DRAW me to Thee, till far within Thy rest,
In stillness of Thy peace, Thy voice I hear—
For ever quieted upon Thy breast,
So loved, so near—
By mystery of Thy touch my spirit thrilled,
O Magnet all Divine ;
The hunger of my soul for ever stilled,
Because Thy Heart is mine.
For me, 0 Lord, the world is all too small,
For I have seen Thy Face,
Where Thine eternal love irradiates all
"Within Thy secret place.
And therefore from all others, from all else,
Draw Thou my soul to Thee . . .
. . . Yea—Thou past broken the enchanter's spells,
And I am free.
Now in the haven of untroubled rest
I land at last,
The hunger, and the thirst, and weary quest
For ever past—
Lord, to lose, in bliss of Thine embrace,
The recreant will ;
There, in the radiance of Thy blessed Face,
Be hushed and still ;
There, speechless at Thy pierced Feet,
See none and nought beside ;
And know but this—that Thou art sweet,
That I am satisfied.
IT was well for Gerhardt that he knew Hoffmann, the merchant, and the linen-weaver.
He could still believe in some who loved the Lord, and walked in his faith and fear. But his temptation seems rather to have been, that he believed too readily in those who claimed to be something more than their fellows.
The " Perfect," of whom we hear from time to time in our own days, already existed in those old times. And the " Pluperfect," who had their strange gifts, and revelations, and inspirations, in addition to their perfection, had at first an attraction for Gerhardt.
" The Inspired," as they were then called, had their origin in the mountains of the Cevennes. The persecuted Huguenots, driven to madness by the tortures and massacres of the dragoons of Louis XIV., were sometimes roused to a desperate revenge, as in the case of the Camisards, sometimes possessed by strange delusions, and worked up into wild excitement. They could readily believe, as they hid in the woods and caverns, or fled in the dark stormy night over the lonely mountains, that they heard unearthly voices, and the singing of hymns, and wild echoes of strange music in the glens and amongst the solitary peaks.
And they repeated the words and the songs, and added more, which to their minds, overstrained and unstrung, seemed to come to them from heaven.
The Huguenot preachers of the first half of the eighteenth century were much hindered by the wild utterances and the disorders of the inspired men, women, and even small children, who would disturb the meetings, and bring discredit upon the preaching and worship, by their cries and convulsions and mysterious prophecies.
Finding themselves silenced by Antoine Court and other preachers in the Cevennes, many of the " Inspired " fled to Germany and Holland. There, amongst the children of those who had grown up in ignorance and in terror, during the Thirty Years' War, the prophets found a soil ready prepared to believe in the wildest of visions and prophecies. At Halle, and at other places, many Germans were seized with the contagious malady, and in the neighbourhood of Mülheim they were not wanting.
Gerhardt was filled with awe and wonder when he first saw the wild eyes and heard the fearful voices of the Inspired. He felt himself scarcely able to refrain from speaking and singing in the same unearthly manner. Even when he was alone, fits of trembling would seize him, and some unknown power seemed to take possession of him.
"But," he says, "I knew God as the blessed, the gentle One, and in a more inward manner. I therefore gave no place to these strange, unrestful, and terrifying delusions, but went quietly to my work. And when it had thus happened to me once or twice the power was broken, and I had these visitations no more."
It would seem that it was chiefly through the teaching of Hoffmann that God was thus known to Tersteegen as the Rest and Stillness of his soul. Hoffmann was called a Quietist.
What was it to be a Quietist ? Perhaps even amongst those who have studied the history of the Quietists, scarcely two could be found who would give answers to this question, not contradictory to one another. Those people who were called Quietists at different times, and in different countries, had, it is true, something in common, and might be called by the same name, very much as a primrose and a daffodil might be called yellow flowers.
The Catholic nun Teresa, and the Calvinist Hoffmann were people far more unlike one another than alike; yet both were called Quietists, and in one respect at least both had a claim to the name.
But we must go beneath the surface of history if we are to understand how and why such a name existed. We can find in our hearts an explanation of the fact that the race of Quietists is one of the most ancient families of mankind.
Have we not all that nature which is as the troubled sea ? for the way of peace we know not. And the sad and weary craving for rest, begun when the gate of Eden was closed, and the life of toil became the doom of men ? Toil of heart and soul—far harder than the toil of the hands—labour to regain the lost peace, the unattainable mountain-top, where the weary climbing would cease at last.
