are the beautiful and solemn thoughts of Plato — the most striking of all antiquity for their marvellous approach to Christian verity ; such as his picture of the soul as a chariot drawn by two horses, black and white ; or again, as a " tyrannized city, poor and starved, and that cannot do what it would ;" of the wise man as the rightful king, of the just man as he who must pass through tribulation, and (capable surely of a fuller meaning than Plato's), "who will suffer stripes, bonds, the rack, will have his eyes burnt out, and after all other sufferings will be crucified." And if we turn to Kome, there are other voices as clear, and uttering words that tremble on the verge of truth, like those of Seneca, for example : " We reach innocence through sin ;" " No one of himself 296 SOME GUESSEBS AT TRUTH. is able to rise out of tlie depths, but must clasp some outstretched hand;" or that profound saying of Pliny : " Nothing is more proud or more wretched than man." Nay, so frequently does Seneca speak " almost as a Christian," that certain learned German treatises have been written to prove his familiarity with the writings of Paul ; and Jerome, as is well known, calls him " our Seneca." It is curious to linger among these old Pagan thoughts ; to find how near they sometimes touch upon the truth ; how, like distant mountain summits flushing with light before the sun has risen, they seem to catch the earliest rays that issue from the Cross. But it is tantalizing as well. You are always on the point of a discovery which is never made, winding through " passages that lead to nothing," and in the reverse of the Apostle's pic- ture, seeming to have all things, yet having nothing. The transition to the Christian thinker places us in an entirely other world, with our own familiar sky as it is traversed by its daily sun, and set with its familiar stars, with the well-known objects and suggestions of home, with things positive and real, that we apprehend by the same unconscious habit by which we live and move. The Christian SOME GUESSERS AT TRUTH. 297 thinker may be still a guesser, but thought is no longer one great guess. It is based upon the com- mon verities of revelation ; on these it builds its speculations concerning the yet unknown ; by these it shapes its wise sentences, and welds the truths of God into the facts of life ; out of these it springs, and back to these it ever returns. Some of the earliest of such Christian guesses are crude enough, and with a great baldness and sameness of form : at times, however, with the distinctness and pregnancy of a proverb ; often the simple setting of words of Scripture ; not seldom trifling and fanciful. Their range is narrow, extending over the teaching of life and the experience of the Christian, but avoiding philosophy, science, and politics. Perhaps those two collections that have jfloated down uninjured into our present century, as they are the readiest, so they afford the best examples, and do really contain some ** Thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality." About the middle of the third century, Sixtus was Bishop of Rome for rather less than a year, his episcopate being shortened by martyrdom during the Valerian persecution. Brief as it was, it has 298 SOME GUESSEBS AT TRUTH. given his name to a small collection of Wise Sayings, of which, perhaps, he was the author. At all events, from his time they had considerable circulation, and have even been translated into modern tongues. Some of these sayings run thus : — " It is by no means a small matter not to despise small matters." " Unrighteousness has its root in selfishness." " Whatever a man has beyond his need is his enemy." " A lust is insatiable, and therefore it is always poor." " A wise man is always like himself." " The flatterer of the wicked is more wicked than they." " It is better to be overcome, and yet speak the truth, than to lie and overcome " — (with which may be compared Shelley's well-known but terrible saying about Plato and Malthus). " All wounds are light but a word " — (in the Hindoo Kural it is said : — ' ' The wound may lieal, though from a burning brand, And be forgotten ; but the wound ne'er heals The burning tongue inflicts "). " Do great things although thou dost not promise them." " It is pride that makes us bear grudgingly the tabernacle of the body." '' Living is in our power, but right living is not." About a century after these words had been issued SOME GUESSER8 AT TRUTH. 299 into tlie world, one Nilus was Exarch of Constanti- nople. He was of a good family, still young, happily married, and with certainty of a brilliant career. Chrysostom was preaching in the city, and Nilus bowed to the eloquence of him of the golden mouth. Now it was the spring-time of monachism, and the world was corrupt and dying, and the Church in the capitals was swayed by intrigue. And to Nilus, as to many another, to the man of the world most of all, there seemed to be no escape and no purity but by fleeing into the desert. His wife and daughter retired to an Egyptian cloister, one of those calm, lonely spots along the Nile, such as have been in- imitably painted in Hypatia. He himself, with his son, withdrew to the grim solitudes of Mount Sinai ; and there, among the awful shadows of the place, he dwelt for thirty years, asking no fellowship but His at whose presence the earth had shaken, and whose voice still spoke through the thunder as it rolled round the jagged peaks. There he meditated, and toiled at his herbs, and corresponded with his friends, and when he died, left nearly twenty books and a thousand letters to the future printer. They were ascetic, such as a monk must inevitably write, shutting out from him the healthful, loving 300 SOME GUESSEES AT TRUTH. intercourse of his fellows, and moving within the ever-narrowing circle of his own life. But they were the thoughts of a manly and vigorous thinker, who knew the world he had deserted, and, from a distance, watched it with much interest, eagerness, and wisdom ; a man who is clearly distinguishable even from the monks of his time, by the breadth of his views, his sagacity, the simplicity of his gospel. He also, in those solitudes, searching for the truth, put it into words of power, — few, con- centrated words, — in which it has been kept for many generations. To any one curious about the monks of the East, there are other of his ^rritings richer in information ; but to the guesser at truth there is none so interesting as the Capita Parcene- tica, from which some sentences may be taken at random : — " Rejoice not over the bloom of thy life, for the flower of grass withereth at the touch." " The ear and the tongue are ever in danger." " Let thy mouth be filled with psalms and prayers, for the evil spirits flee at the name of God." " Drive away wicked thoughts by good." " If thou wilt have the devil weak, put away thy sin ; for if he lose his wings he is no bigger than a sparrow." " Suffer affliction ; the virtues grow SOME GUESSEBS AT TRUTH. 301 beneath, as the roses blossom from under the thorns." " Hold idleness to be the mother of sin ; it both robs thee of the good thou hast, and hin- ders thee of what thou hast not." " The joys and sorrows of this life are like a shadow and a wheel : for like a shadow they abide not, and like a wheel they roll round." " Always expect death, but never fear it." " Adam's children must work ; Eve's child- ren must suffer." Now, there is truth, sometimes profound truth in these sayings, and it is singular to find them so free from monkish extravagance and corruptness of doctrine ; nay, upon occasion, protesting against both. But two examples may well suffice for a large class, not always careful to rise above being mere utterers of sentences. Such as they are, their art has perished with them, and probably the absence of any legitimate successor accounts for their surviving so many abler works. They repre- sent, moreover, exclusively the inner life of the Christian. But while to a certain mental type and mental condition they will always be welcome, and an age that is marked by the revival of devotional literature is likely enough to witness the revival of Sixtus and Nilus and the rest ; it may be hoped 302 SOME GUESSERS AT TRUTH, tliat some other Christian guesser will arise, moving within less nan'ow and arbitrary limits, with more creative energy of thought, and essaying rather than shunning the problems of modern life and modern science. As for what of guessing has prevailed in these later centuries, it has taken a most free and com- prehensive range, and assumed a set character and culture very different from earlier occasional and accidental efforts. It is now indeed a distinct form of literary effort, with its special crowned names, and special critics and admirers. Felicity of ex- pression was always essential to it, but this felicity is cultivated and polished up to an unusual bril- liance, and in cutting the diamond to make it glitter, it is sometimes reduced to a marvellously small jewel. On the other hand, a notable laxness has crept in as regards terseness of expression ; for, while the proverb has been left on the beaten highway, the path of the guesser wanders " at its own sweet will" through ever- varied fields and flowers of thought. Nay, it is sometimes difficult to see wherein his writing differs from mere unfinished work, which a man's idiosyncrasy, or more intelligibly, laziness, has prevented him SOME GUES8EBS AT TRUTH. 303 shaping into a comely and harmonious whole ; a reproach to which one of the best books of the kind — that of the brothers Hare — is not unjustly ex- posed. Perhaps Joubert in one direction, and the Guesses at Truth in the other, represent the extreme limits to which this kind of writing may be pushed. A' step over on either side would be fatal. A man may polish a sentence till it sparkles, and yet it may neither be a "thought" nor worth a thought. Mere verbal antithesis is only a trick of words, unless it rings with the truth ; and it is just that trick from which the real, and humble, and earnest thinker will recoil. But the recoil is not to throw us down among the jottings of Brown's commonplace book, or Jones's efforts to comprehend the universe, or Smith's pencillings by the way, none of which be- tray the faintest polish, and in which there is nothing to finish, for it cannot be said there is any- thing begun. Thoughts of the true kind, guesses at truth, must have a separate completeness. They represent the results of the writer's reflection on a given subject. He may express that with exceed- ing point and brilliance, or may choose a more homely, unaffected, even rambling style. But to 304 SOME GUESSEBS AT TRUTH. whatever length the guess runs, it must bear being detached and looked at apart, and have a unity in itself. And it is the peculiarity of some minds, that their thoughts lie detached, and that they have no wish or power to bring them together into one system. There are books, of which every " one feels the real value lies in the looser and in- formal notes, books which ought to be written in notes ; and there are thinkers whose loose, almost slipshod utterances by the way, are worth more than any of their formal and pretentious efforts. These are already born guessers, and need no more than the culture of their special faculty. For though every man has, at least once in his life, guessed earnestly at the solution of some problem or other of existence, comparatively few have the power of mastering such thoughts so as to make them intelligible. And of those who can, it is only some who busy themselves with such solutions. So that, while every man is guessing at some truth, the guessers, so-called, are rare. We can reckon only in our modern period two or three names in England, and as many in Germany, and not many more in France. As for those of other countries, it does not much matter, for they SOME GUESSEES AT TRUTH. 305 have had no influence upon the thought of Europe. Each country appears to have a distinct individ- uaKty. The German thoughts are mystical, busy- ing themselves altogether with the higher spheres of truth, struggling with the most vexed questions of metaphysics, soaring so high and so near the sun, that the unpractised eye drops from them dazzled. Not that they are unintelligible, but on the brink of it, and you follow them feeling painfully near the edge. They represent fairly enough a speculative people, whose thoughts outrun their acting, and who search into the elements of being, while others, taking them for granted, perhaps on insufficient grounds, are raising up great national histories. What Englishman would have thought out such thoughts as these of Novalis ? " Death is nothing but the interruption of the interchange between the soul and the world." "Love is the Amen of the universe." " The curve is the triumph of free nature over rule." " Bodies are thoughts precipitated into space." "The woman is the symbol of goodness and beauty; the man is the symbol of truth and righteousness." " Every science becomes poetry after it has been philosophy." " Mathematics is only common elementary philosophy ; and philo- 3o6 SOME GU ESSE US AT TRUTH. sophy is only higher matliematics." " Much scepti- cism is nothing but unripe idealism." ''We can know nothing of ourselves ; all genuine knowledge must be given us." " All arts and sciences rest on partial harmonies." "In the / we are all in fact perfectly identical ; from that we separate into in- dividuality. I is the central point." "Speech is for philosophy just what it is for music and paint- ing, not the right medium." " Philosophy is the Poem of the understanding." Not that all his utterances are of this sort, but that this is their prevailing tendency presented in examples as in- telligible as may be ; for there are some so wild and mysterious, and awfully daring in their flights, that they seem at first little better than word- puzzles. Yet that they are not likely to be that, such golden sayings as these may show — ex niagno tollere acervo : — " The poet understands nature better than the man of science." " Poetry heals the wounds which the understanding makes." " Poetry is the absolute real. This is the core of my philosophy. The more poetical the truer." " Most revolutionists do not know what they would — form, or no-form." " There comes an energy out of sickliness and weakness, and it works more mightily than the SOME GUESSEES AT TRUTH. 307 true, but, alas ! it ends in yet deeper weakness." "Science is only the one half; Faith is the other." "Prayer is in religion what thought is in philo- sophy." " The whole hfe is pubHc worship." " The letter is like a temple or monument ; without meaning it is dead." "Where children are, is a golden age." "Many a man lives on better terms with the past and the future than the present." *' Spectres rule where there is no God." "There are many flowers of heavenly origin in the world ; they do not flourish in this climate, and are pro- perly heralds, clear-voiced messengers of a better existence : Religion is one ; Love is another." " History is a huge anecdote." " Genuine innocence is as little lost as genuine life." "God is only known [comprehended] by God." " A people, like a child, is a separate educational problem." "The less the work, and the slower, so much the nearer being perfect. The more one can do \nth little, the more one can do also with much. If you know how to love one, you know best how to love all." " He who will seek God once will find him every- where." "The preacher must first seek to rouse enthusiasm, for this is the element of religion. Every word must be clear and hot out of .the heart." X 2 3o8 SOME GUESSEBS AT TRUTH. "Philosophy should not answer more than it is asked." "To contrast vice with virtue is to do it too much honour." These are thoughts, one might say, of remarkable plainness, not burdened with any superfluous mysticism of expression. If there are others that seem doubly or trebly veiled, may it not be supposed they also are uttered as simply as may be ; that it is the remoteness and profoundness of the thoughts that make them wear so strange an aspect? For that many of them have that aspect there is no manner of doubt, and one who is reputed the least intelligible of English writers, and to whom, if to any, a German thinker might be supposed an open secret, has himself reported that "here we cannot always find our own latitude and longitude, sometimes not even approximate to find- ing them ; much less teach others such a secret." The thoughts remain much as Mr. Carlyle has left them, the delight of a few, but often a puzzle and mystery even to them. How they shaped them- selves through so simple and brief a life is itself a mystery; and, this taken into account, Novalis stands first among all the guessers at the true. A childhood passed in a strict Moravian household, office work requiring constant attention, the seclu- SOME GUESSERS AT TRUTH. 309 sion of a country residence, and death at twenty- nine, out of these slender materials his life was built, — ^these and such others as lay in his own nature. That nature seems to have been as tremulous with passion as Shelley's, whom he resembled in more respects than an early death : a richly sensuous, but at the bottom essentially reverential and religious nature. He had much of the poet's gifts, and in their finer and subtlest form, yet he wi-ote but few poems : and while his speculations drev/ him away to the vast scheme of an Encyclopedia of the Sciences, in which each should mutually illustrate the other, the Moravians were filling the Church w^ith the exquisite music of his hymns. Like Pascal, he was a master in mathematics, and had a united, quickness and accuracy of apprehension that enabled him to acquire a new science with amazing rapidity. Like Coleridge, he speculated much on the philo- sophy of religion, and towards some final system in which the sciences would have their proper adjust- ment to religion, as of planets to their sun. In such transcendental speculations, he seems to move with ease, and to pursue them with singular daring into regions where the mind falters to follow him ; while in common life, he was practical, sifting each detail, 3IO SOME GUESSEBS AT TRUTH. and imposing on himself meclianica] labours from which most clerks would have shrunk. The domi- nant impression he leaves is of a mystic speaker ; and we recall his friend Tieck's picture of the tall, slender figure, the wavy curls of brown hair, the transparent skin, the brilliant eye, " the shape of the head and expression of the features hke Diirer's St. John," and how he would sit through the night with Schlegel and the rest, pouring out the thick- coming thoughts, and lighting up the darkest and hardest by the dazzling play of his imagination. But it is worth noticing the quahties that went to make up his character, and that, being a mystic, he could be thoroughly intelligible on other men's ground, and thoroughly practical on his own. Instead of apprehending less of truth than other men, is it not possible that the true mystic may apprehend the most ; also, that he is not necessarily an idle, profit- less dreamer, bat may be a serious, reflective, dili- gent man ? If in Germany the guesser at truth is somewhat of a transcendentalist, in France, it must be allowed, he is clear of whatever obscurity that word implies ; and while the thoughts of Novalis are loose and straggling, those of Pascal and others are orderly SOME GUHSSEBS AT TRUTH. 311 and proper as soldiers on parade. They excel all others in precision and system, as their language excels others in preserving delicate, sharp outlines of meaning, and nice subtleties of division. Pascal, Coleridge, and Novalis, each formed the conception of a vast inclusive religious philosophy ; each has left his thoughts upon it ; each was led to conclu- sions far in advance of his time, and to investigations in advance of his conclusions. Novalis may be said to have penetrated the farthest, and formed the grandest plans, and to have had the subtlest intel- lect. Pascal has left the nearest approach to a system, and confined himself w^ithin the narrowest limits. He is occupied mostly with what is histori- cally true, and in that mostly with the Christian verities. His thoughts lean to a more accurate set- ting forth of Christian doctrine, philosophically accu- rate, — so that the dogmas of the Bible may be seen to harmonize with the results of philosophic inquiry ; and his speculations move much within the sphere of religious experience and consciousness. There is most genuine gain to be drawn from him, for he is the most positive of the three in his results, and troubled himself less with those faint, far-off nebulse of truth, that we have as yet no power to resolve. 312 SOME GUESSERS AT TRUTH. No one can take him up withont feeling that he is a man of uncommon reflective power ; no one can lay him down without feeling that he is a man of un- common clearness of speech. As a mere writer of thoughts, he is not only first of the three, but first of all. And as a Christian thinker, and one in whom the Christian will find a fresh, perpetual strength and pleasure, he is specially pre-eminent. To take but one or two of his sayings — and they are taken just as they come to hand, — it would be impossible to find better or finer things than — " To know God and not to know our misery, is pride. To know our misery and not to know Jesus Christ, is despair. But to know Jesus Christ delivers us from both pride and despair, because in him we find God, and our miser}^, and the only way to repair it." " Not merely do we only know God by Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves by Jesus Christ." "Jesus Christ says the grandest things so simply, that it does not seem as if He had thought them, and never- theless so clearly, that it is manifest He thought them." " Holy Scripture is not a science of esprit, but of the heart." " The incredulous are the most credulous. They believe the miracles of Vespasian in order not to believe the miracles of Moses." Or SOME GUESSERS AT TRUTH. 313 that, well known: "The multitude that is not reduced to unity is confusion ; the unity which does not belong to multitude is tyranny." Or Neander's favourite motto : " All contradictions are reconciled in Jesus Christ." Yet Joubert is a more national type. His mind seems to let off its pointed sayings as you might let off fireworks. You never meet him in undress. He hands you, as his most recent com- mentator has well said, a tray of diamonds. You forget that you were in search for truth, and not for clever sayings. The whole has too much the air of a work of art, and that art too nearly mechanical. The truth is not very much, nor very far to seek ; the philosophy is not so profound ; but each saying represents a definite and limited thought, and each is presented with an admirable perfectness of expres- sion. Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, on the other hand, are only divided wilfully into so-called apho- risms. His mind was not of a character to break up into fragments, each of which would contain a cer- tain completeness in itself And while here and there you are surprised by a happy thought standing out by itself, or a guess at some far-off possible truth, the whole runs together as imperatively as if the divisions were all removed. The portions of his 314 SOME GUESSEB8 AT TRUTH. system that he has left are fragmentary, only because the whole is unfinished, and it must always be read as belonging to that whole. Had he given the pains, he could have done letter. One-hundredth part of the care bestowed by Joubert on a page, would have established for his book a tolerable reputation in aphorisms. But at least there is this compensation, that he makes you feel his love and honour for truth ; that it is not, as too much with the other, the man of the world, the man of letters, who speaks, anxious to set forward his talent to advantage, but the man who recognises truth to be so noble and worthy, that he has fairly lost sight of himself. Better types however among our English writers are Lord Bacon and the Hares. Bacon's Sentences — called Elegant by some strange blunder — are instinct with a healthy freedom and naturalness and power. To read in the Guesses at Truth by Two Brothers is like wandering over the broad English downs, while the wind is curling up fresh and crisp over the grass. The firm moral grasp of these English guessers is noticeable ; their practical sense, and great breadth of wisdom. There is some- thing characteristic even in their downright blunt honesty ; in their love of moral and sesthetical ques- SOME GUESSEBS AT TRUTH. 