And long before the name was thought of, there were those who bethought themselves of ways and means for reaching the still peak above the clouds—rest of conscience above the thunders and the fire of Sinai, rest of heart and soul in some calm place above the sorrows and confusions of the weary world.
Was Quietism, then, but a form of selfishness ? In many cases it was ; in all cases, except in those where God Himself had spoken to the soul, and self had been lost sight of in the glory of His presence.
We can therefore understand that forms of Quietism were to be found in the darkest of heathen religions ;
for as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man, and the unsatisfied craving fOr rest is a necessity of the fallen soul.
But we can also understand that where the love of God had reached the heart, the craving would take another shape, and the thought of rest would no longer be merely that of deliverance from condemnation and fear, and sorrow, and toil, and dissatisfaction. The longing would stop short of no lower point than that of being well-pleasing to Him whom the heart loves, of rejoicing in the joy of Him whom the soul adores.
Therefore the Quietism of S. Teresa, of Mme. Guyon, and of Hoffmann, was a state to which the heart desired to attain for the love of God, rather than for the love of self. It was a desire to have no will but the will of God, to reach a point when self should be gone, and all that God should will and do be the delight of the heart, however painful otherwise to nature. Then would there be rest and quiet, for the soul would say unceasingly, "All is well."
But we may desire to do and suffer the will of God, and yet from want of being "filled with the knowledge of His will," we may be aiming at the wrong point after all. And to the Catholic Quietist the will of God meant, in most cases, that which stands in the most direct opposition, not merely to our fallen desires, but to our natural feelings.
To arrive, therefore, at a state of conformity to it, it was needful to deaden all natural feeling by constantly thwarting, and denying, every desire for that which was otherwise than painful. It was common amongst the Quietists to say, " If God were to cast me into hell, and His will were all my delight, I should rejoice that I was there."
Conformity to His will was thus constantly measured, and that not by a knowledge of what His will is, but by the amount of pain and suffering to which the soul and body could willingly submit.
And thus, if this "union with God," as the Quietists would incorrectly call the subjection of the will, was to be an attainment, reached by earnest endeavours, it was quite natural to put no limit to it, and to suppose the cases the most impossible to nature.
We must not, however, shut our eyes to the fact that the hearts of these true children of God desired something far beyond rest and joy for their own souls.
Granting this, we have also to admit, that they were seeking that which they could never find. They had moments of joy and peace when they forgot how far they had attained, when they forgot themselves altogether, and their hearts were filled and satisfied with God Himself. But when they turned to look at themselves, their hearts again misgave them, and they saw that the high peak was yet unsealed, and their toil and labour began afresh.
They were seeking in themselves that which God has found, and can only find, in Christ. They had not received consciously, as a free gift, the divine life that is in Christ. They had it, it is true, but they were not aware that in Him it was theirs. They had not seen their place in Hirn, the accepted and perfect Man in whom God the Father is well pleased.
They did not know that upon Him the eyes of God were set, and that in Him He had accepted them also, loving them with the same love, delighting in them for His sake with the same delight, "resting in His love, rejoicing over them with singing."
They did not realize that in Him they were already not only on the high and silent peak, but far above it, in the heart of heaven, in the bosom of the Father. Had they seen these things, the thought of being content to be in hell could never have been conceived by them, for it was in Christ that they were complete, in Christ accepted, in Christ welcomed into the Father's house. Could He be anywhere but there ? They regarded themselves as apart from Christ, and yet as seeking after unattainable union with God.
They did not know that, as believers in Jesus, they were already one with the divine Man who is the Son of His love, and that His peace and joy already granted them, were theirs already, because the peace and joy were His.
Had He not said, "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you." " These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full " ?
But by faith do we know these things. We believe them on the testimony of God, not on that of our own changing feelings. And to a Quietist, we may say to a mystic in general, the feeling and experience was the measure of reality. They believed rather in their feelings than in the word of God. They began with themselves, and worked upwards to reach to God.
It was, therefore, on the plan of the builders of that ancient tower, whose top was to reach to heaven, that they built up one storey after another, of self-purification and self-renunciation, entirely unaware that it was with self rather than with God that they were occupied ; whilst at the same time it was the blind stretching forth of the heart and soul to God, whom they truly loved, that draws forth the love and sympathy of the heart that has known Him to these ignorant and devoted Christian men and women.