315 tions ; in their free handling of political science ; in their reverence and religious basis. " Without good nature/' says Lord Bacon, "man is but a better kind of vermin." " The master of supersti- tion is the people ; and in all superstition wise men follow fools." " A civil war is like the heat of a fever ; but a foreign war is like the heat of exercise, and serveth to keep the body in health." " Suspi- cions among thoughts are like bats among birds ; they ever fly by twilight." " The best part of beauty is that which a picture cannot express." " Extreme self-lovers will set a man's house on fire, though it were but to roast their eggs." " He that cannot see well, let him go softly." And these from the Guesses at Truth are not unworthy to be beside them : — " The intellect of the wise is like glass ; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it." " The ancients dreaded death ; the Christian can only fear dying." " Friendship is love without either flower or veil." " Hell, a wise man has said, is paved with good in- tentions. Pluck up the stones, ye sluggards, and break the devil's head with them." " Surely, half the world must be blind, they can see nothing unless it glitters." " People stare much more at a paper kite than a real one." " The most benighted persons I 3i6 SOME GUESSERS AT TRUTH. have known, have been in some things the most sceptical. The most sceptical are often notoriously the greatest bigots." " Be what yoa are. This is the first step towards becoming better." " Self- depreciation is not humility." " None but a fool is always right ; and his right is the most unreasonable wrong." To do anything like justice to this book w^ould, indeed, demand longer extracts. Its happiest utter- ances are those in which there is least of the apothegm, and throughout it represents the fullest interpretation that can be given to its technical title. But of its kind we have no English book like it, none so compact of ripe and suggestive thoughts, nor so nearly approaching that ideal of what Guesses at Truth ought to be. Other guessers no doubt there are, though the great world shall never hear of them, like ripe- hearted, genial Claudius, sitting in his poet's cor- ner at Wandsbeck, or even young Novalises, bur- dened with mystery of vague, limitless thought. And if men say Cui bono ? is not the truth reward sufficient for those at least who value it ? The rest are likely to guess but little, or move an inch out of the safe road of accepted commonplace. SOME GUESSEES AT TRUTH. 317 For those who do venture, and with honest purpose of discovery, there are infinite and abundant plea- sures, joys Uke Columbus's when he touched the new land, or Le Verrier's when he found his planet. Our world is still full of hard and tangled pro- blems ; may we not guess at the loosing of them ? Science is not rounded off like a measured and defi- nite sphere ; is there not yet some further region to him that will manfully go out and seek it ? Are there not certain great gaps in our know- ledge, confusions in the things we know ? May they not lead the quiet and patient thinker to those truths that will fill up the one and explain the other 1 Nay, even in spiritual wisdom how much each generation learns from the last, how much has still to be learnt ! But Christ is absolutely true, the point whence we start and where we must end. From Christ and to Christ includes the whole circle of our knowledge and the whole circle of our uncertainty. All truth and all ways to truth must end in Him who is the Truth and the way. Being in Him, what is unknown need not perplex us, cannot baffle us, for He knows it, in whom are hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And above all, we have by Him that knowledge which is 31 8 SOME GUESSEBS AT TRUTH. eternal — whatever way human guesses may shift — of a Eedeemer from the woe, and wreck, and curse of sin, the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent. ON VAGABONDS. BEGGAR who should carry in his person the traditions of his race would be a sight to strike terror into a parish beadle. His rags should flutter to the wind like banners that have flapped for centuries over knights' stalls. His grizzled locks should tell of ancient fortunes. His form should be the wreck of fallen greatness. His whine should be the song of "blind M^onides." The thin palm outstretched for an alms should be the hand that smote the Vandal hordes at Carthage. His head-gear should be the battered emblems of a crown. His staff should have propped his tottering steps before the Deluge. He should have received largess from Augustus, and prowled about the kitchen of Semiramis, sat at the gate of Baalbec, and filled 320 ON VAGABONDS. his wallet from the tent of Achilles. What Bumble would thrust the Beggar of Bethnal Green into the casual ward ? What Board of Guardians would not throw open the doors to King Cophetua's beggar- maid? Is there a policeman who would dare bid Homer move on, or lay but the point of his baton on Lear ? Polyphemus, eyeless and unshapely, grop^ ing round the world for bread, Diogenes snarling in his tub, Ulysses fed with scraps by his own cook, — even the parish of would bend before such greatness, and the tub might be rolled to the corner of Tyburnia. The Mendicity Society would not un- seat Belisarius from his corner, nor stay the hand that slipped a coin to Edie Ochiltree. The royal " gaberlunzie man " in the stocks ; Timon's head- stone over a workhouse grave ! — who does not smile at the absurdity ? Let the beggar pass, " the only free man in the universe." As well arrest the flying sand of the desert. He belongs to the oldest of corporations ; yet no party man, but a citizen of the world. Climate and soil are alike to him ; he does not avoid tropic heats, polar frosts do not chill his blood ; but he affects the society of his kind, and abounds most in temperate zones. "The world goes up, and the world goes ON VAGABONDS. 321 down/' bnt not he ; like Humility, tie walks safe in the valley. He is so long in the world that it is his by prescriptive right ; the green lanes, and heaths, and shady copses ; the broken meats, and bones, and all the coppers ; and that antique division between meum and tuum is abolished in his favour. He is conservative of ancient customs, and has not changed either his dress or his habits these thousands of years. With all this he is a vagabond ; of the lineage of heroes it may be, but of the corporation of vaga- bonds. Charles Lamb will have it, that beggars are " standing morals, emblems, mementoes, dial-mot- toes, Spital sermons, books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry ;" he has a grudge against the poor- laws — " scrips, wallets, bags ; staves, dogs, and crutches ; the whole mendicant fraternity with all their baggage, are fast posting out of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution ; " he sighs over the " helium ad exterminationem proclaimed against a species ; — much good might be sucked out of these beggars." He will not recognise them to be vaga- bonds. " If I were not the independent gentleman that I am, I would choose, out of the delicacy and 322 ON VAGABONDS. true greatness of my mind, to be a beggar." Society sees them to be vagabonds and nothing else ; wages war on them as such ; shuts her door upon them ; builds poor-houses, and drives them in through the stern gates ; gives them over to policeman Z ; holds them in suspicion and abhorrence. And I am afraid that Society is right, and Charles Lamb is wrong. Perhaps she would be the better for something of his gentleness ; if even she would sometimes say to herself with him : " Rake not into the bowels of un- welcome truth to save a halfpenny." Human life is too living to be gauged by rigid theories of political economy, the more rigid the less likely to be true ; and those who button up their pockets at the dis- tant prospect of an alms, may be violating the very science they profess, and which in its highest form is, thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself. It was only the other day the papers told of some lone woman among those brave suffering artisans of Lan- cashire ; how in the depth of her need and almost despair she went out to sing a ballad in the streets, a sweet old plaintive ditty that her mother had often sung to her, and how she sung it in her low, modest, tremulous way, till, as she finished and looked round and saw by the group of faces she was in public, she ON VAGABONDS. 323 burst into tears ; and how a Lancashire lad stepped up, and took round his hat, and brought it to her well stored with coppers, and sent her home. Who would not wish to have stood in that Lancashire lad's place ? who would not have dropped a penny into the hat ? who would be so unfeeling as have met her with a surly Go to the workhouse ? If the kind soul that warmed to little carol-singing Martin Luther had handed him to the constable for a noisy young beggar, what might have been the fate of modern Christendom ? The theory is good, but life requires we should sit loosely to it ; that we should not read the second and great commandment as if it was in the second table, and ran, thou shalt not. Perhaps, also. Society is over-confident in her work-houses and poor-laws, and that they are not the very best system that can be devised ; that the way has to be fou^id yet for helping the poor out of their poverty without crushing them down into mere alms-takers ; that the poor-house bears too much of the same rela- tion to the poor as the jail to the criminal, punitive and not preventive ; the simple acknowledgment of poverty as a fact, and the effort to keep it within bounds and prevent it obtruding on the susceptibili- ties of the public. Nor may this same Society be Y 2 324 ON VAGABONDS. altogether guiltless of a comfortable satisfaction ia having her duties done vicariously, by boards and officials, within dreary stone walls, out of sight, and, by the old proverb, out of mind. But upon beggars the judgment is sound. They are vagabonds, and vagabonds make war upon Society, and Society must make war upon them even in self-defence. They are the universal parasites, to be found wherever society is found. They prey upon her, draw their strength from her, and assail her in return. It is a parricidal war of the offspring upon the parent; a struggle between the rogues and the honest men ; — the determined effort to pasture their leanness upon their neighbour's fatness. The vagabond in this light ceases to meet with any sentimental pity. We can hardly be patient with Goldsmith for telling such a charming story, under the title of The Phi- losophic Vagabond. Lamb's love for mendicants seems a crime. Wordsworth, of course, might make heroes of one-legged tramps, and heroines of evil- looking gipsy-women ; but it is too bad that Vincent Bourne could find no better subject for " the sweetest of his poems " than a blind beggar's dog. Do we not know that the dogs are' of a piece with their master ? Do we not know that when Gerard's Italian hound ON VAGABONDS. 325 followed Dr. Burgess, and that simple-minded divine took him up, it was only, to his horror, to have the dog picking everybody's pocket in the street, and sneaking with the booty to his new master ? War to the knife, we cry, against the whole crew ; and fetch down Mr. Mayhew's ponderous volumes ; and gaze with a horrid fascination on those statistics, lists of vagabonds, beside which Homer's Catalogue of ships is a bagatelle, — vagabonds that must be classified with the Roman alphabet, and the Greek alphabet, and numerals large and small ; armies of vagabonds who march over successive pages until we fancy them all on the march against our slender purse and unbarred doors. Now without exaggeration this Vagabondage is an alarming evil, and one that has reached such proportions as almost to dishearten those who are eager for social reform ; one, too, which needs to be mastered in its history and bearings before fairly grappling it. For it has a history stretching back to the very farthest antiquity, till the shadow of Cain — first of vagabonds, arch-vagabond of the race — falls darkly across it ; a history that is preserved in the crime and pauperism of every nation ; the history of a distinct, comprehensive, and well-organ- 326 ON VAGABONDS. ized system, which employs against society more than three hundred kinds of roguery, and against which society in its turn employs poor-laws, prisons, reformatories, Magdalens, and those other punitive and curative measures that take up so large a space in modern social studies. And the beggar, with his Give a poor man a penny, Sir, crouches there in the street as the representative of Vagabondage and its history. For out of Beggardom does our modern Vagabondage seem to have sprung, carrying with it, as it widened down the centuries, certain clear indi- cations of its origin. Out of Beggardom born, and in the old, heroic Middle Ages. It grew up on fat abbey lands, and round the great cathedrals; and the gallant, gay crusaders had it for retinue as they rode to Pales- tine — 2^^^^ equitem sedet atra cura in a literal and very terrible sense. For eleven centuries the Church had fostered and petted beggars ; and Am- brose's remonstrance of the year 400 only marked the beginnings of a begging plague. In time the inert mass of beggary received an impulse. The great orders of mendicant friars sprang up, and the monk with his wallet was met in every street and on every road. The lesson was easily learnt. ON VAGABONDS. 327 Mock orders went out on plea of churcli penance : Flagellants whipped themselves, and stole from their neighbours ; the Dancing devotees whirled through great part of Europe, and sucked up numbers of idle fellows in their course ; groups of beggars slipped themselves from the great body like the small puffs of foam that scud away from large patches ; and before long Beggardom was an organized vagrancy. During this time the crusading spirit had died out, but not without leaving behind it a restless spirit of adventure. The Crusades them- selves, like all wars, swelled the number of idlers and poor ; and when this chivalry had lost its finer and nobler elements, it became mere vagrant knight- errantry. The old feudaUsm provided it with organi- zation, and bands of men wandered over the country at large, — the 30,000 " Devils," and lesser bodies, — plundering as they went, and leaving a thirst for plundering in their route. And as if this had not been enough to set all Beggardom in motion, the fifteenth century witnessed the advent of the Gipsies, from where no one could tell, from Egypt they said themselves. " Counting from the birth of Christ fourteen hundred and seventeen years," says old Sebastian Munster, " were there first seen in Ger- 3^8 ON VAGABONDS. many the Zigeuner* an unformed, black, wild, and filthy people, greatly given to stealing. They have a count and some knights among them, well clothed, and truly honoured. They give out that they are on penance, and that they set off from Lower Egypt. But these are stories. They have no fatherland ; wander idly about ; support themselves by thieving ; live like dogs ; and have no religion." They even showed honest Sebastian a letter from Emperor Sigismund in which it stood that their forefathers had apostatized from the Christian faith, and that they were to journey on penance as many years as the years of their unbelief. In ten years acco-unts came from Paris that twelve mounted Gipsies, with eighty women and children, had passed through the streets, saying that the Pope had sent them on pilgrimage, and that every bishop was to give them ten francs. A hundred years later an English statute was made, rehearsing that " many outlandish people, calling themselves Egyptians, using no craft nor faict of merchandise, have come into this realm, and gone from shire to shire and place to place in great * From which come the modern Gauner and Gaunerthuvi, re- sembling, but more significant than our Vagabond and Vaga- bondage. ON VAGABONDS. 329 company, and used great subtle, and crafty means to deceive the people, bearing them in hand, that they, by palmistry, could tell men's and women's fortunes, and also have committed many and heinous felonies and robberies." The Gipsies were fairly loose upon Europe; vagrants by descent and pro- fession ; incapable of either rest or honesty ; with the low cunning and subtlety of Asiatics ; systematic thieves ; a vagabond knight-errantry. The beggar assumed a more distinct and formidable type — part gipsy, part soldier, part monk. The land was full of low adventurers, wandering priests, barefoot friars, discharged soldiers, schoolmasters and their scholars, artisans out of work, streaming vagrantly hither and thither, setting all the loose population afoot. And when the Reformation came and closed the monas- teries, and swept clean round the church doors. Vagabondage received a final accession, and the con- vent pauper became an unwilling tramp. Meanwhile for two centuries there was a Golden Age of beggars. They grew into coi-porations with corporate rights. Permission to beg was granted with legal forms. They had certain citadels, like the Kohlenberg in Basel ; free quarters, from which they rushed out to prey upon the town. They 330 ON VAGABONDS. rose to the dignity of a profession, and paid income- tax. The beggar who had begged his five pounds' weight of coppers had entrance to the infirmary. In Labeck he paid sixpence a year to the town dues. Poetry stooped down, and painted him in the hues of romance. In a restless and unsettled age men turned vagrants in the same spirit of adventure that had led their fathers to the Holy Sepulchre, and the Knights of the Round Table in quest of the Sangreal. Eobin Hood and Rob Roy were no better than they should be, plain vagabonds, and thieves, but that the one wore Lin- coln green, and the other the kilt, and the Muses dealt kindly with them both. Prince Hal, with all respect to his friend Falstaff, was a highwayman. And long after, a certain low and shabby romance clung to the vagabond. A century ago he was the pet of fine ladies. They visited him in prison, kept mementoes of him from Tyburn, pressed round his scaffold for farewell of a hero. The thief became the property of the story-teller ; our worthy an- cestors crowded to see The Beggars Opera; there were even noble marriages contracted with the slums. And through Schiller's Bobbers we can see the same feeling, as it existed at the close of last ON VAGABONDS. 331 century, when Buckler overran the Netherlands, and made his name of Schinderhannes almost his- toric; and Pickard, with his "tangled coal-black beard and flaming eye," proclaimed himself king of the midnight, and the village of Mersen on the Maas was only a robber's den. The Golden Age has passed away. The beggar's immunities have perished. The highwayman has disappeared from our roads. The poetry has faded ; and thieves' stories are only chaunted in thieves' haunts. But Vagabondage survives, and has grown into a riper system and a deeper wrong. It has been slowly perfecting itself; gathering strength from various quarters, wisdom from the lore of centuries. It sprang from the dead Church, of the Middle Ages ; it was moulded by a Judaism as dead, and by Asiatic heathenism. It grew up under the shadow of Christian forms ; masked itself in Christ- ian phrases ; copied ecclesiastical orders ; imaged out on the side of evil what the Church strove to represent on the side of good. It is an orderly structure of disorder, an organization of all the elements of disorganization. The old kingdom of Beggardom is but a minor province in the present kingdom of the vagabonds. They have become a 332 ON VAGABONDS. mighty power, arrayed against social order ; swarm- ing in the purlieus of our great cities, and lurking in quiet country districts ; set to do wrong as the calling of their life ; existing in despite of law and police and Christian churches ; sullen, determined, on the whole increasing. They stand out, a dark huge mass ; that is, to those who see it. For there are some, too far off, too easy and pleasant in their lives, to know what it is, to whom faint tidings of it are borne, but as of something vague and dream- like. And there are many who see it, and ignore it ; leave it in the hands of the Government and police, and go their way. And it is not a pleasant thought. But it is reality ; a reality that must be faced as boldly as it faces us, to which the Christian turns as to the saddest and darkest of unsolved problems, and yet a problem for which he, if any, should have the solution. Most curious perhaps of its characteristics is that it is a corporation based upon imposture ; a corporation of various trades, which are filled up as professions are in common life, and every trade a cheat. Mr. Mayhew mentions about a hundred and twenty-six varieties of persons who will not work. An author of a hundred years ago specifies three ON VAGABONDS. 333 hundred ways of getting a dishonest living ! The classic authority on the subject, and to which Luther has added a singular fame by writing a singular and characteristic preface — the Liher Vagatorum of 1527 — betrays the very same feature, and reveals the antiquity of the imposition, and the conserva- tive reverence with which it has been handed down. This book mentions the Lossners, " knaves who say they lay in captivity among the infidel," and an- swering to our shipwrecked mariners. There are the Klenkers, who " sit at the church-doors with sore and broken legs, and all the while as little ails them as other men." "At Schlestad one was sitting at the church-door. This man had. cut the leg of a thief from the gallows. He put on the dead leg, and tied his own leg up. He had a quarrel with another beggar. This one ran off, and told the town-serjeant. When he saw the serjeant coming he flew, and left the sore leg behind him — a horse could hardly have overtaken him." There are the Salvers, who "besmear themselves with salve, and lie down before the churches, looking as though they had been ill a long time." Of these and the like the author says warmly, "Give them a kick if thou canst." ScaldruTYb and other " dodges " are still 334 ON VAGABONDS. practised in London. Mayliew was informed of a man who had pricked the flesh of his leg all over to draw pity ; and reports another " whose right sleeve hung loose at his side, and there appeared to be nothing left of his arm but a short stump. On being examined at the police-office^ his arai was found strapped to his side, and the stump turned out to be a stuffing of bran." There are the Bohissers, " who beg alms to repair a ruined chapel," and two of whom drove a great trade in Ireland some months ago ; the Strollers, " exorcisers of the devil for hail, storm, and witchcraft" (also not un- common in some English counties) ; the Sclileppers, abounding in the Black Forest, false priests who collect for an altar-cloth, and release souls out of purgatory at a penny a piece ; the Dallingers, who have been hangmen, and who whip themselves with rods before the churches ; and " when they have practised for awhile, and cheated many people, they become hangmen again as before ; " the Suntwegers, who " say they have taken a man's life away in self- defence, and, unless they bring back a sum of money at the right time, their heads will be cut off ; " there are pretended noblemen and mercers, " clothed prettily and with neatness ; " " baptized ON VAGABONDS. 