They were unaware that it is from top to bottom that the veil was rent, that the beginning of the work was on the part of God ; that His love it is, not ours, the blood of Jesus, not our own striving, that brings us into the innermost court of heaven.
And therefore we can trace back their error to this—they put love to God first, faith in the love of God next in order, and thought to reach God-by the love of their own hearts, rather than by believing in His perfect love to them—the love manifested in the gift of His Son, in the cross of Jesus.
They did not see that to believe Him, to hear and receive His word, must be the only foundation upon which that love can rest which is the fruit of the Spirit of God, and that all other love is but natural feeling, which may at one time grow cold, at another blaze up into wild extravagances.
How often amongst us is credulity called faith, indiscriminating kindness, love, and the not uncommon quality of hopefulness, Christian hope ; whereas the faith, love, and hope, which are the fruits of the Spirit, are known by their object ; and it is only where faith in the word of God is found, that true love and hope (the "blessed hope," even the looking forward to the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ) can exist.
Most of the mystics regarded the word of God as one of the external things which were to be revered, but to stand second to the feelings, by means of which they hoped to rise to Him, and hold communion with Him. They rushed to the conclusion that the only alternative to a religion of feeling was a dry, doctrinal theology devoid of all feeling, not perceiving that it is impossible to believe with the heart in the marvellous revelation of love given to us in the word of God, and to remain untouched, unmelted, untransformed in the glory of that light and heat.
To a Catholic mystic all external things—the word of God and the ceremonies of the Church—were thus set aside as hindrances, only to be used and reverenced as a matter of obedience when the Church commanded it.
And in the same way did the Protestant mystics regard doctrines and ordinances. They had been wearied by the preaching of doctrines, and the classification of men and women according to their assenting or objecting to these doctrines, whilst the heart might remain hard and cold as ice.
And, therefore, as our foolish hearts are apt to do, they rushed to an opposite conclusion equally dangerous, and overlooked the doctrine, if only the heart were warmed by love to God. They did not perceive that true love to God can only be called forth by that which we know of Him, and that all we know of Him is that which He Himself has told us. If, therefore, we believe that which is false concerning God, a true love to Him cannot be the consequence. We have in such a case fallen in love with our own conceptions ; and this warm attachment of the heart to its ideal has often been mistaken for love to God, and measured by its intensity rather than by its cause. " We love Him because He first loved us." But how do we know He loves us ? We must fall back upon His revelation of Himself in His word and by His Spirit to the believing soul.
It was natural, therefore, that the perfect and immeasurable love of God, which is an object of faith, was little considered by many mystics in proportion to their striving after perfect love to Him. They had not seen that the dryness and coldness, which they found in what they called doctrine, was really in the unbelieving heart, and had they believed the glorious truths and facts to which they incorrectly gave the name of doctrine, the warmth and light would have flowed into the heart from God, instead of being toilsomely struck out of the hard flint, the stony heart within.
Let us not blame them too severely, whilst amongst ourselves the same delusion is everywhere to be found. How often have we not heard the wonderful fact that Christ bore our sins in His own body on the cross, spoken of as a doctrine ? Other facts in history are not called doctrine by us. But this act of love, which should stand out from the pages of history as the great fact upon which all hinges for us for time and eternity, is to numbers amongst us nothing more than "the doctrine of the atonement."
And to numbers this fact exists only in books of theology, and much talk is made of "love, which is better than correctness of doctrine," whereas it is our own labelling of facts as doctrines, which makes them powerless to touch the heart, or save the soul.
We believe the great and marvelous facts, and the soul passes from death to life, and we find ourselves no longer climbing up the toilsome ladder of our own feelings to reach to heaven, but already, in the person of Christ in the bosom of the Father, in the center of that unspeakable love which flows to us from God.
" If this really happened," said an infidel, when Isaiah 53 was read to him, "I am saved." And from that moment his heart was given to Him who had saved him. He worked for God for four years, and passed away, saying, "I am going to be for ever with Jesus."
But the mystics passed over the open door of faith, and took many weary journeys till at last they were brought to see that the work was done ; and done, not by them, but by Christ. Then at last they knew the joy of God.
"1-lave you all you need, or are you in want of anything ?" a friend said to an old woman dying in an Oxfordshire village. "God loves His Son too much to leave me in need of anything," she said. This was a quiet beyond that of Quietism, as the heaven is high above the earth.