335 Jewesses, who can tell people whether their fathers or mothers are in hell or not;" those who bon'ow children ; Gensscherer, or distressed mechanics, who are ashamed to beg ; Sefeldiggers, who can find hid treasures ; tinkers, who " mayhap will break a hole in thy kettle with a stick or a knife, to give work to a multitude of others;" and Grunterers, "who fall down before the churches with a piece of soap in their mouths, whereby the foam rises as big as a fist, and they prick their nostrils with a straw, causing them to bleed, as though they had the falling sickness." Some of these tricks are disappearing; others have been developed with greater skill. Begging letters were in their infancy then ; but Czapo- linski, our contemporary, makes from £20 to £60 a day. The Mendicity Society found the writer of a " most touching letter " crouching in a miser- able London gan^et ; and found again that he lived handsomely with his wife and family in another part of the town. The romantic " Kaggs " family lived for years " in a sort of vulgar luxury, at no cost but invention, falsehood, and a ream or so of paper." x\n old man about Russell Square '' will pick up a small piece of bread which has been thrown out 336 ON VAGABONDS. to the sparrows, wipe it on his velveteen coat, and begin to eat it. I followed him one day," says Mr. Mayhew, " into a low beer-shop in St. Giles's, and found him comfortably seated with his feet up on a chair, smoking a long pipe, and discussing a pot of ale." There are men who throw themselves into the Serpentine on the chance of a glass of brandy when they are pulled out. In 1816, a Commons' committee reported of children let out by the day at half-a-crown : of a woman who had sat ten years at a corner with twins that never grew older ; of beg- gars who paid 50s. a week for their board ; and of one negro beggar who retired to the West Indies with a fortune of £1500. " The personal appearance of the vagabond," says one writer, " is itself a bodily lie." The body is altered in height and character. In one instance alteration of height was made at six different times, varying from three to four inches. Another lived seventeen months at Lubeck with a high shoulder and a stiff finger, and would have been arrested afterwards at another place, but for having neither. The face and hands are often marked with lunar caustic. More recently a skilful tattooing has been discovered, which presently dis- appears on the colouring stuff being absorbed by the ON VAGABONDS. 337 lymphatic glands. Even dumbness has been feigned successfully for many years. A Berlin Jew once robbed a grave Canon in his hotel, and among the ducats in his strong-box he found the apparatus for housebreaking. Imposture is the universal sign from the beggars' dependant (for there is even lower than the beggar) to the ticket-of-leave man. All Vagabondage is a swindle. But yet it is true to itself In no other way would its coherence and persistence be ex- plicable. It is held together by rigid and careful bonds, by mutual trust and mutual interest. It is worked on a definite plan ; a huge secret society issuing its edicts and passwords, distributing its forces, maintaining its communications with all the capitals of Europe, passing its members from place to place, on the alert for every crime, in universal watchfulness of every police. One close bond is their relationship ; what passes for mar- riage with them being in most cases intermarriage. Another is secresy. No pains are spared to keep it. Prisons have been stormed for no other reason than to relieve prisoners who might have betrayed their fellows, or even their crime. A comrade of Picard began to inform. Picard freed him, went 338 ON VAGABONDS. to a robbery with him, and shot him on the way. One of a robber's gang concealed two crowns of the common plunder, and his companions tortured him to death. Wichern has observed the same darkened honour in Berlin. If a thief, he says, has stolen 2500 crowns, and reports only 2000 to his companions, woe to him ! They are sure to find out the true sum from the police reports. The least punishment is a brand in the cheek to make the traitor known ; and the informer has often to be transported for safety, a questionable safety when this underground Vehmgericht compasses the world. A third bond they owe to the Gipsies ; besides giving Beggardom the vagabond impulse, the Gipsies gave it speech, and taught it the use of a secret tongue. Stragglers who joined them were unac- quainted with the so-called Egyptian, but seem to have gathered its vocabulary with that quickness of cunning which belongs to evil. The Egyptians, in turn, picked up words from the countries through which they passed. Fresh words were being con- tinually coined ; and little rivulets of speech were always flowing into the great stream, from the Church mendicants of the Middle Ages, with their ON VAGABONDS. 339 religious slang, the Jew fences, witli their Hebrew- German, and the Lingua Franca, down to the modern Cadger's cant. A composite language was thus formed, by which vagabonds in every part of Europe, and possibly in the jDarts beyond Europe, communicate with each other, which none but vagabonds understand, commonly a traditional, rarely a written speech, in which their secrets are lodged, beyond the ken of keen-sighted policemen, and hitherto of keener-sighted philology. Its basis would seem to be oriental. Many of the primitive words have been traced to Hebrew and Sanscrit. In a page or two of the vocabulary of the Liber Vagatorum occur the Hebrew words for priest, bread, flesh, house, God. The various orders of thieves in Germany have Hebrew names ; the two classes of thieves' implements are called Great and Little Purim. An Indian friend, looking over Mr. Hotten's dictionary the other day, recognised a crowd of words that are still used in Gujerati slang. The Latin of the friars survives in such common words as " patter " (paternoster) and " fake " (facere) ; and tliere are names of common coins that sprung up under the classic shade of Rome. Dr. Latham de- clares that " the thieves of London are the con- z 2 340 ON VAGABONDS. servators of Anglo-Saxon isms ;" there are phrases of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, to be heard now only at the Seven Dials or the New Cut. Each country appears to have grafted its own vocabulary on the old stock, and the English, by virtue of our insulation, is the most distinct of any. It is peculiar also for its variety- slang that must be read backwards, slang that is merely euphonious, cant by multiplication of conso- nants, and cant by transposition of consonants. Lascars and Malays, Genoese and Danes, have con- tributed their quota ; there are odd words selected for their unmeaningness, words that have been coined in some brilliant vagabond inspiration, and words that have been transmitted through the various grades of society -until both usage and spelling have made them new. This outer region of the vagabond's tongue is marked by great fluctu- ation, by the same alteration of sense in words that are retained, and the same dropping of words once popular, that characterise our English itself. The subject is one which cannot be pursued here ; it demands, by its importance and extent, separate treatment. But the fact of a secret language is clear; a language spoken in our own streets, yet ON VAGABONDS. 341 unintelligible to us ; spoken in every great capital, yet unintelligible in each ; the tbieves' and beggars' vade TYiecum ; the sign of a people that in this as- pect resemble only the Jews, scattered through every nation, and combining with none. And this lan- guage reveals the degradation of that people in the most appalling form ; turning the holiest words to the basest uses, invei'ting every principle of honour and morals, laughing at sin through some whimsical cant, twisting all social order and Christian life into a Satanic burlesque, making a onock at sin; the very language of sin itself, where every phrase con- ceals an assault upon virtue, without a word for goodness, or purity, or honour. A society constructed out of such elements as this, maintaining its unity by such a tongue, and yet holding together for centuries undecayed, is surely as awful a proof as need be of the mystery of evil. But it has still another bond of secret communica- tion. A clergyman whose pastoral work led him for two years through a thieves' quarter, tells us, that "a gesture which may seem unmeaning to the passer-by would make him quake with fear if he knew its significance." " Every movement of the eye and mouth," says another writer, " every shufEing 342 ON VAGABONDS. of the feet, the touching of the neck or mouth or hair, a cough, a hem, a sneeze, let it seem never so accidental, is a sign." There is a finger alphabet, commonly practised with one finger; words are traced by the finger in the air, or, in the dark, on the hand of a comrade ; the finger letter C carelessly made as the hand lies carelessly on the table an- nounces one of the order ; a peculiar wink conveys a mystery. There is a vagabond heraldry by which every vagabond has his crest, and every profession its coat of arms; and the vagabond who should assume his neighbour's quarterings would atone for it in blood. His crest may be either out of the world of animals or Euclid, a horse or a parallel- ogram ; sometimes a cross wound round with a ser- pent ; perhaps a A^isor over a fox. As inviolable as his heraldry is his nom de plume ; the Jews having the manufacture of this article, and furnishing to the world of vagabonds at least one apiece. The thieves' arms are a key pierced by an arrow ; in the beggars', the arrow pierces a heart ; it figures also in the gamblers' through three dice. The arrow, sur- mounted by a black globe, signifies fear of capture ; a stroke with a twisted line about it signifies an ex- ploit ; a line attached to this points out the way the ON VAGABONDS. 343 writer has gone; the hooks above the line are for men, those below for the women ; the cipher above for the leader's children — he being marked by his crest ; those below for the children of the rest ; even the date may be as openly written as 1/12/62. In 1724, Gipsies are described as " sticking up boughs of divers kinds, that one company may know which way another is gone ; " in 1852, they are described performing the same office by ''strewing handfuls of grass at a foot lane or cross roads, by a cross made on the ground with a stick or knife, and by a cleft stick placed in a fence. The marks are always placed on the left-hand side." The hieroglyphics are as old as the fifth century, and once we find them there, who can say how much older? They are made with coal, or chalk, or pencil; sometimes in the sand or snow. They are found on churches, public buildings, inns, mile-stones, solitary trees. A Government report from Hampshire speaks of them as "on corners of streets, on door-posts, and on house-steps. The murderer's signal is even exhibited from the gallows ; as a red handkerchief held in the hand of a felon about to be executed, is a token that he dies without having betrayed any professional secrets." Few notice these secrets, though they are 344 ON VAGABONDS. common enough on the ways into any town; the country peasants who see them are superstitious • enough to preserve them. These are but some of the characteristics of this strange world. Many as curious might be noticed ; their superstitions and the connection these have with Tahnudical writings ; their mystical and caba- listic letters ; their class distinctions and rigid etiquette ; their peculiar science ; their common physical t3rpe ; the adaptation of their industries to the seasons and fashions; their knowledge of the polite world and its movements ; their schools for teaching their language and craft; their haughty contempt of all the world beside, as a Jew might speak of a Gentile, or a German student of the Philister. But they are there before our doors ; stealing up our streets; plotting against our pro- perty; darkening our feasts; a kingdom of dark- ness, of which we learn by police reports, at which we shudder when some more evil and daring spirit glides out of it — some Williams, or Dumollard, or Karl Maasch, or Catherine Wilson — smiting down a score of victims with a single hand, but which men turn to wearily and unwillingly, as to the inevitable. What is to be done with it ? Repression has been ON VAGABONDS. 345 tried, and it may be said, failed. Before Luther's time, a beggar tbat was caught in theft was incon- tinently drowned. Whipping and burning, the stocks and the gallows, ear-slitting, and even slavery, were abundantly used by our forefathers, and Henry VIII. has the credit of hanging 72,000 rogues and vaga- bonds. Yet beggars and thieves flourished apace, and made it a savage war of reprisals ; " burnt carts laden with charcoal, set fire to heaps of felled wood, barked apple and pear trees, and cut out the tongues of cattle and the ears of the king's subjects." Master Franz of Nuremberg, relates, that from 1573-1615 he put 861 to death, and tortured 375 others in that district alone. At Giessen in 1726, five were broken on the wheel, nine hanged, and eleven beheaded. At Gotha a lunatic vagabond was slowly butchered by seven sword-strokes. In France, forty were shut up in a house that was then mined, and blown into the air. Schinderhannes was guillotined with nine- teen of his band at Mayence. And still the evil grew under the very hands of justice ; in apparent subsidence in one century, but only to rise with greater force in the next. Kepression of the severest was ineffectual, and with our present time there came milder measures. 346 ON VAGABONDS. A more humane and compreliensive Poor-Law was established, on the principle that it was as much the duty of the nation to care for its poor as to have an army or a fleet ; that the poor could not be banished ; that the vagi-ant must have at least the option of shelter. Poor-houses rose up over the country ; poor-rates were levied ; and men were content. It was a contrast to the older time when the magistrate fixed the days a beggar should take from place to place, and if they were exceeded, the unfortunate tramp was whipped through every vil- lage on the rest of his route. Prison discipline was revised, and based upon juster views. It was made correctional as well as punitive. The prisoner might be a vagabond ; but he was treated like a human vagabond, not like an evil beast. And the theory of con-ectional prisons and reforming pri- soners by discipline, was pushed far enough, so far that the vagabond prefers the prison to the work- house, and the worst of all criminals is a ticket-of- leave man. Yet somehow Vagabondage increases, and is almost as daring and terrible in 1862 as in the days of the Mohawks, and the gentlemen of the road. If the mendicant has slunk away, the men- dicant spirit is rife. And in spite of the Poor Laws. ON VAGABONDS. 347 there are beggars, and perhaps not altogether by their own fault. Vagabondage is there, and what is to be done ? From the Huguenot wars up till now there have been a million professed vagabonds in Germany : their families and auxiliaries have been at least three millions more. Take an English county like Yorkshire, or two like Hereford and Berks. People them with vagabonds as thick as they are peopled now with honest men. Put the inns and public- houses into their hands. Let the children in the streets be vagabond children ; let the green lanes be walked by vagrants and thieves ; let them fill every town. Let their speech be as different from ours as Dutch from English ; their history and traditions purely criminal ; their instincts against order ; their secresy and organisation perfect ; their morals, immorality; their knowledge of God derived from oaths ; without sense of either sin or righteousness. That is something like the evil that faces us ; that has grown up as part of our social life and system ; that is in the very heart of a Christian nation. Are detectives and constables and gaolers the best missionaries to send into such a region ? Is there any likelihood that they will change it? 348 ON VAGABONDS. Is it seemly that this work should be given over to them ? Nay, as long as that is our only remedy, we may be hopeless of anything but mere safety from this Vagabondage, if even that. And, is it not to be held as a reproach on a Christian nation that this Vagabonds' Kingdom should exist in it at all ; a reproach on a Christian Church that has not used the remedies within its reach ; that has not acted by faith in the mighty power of God for the over- throw of sin ? It is peculiarly a question for the Christian Church. There, if anywhere, men will look for the redress of social wrongs, and the remedy for social evils. If the Church gives it over, is it likely that philanthropy or law will succeed ? Christian effort — of the Church, of the individual — is the last hope ; but by faith there is more than hope in it. There are points of contact which any honest, hearty Christian will find enough. "The Vagabond," says Dr. Ave-Lallemant, with every right to speak, " is not incurable ; it is hard to improve him, but no genuine Christian work is easy." He has strong affections. Marriage scarcely exists for him, though sometimes the form is gone through in mockery, with one vagabond for clergy- man and another for sexton; their so-called wives ON VAGABONDS. 349 are exchanged as a matter of business for a poodle or five crowns ; a long sentence authorizes a tempo- rary divorce ; and their union is always dissoluble by considerations of policy and selfishness. Yet there is affection, capable of much sacrifice, cele- brated in some of their ballads, revealing some hid- den softness and purity. A mother has been known to carry the dead body of her child for days, and would not leave it in her flight. " I should just like to make one last theft," said a cruel Dutch robber to his confessor, as they went to the block. " What ? " replied the Capuchin, confounded. " Just that ; and then I would take the money, and give it to the Ursuline nuns, and they would bring up a certain poor child I know, that must otherwise perish." Schinderhannes was always very tender to his father ; and Hans to the last honoured with all obedience the parent who ruined him. Their cal- lousness arises as much from ignorance as from deliberate criminal purpose. " What religion are you ? " was asked of a robber in 1812. " One about as much as the other. My mother taught me as many prayers as got me confirmed ; but I am cer- tainly no Jew." " You know that robbery and stealing are forbidden ? " " Yes, I knew that, but I 350 ON VAGABONDS, never knew it was sinJ' Some Wiirtemberg pastors visited a certain notorious Constanzer Hans in prison. He, too, had never been taught of sin, and when he learned it from their lips, it was like scales falling from his eyes. He died a thoroughly changed maru It may look at first like a blind groping in a dark world, but these rays of tenderness and conscience throw some light and hope into it. And they throw hght upon the remedy. Whose fault is it but the fault of the Christian Church that these men know nothing of sin? Who is to teach them that, if Christians will not 1 And Avhat hope is there of a thief giving up theft merely because law forbids it ? The police and the prisons are on the one side, but balanced on the other by excitement, adventure, the outlaw's revenge upon society, and the difficulty of an honest calling. Let the vagabond be smitten with the sense of sin, dealt with in a patient, man- ful spirit by those whom God has taught both of sin and redemption ; and there is hojDe to see him " clothed and in his right mind." But we dare not approach him as the only guilty one. Whatever in us and in our social life has helped to make him what he is, has made us guilty hkewise. Nor dare ON VAGABONDS. 351 we come with anything Hke dead sermonising, like that old preacher of last century, who put 128 questions to every convict, and made him repeat as many printed answers. It must be in the power of a living faith, and with the keen perceptions of a Christian conscience, and a love that can endure all things. And the work is but begun when the single soul is rescued. It is not enough to reclaim the vagabond, and then leave him to the mercies of a suspicious public. That same Gospel which is preached to the solitary sinner is good for the order of the world. Social reform is not even to go hand in hand with the gospel, but it is part of it. For the spiritual and personal relations of man are not given over to Christians ; the social and material to legislators and philanthropists; but the entire man is the domain of God's work, and of every Christian as fellow-worker with God, and the work must go on until society is set upon a righteous basis, built up in purity, truth, unselfishness, and sympathy. Reformatories and Ragged Schools are admirable; in a time when vagabondage is signalised by its juvenile crime, they are above all needed. But it is not enough to have them. Least of all is it seemly 352 ON VAGABONDS. for the Christian Church to stand by, and let others work them, or throw them with every other heavy burden upon the Government. They are the direct concern of every Christian man and woman ; they will be effectual just in proportion as Christian men and women work them ; they will never get beyond the awkwardness of an experiment until we recog- nise them as a personal Christian duty. Work- houses and poor-laws are also admirable ; institu- tions that mark more than any other the progress and humanity of our century. But they will not make an end of mendicancy. Luther saw towards the right way when he wrote that " every town and village should know their own paupers, as written down in the registry, and assist them." Falk saw it more clearly at Weimar. Chalmers proved it in the great cities. In Erlangen, in Bavaria, the poor are managed on the principle that the Church is their proper caretaker and administrator of the highest and most authoritative poor-law ; and Pastor Schunk's reports are of singular interest and en- couragement. The great experiment at Elberfeld is as vigorous as ever. And it is in this direction that we must move upon Beggardom. It is a Christian enterprise in which none but Christians ON VAGABONDS. 353 can thoroughly overcome. It is peculiarly the busi- ness of the Church, of the Christian congregation, of the individual. It is only by personal Christian contact with it that Vagabondage can be lessened and finally cured. Otherwise it wiU be a perpetual tax upon the State, a constant apprehension, a fearful reproach. A X LEBEECHT FEIEDEFELD'S TKIALS. [ROWN old and grey in service, and still the same slender salary, and no hope of promotion." So sighed the good old schoolmaster, Lebrecht Friedefeld, as he sorrowfully contemplated a little heap of silver pieces that lay before him on the plain deal table that almost filled his tiny room. Good man, his thoughts were some- what wandering this Sunday morning. It was very bright and still without ; there were no steps up the village street ; the sunshine lay in broad patches over the meadows, so fixed that it must have fallen asleep ; you could hear the timid brook as it whis- pered to the rushes, and the wind had gone to rest among the great chestnuts, only stirring a leaf now and then to show where it was. All this could be '^^ LEBRECHT FRIEDEFELUS TRIALS. 355 seen through the window — and the orchard blossoms, and here and there a gable end, or a chimney with its tremulous pillar of smoke, and the old stork solemnly silent on the roof, and the low wooden spire of the church, half smothered in trees, and beyond, the quiet sky with its blue depths and spots of stationary cloud. Moreover, with the sweetbriar and scent of limes, there stole into the room a broken murmur of prayer from a neighbour's house. It would have been better if the schoolmaster had thought of these things, and not drawn the heavy leathern purse out of his pocket, and emptied the crowns upon the table. For his meditations became worldly, and naturally brought little peace with them. And I do not excuse him. Neither do I ex- cuse you, reader, for thinking, as you did, last Sunday, between breakfast and church-hour, when you walked to the window and found how much that young plantation had grown, or wondered how the wheat would yield, or when a remembrance of that clever stroke of business last week brightened through your reverie, or you admired the wise discernment that selected that pretty ribbon you were tying, or a misgiving came over you about a little bill that must be settled, or A 's carriage passed, ajid left an A A 2 356 LEBBECHT FBIEDEFELD'S TBIALS, ugly rumour behind about his credit, and you vexed yourself with the mysteries of bad debts, I do not excuse the schoolmaster, and I do not wish you to condemn him more harshly than yourself. It would have been better had the money been laid aside; but I cannot alter that, for this is a history, and not a story. "One quarter's salary — thirty crowns. In these dear times that will scarce reach over six weeks, and after that I must be content with potatoes till the next quarter is due ; and then the old song begins once more that I have sung these forty years. Thirty crowns ! And corn is four crowns a bushel ; and meat is so dear, and, alas ! the bones are so large in these days! Old Friedefeld, it will be a sharp quarter for you." He shook his head sadly, folded his hands, and sunk into a profound reverie, which, to judge from the bitter expression that played round his lips, brought little comfort or help. He was interrupted by soft, clear, flute-Hke notes that rang out in the beautiful hymn — ** Leave God to order all thy ways, And hope in Him whate'er betide ; Thou'lt find Him, in the evil days, Thy all-sufficient strength and guide." LEBBECHT FRIEDEFELUS TRIALS. 357 It was the blackbird from its cage on the sunny wall; and as it sang, the old schoolmaster's eye lighted Tip, and the painful twitching about his mouth changed into a quiet, happy smile. "Bravo, bravo! my little blackbird," he cried, as the song ended in one prolonged joyous note ; " and you, old Friedefeld, shame on you for your weak- ness ! Your God and Father in heaven, who has helped you in honour and faithfulness these forty hard years, will help you for the rest of your days. Courage, man ! though you are one of the least workers in the Lord's vineyard, yet will you finally receive your reward. Will you turn envious and peevish in your old days, after you have had your daily bread for a life, and never gone hungry to bed ? Fie upon you, Lebrecht! And that I should be grumbling, of all days, on this day of the Lord, the blessed Sunday, when my heart should be full of thanks to our heavenly Father ! God will make it all right in His wisdom and goodness; and so, cheerily divide the money as far as it will go. Thirty crowns ! Let me see : what is to be done for that ? First of all, I must have a pair of new shoes ; for these — ah, the soles are nearly worn off, and the- uppers are revealing notable rents : that makes a 358 LEBEECHT FBIEDEFELD'S TRIALS. crown and a half. And then a pair of new stock- ings ; for these are visibly at an end, and the velvet is so faded and foxy that I am ashamed to go up the church. But— well, it can't be helped, a new pair must come ; and, with the making, they cost summa suTnmarum four crowns and a half ; that is, in total, six crowns. Now breakfast, dinner, and supper for ninety days at sixpence — cheaper it will not be, and corn so high — fifteen crowns — make, together, one- and-twenty, and nine remain ; of which neigh- bour Brown must have five for potatoes and rye- seed — remain four ; and the miller two for last month's meal — remain two ; and a crown must go to old Ursula, for they say she is so weak and sick these days ; and a crown to Peter Stau- mann, who broke his arm on Friday; and a crown to William Bartels — poor fellow, he must eat a good supper, for he will be hungry after this bad fever; and a crown to David Smith — his wife is gone now, and he will have to sell their last cow toward the funeral ; and a crown to Tommy — poor little orphan, who would think it is a yeai* since his father and mother died of the cholera in 'two days ? — and a crown for Widow Seiler, for she has trouble enough in bringing those LEBRECHT FBIEDEFELD'S TRIALS. 359 three sickly children through the world; and a crown " Whereupon the schoolmaster suddenly started, and pursed up his lips, and whistled through them very gently, and a look of comic helplessness passed into his eyes, and he smote thrice upon his thigh, as if by way of atonement for his extravagance ; and then his voice ran on in the same murmur as before : — "Four crowns over already, and Jonathan must have a crown — my Jonathan, my best scholar, my successor, if the Lord will, and if he has no crown to bring at the month's end, I know how his cruel father will send him out to herd geese upon the common. Ah, Friedefeld, teacher of arithmetic, what a blunder you are caught in ! Seven crowns over ! And yet I can't pare off a penny. Ursula Friedes, Widow Seller, Bartels, Staumann — no ; they all need it, they w.ust have it. And neighbour Brown and the miller and I must eat. I can take nothing off, unless But indeed I do need them," he added hesitatingly, and, sinking his voice as he looked down at the shoes and stockings that certainly betrayed a very long acquaintance with the world, and might fairly be called shabby — " I really cannot do without them," 36o LEBRECHT FRIEDEFELD'S TRIALS. "And why not ?" he added, after a moment's deep pause. " Three months soon go round ; and if I take care and stitch the old shoes once more, they must hold out. Poor people, they need it more than I ! Grey-haired fool that I am, must I be so vain in my old age, and play the fop ! Come, Friedefeld, to work. Bis dat qui cito dat!' So saying, he took a sheet of paper, cut it into seven pieces, wrapped up a crown in each, and wrote an address on the back. And then, going to the window, he murmured, "Heavenly Father, let Thy blessing rest upon these mites, and help me, Thine aged servant, through this new quarter ! " And as he prayed, the blackbird piped, "Leave God to order all thy ways," and the village, and the meadow, and the tall trees lay quiet in the sunshine, and the lark's hymn came dripping down from the clouds, and the schoolmaster's heart was moved to gladness, and his care had passed from him to God, and he felt all the blessing of the morning, and his face was like a child's. When it was time to begin his duties, he took down the great rusty keys from the wall, and walked across the churchyard with a grave step, but a bright LEBRECHT FRIEDEFELD'S TRIALS. 361 and joyous face, on past the vicarage till he reached the church. The bells rang out through the Sunday calm, the street was dotted with little groups of vil- lagers, and over the bypaths through the fields the peasants came in their best, the little children, with handfuls of flowers that they had plucked by the way, for people went gravely and leisurely to church in Bernsdorf. And when they had sat themselves reverently in the high pews, the schoolmaster sat himself at the organ, and played a wonderful prelude to the praise and glory of the Lord. Never had he played so well. He took his theme from the black- bird's piping, that had been piping in his heart ever since, and the notes rolled along the vaulted roof like strong waves of the sea, and then floated sweetly and clear like children's voices. Now all the wood seemed to whisper up its hymn through its fresh, tossing leaves, and the brook joined in with its mur- mur, and many an eye in the congregation ran over with joy ; and when, at last, the organ passed into the grand, simple chorale, and the schoolmaster led the singing with a firm, hearty voice, every one stood up and sang as it had not been sung for many a day, till the old church rang with brave Christian hope and solemn thanksgiving. 362 LEBRECHT FRIEDEFELD'S TRIALS. " Admirable ! admirable ! " whispered a stranger, simply dressed in black, half to himself and half to the schoolmaster, as he rose up from the organ and went forward into the choir to hear the sermon. The words met with no other response than a gentle nod ; and the stranger, having looked at him for a moment with a keen, penetrating glance, turned his attention to the preacher. The service was over, the church empty, and at length the schoolmaster came out, and walked slowly back. It was still early, about half-past ten ; and at eleven a few boys dropped in, and sat down very quiet on the forms of the schoolroom, and among them the stranger in black. "I hope I don't disturb you," he said apolo- gisingly; "but do you really keep school to-day — Sunday — my good friend ? " " Only an hour," replied Friedefeld, who regarded his little Sunday school with much favour, but before a stranger with some trepidation. " Is that in the agreement ? " " Well, yes and no," he replied smiling ; " it is no part of the official duty ; but it is a duty of the con- science. I am here to seek the spiritual wellbeing of the children ; and as for work, I think one can LEBBECHT FBIEDEFELD'S TRIALS. 363 never do too much, if one is to walk uprightly before the Lord." " You are a noble fellow," muttered the stranger, arching his brows in astonishment ; and then, aloud — " With your permission, I shall remain during the lesson. I will be no disturbance. There, in the corner, I spy just the place for me." He sat down behind, and the schoolmaster began his lesson without further delay. It was very clear and simple ; the children were interested and atten- tive, and gave ready and good answers, and the hour was almost over when an old dame burst into the room, holding tightly by the hand a pretty little fellow, who looked sorely downcast, and whose eyes were red with crying. " Schoolmaster ! schoolmaster ! " she panted, and her face was glowing ; " ha ! the good-for-nothing ! the good-for-nothing ! ha ! the good-for-nothing ! " and her voice died away inarticulately in her throat, where some gurgling sounds still kept repeating, " the good-for-nothing 1 " "What is it, Mrs. Barber ? What has your grand- son done ? Come here, Willie. Pray sit down, Mrs. Barber ; you must be tired. And you, Willie, what have you done to your grandmother ? Hide nothing." 364 LEBRECHT FBIEDEFELD'S TRIALS. " Oh, the good-for-nothing ! the good-for-nothing ! " cried the grandame ; " he robbed a bird's nest ! Have always told him it was a sin. He had pandies for it once. Must be well punished, the good-for- nothing ! To rob a bird's nest ! Oh, fie, Willie ! and I your grandmother, eh ? What a sin ! and on the blessed Sunday, too. Oh, that ever children were bom!" "Is that true, Willie?" said the schoolmaster, with a grave, severe face. "It — it — it — is," stammered the little fellow, through his tears ; " bu — bu — but, indeed — indeed — gr — gr — grandma" .... " Enough, Willie ; Ve shall learn the whole story when school is over. And now, stand there, beside the desk — so. And, Mrs. Barber, wait a moment. WilHe is mostly a good boy, but if he has sinned, he shall be punished. Now, children." Having stood quite still, the grandmother sat quietly upon a bench by the window, and the lesson was continued with the same interest till twelve struck. And when it was over, and the children were out— ''Now, Willie," said Friedefeld, "tell me all about the bird's nest ; but let it be the truth, for you know I hate nothing so much as a lie ; for lying LEBBECHT FBIEDEFELD'S TBIALS. 365 is sin, and 'sin is a reproach to any people/ as is written in — where, Willie ? '* " In the Proverbs of Solomon, 14th chapter, thirty- fourth verse." " Well answered. And how did it happen about the bird's nest?" "Sir, Bessie Ritchie's goldfinch died; and she is sick, you know, sir ; and she cried, and I was so sorry ; and I said I would get another for her ; and then I hunted through the hedges and garden till I found a goldfinch's nest with four young ones, and I waited till they were fledged, and — and — ttfen " " Well, Willie, and what then ? " " And then I went early this morning to take out a bird for Bessie — only one, sir — only just one ; the beautifuUest, because Bessie is sick ; and just then grandma came and caught me, and said I was a good-for-nothing, and would not let me say a word, but brought me straight here to you, sir ; and now — and — indeed — indeed, sir, I didn't m'gan any Avrong ; and because Bessie is sick I thought it was no sin to take one little bird, only just one Oh, sir, forgive me, or I won't have a kind look from grand- mother the whole week ! " 366 LEBRECHT FBIEDEFELUS TRIALS. "Well, Willie," said the schoolmaster, kindly, *'I see you speak the truth, and that you meant well ; so we'll not say anything more about the bird's nest this time. It is right always to try and make sick people happy; but, remember, if you want to do good another time, tell it first to grand- mother ; and next Sunday, see that you come here instead of running after birds' nests ; and don't forget to read out of the Bible to grandmother, for her eyes are not so strong as yours. Now, good-by ; and tell Bessie I shall see her in the afternoon." But, as Willie slipped away, radiant with joy, the schoolmaster said, softly, to the grandmother, "Eve^- thing in measure, Mrs. Barber. It is good to be firm with the children, and not to spare the rod ; but you know, Mrs. Barber, first make inquiry, and then punish, if it be necessary. You understand me?" " Right well — right well, sir ; and Willie is a good boy, and my heart's flower, but just for that he must never be a good-for-nothing. Yet now I know — first inquire and then punish. Won't forget it ; and thank you, sir, for telling me, and God reward you ! " As the old lady left with a profound courtesy. LEBBECHT EBIEDEFELD'S TRIALS. 367 which was chiefly directed towards the seat she had occupied, the stranger, who had been quietly ob- serving everything from his retreat, came forward, and was about to address the schoolmaster, when a succession of vehement tappings at the door, followed by a great shuffling of feet, interrupted the half-formed words, and, before he could go on, the room filled up with a motley group of people, that seemed to have broken out of an hospital. Wooden legs, crutches, arms in slings, and sleeves that were armless, heads bound up with handkerchiefs, stooped people and crooked people, had surrounded the schoolmaster, who was trying to make himself heard through a very Babel of voices and coughs. " Now, good friends, what do you want ? Don't you know how wrong it is to be out ? And you, Stanpily, with that broken arm, and, Bartels — ^you ought to be in bed ; and. Ursula — tut ! tut ! Are you gone mad ? " And then, thinking it was too severe, he added, "Well, well; God bless you all Sit down ; but quiet, quiet — not a word ; if you say a word, I shall get angry and run away ;" and, as the noise did not much subside, he turned aside, as if in gi'eat wrath, but it was only to rub his spec- tacles very hard, and let no one see the tears that 368 LEBEECHT FBIEDEFELD'S TRIALS. were making them dim. However, it had its effect, and they stood looking sorrowfully down npon the ground, and without even a whisper. And now the stranger came forward, and, catching Friedefeld by the hand — " Do not take it ill, my worthy friend, but I should like to know what brings these people to you ? It seems," (turning round to the rest,) "good people, you are very fond of your schoolmaster ? " It was like opening a sluice-door, such a stream of words poured irrepressibly out of every mouth. The faithful working of forty years was revealed, and how the schoolmaster had nursed the sick, and comforted the stricken, and pinched himself to feed the hungry, and, — there never was any one like him, and it was like the sunshine to see him stepping into their houses ; and for all he was such a scholar, he was just as humble as themselves, and sure they only wanted to come up this quiet day and thank him for his loving heart, and hear the blessed words he spoke about the Lord Jesus ; and from lip to lip his praise flew round, while he stood by ashamed, and blushing as red as a young girl, and then hung his head like a poor sinner or thief caught in the act, and finally fled out of the room, into the garden. LEBRECRT FRIEDEFELB'S TRIALS. 369 where lie walked up and down between the sweet- briar and laburnums, wofully disturbed. And there, not long after, a deep, sweet voice spoke softly by his side, " Oh, thou good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things ;" and, starting sharply, and half frightened, round, he saw the stranger in black, who continued, with a smile : — " The Lord has had some purpose in sending me here this day, and surely will fulfil this word that He has spoken. Patiently and hiddenly you have sown the good seed these many years, and cared nothing for yourself. And now it may be the Lord will give you your reward, even on earth, and the time of the reaping is come. You will hear from me again." Before the astonished schoolmaster could answer, the stranger had disappeared. There was nothing left for him but these odd mysterious Avords, over which he shook his head, and could find no meaning in them, and so, like a wise man, soon foi'got them, and made ready for the afternoon service. When that was over, he visited, as his custom Avas, the poor and sick of the congregation, returning towards evening, somewhat tired, but happy, and knelt in 370 LEBBECHT FBIEDEFELD'S TRIALS. his little room with a thankful heart to Almighty God, and did not forget the stra^nger in his prayer, and then lay down to sleep the tranquil sleep of the righteous, whose soul rests in the bosom of God. Rather more than a week had passed. The shoes had been stitched, except one obstinate rent that refused entreaty, and the well-known stockings had been seen again at church — I question if the honest villagers would have liked the new ones half so well — and the blackbird was piping to himself before the school began, when there came a clatter of a horse's feet, and the express postman rode straight u]3 to the window, and reaching in a packet, cried, "Nothing to pay," and rode off before Bernsdorf had time to take in the astounding fact, though, on reflection, it would have admitted that the king himself might correspond with its schoolmaster. Friedefeld con- templated the packet from all sides, and ended mth the superscription. It was addressed, " Lebrecht Friedefeld, late schoolmaster in Bernsdorf" No mistake then about the person. But " late " — and he turned it round again, and looked at the seal. It was the official seal of the Board. "Late!" he cried, in alarm. "Will the gentle- LEBRECHT FBIEDEFELD'S TEIALS. 371 men in town really drive me from my post ? Though my hair is grey, body and spirit are active still. Late ! Ah ! what news lies under this great red seal ! Well, whatever happens, everything goes by God's will and grace." So saying, he broke the seal hastily, but his hand trembled, and a dark mist drew before his eyes. A paper fell out — another — then a third. Catching at the first, he spread it open, stole one glance at it, became white, and sank back into his chair. " AVas I not right ? Who could have thought it 1 My dismissal ! Graciously indeed, but Avithout a word about pension. Cast as a useless servant out of the vineyard, where I have worked, and sow^ed, and planted. That is hard ;" and a tear slowly filled his eye, and stole down a furrow^ in his cheek. "Leave God to order all thy w-ays," sang the blackbird, who was watchinsc intentlv, with head on one side, and evidently felt the gravity of the situa- tion, " and hope in him, whate'er betide." " Right, right, my pretty blackbird — well spoken ; but truly my mind is troubled, and needs every comfort. Lord my God, how hast Thou laid this sore burden on Thy servant ? " 372 LEBEECHT FRIEDEFELUS TRIALS. " What ? Murmuring I — sad ! What is this ? " said a familiar voice ; and the schoolmaster's eyes fell upon the stranger in black, who had slipped into the room unnoticed. " Read on, Lebrecht Friedefeld. If the Lord takes, can He not also give ? " Seizing the second paper, the schoolmaster read — " Wh — , what I " he stammered, with altered face. " Chief organist ! — Income, four hundred crowns ! — I, old Lebrecht Friedefeld I — I to play that glorious organ in the cathedral, finger it, unlock its heavenly music ? " " Certainly ; but read further, you faithful, old, God-fearing man. There is another paper." Friedefeld took it, unfolded it with unsteady fingers, and, as he read, his eyes fairly ran over with tears, and he looked up, speaking in broken words : " Too much — too much goodness, Father, for Thy sinful child ! Lord, how is it possible — how shall I believe it — that I, the old village schoolmaster, shall be rector in the capital, with eight hundred crowns a year ! I, the poor schoolmaster ! No, it is a dream. My thoughts must have got con- fused." " No dream, but reality, m}^ dear rector and chief LEBBECHT FBIEDEFELD'S TRIALS, 373 organist. You are wide awake, and hold the proof of your good fortune in your hands; for you will observe that these papers are made out and con- firmed by the Board ; and see, there is your name. So, now you must be happy ; for God has appointed you to a place where you can do much to His glory." "Hosanna! Bless the Lord, O my soul !" And, after a pause, the schoolmaster added, " Just permit me one question. How have I deserved this in my humble position ? " " Remember the parable of the Lord that is writ- ten in Matt xxv. 14 — 30: 'Well done, good and faithful servant ; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things : enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' " '" But you, sir, who are you ? " " I ? I am one who went out to seek, and whose stej)s God guided till he found. I am Bishop Weilert, from the capital. The seminary needed a head. I made long and fruitless trial, and what I could not find in honour I sought in lowliness, until, at last, my feet passed over your quiet tliresh- old. There I found what I sought : ti-ue fear of God, true righteousness, true humility, and faith 374 LEBRECRT FBIEDEFELUS TRIALS. and piety to do the good only for the good's sake, and not by order of the commandments ; true hus- bandry, true self-denial ; and I said in my heart, This is the man ! I hurried home, and related to the prince what I had seen, heard, and observed. He received my words graciously, and here, my worthy rector, is the result — not of my words, but of your life." The two men grasped each other by the hand ; tears stood in their eyes ; and Friedefeld spoke — " Glory be to God in the highest ! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name ! " But the blackbird only sang its clear steadfast words — " Leave God to order all thj' ways, And hope in Him, whate'er betide ; Tliou'lt find Him, in tlie evil days, Thy all-sufficient strength and guide." This is my story. It happened in the village of Bernsdorf, on the borders of Silesia. If you wiU not believe me, you will be kind enough to travel there (it is a beautiful country, and as they say in it, " very friendly,") and satisfy yourself Old Ursula s cough is worse, perhaps, but no cough will ever prevent her telling you of all that came to pass out LEBRECHT FRIEDEFELD'S TRIALS. 375 of that Sunday morning not so many springs ago. And if you go to the rector himself, you may have the story from his own lips. He is simple Lebrecht Friedefeld still. THE E^D. .- i